(Dev's please review this.) How PS2 Works and Where it can be Optimized

Just because lots of AAA titles use it doesn't mean it's the right choice. Scaleform is essentially a version of Flash built "for" games. In fact, the GUI is built using Adobe Flash. This means scaleform inherits a LOT of the ridiculous generic overhead that just isn't necessary for a game UI. I mean, is it really necessary to have vector fonts and HTML text layouts?

So, Scaleform is essentially Flash. Flash hasn't really ever been known for it's performance. It has been known for it's flexibility, and it's relative ease of use, however.

Also, Scaleform is known to have performance issues when using ActionScript or animation tweening.

Tera is a recent major game that uses Scaleform. With the GUI off, you can gain about 20FPS.
https://forum.tera-europe.com/showthread.php?t=83902&page=2

World of Tanks also uses Scaleform. I've noticed myself it runs MUCH faster without the GUI.

Oh, and AFAIK Ogre3D uses CEGUI. Scaleform is an optional plugin. The reason is Ogre is made to be as lightweight as possible out of the box. CEGUI meets those requirements. It loads nothing until told.

To me the proper solution is to drop all the bloated crap that loads the heap and the stack with garbage overhead. Again, scripting languages have no place in a real-time game environment.

I agree. That's easier said than done. Proper multithreading is quite possibly the most difficult programming task ever.

Scripting ? Meaning it's interpreted at run-time as opposed to being compiled?

Is this so that GUI changes can be easily made? Or that MODs can be added easily at a later date?

Do you even have any idea what a heap or a stack is? Have you worked on a AAA title before, perchance? Do you know that there are plenty of games using interpreted languages to drive UI functionality.. like Lua in World of Warcraft? Oh, or maybe people using Lua under Nginx to alter pre-request behavior on websites serving tens of millions of hits a day where extra milliseconds in the response time equates to pennies lost per customer?

If you're going to spew out ********, at least add a disclaimer and let everyone know you're simply copy and pasting results from Google. Thanks chief.

Absolutely there are plenty of games using scripting. But when a title suffers from poor performance due to optimization, folks like to question different aspects and ascertain where the bottleneck might lie.

??? Were you talking to me ??? Sorry, I'll add my disclaimer now...

20+ years working in the gaming industry - 8+ with a top 5 game developer
10+ years as a CIO

May we refrain from starting personal fights in this thread. Also I'd like to point out, the majority of games use a script system to control events, this includes some of the oldest engines. GoldSRC and earlier IDTech Engines, for example, used QuakeC while most current games use either lua or python.

And now we watch as people who have absolutely no idea what you've said agree with you. Also as someone who does understand what you said, I dont really see any particularily bad stuff here, or that has any clear effect on optimization. You could argue it seems unprofessional but that would be exceptionally subjective and a more or less meaningless statement. I mean the unreal engine uses even more file types and I cant imagine you'd argue that it's poorly optimized, sure alot of them get contained into common files, but it's not like they don't just open the containers and extract the data to just use the files anyways....

As for the actual effect on performance of anything you've described so far? from my count it's insignificant. Everything you've described adds up to a fraction of a fraction of a percent of cycles and additional hd reads compared to the alternatives you seem to be suggesting. And I think it'd be quite silly to think they don't have a plan for cheaters, they've been tight lipped about it, but they've always said they have a system in place, and that it's no joke.

OP: Good post with some excellent points.
to the few that are posting constructive thoughts with the OP thanks.

I remember I had to compile my grapple hook and chase cam .qc files. Most of the modern scripting languages aren't precompiled but are JIT and run in a managed environment with a wonky GC running. My point is JIT code can only hurt, not help (performance-wise) and your research clearly indicates a large potential of lots of parsing and compiling, quite possibly in game.

You have done _nothing_ but stating the absolute obvious in this thread, part of which was even wrong.
Anybody could've found these things in a few minutes
In what ways is this going to contribute? The game was released too early, its unfinished, that's just it, the devs know what's wrong. What reason do you have to believe that you know more about planetside 2's issues than the devs who have access to the sourcecode and extensive runtime statistics. The whole thought in and of itself is just ridiculous and highly condescending towards the developers, considering that the game at least runs way, way better than other games in that scale like GW2 or Warhammer Online

This just reeks of "oh look at me I'm so smart and I know big words". You're not helping anyone, you're trying to distinguish yourself while making the developers of PS2 look like idiots

@Krizzen
That's where frik_file comes in handy.

@Elo1
I never said I was smarter than them nor is my intention to make them look like idiots. I'm merely stating my findings from studying the files and games structure.

TLR, game released early, going to take time to fix.

Did a little experiment with the UI; ran out to a deserted corner of the map and looked at the floor. 55 fps.

Pushing tab to bring up the score screen boosted it to 62 fps. (hides the map & chat box)

Disabling the UI entirely? 67 fps.

I also found that just grabbing the scroll bar on the chat box and moving it up and down killed about 5 fps.

This was on a Q6600 @ 3.0 GHz with a ATI 5770, at 50% render quality (to make sure it was cpu bound).

That's rather interesting. Let me try the same thing and see if the result with the ui is the same.

@Kitsune94

Tldr the whole topic. Not sure if someone asked already, but do you seriously believe they don't have people who know what could be improved?

I'm not saying they don't. One would assume that they do. If that's the case though, then why hasn't the community seen any word about it other than 'there will be a big patch in January, enjoy these small hot-fixes in the mean time'?

@SonicUK
I have tested your experiment. It produced a similar result however, in the case of my gpu, while greatly improved from what it normally is. As was with you, it was +/- 5 fps. You did quite interesting of a find.

No offense but if the DEV's actually listened to the players during beta and listened to the concerns of the players as well as the many bugs the devs have known about since beta it seems as if sony does not listen to its player's who have voiced their concerns to the devs. so yea it does make the devlopers on ps2 look like idiots because you guys havent really fixed crap since its launch you released the game with WAY to many bugs and way to early and many of the players feel sony is acting like fun com with the disrespect towards the players and the many issues that may or may not ever be fixed. with that being said if the current trend of the devs and the company continues many players will not look into this game due to poor management on the companys part lets face it most of us "PAY" for your product and expect results from the devs which you have yet to provide. so yes your devs are Idiots and the guy/girl exposing this is great for doing so.

if people say that disabling the UI gives a bump in fps....how does one go about disabling the ui of PS2 to give this theory a test?

I still wouldn't go as far as to call them idiots. However, I do agree and believe that they should be more considerate of their player base. Many players do pay real money for their game, the least they could do is listen to what their community has to say or ask for.

@nst6563
Go to the settings menu, under general there is a button that says 'Draw HUD'

thanks I'll give that a try