4 ms·

True. Optimization is completely dead. Long gone are the days of a game being amazing because the devs managed to pull crazy graphics for the current hardware.

True. Optimization is completely dead. Long gone are the days of a game being amazing because the devs managed to pull crazy graphics for the current hardware. Nowadays a game is only poorly optimized if it's literally unplayable or laggy, and you're forced to constantly upgrade your hardware with no discernible performance gain otherwise.

archagon 10mo ago
I feel like Steam Deck support is making developers optimize again.
- jamesgeck0 10mo ago
  Not to mention one of the "big three" console manufacturers building their business on older mobile hardware.
batiudrami 10mo ago
Crazy take, in the late 90s/early 00s your GPU could be obsolete 9 months after buying. The “optimisation” you talk about was the CPU in the ps4 generation was so weak and tech was moving so fast that any pc bought in 2015 onwards would easily brute force overpower anything that had been built for that generation.
- ronsor 10mo ago
  > Crazy take, in the late 90s/early 00s your GPU could be obsolete 9 months after buying. Not because the developers were lazy, but because newer GPUs were that much better.
  - jeltz 10mo ago
    There were lazy devs back then too but I feel lazy devs have become the norm now.
    - dijit 10mo ago
      I work in gamedev, historically AAA gamedev. If you think that the programmers are unmotivated (lazy) or incompetent; you’re wrong on both counts. The amount of care and talent is unmatched in my professional career, and they are often working from incomplete (and changing) specifications towards a fixed deadline across multiple hardware targets. The issue is that games have such high expectations that they didn’t have before. There are very few “yearly titles” that allow you to nail down the software in a nicer way over time, its always a mad dash to get it done, on a huge 1000+ person project that has to be permanently playable from MAIN and where unit/integration tests would be completely useless the minute they were built. The industry will end, but not because of “lazy devs”, its the ballooned expectations, stagnant revenue opportunity, increased team sizes and a pathological contingent of people using games as a (bad) political vehicle without regard for the fact that they will be laid off if they can’t eventually generate revenue. —- Finally, back in the early days of games, if the game didn’t work, you assumed you needed better hardware and you would put the work in fixing drivers and settings or even upgrading to something that worked. Now if it doesn’t work on something from before COVID the consensus is that it is not optimised enough. I’m not casting aspersions at the mindset, but it’s a different mentality.
      - gmueckl 10mo ago
        Most gamers don't have the faintest clue regarding how much work and effort a game requires these days to meet even the minimum expectations they have.
        imcritic 10mo ago
        That's bullshit. I don't care about graphics, I play lots of indie games, some of them are made by a single person. There are free game engines, so basically all one needs for a successful game is just a good idea for the game. And a friend of mine still mostly plays the goddamn Ultima Online, the game that was released 28 years ago.
        dijit 10mo ago
  - rasz 10mo ago
    Because GPU developers started to be less lazy :) No T&L meant everything was culled, clipped, transformed and per-vertex divided (perspective, lighting) on CPU. Then you have brute force approach. Voodoo 1/2/3 doesnt employ any obvious speedup tricks in its pipeline. Every single triangle pushed into it is going to get textured (bilinear filtering, per pixel divide), shaded (lighting, blending, FOG applied) and then in the last step the card finally checks Z-buffer to decide between writing all this computed data to buffer or simply throwing it away. It took a while before GPU devs started implementing low-hanging fruit optimizations https://therealmjp.github.io/posts/to-earlyz-or-not-to-earlyz/ https://therealmjp.github.io/posts/to-earlyz-or-not-to-early... Hierarchical-Z, Fast Z clearing, Compressed Z buffer, Compressed Textures, Tiled shading. It all got added slowly one step at a time in early 2000.
- bombcar 10mo ago
  Obsolete in that you’d probably not BUY it if building new, and in that you’d probably be able to get a noticeably better one, but even then games were made to run in a wide gamut of hardware. For awhile there you did have noticeable gameplay differences- those with GL quake could play better kind of thing.
  - tinco 10mo ago
    The GP was talking about Unreal Engine 5 as if that engine doesn't optimize for low end. That's a wild take, I've been playing Arc Raiders with a group of friends in the past month, and one of them hadn't upgraded their PC in 10 years, and it still ran fine (20+ fps) on their machine. When we grew up it would be absolutely unbelievable that a game would run on a 10 year old machine, let alone at bearable FPS. And the game is even on an off-the-shelf game engine, they possibly don't even employ game engine experts at Embark Studios.
    - fngjdflmdflg 10mo ago
      >And the game is even on an off-the-shelf game engine, they possibly don't even employ game engine experts at Embark Studios. Perhaps, but they also turned off Nanite, Lumen and virtual shadow maps. I'm not a UE5 hater but using its main features does currently come at a cost. I think these issues will eventually be fixed in newer versions and with better hardware, and at that point Nanite and VSM will become a no-brainer as they do solve real problems in game development.
    - Sohcahtoa82 10mo ago
      > it still ran fine (20+ fps) 20 fps is not fine. I would consider that unplayable. I expect at least 60, ideally 120 or more, as that's where the diminishing returns really start to kick in. I could tolerate as low as 30 fps on a game that did not require precise aiming or reaction times, which basically eliminates all shooters.
      - maleldil 10mo ago
        On 10 years old hardware?
- justsomehnguy 10mo ago
  > your GPU could be obsolete 9 months after buying Or even before hitting the shelves, cue Trio3D and Mystique, but tha's another story.
pzmarzly 10mo ago
> Long gone are the days of a game being amazing because the devs managed to pull crazy graphics for the current hardware. DOOM and Battlefield 6 are praised for being surprisingly well optimized for the graphics they offer, and some people bought these games for that reason alone. But I guess in the good old days good optimization would be the norm, not the exception.
djmips 10mo ago
A lot of people who were good at optimizing games have aged out and/or 'got theirs' and retired early or just got out of the demanding job and secured a better paying job in a sector with more economic upside and less churn. On the other side there's an unending almost exponential group of newcomers into the industry who are believe the hype given by engine makers who hide the true cost of optimimal game making and sell on 'ease'.
cycomanic 10mo ago
This is such a funny take, I remember all throughout the 90s and 00s (and maybe even 10s, not playing much then anymore) you often could new games on acceptable settings with a 1-2 year old high spec machine, in fact to play at highest settings you often needed ridiculously spec'ed machines. Now you can play the biggest titles (CP77, BG3 ...) on 5-10 year old hardware (not even top spec), with non or minimal performance/quality impact. I mean I've been playing BG3 and CP77 on highest settings on a PC that I bought 2 years ago used for $600 (BG3 I was playing when it had just come out).
rerdavies 10mo ago
That's not how it ACTUALLY worked. How it actually worked is that top video card manufactures would make multi-million dollar bids to to the devs of the three or four AAA games that were predicted to be best-sellers in order to get the devs to optimize their rendering for whatever this year's top video adapter was going to be. And nobody really cared if it didn't run on your crappy old last-year's card, because everybody undrerstood that the vast majority of games revenue comes from people who have just bought expensive new systems. (Inside experience, I lived it). I don't think it has ever been the case that this year's AAA games play well on last year's video cards.

archagon 10mo ago

I feel like Steam Deck support is making developers optimize again.

jamesgeck0 10mo ago
Not to mention one of the "big three" console manufacturers building their business on older mobile hardware.

batiudrami 10mo ago

Crazy take, in the late 90s/early 00s your GPU could be obsolete 9 months after buying. The “optimisation” you talk about was the CPU in the ps4 generation was so weak and tech was moving so fast that any pc bought in 2015 onwards would easily brute force overpower anything that had been built for that generation.

ronsor 10mo ago
> Crazy take, in the late 90s/early 00s your GPU could be obsolete 9 months after buying. Not because the developers were lazy, but because newer GPUs were that much better.
- jeltz 10mo ago
  There were lazy devs back then too but I feel lazy devs have become the norm now.
  - dijit 10mo ago
    I work in gamedev, historically AAA gamedev. If you think that the programmers are unmotivated (lazy) or incompetent; you’re wrong on both counts. The amount of care and talent is unmatched in my professional career, and they are often working from incomplete (and changing) specifications towards a fixed deadline across multiple hardware targets. The issue is that games have such high expectations that they didn’t have before. There are very few “yearly titles” that allow you to nail down the software in a nicer way over time, its always a mad dash to get it done, on a huge 1000+ person project that has to be permanently playable from MAIN and where unit/integration tests would be completely useless the minute they were built. The industry will end, but not because of “lazy devs”, its the ballooned expectations, stagnant revenue opportunity, increased team sizes and a pathological contingent of people using games as a (bad) political vehicle without regard for the fact that they will be laid off if they can’t eventually generate revenue. —- Finally, back in the early days of games, if the game didn’t work, you assumed you needed better hardware and you would put the work in fixing drivers and settings or even upgrading to something that worked. Now if it doesn’t work on something from before COVID the consensus is that it is not optimised enough. I’m not casting aspersions at the mindset, but it’s a different mentality.
    - gmueckl 10mo ago
      Most gamers don't have the faintest clue regarding how much work and effort a game requires these days to meet even the minimum expectations they have.
      - imcritic 10mo ago
        That's bullshit. I don't care about graphics, I play lots of indie games, some of them are made by a single person. There are free game engines, so basically all one needs for a successful game is just a good idea for the game. And a friend of mine still mostly plays the goddamn Ultima Online, the game that was released 28 years ago.
        dijit 10mo ago
- rasz 10mo ago
  Because GPU developers started to be less lazy :) No T&L meant everything was culled, clipped, transformed and per-vertex divided (perspective, lighting) on CPU. Then you have brute force approach. Voodoo 1/2/3 doesnt employ any obvious speedup tricks in its pipeline. Every single triangle pushed into it is going to get textured (bilinear filtering, per pixel divide), shaded (lighting, blending, FOG applied) and then in the last step the card finally checks Z-buffer to decide between writing all this computed data to buffer or simply throwing it away. It took a while before GPU devs started implementing low-hanging fruit optimizations https://therealmjp.github.io/posts/to-earlyz-or-not-to-earlyz/ https://therealmjp.github.io/posts/to-earlyz-or-not-to-early... Hierarchical-Z, Fast Z clearing, Compressed Z buffer, Compressed Textures, Tiled shading. It all got added slowly one step at a time in early 2000.
bombcar 10mo ago
Obsolete in that you’d probably not BUY it if building new, and in that you’d probably be able to get a noticeably better one, but even then games were made to run in a wide gamut of hardware. For awhile there you did have noticeable gameplay differences- those with GL quake could play better kind of thing.
- tinco 10mo ago
  The GP was talking about Unreal Engine 5 as if that engine doesn't optimize for low end. That's a wild take, I've been playing Arc Raiders with a group of friends in the past month, and one of them hadn't upgraded their PC in 10 years, and it still ran fine (20+ fps) on their machine. When we grew up it would be absolutely unbelievable that a game would run on a 10 year old machine, let alone at bearable FPS. And the game is even on an off-the-shelf game engine, they possibly don't even employ game engine experts at Embark Studios.
  - fngjdflmdflg 10mo ago
    >And the game is even on an off-the-shelf game engine, they possibly don't even employ game engine experts at Embark Studios. Perhaps, but they also turned off Nanite, Lumen and virtual shadow maps. I'm not a UE5 hater but using its main features does currently come at a cost. I think these issues will eventually be fixed in newer versions and with better hardware, and at that point Nanite and VSM will become a no-brainer as they do solve real problems in game development.
  - Sohcahtoa82 10mo ago
    > it still ran fine (20+ fps) 20 fps is not fine. I would consider that unplayable. I expect at least 60, ideally 120 or more, as that's where the diminishing returns really start to kick in. I could tolerate as low as 30 fps on a game that did not require precise aiming or reaction times, which basically eliminates all shooters.
    - maleldil 10mo ago
      On 10 years old hardware?
justsomehnguy 10mo ago
> your GPU could be obsolete 9 months after buying Or even before hitting the shelves, cue Trio3D and Mystique, but tha's another story.

pzmarzly 10mo ago

> Long gone are the days of a game being amazing because the devs managed to pull crazy graphics for the current hardware. DOOM and Battlefield 6 are praised for being surprisingly well optimized for the graphics they offer, and some people bought these games for that reason alone. But I guess in the good old days good optimization would be the norm, not the exception.

djmips 10mo ago

A lot of people who were good at optimizing games have aged out and/or 'got theirs' and retired early or just got out of the demanding job and secured a better paying job in a sector with more economic upside and less churn. On the other side there's an unending almost exponential group of newcomers into the industry who are believe the hype given by engine makers who hide the true cost of optimimal game making and sell on 'ease'.

cycomanic 10mo ago

This is such a funny take, I remember all throughout the 90s and 00s (and maybe even 10s, not playing much then anymore) you often could new games on acceptable settings with a 1-2 year old high spec machine, in fact to play at highest settings you often needed ridiculously spec'ed machines. Now you can play the biggest titles (CP77, BG3 ...) on 5-10 year old hardware (not even top spec), with non or minimal performance/quality impact. I mean I've been playing BG3 and CP77 on highest settings on a PC that I bought 2 years ago used for $600 (BG3 I was playing when it had just come out).

rerdavies 10mo ago

That's not how it ACTUALLY worked. How it actually worked is that top video card manufactures would make multi-million dollar bids to to the devs of the three or four AAA games that were predicted to be best-sellers in order to get the devs to optimize their rendering for whatever this year's top video adapter was going to be. And nobody really cared if it didn't run on your crappy old last-year's card, because everybody undrerstood that the vast majority of games revenue comes from people who have just bought expensive new systems. (Inside experience, I lived it). I don't think it has ever been the case that this year's AAA games play well on last year's video cards.