6 ms·

> Performance is never a positive as much as a disqualifying negative. Features are what sell the software Except we're talking about video games, where time a

by ratww 5y ago

> Performance is never a positive as much as a disqualifying negative. Features are what sell the software Except we're talking about video games, where time and time again performance was crucial in achieving new breakthroughs, from Mario's side scrolling, to Carmack's advances in FPSs, to... FFS, we're talking about Unreal 5, this version's selling point is mainly being able to do in realtime what was previously only possible before with offline rendering. Just because there are trash mobile games that make money doesn't mean there isn't money in high-performance software.

Ygg2 5y ago
> Except we're talking about video games, where time and time again performance was crucial In that domain speed is pretty important, but even there it's not as crucial as you might assume. I'm not saying discount it altogether, just good gameplay will trump good performance. They aren't completely unrelated, but there are diminishing returns. What are the titles that need to be that much performant? AAA titles are just rehash/sequels with latest monetization tactics tacked on. On low end you got shitty mobile games that only optimization is user conditioning. That leaves you with Indies, that can use GameMaker/Unity and still get their game out. Sure some AAA use Unreal to their absolute limits. In same way some people develop drivers for embedded hardware. You still don't want to develop games and software in general, the same way those few studios do.
- sarchertech 5y ago
  > What are the titles that need to be that much performant? Nearly every single game no matter what it looks like makes performance trade offs. Number of enemies on screen, ai search depth, world size, world granularity, whether to allow partial transparency, number of lights, number/complexity of systems etc… Even for something that may look like just another indie side scroller. Sometimes these constraints breed creativity. But if you use game maker/unity, you will find yourself regularly running into performance issues that will require problem solving. The same is true when making an engine, but the problem space is far, far more nuanced than just: some types of games don’t need to worry about performance and so are fine using game maker/unity.
- ratww 5y ago
  That's a gross simplification of how the market of games works and why people buy them. Plus, you're claiming that both AAA and mobile are money-grabbing schemes where performance and features affected by performance don't matter, which couldn't be further from the truth. Not to mention that very often good gameplay also requires appropriate performance. This is still critical in titles not targeting high-end hardware, but also in AAA. Frame render time matters, and lack of performance can affects the work of not only developers, but also artists. Even in mobile games performance could make a huge difference: something with low performance might not run in some mobile phones and you'd lose a huge chunk of audience (and no, before you say it, it's not just people with iPhone 16s that are a target to make money).
  - Ygg2 5y ago
    > That's a gross simplification Sure it's a simplification. But it is the truth. AAA are generally that way now, because people don't want to bet a lot of money without it being a sure fire bet. And it's same for game mills in mobile land. > Not to mention that very often good gameplay also requires appropriate performance. Yes, but point is good performance. Casey insists performance is thing to optimize for. When in reality it's like n-th thing to focus-on.
    - ratww 5y ago
      > Sure it's a simplification Yep, a gross and incorrect one, invented only to advance an argument that doesn't match reality. Performance and ms-per-frame is still highly critical in AAA-land, despite your opinions on current gaming trends. There are people working hard on it, including the Unreal and Unity teams. > Yes, but point is good performance. Casey insists performance is thing to optimize for. When in reality it's like n-th thing to focus-on. Again, this is a bit of a misrepresentation, and probably a bit of projection. His rants are often about specific issues he finds, and mostly about low-hanging-fruit issues that cause real usability problems for end users. He might write and teach how to write high-performance code and high-performance architecture, but it was not to the detriment of code quality, speed of development or architecture quality. The architecture of Handmade Hero, for example, is significantly better than most "make your own engine" shows on Youtube.
- johnnyanmac 5y ago
  >AAA titles are just rehash/sequels with latest monetization tactics tacked on. On low end you got shitty mobile games that only optimization is user conditioning ehhh. I agree with most of your sentiment, but this is starting to be the gamer version of this topic. Replace "modern software is crap" with "modern AAA games are crap". The industry is too varied to lump it all into one box, especially when several of the largest games this year came out with your normal "buy one get everything" monetization. Back on topic: I'd say optimization is still an important and under aprreciated factor of development. One where you don't notice it when it's done right but is all that's talked about when done wrong. I want to hope UE5 solves some of those problems, but the proof will be in the pudding as always.
  - Ygg2 5y ago
    > starting to be the gamer version of this topic They are crap and getting worse on a completely different axis (social engineering). It's not all gloom and doom, people can get insensitive to strategies and good games haven't, stopped getting made. > I'd say optimization is still an important and under aprreciated factor of development I never said it didn't. I said It's not be all end all, and not optimizing is causing collapse of civilization.
kunos 5y ago
> Except we're talking about video games Not really. Most of the times Casey & Co. (Blow et others) have entire rants bitching about photoshop, visual studio,windows, websites etc. They tend to present videogames as example of "how it should be done". They (again, as Casey&Blow and the rest of the group they seem to belong to) have this weird attitude of automatically dismiss anything that doesn't belong to whatever microsubset they are already very experienced in.. so Rust is shit, C++ is shit, GC is shit, smart pointers are shit, get/setters are shit, public/private is shit, memory safety doesn't matter and so on.. all this while not offering any alternative other than "git gut". I tend to agree with a lot of the rants to be honest but I also perceive their suggested solutions as total non starters for large scale development.
- ratww 5y ago
  That’s an unfair mischaracterization and generalization, considering that very often those “rants” are often filled with genuine analysis, criticism, comparisons. Or, in specific cases, such as OOP criticism, with very vocal disclaimers that his view deviates from the mainstream. Are those people not entitled to an opinion? The last time one of those happened publicly, Casey was able to provide a proof of concept in a very short timeframe, despite claims that it was impractical and borderline impossible to fix.
  - syntheweave 5y ago
    Casey is much better and more measured on this front than Jon Blow, who has a history of wandering into random comment threads on HN and pronouncing some topic a "solved problem" or "trivial", only to actually work on the problem himself a few months later and remark that it is more complex than he thought. But because Casey and Jon are friends and frequent collaborators, and generally prioritize the same things, they get interpreted as sharing each other's views about everything. They don't, but the mischaracterization is not easily dispelled.

by ratww 5y ago

Ygg2 5y ago

> Except we're talking about video games, where time and time again performance was crucial In that domain speed is pretty important, but even there it's not as crucial as you might assume. I'm not saying discount it altogether, just good gameplay will trump good performance. They aren't completely unrelated, but there are diminishing returns. What are the titles that need to be that much performant? AAA titles are just rehash/sequels with latest monetization tactics tacked on. On low end you got shitty mobile games that only optimization is user conditioning. That leaves you with Indies, that can use GameMaker/Unity and still get their game out. Sure some AAA use Unreal to their absolute limits. In same way some people develop drivers for embedded hardware. You still don't want to develop games and software in general, the same way those few studios do.

sarchertech 5y ago
> What are the titles that need to be that much performant? Nearly every single game no matter what it looks like makes performance trade offs. Number of enemies on screen, ai search depth, world size, world granularity, whether to allow partial transparency, number of lights, number/complexity of systems etc… Even for something that may look like just another indie side scroller. Sometimes these constraints breed creativity. But if you use game maker/unity, you will find yourself regularly running into performance issues that will require problem solving. The same is true when making an engine, but the problem space is far, far more nuanced than just: some types of games don’t need to worry about performance and so are fine using game maker/unity.
ratww 5y ago
That's a gross simplification of how the market of games works and why people buy them. Plus, you're claiming that both AAA and mobile are money-grabbing schemes where performance and features affected by performance don't matter, which couldn't be further from the truth. Not to mention that very often good gameplay also requires appropriate performance. This is still critical in titles not targeting high-end hardware, but also in AAA. Frame render time matters, and lack of performance can affects the work of not only developers, but also artists. Even in mobile games performance could make a huge difference: something with low performance might not run in some mobile phones and you'd lose a huge chunk of audience (and no, before you say it, it's not just people with iPhone 16s that are a target to make money).
- Ygg2 5y ago
  > That's a gross simplification Sure it's a simplification. But it is the truth. AAA are generally that way now, because people don't want to bet a lot of money without it being a sure fire bet. And it's same for game mills in mobile land. > Not to mention that very often good gameplay also requires appropriate performance. Yes, but point is good performance. Casey insists performance is thing to optimize for. When in reality it's like n-th thing to focus-on.
  - ratww 5y ago
    > Sure it's a simplification Yep, a gross and incorrect one, invented only to advance an argument that doesn't match reality. Performance and ms-per-frame is still highly critical in AAA-land, despite your opinions on current gaming trends. There are people working hard on it, including the Unreal and Unity teams. > Yes, but point is good performance. Casey insists performance is thing to optimize for. When in reality it's like n-th thing to focus-on. Again, this is a bit of a misrepresentation, and probably a bit of projection. His rants are often about specific issues he finds, and mostly about low-hanging-fruit issues that cause real usability problems for end users. He might write and teach how to write high-performance code and high-performance architecture, but it was not to the detriment of code quality, speed of development or architecture quality. The architecture of Handmade Hero, for example, is significantly better than most "make your own engine" shows on Youtube.
johnnyanmac 5y ago
>AAA titles are just rehash/sequels with latest monetization tactics tacked on. On low end you got shitty mobile games that only optimization is user conditioning ehhh. I agree with most of your sentiment, but this is starting to be the gamer version of this topic. Replace "modern software is crap" with "modern AAA games are crap". The industry is too varied to lump it all into one box, especially when several of the largest games this year came out with your normal "buy one get everything" monetization. Back on topic: I'd say optimization is still an important and under aprreciated factor of development. One where you don't notice it when it's done right but is all that's talked about when done wrong. I want to hope UE5 solves some of those problems, but the proof will be in the pudding as always.
- Ygg2 5y ago
  > starting to be the gamer version of this topic They are crap and getting worse on a completely different axis (social engineering). It's not all gloom and doom, people can get insensitive to strategies and good games haven't, stopped getting made. > I'd say optimization is still an important and under aprreciated factor of development I never said it didn't. I said It's not be all end all, and not optimizing is causing collapse of civilization.

kunos 5y ago

> Except we're talking about video games Not really. Most of the times Casey & Co. (Blow et others) have entire rants bitching about photoshop, visual studio,windows, websites etc. They tend to present videogames as example of "how it should be done". They (again, as Casey&Blow and the rest of the group they seem to belong to) have this weird attitude of automatically dismiss anything that doesn't belong to whatever microsubset they are already very experienced in.. so Rust is shit, C++ is shit, GC is shit, smart pointers are shit, get/setters are shit, public/private is shit, memory safety doesn't matter and so on.. all this while not offering any alternative other than "git gut". I tend to agree with a lot of the rants to be honest but I also perceive their suggested solutions as total non starters for large scale development.

ratww 5y ago
That’s an unfair mischaracterization and generalization, considering that very often those “rants” are often filled with genuine analysis, criticism, comparisons. Or, in specific cases, such as OOP criticism, with very vocal disclaimers that his view deviates from the mainstream. Are those people not entitled to an opinion? The last time one of those happened publicly, Casey was able to provide a proof of concept in a very short timeframe, despite claims that it was impractical and borderline impossible to fix.
- syntheweave 5y ago
  Casey is much better and more measured on this front than Jon Blow, who has a history of wandering into random comment threads on HN and pronouncing some topic a "solved problem" or "trivial", only to actually work on the problem himself a few months later and remark that it is more complex than he thought. But because Casey and Jon are friends and frequent collaborators, and generally prioritize the same things, they get interpreted as sharing each other's views about everything. They don't, but the mischaracterization is not easily dispelled.