Operation: Make Faster Game

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by codeForge, Sep 10, 2013.

  1. NyaR

    Reading this post has calmed me down.
    • Up x 2
  2. codeForge

    Okay thanks guys for the questions. One that has come up a ton here is what gameplay effect the occlusion changes will have. The hope is to have all our optimizations have as little negative effect on the gameplay as possible. I'm not going to say everything will be rainbows and unicorns, but you'll still be playing the game you're playing now.

    WRT Looks
    We love the way the game looks, and while we feel frame rate is more important than looks, we don't want to just ruin the look and feel of the game, and we don't have to. I will say that if you have a very low-end machine, you will definitely not be seeing the same thing as someone with a high-end machine, that does not mean you see fewer players or vehicles! Those are too important to LOD out. Instead, we do find other things to cull from the scene, things that don't count as cover and don't adversely effect gameplay.

    WRT Game Systems
    All game systems function the same regardless of your machine specifications. Your bullets drop at the same rate whether you are on a $10k ubercomputer or a laptop from 2003. Same with every other gameplay-related system. We're not changing this into a different game altogether.

    The #1 question though is "WHEN", and it's a good one.

    We've given the answer, and it's "when it works". We don't want to put out our first patch with some tiny, barely-noticeable change, and we also don't want to put out our first patch with a ton of crashes in it... so we want to take the time to do something substantial and then take time to test it, with you, on our Public Test Server.

    The team is as excited to get them to you as you are to have them.

    Just keep the faith,

    codeForge
    • Up x 14
  3. Revanmug

    The problem with "patience is key" is that patience was already running fairly low because there are many other things that are plain broken in this game. We were suppose to have a patch fixing most projectile pathing and rending that is plaguing this game but was push away at the last second. Hossin was also suppose to be coming soon. Let's not talk about the ESF update or some of the discussed balancing.

    I would be careful. Releasing good and working patch is important but you can't take months to do it. You are shooting yourself in the foot if you do so because this isn't the only issue that need to be resolve.

    While this isn't changing the fact that PS2 has optimisation problem, rendering that much more player do make a difference. Any crowded Biolab can easily have 200 players. And base that get 3 ways, like allatum, Zurvan and Tawrich, are even worse. Luckely, it doesn't happen too often.
  4. Giggily

    You should read the announcements section some time.
  5. o.Solei.o

    All I can say is...


    THANK YOU CF AND EVERYONE WORKING ON THIS!!!
    • Up x 1
  6. astv25

    I'm glad to hear that the optimization is being thoroughly tested before being implemented, even if that means we won't see faster improvement.

    I was playing tonight and my usual FPS is around 35-40 in a large battle (48+ readings from 2 factions). I'm quite comfortable with that considering I'm on a laptop. Tonight, however, my FPS was 60 at warpgate and as soon as I spawned a Scythe to link up with my squad, my FPS dropped like a rock to 7 and stayed there, sputtering. After a few seconds, it cleared up and I attributed it to what I refer to as "initial log-in lag." This, sadly, was not the case.

    Throughout the night, my FPS dropped to 7 with increasing frequency and (from my limited experimentation) with no correlation between drops. Considering there hasn't been an update since I last played uneventfully, I rebooted my computer and restarted the game. This time FPS dropped to 5 every 30 seconds or so.

    My internet wasn't being taxed by anything other than the game and with a fresh boot, I can only conclude my game decided to go bananas on its own. I'll try verifying my files and I'll see if maybe some other process ate into my CPU, but in the meantime: anyone have any thoughts/similar experiences?


    Code:
    Tech Specs:
     
    Intel i7 2670QM
    8 GB RAM + 16GB VRAM/Swap
    NVIDIA GeForce 555M 1GB
    1TB HDD w/ 400GB free @ 3gb/s Read/Write (Probably around 100mb/s, actually.)
     
    Windows 7 HP x64
    
    
  7. codeForge

    On Threads.
    We have dozens of threads. Multiple threads for loading, sound, animations, physics, networking, on and on and on.

    Why isn't more already done? There were some stumbling blocks to threading the renderer, UI, and visibility that were an unfortunate effect of the state of the game's interface to third-party libraries near launch. It was going to take some significant work to fix them. We are now doing that work.

    It really is just that simple. We have a team that can handle it. Just a really tough task waiting for time to get done.

    And keep 'em coming guys, I really do appreciate the questions, hard-ball or otherwise!
    • Up x 9
  8. RHINO_Mk.II

    Inside every Vanu's locker.

    Bwah ha ha haaa.
    • Up x 1
  9. Gerno

    All of these changes look great, however you guys didn't mention a key issue in Planetside 2, and that issue is that changing the graphics settings is incredibly confusing. In every other game I've ever played, changing the settings to low is all you need to do if you're getting a low framerate. However in this game you need to mess with the game's ini files, and then set textures to ultra to get the best framerate. That is absolutely unacceptable. You guys have to fix the graphics options. I should not have to look up a guide to get the best performance out of this game.

    Also, something which I've heard of, but I'm not sure of, is that shadows in this game are calculated on the cpu instead of the gpu. Now, I'm no graphics programmer, but aren't shadows much easier to render on the gpu? If you do in fact render shadows on the cpu, will we ever see that offloaded to the gpu? If I'm wrong about any of this someone please correct me.

    While I was writing this thread, you guys mentioned threads, which reminds me; this game still uses DX9. I know that DX11 has much better multithreading support, along with more advanced rendering techniques such as tesselation. Will we ever see a conversion to DX11, or is that not necessary?

    All in all though, thank you guys so much for finally giving us some details on optimization. It will be a satisfying feeling to see my quad core cpu actually use more of those other two cores, which will allow my gpu to flex its muscles more, and as a result see my framerate improve.
  10. RHINO_Mk.II

    This post and your efforts to improve the game are both very much appreciated. As compensation, have some awesome music from "The Matrix" to acknowledge your continued support and optimization of the game.
  11. DeadliestMoon

    What do you guys do for lunch when you are at work?
  12. codeForge

    Everything rendered is rendered on the GPU. The CPU is used to calculate visibility on shadows, maybe that's where the confusion lies. It's very similar to almost every other 3D game out there.

    Some engines do render things like dynamic shadows into a CPU texture then upload that texture to the GPU, but that's pretty DX8 kind of thinking for a game with a ton of dynamic models and Time of Day.

    Why aren't we DX11? Because just throwing a DX11 engine on a DX9 game is slapdash. To really take advantage of DX11 you need to have DX11 in your renderer's DNA. We will be doing that work over time, but you won't see it any time SOON.

    Oh and on the graphics settings. Yeah guys, we try to get graphic settings as good as we can. We debate it a lot, with some really smart people. It's tough finding a balance between too much information and not enough...both can cause confusion. But your message is well-received, and we will continue to make the effort. Oh and please do some searches on other games and getting frame rate up; you'll find those same player guides out there for practically every game since Pong, it's just only something you look for when you need it, and here you do.
    • Up x 7
  13. TheBloodEagle

    If it's just all about the First Person Shooter experience, why not stick to CS then? You can run those games at 120fps like a champ & get your shooting on. I'd rather want a balance of these things. PS2 can be quite beautiful and immersive even on medium settings (which I play). And hell, if the players didn't care about the visual experience then we can argue they wouldn't have cosmetics (thus supporting the game). You can bet if they toned down the game to look straight out of 1999, it would run FANTASTIC. It doesn't have to be either 60 frames of ugliness or 5 frames of beauty; there's a middle ground, as Luperza said.

    They even agree:

  14. Kacho Seiyo Arino

    My C.O is a Heavy, am I ******?
    • Up x 1
  15. idansim

    although no one will probably read this post i still feel the need to say thanx to the devs that make this amazing game, this right here is the reason i switched out of bf3 to ps2, the fact that the devs care about what we think and try very hard to listen to what we are saying and actually updating the game constantly based partly on our requests, and doing all this without putting a price tag on the game, and thats what makes me want to spend my money here, not because i need to but because i want to. so thank you devs for making a game that i so deeply love you guys are truly doing an amazing job (even if the dead tank next to me blows up my tank...) and as long as you keep you the amazing job you have one faithfully nc that will play your game.
    • Up x 2
  16. Metallideth

    Tech Test & Beta were really the times to get a chunk of this correct. Sadly I think SOE & SONY management rushed it since "Hey, It's F2P". Unfortunately, most gaming companies think this is ok nowadays. This can be seen from
    Who creates a game and takes forever to make a tutorial for new players then wonders why new players are lost?? (management)

    Didn't most other games (32 & 64 player TDM etc..games) incorporate this type of coding for the last 7 years? I would have imagined this should have been a top priority when creating a game with "two thousand" players on a continent. You would want to get the game optimized as much as you can to deliver the smoothest gameplay possible first.

    As always you have my respect codeForge, for letting us know on the Official Forums what is happening. I'm happy to read your post and see what you guys are finally working on now that management has decided to untie your hands and fix the game instead of adding more hats and hubcaps.

    The only part I haven't figured out yet is if this is in response to the lack of players logging in or just getting most of the bugs/optimizations ironed out before the fork over to the Playstation 4
  17. vincent-

    Do take your time but would be neat to see ragdolls I really look forward to the benchmarker.
  18. Furluge

    I'm pretty sure the VS will need to ask their Cleric for the proper intonations and chants to divine the clarity of Vanu to understand this one. Vanu Sovreignty: Creepy Religious Cult first, technophiles second.
  19. Lazaruz

    I wonder... If my lowest of the low fps is around 15 in absolutely huge vehicle zergs, how much I would get after all is said and done?

    In any case, it's nice to get some information from behind the scenes, even though I probably didn't understand half of it :)
    Thank you, and keep up the good work!
  20. XRIST0

    Good news is good , get to work .