• 26 Posts
  • 370 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 9th, 2023

help-circle



  • No, it has special source, because it 1) was literally the first practical photo editing software for home computers 2) has been in continuous development since 1987 and 3) is clearly designed for artists, not programmers. It’s not just how long the development has been, but also how much resources have been poured into it compared to open source and other competitors - and to what end. Gimp may only be just nine years younger, but it’s clearly (just look at its insane user interface) typical of an issue that is very widespread among open source projects: It’s developed by programmers for programmers, with little regard for non-technical users and actual workflows.

    Not all open source software suffers from this, but a ton does. It’s frustrating any time I’m trying to get people to e.g. switch to Linux and other open source software; they often run into a wall of poor usability. This is the main thing that prevents mass adoption of the Linux desktop. The fact of the matter is, most developers of open source software are highly technical people who are developing this software for themselves and other highly technical people. This might be fine for you and I, but it won’t win over the better washed masses.








  • Stutters (on a more than powerful enough PC), glitches and crashes ruined the experience though. Also, none of the spaces are well designed for actual gameplay and instead force the player to endlessly walk for no good reason. This would be fine exactly once in a narrative experience (“Look at this cool set piece we’ve built!”), but not for routine things like getting to your ship or a store every time.





  • While I agree that there are games that - mostly for a lack of time in an industry that puts ever increasing pressure on developers - are having hardware requirements that are higher than they need to be, the whole picture is a bit more nuanced.

    DLSS, FSR 4.1 and (to a lesser degree) Xess are good enough that you’re just wasting performance (and even, in some games, image quality) for no reason by not activating them. They are an inherent part of modern rendering pipelines, not mere crutches, a way out of the fact that every tiny improvement to visual fidelity comes with a huge cost to performance. If you have hardware that is still limited to older versions of FSR - which are kind of shitty - then I can understand your sentiment, but if you’re not, then I invite you to have a friend help you with a blind test, activating and deactivating current upscalers to find out for yourself if you can spot the difference. You might be surprised.

    Also, if you had paid attention to what CDPR developers have published and presented so far, they have optimized UE significantly, dramatically improving performance, both by rewriting parts of the engine entirely (like the geometry streaming system) and throwing out others that they have no need for (like Blueprints). Expect The Witcher 4 to have hardware requirements that are appropriate for the visuals. Note that I’m not saying it will have low hardware requirements - there’s a difference. Given the target audience, the expectations and the game’s status as a halo game for both CDPR and UE, this game will push technology forward, which is not cheap.

    That said, this game has been announced for the current console generation, which includes Xbox Series S, so it’ll still have to scale. Expect fallbacks (like possibly software ray-tracing, since UE supports this feature - I doubt it’ll allow you to disable RT entirely) and plenty of options to dial it back to run on reasonably modest hardware. It’s likely going to be too much for the Steam Deck, but still run on e.g. an RTX 2080, a first-gen RT-capable card with 8GB of VRAM from eight years ago (ebay price: ~200 bucks), which in my experience can handle the most demanding current RT-only games remarkably well.

    Do not expect the upgraded version of Rocket League to have hardware requirements as low as the current version. That game officially only needs a GeForce 760, which is an upper entry level card from thirteen years ago that is limited to DirectX feature level 11 and has only 2 GB of VRAM. I honestly doubt that many players are still playing the game on hardware this old (and the developers have the numbers). What we can reasonably hope for, just like with The Witcher 4, is that the new version has hardware requirements that are appropriate for the visuals. I think it’s realistic to expect them to be similar to Fortnite, given the developer being part of Epic, scaling on a wide variety of systems. It’s still a F2P e-sports title after all, so it will have to remain accessible to a large number of players on hardware ranging from toaster to space ship.


  • It’s embarrassing that this kind of talk is still the norm surrounding Unreal Engine in gaming forums.

    Have you two thought about just how difficult it is to maintain a game based on an engine that is now 22 years old? Imagine hiring new developers who taught themselves or already have worked in other studios on UE4 and 5, but now have to go back to a significantly less advanced engine with far more archaic tools. The studio has to move on at some point.

    Also, modern versions of UE can be incredibly performant - it entirely depends on the features you’re using. Going full-out on Nanite for example is demanding, but it’s supposed to be a high-end feature pushing the envelope on the latest hardware. You’re not forced to use it as a developer and I doubt they will for an arena-based sports title. Similarly, Lumen is entirely optional as well.