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I disagree that developers should spend valuable engineering time on producing games that can’t be run. Spend that time making other games instead, or squashing

I disagree that developers should spend valuable engineering time on producing games that can’t be run. Spend that time making other games instead, or squashing bugs (looking at you, cyberpunk!) and maybe keep a backlog of future features to patch in when the hardware gets there.

autoexec 4y ago
I agree! When it comes to graphics, just make them look great with current (and not uncommon) hardware. When most gamers have upgraded hardware capable of substantial differences games can keep selling remasters if people care. I'm fine with nearly all gamers getting a better experience even if that means the tiny fraction of gamers who can and are willing to spend insane amounts of money on the best of all possible video cards are not able to take full advantage of their crazy hardware in most games.
Retric 4y ago
It’s actually cheaper to build a game with higher graphics settings and then let people tweak the settings vs trying to optimize a game for hardware you can’t actually test with in development. On top of this you can release some awesome screenshots from settings that aren’t actually playable at release. This is especially beneficial when deadlines slip and suddenly consumers have a lot better hardware than you where expecting.
gambiting 4y ago
As an actual gamedev - no real extra engineering time is spent on this - during development all textures and assets are usually produced in 8K or higher anyway, it's only during the data packaging step that everything gets downscaled to whatever was selected by tech art. There's a reason why my workstation has 256GB of ram - just loading up the main world of the game easily takes 100-150GB because everything is in such extreme quality. Same applies to visual effects - usually in development you will run all effects at full resolution to test how it all works. Releasing an "extreme" preset that no consumer PC can really run yet is just a matter of leaving those higher-quality assets in + enabling those full resolution options for VFX. Allowing users to use ray tracing at full resolution(something which will kill any GPU on the market) requires just adding an extra config option - there's very little engineering time required. QC will need to do a full pass of these options, but in the grand scheme of things tested that's not a huge deal.
- mjrpes 4y ago
  Will that substantially increase size of game on disk?
  - gambiting 4y ago
    I mean, it can - but that's also a solved problem. Look at far Cry 6 - you want HD textures that require at least 12GB of vram? No problem, it's just an optional download.

autoexec 4y ago

I agree! When it comes to graphics, just make them look great with current (and not uncommon) hardware. When most gamers have upgraded hardware capable of substantial differences games can keep selling remasters if people care. I'm fine with nearly all gamers getting a better experience even if that means the tiny fraction of gamers who can and are willing to spend insane amounts of money on the best of all possible video cards are not able to take full advantage of their crazy hardware in most games.

Retric 4y ago

It’s actually cheaper to build a game with higher graphics settings and then let people tweak the settings vs trying to optimize a game for hardware you can’t actually test with in development. On top of this you can release some awesome screenshots from settings that aren’t actually playable at release. This is especially beneficial when deadlines slip and suddenly consumers have a lot better hardware than you where expecting.

gambiting 4y ago

As an actual gamedev - no real extra engineering time is spent on this - during development all textures and assets are usually produced in 8K or higher anyway, it's only during the data packaging step that everything gets downscaled to whatever was selected by tech art. There's a reason why my workstation has 256GB of ram - just loading up the main world of the game easily takes 100-150GB because everything is in such extreme quality. Same applies to visual effects - usually in development you will run all effects at full resolution to test how it all works. Releasing an "extreme" preset that no consumer PC can really run yet is just a matter of leaving those higher-quality assets in + enabling those full resolution options for VFX. Allowing users to use ray tracing at full resolution(something which will kill any GPU on the market) requires just adding an extra config option - there's very little engineering time required. QC will need to do a full pass of these options, but in the grand scheme of things tested that's not a huge deal.

mjrpes 4y ago
Will that substantially increase size of game on disk?
- gambiting 4y ago
  I mean, it can - but that's also a solved problem. Look at far Cry 6 - you want HD textures that require at least 12GB of vram? No problem, it's just an optional download.