There are so many things that go into whether a game feels responsive or not. Your experience could be explained by anything from access to stable Internet, to trends in game design philosophy, and vary from game to game based on implementation.
Here’s one of my favorite GDC talks that looks at just one small part of what goes into making a game feel responsive: youtu.be/h47zZrqjgLc
Sure, this is just an example of how complex “feel” can get in game development. The video includes several examples where player perception changes drastically from very minor gameplay design changes
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Amazing game, just like its predecessor. Clunky movement and combat as usual though, kinda sad that it did not improve that much. Still improved though.
If you folks want to have a really hard time find a way to play the NES version of Mike Tyson’s Punch Out on original hardware with a CRT monitor and then play it on any emulator on a modern monitor. You will feel like you’ve aged 80 years.
I was playing punch out on the switch the other day and 100% this. That game was all about proper timing and reaction speed. All the little latencies add up to it being nearly impossible. I never beat the game as a kid, but I could get to the last fighter, Tyson in my version, Mr Dream? In the non Tyson version? Anyway, can’t even beat the Russian dude that laugh taunts me on the switch. I know what to hit, and when to hit it, but HDMI lag, upscaling lag, blue tooth controller lag, all add up to it being nearly impossible to react.
No. The thing is AAA games are now being released in an unoptimized state way too often. Even if you still get good FPS microstuttering and short lag spikes still occur frequently.
Of course this can make you wonder if this is a you problem and you just got too sensitive.
Nope, this is an industry problem. Why would you optimize a game? No, legitimately asking. It doesn’t affect sales numbers, it often doesn’t significantly tank your steam review score (that most publishers don’t care about), there are practically no downsides to not optimize your game.
But if you do value optimization, it lowers dev velocity, requires more training/awareness for devs and artists, and you won’t be able to ship as fast anymore. And on top of that you get… nothing. A few more sales maybe?
I used to agree it was “optimization” problems. And there are definitely some games/engines with those (I love Team Ninja but… god damn).
But it is also that mindsets have changed. Most people know of the “can it run Crysis?” meme… if only from Jensen. But it was a question for a reason because Crysis (and other games) genuinely pushed the envelope of what desktop computers could handle. It was an era where you really would put a LOT of effort into figuring out what settings would get you what framerate and “ultra” was something that only the super rich or the people who JUST built a new computer could expect to run.
But around the launch of the PS4/XBONE, that all changed. Consoles were just PCs for all intents and purposes and basically all games “worth playing” were cross platform. So rather than taking advantage of the latest nVidia card or going sicko mode for the people who got the crazy powerful single thread performance i7, they just targeted what the consoles could run. So when people did their mid-gen upgrades of PCs… suddenly “ultra” and “epic” were what we began defaulting to. Just crank that shit up, turn off whatever you don’t like, and see your framerate and go from there.
The refresh SKU consoles bumped up the baseline but… not all that much since those games still had to run on a base XBONE. And then we got the PS5/XSEX which… you know how it is never a good time to build a new PC? It was REALLY not a good time to build a new console as ray tracing and upscaling/framegen rapidly became the path forward in the hardware/graphics space. But also? Those launched during COVID so the market share of the previous gen remained very large and all those third parties continued to target the previous gen anyway.
Which gets back to PC gaming. Could more effort be put in to improve performance? Yeah, definitely. But we are also getting reminded of what things were actually like until the mid 10s where you might only play a game on Medium or High and wanting that new game to be gorgeous is what motivates you to drive down to Best Buy and get a new GPU.
But instead it is the devs fault that we can’t play every game on maxed out Epic settings at 4k/240Hz… because this generation never knew any different.
I get what you’re trying to say but I’ve definitely experienced performance problems even on lowest settings.
The issue isn’t that everyone tries to run the game maxed out. The issue is that fundamental problems are often left in the games that you can’t just fix by lowering quality settings.
And there is a reason the +/- (?) buttons literally changed the render window for DOOM and the like. Like… those iconic HUDs were specifically so that those playing on a 640480 monitor might actually only have to worry about a 640360 game and so forth.
Same with those of us who played games like Unreal Tournament at 18-24 FPS on an 800*600.
Like I said, there are definitely some problem children (again: Team Ninja). But it is also worth remembering that most games are still targeting a previous gen console SKU at 1080p. And, ironically, the optimizations are going to be geared more towards that.
Which… is why upscaling is such a big deal. Yeah “AI Upscaling” is a great buzzword. But it really is no different than when we used to run OFP at a lower resolution on the helicopter missions. It is just that now we can get “shockingly good” visuals while doing that rather than thinking Viktor Troska looks extra blocky.
Like, I’ll always crap on Team Ninja’s PC ports because they are REALLY bad… even if that is my preferred platform. But it took maybe 2 minutes of futzing about (once I got to Yokohama proper and had my game slow to sub 20 FPS…) to get the game to look good and play at a steady 60 FPS. No, it wasn’t at Epic (or whatever they use) but most of the stuff was actually on High. Is it the same as just hitting auto-detect and defaulting to everything maxed out? Of course not. But that gets back to “Can it run Crysis?”
Much of this specifically is devs implementing MSAA, which once upon a time was cheap, efficient, and looked fine. Nowadays with RT added into the mix MSAA just simply can’t function well on modern hardware, to the point where even city builders like Cities Skylines 2 will crawl to 14-15fps on low settings if you haven’t overridden the graphics pipeline to remove msaa and replace it with one that actually functions.
Wpadła mi ostatnio taka ciekawostka - kreatyna zmniejsza deficyt koordynacji spowodowany brakiem snu w takim samym stopniu jak kofeina pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21324203/
Szklanka zimnej wody, może być nawet z lodówki działa pobudzająco. Wyjście z rana na zewnątrz też jest pomocne, wystarczy się nawet wywlec na balkon.
Oj tak kreatyna bardzo spoko, ta z Biedronki ma jeszcze taurynę i jest do tego smaczna, ale czystą kreatynę można znaleźć na allegro za 28 zł (duży słoik). Kreatyna nie tylko wzmacnia fizycznie, ale też zdolności poznawcze (według badań, których nie dam rady teraz przytoczyć).
Kreatyna spoko. Próbowałem różnych odżywek, np białko mnie dość szybko uczulało, a kreatynę jem regularnie od paru lat. Ostatnio też cytrulinę próbuje, podobno pomaga przy długim wysiłku i na pompę mięśniową, wydaje mi się że tak, ale może to być placebo.
I feel like there is a balance I need to enjoy a game fully. I really like modded Minecraft because I can approach the problems in many different ways but there is still progression. While in vanilla I often find myself lost because the things I have available to do next are only to help me do more things in the future.
Well, I was trying to complete my second playthrough of Metal gear solid 2. But a bad Windows 11 update seems to have corrupted something, and now my PC is crawling.
So, attempting to reinstall/repair. Thanks Microsoft :3
Other than that Metal Gear has been awesome. I finished 3 the other week and have also been playing 4 on the ps3. Not super keen on the bombardment of cutscenes so far in 4, but it’s still pretty neat.
I have really appreciated learning the mechanics of each game. I feel like this is one of the first series where I can play each game twice and learn new things about the game on each playthrough. I can tell how I’m improving and when certain fights were completed with luck or if I actually mastered them. The depth is super addicting
Not super keen on the bombardment of cutscenes so far in 4, but it’s still pretty neat.
This isn’t a spoiler but I need to warn you: the final cutscene is 40 minutes long with no break/checkpoint and you can only save your game after, not before or during. Literally everyone who goes into the game blind ends up trapped there late at night wanting to go to bed.
Thank you for the heads up! I’ll have to go check when the cutscene comes up so I don’t get caught off guard.
I ended up having to watch the MGS2 cutscene before the last boss, and one of the really long MGS3 cutscenes on youtube because I fell asleep while they were playing lol
It’s so weird to me that no one uses the term “slowdown” any more. Lag and latency meant networking delays back in the days you’re talking about. Not a complaint, just an observation that I’ve been wondering about the last few years.
But yeah, as others said, slowdown/lag was pretty common. I immediately think of the ninjas jumping out of the water in TMNT3, the beginning of Top Man’s stage in Mega Man 3, and the last boss of The Guardian Legend, but there were many more. Early 3d is shocking too, with more sub-30-fps games than you remember. Some called themselves at 20, even. [Edit: Now that I think about it, even some NES games capped at 20. Strange times.]
I believe OP is referring to input latency, which isn't so much a result of the system slowing down due to increased load, as much as running in a consistently slowed-down state causing a delay on your inputs being reflected on-screen. There's several reasons for why this is happening more often lately.
Part of it has to do with the displays we use nowadays. In the past, most players used a CRT TV/monitor to play games, which have famously fast response times (the time between receiving the video signal and rendering that signal on the screen is nearly zero). But modern displays, while having a much crisper picture, often tend to be slower at the act of actually firing pixels on the screen, causing that delay between pressing Jump and seeing your character begin jumping.
Some games also strain their systems so hard that, after various layers of post-processing effects get applied to every rendered frame, the displayed frames are already "old" before they're even sent down the HDMI cable, resulting in a laggier feel for the player. You'll see this difference in action with games that have a toggle for a "performance/quality" mode in the graphics settings. Usually this setting will enable/disable certain visual effects, reducing the load on the system and allowing your inputs to be registered faster.
Input latency includes the time it takes to render the frame. CRTs have a small inherent latency advantage compared to modern LCDs but they're not instant and that advantage is miniscule compared to the disadvantage of the lower framerate. A game running at 30 fps on a gaming LCD will have lower input lag than a game running at 20 fps on a CRT. I'm sure there are outliers that poll inputs in a silly way that increases input lag, but for most games the render time will be the greatest factor. Performance modes usually simply reduce the render time (even if the framerate is unchanged).
You’re right. Yes, there’s slowdowns in a lot of older games but not necessarily input lag. The slowdowns dont bother me hardly at all. I think you hit right on it!
“Lag” does indeed come from network/signal theory and does indeed refer to networking. Been a minute, but I want to say lag is the round trip delay and latency is A to B but don’t quote me on that.
That said? Nobody cared. “Lag” was always the time between action and response. Some of that might be input delay. Some of that might be display delay (which has always been over-exaggerated but…). And a lot of that really was network delay. These days it tends to be more rendering/logic delay because people who are playing on shitty internet connections know it.
I distinctly remember mario bros on the nes. There was like a 1/3second latency between pressing the button and mario jumping. You had to time your jumps (especially when running) further back than you’d expect to compensate. You just kinda got used to it after a while.
Yep. On the emulators now it is instant. I recently stayed at an airbnb with an nes and played with my kids. The lag is definately there. Even my kids were falling off stuff shouting that they pushed the jump button.
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Older games are a laggy mess when there is too much on the screen. Not to mention sprites disappearing. The issue I think is, we have gotten better and better over the decades until recently. We are just seeing a backward slide in performance (for many reasons, not just poor optimization).
I’ve only recently (2 years ago) started to play older games I was interested in but never got the time to play. I even got a 16:9 CRT-TV and modded all the original consoles. It toatally depends on the game if it is a smooth and optimized experience or just an unresponsive mess of code.
Examples: Virtua Racing on the Genesis or Star Fox on the SNES. they were slow and quite laggy. sure they were essentially pushing the limits of what the console could do and in the case of Star Fox had to have the FX chip in the cartridge but I wouldn't call racing around on the Genesis in Virtua Racing a "smooth" experience.
Other games are like this too with loading. Mortal Kombat CD on the Sega CD. you get to the Shang Tsung fight and the game has to load every time he morphs. Other games would also slow to a crawl if there was a lot on the screen. To your point Ranger X on the Genesis had these little tadpole enemy things that could quickly populate the screen if you didn't take them out quickly it would slow the game down. Same would happen on the PSX with the game Loaded.
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