4 ms·

I know you're joking, but it's pretty much infeasible to test the kind of bugs typical in games using automatic testing. So much is content driven, and the stat

by yoklov 11y ago

I know you're joking, but it's pretty much infeasible to test the kind of bugs typical in games using automatic testing. So much is content driven, and the state space is far too large. Even for stuff that's fairly testable, like navigation, collision, etc, you have the issue of there being a million edge/degenerate cases, and it's very hard to know this never hits one in the game code or content. So the best you can usually do is test library code. Not that this has anything to do with AK, which sounds like plain old sloppiness.

willvarfar 11y ago
When the office staff go home for the day, their rubbish hodgepodge of PC varieties and specs should spending their evenings playing the game with a game bot.
serge2k 11y ago
Ok, but in this case they chose to put in a 30FPS cap. Ignoring that performance is well below even that, they should have known it was unacceptable.
- maccard 11y ago
  Why is that unacceptable? From the reports I've read re enabling the 30fps cap removes many of the performance problems. Some of the game logic can be hard coded to accept 33ms frame times, especially if the console versions are capped at 30 and the PC version is a port of them. They made a technical decision to cap it at 30, there's nothing wrong with that. If you don't agree with it, then don't buy it.
  - lsadam0 11y ago
    I'm a developer, but not a game developer. Making the decision to hardcode game logic to only accept 33ms frame time sounds like a pretty dumb choice. I would wager that if your fix is to artificially cap performance of your software, then something in your code base sucks majorly. Call me crazy.
    - douche 11y ago
      Well, it's not like running at anything above 60 FPS makes any sense due to the refresh rate on the vast majority of displays being capped at 60 hz. You can slam geometry through the graphics card above that rate, but some of those frames won't make it to the screen. 30 FPS is not great, but it can be better than having wildly variable framerates. Consistent 30 FPS is better than traditional films, which mostly ran at 24 FPS. Now, for a fast-twitch action game, processing input at 30 FPS is unacceptable; input lag sucks giant donkey balls. But I would expect that a AAA development studio knows that running input-handling, networking, physics, AI, etc in lock-step with the rendering loop is not the smartest idea. These things should run on their own schedules, independent of the graphical framerate.
      - eterm 11y ago
        30fps is horrid and basically unplayable for a first person PC game. This isn't a movie, it is active, not passive. "Better than traditional films" is completely irrelevant. Take a game where you can cap the framerate and bind a key to switch between capped at 30 and capped at 60, if you're playing the game you'll immediately feel the transition and 30fps will feel relatively unplayable.
        ZoFreX 11y ago
        This isn't a first-person PC game, and until quite recently 30fps was considered a playable framerate. It's only in the last couple of years that "60 has become the new 30". Yes, of course a frame lock sucks, but it's not the end of the world and many people wouldn't even notice if not for everyone complaining about it.
        eterm 11y ago
        That is complete nonsense about "last couple of years", I remember wanting ~40fps for half-life over a decade ago. Yes, at that time (10-14 years ago), 30 fps was considered playable. But that is "playable" and even then wasn't recognised as a great framerate for most of that period. For the last decade, less than that has been seen as bad. In fact a few years after half-life's release (when it was still popular but hardware had matured) 100fps was the goal, to match the 100Hz that most monitors back then could do. 60fps only even entered the discussion with the switch to TFT/flat panels with their lower refresh rates.
vlunkr 11y ago
Even if it is impossible for automated testing, that doesn't account for QA and other manual testing. Obviously the bugs aren't too hard to find for most of the people playing it.

by yoklov 11y ago

willvarfar 11y ago

When the office staff go home for the day, their rubbish hodgepodge of PC varieties and specs should spending their evenings playing the game with a game bot.

serge2k 11y ago

Ok, but in this case they chose to put in a 30FPS cap. Ignoring that performance is well below even that, they should have known it was unacceptable.

maccard 11y ago
Why is that unacceptable? From the reports I've read re enabling the 30fps cap removes many of the performance problems. Some of the game logic can be hard coded to accept 33ms frame times, especially if the console versions are capped at 30 and the PC version is a port of them. They made a technical decision to cap it at 30, there's nothing wrong with that. If you don't agree with it, then don't buy it.
- lsadam0 11y ago
  I'm a developer, but not a game developer. Making the decision to hardcode game logic to only accept 33ms frame time sounds like a pretty dumb choice. I would wager that if your fix is to artificially cap performance of your software, then something in your code base sucks majorly. Call me crazy.
  - douche 11y ago
    Well, it's not like running at anything above 60 FPS makes any sense due to the refresh rate on the vast majority of displays being capped at 60 hz. You can slam geometry through the graphics card above that rate, but some of those frames won't make it to the screen. 30 FPS is not great, but it can be better than having wildly variable framerates. Consistent 30 FPS is better than traditional films, which mostly ran at 24 FPS. Now, for a fast-twitch action game, processing input at 30 FPS is unacceptable; input lag sucks giant donkey balls. But I would expect that a AAA development studio knows that running input-handling, networking, physics, AI, etc in lock-step with the rendering loop is not the smartest idea. These things should run on their own schedules, independent of the graphical framerate.
    - eterm 11y ago
      30fps is horrid and basically unplayable for a first person PC game. This isn't a movie, it is active, not passive. "Better than traditional films" is completely irrelevant. Take a game where you can cap the framerate and bind a key to switch between capped at 30 and capped at 60, if you're playing the game you'll immediately feel the transition and 30fps will feel relatively unplayable.
      - ZoFreX 11y ago
        This isn't a first-person PC game, and until quite recently 30fps was considered a playable framerate. It's only in the last couple of years that "60 has become the new 30". Yes, of course a frame lock sucks, but it's not the end of the world and many people wouldn't even notice if not for everyone complaining about it.
        eterm 11y ago
        That is complete nonsense about "last couple of years", I remember wanting ~40fps for half-life over a decade ago. Yes, at that time (10-14 years ago), 30 fps was considered playable. But that is "playable" and even then wasn't recognised as a great framerate for most of that period. For the last decade, less than that has been seen as bad. In fact a few years after half-life's release (when it was still popular but hardware had matured) 100fps was the goal, to match the 100Hz that most monitors back then could do. 60fps only even entered the discussion with the switch to TFT/flat panels with their lower refresh rates.

vlunkr 11y ago

Even if it is impossible for automated testing, that doesn't account for QA and other manual testing. Obviously the bugs aren't too hard to find for most of the people playing it.