State of the Game
- Thread starter Fuglydog53
- Start date
No.
Its not about PC or Console, but more like "how easy it is to find the performance problem(s)". Consider a standard dev/qa workflow
First a developer delivers features, and they test them. Unless you reconfigure it, then your Debug build runs natively on the developers workstation (AKA a PC).
Then you merge feature branches into a release build that runs on a QA box, where you discover what impact the features had on performance/stability.
Then you go back to the developers and ask them to fix the performance. To them, this is basically another feature, just one called "Make it faster", so we are in a loop.
Now when working on features, the Dev can either run locally on his workstation and follow the steps to replicate the issue (which is comparatively easy) or use remote debugging to capture information from another machine (which takes a whole load of hassle to setup). Particularly when you start looking at performance where you want special tools to tell you how long each step takes. As soon as you add time pressures to this loop, you want to shrink it, and it just takes less time for Dev to just work locally, and kick out builds for QA to test on whatever platform they like. However at this point, your risk is that the Dev is focused on fixing singular aspects of problems (i.e. Works on My machine
) but not the risk of introducing other unwanted problems, and so you rely on QA to regression test everything. Now that process might work where you have a limited number of scenarios to test (i.e. non Proc-gen), but in ED we have a lot (it's 4Billion stars, how many sq Km of planets?). This means QA cannot test everything (What's the stat? 400 years even to visit those all stars, let alone do something) and even if they got all the players to join in and do QA (But we aren't seeing that... are we?) you still wouldn't find all the bugs because not all activities would get covered (CQC anyone?).Specifically No to;
There are no PC only features. Look at Horizon. You might scale graphics settings down but PC can already do that with Ultra/High/Mid/Low or something custom. In many ways, latest gen consoles are better PCs than some older low end PCs (e.g. my old FX4300+GTX960), so this isn't a performance issue.
The big reason for not releasing to Console is that FDev have already said in the streams that they can't get a Beta build from MS/Sony, so a bad release would have broken ALL console players, unlike on PC where you can still launch Horizons if Odyssey is broken for you or push a patch really quickly (I think I read MS don't like it if you want a patch in less than 3 days).
Given the current levels of Salt, If I ran that team I would be focusing all my efforts to prove that we can release (any release) without exposing a whole load of bugs, before I release to console.
Yep. Just that.
This is the (only accurate) way....
I went to launch my alt earlier to claim my free arx, only the game was no longer on the Epic launcher at all. No idea what's gone on there, I'm in the middle of downloading today's update on my main, then I'm going for reboot and hope. If I have to download the whole shebang again on Epic there's no way I'll be able to log in today on that account to get my freebies - hardly the end of the world for the sake of 150 arx or whatever it is today, but bloody irritating.
![[Diplomacy] Carnegie](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/123/123809.jpg?1553527149){kind=avatar}
Wait, you mean they're NOT?
EDO downloaded afresh and working again... Next up might just be Windoze 11 Pro.
First they came for the Macs and I didn't care, because screw 'em
Then they came for consoles and I said nothing, because they're a salty bunch and I didn't want to get doxxed
Next they came for Epic and I laughed, because it was free anyway
Then they came for me, and I shrugged because it's only a game!
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It's amusing you think standard dev / qa workflows apply to this game considering what we see in every release. but lets skip to the important points.
console makers make available development machines for game studios to use that offer significant debugging features in a controlled environment where all of this can be done in away that eliminates hardware specific variables. Not only are there tools to identify slow sections of code made available for these consoles for the explicit purpose of making sure things are running optimally on them, but once you find that issue, you dont have to worry about hardware specific problems.
see, your assumption that there is nothing pc specific is wrong. there are lots of things that could cause odyssey to be running poorly on someone' machine, that's why we have such a huge variation of performance within pc even with similar performing hardware. So no.. you are wrong. If the job of the developer in debugging is to get their job done the fastest and most optimally, they would be eliminating all variables that they can... and that means going with console first. Because what works there will almost always work for the wider population of PC... but not vice versa.
if a bug is fixed via some change to say some graphics pipeline that happens to work well for nvidia cards or intel cpus or some combination that the developer happens to be running on their own machine ..how is that helpful for anything console? Even if we're not talking about using an obvious nvidia only extensions.
QA doesn't need to test everything to test fixes. You're talking about some aspect of rolling a month worth of changes by an entire team into a patch. That's not how things should be done. Testing should be done per targeted fix and releases should be made frequently so the wider aspect of the game that those fixes interact with can be tested - not just internally but by players. That and you dont need to worry about the scale of the galaxy in relation to any kind of testing in this game. 10 systems is probably all you need to test to handle having checked how something will behave in all hundreds of billions of them. There is nothing unique about systems in the game that dont have assets fdev placed in them and the vast majority of even that is just copies of the same stuff. 10 systems would be good enough. as long as you pick 10 that aren't the same as eachother.
this issue doesn't require end players to test. it's not something that isn't reproducible. I dont think lacking a private/public beta matters for internal testing and use.
The point is not to make it available to the public "already" ... but that it would benefit the pc build while simultaneously allowing them to give details and updates to console players so they dont continue to think it's going to be abandoned. A sentiment that is damaging the playerbase there unnecessarily if they aren't going to abandon it.
nodody said to release it on console all broken. I think you misread that. I suggested maybe a private beta but if not, the act of internally basing the optimization of odyssey on consoles can be done without any kind of external facing console port. And that would allow you the advantages of known - set hardware and the baseline and improvements of changes therein, while being sure that once you get to a given level in PC... you are at a given level in console and not starting from a total unknown for console like they suggest they will be since they wont be starting on console until after pc gets to a given performance point.
I demand my twentieth of a paintjob's worth of free arx, or I shall unleash a torrent of open letters the like of which the world has never seen!
You need to start a bitter campaign of persecution for months and months. You could simply end it all and not care, but I don't want to tell you what to do....
(God I sound quite bitter, I should stop trying to talk to the boxboys!)
Game is literally unplayable
dO ThE deVS eVEN pLAy TheIr oWN GaME daT dEY goT fER FrEE on tEH ePICs????
He doesn't own a console, mate, or a Mac.
Right off to install a redemption office.
interstellar factors and redemption type stuff ... never saw a need for such things on my carrier since you'd only ever need them in the bubble and everything in the bubble is so close and accessible.
takes up valuable storage space for loading up on platinum
takes up valuable storage space for loading up on platinum
uh huh.