The sheer number of high level enemies and bosses I've killed as a Warlock with one hit of my Eldritch Blast charged with Repelling Blast that throws them down a pit begs to differ. There's no ukulele strumming or bongos banging that'll top the fun and laughs I have every time I see an enemy relatively close to a big fall.
Other than that, the game is VERY generous with healing items and options all around. There's so many dialogue options which gave me DC 5 or less to pass, along with many inspiration sources that you'll barely need Bard's "essential" skills.
I fucking loved playing as a Great Old One Warlock in 5e. Eldritch Blast with Agonizing Blast (I assume that’s an option in BG3?) is so versatile. Maybe I’m just easily persuaded because now I’m leaning toward Warlock again lol.
How is it for role-playing? I think that was my favorite part with the character I had.
I don't know how much Larian has changed BG3 from the classical tabletop, but it feels like everything is the same. To be fair, just pick the class and race you most like and play it, ignore all the minmaxing gatekeepers and articles like this, just have your own fun and come to your own conclusions.
How is it for role-playing? I think that was my favorite part with the character I had.
I have about 30 hours and I haven't even left the first area, but from what I've seen, you never go long without a dialogue choice with a skill/race/class check. The charisma and wisdom based checks are constant, so my Warlock is always useful no matter what.
One of the biggest changes is ranges of attacks. An Eldritch Blast has a range of 120ft in 5e. In BG3 all ranged attacks have been significantly shortened (less than half for Eldritch Blast) so they can’t be targeted “off screen”.
As a design philosophy, Larian dislikes people being hit by attacks from off screen so they limited the length of ranged attacks.
That’s what you get when you don’t want to pay people for their work and try to keep teams together. The newbies aren’t going to care about the rich history of the games they’re banging out code for at 3 AM on a Saturday.
The usual cycle. They get good, get big, get shit, get insolvent or bought up until there’s no bigger fish anymore (in which case you have to live with shit until they get insolvent after a long time).
I honestly don’t understand why anyone (OEMs) use HDMI when DP is seemingly superior in every way. Why don’t any TVs come with DP? Why don’t streaming boxes come with DP? It’s confounding me.
oh im pretty sure this purely market competiton, not between the two ports but between manufactures.
like if you want to compete with a company (ex. sony) who is making x tv with hdmi, ideally you want a similar product available that has the same ports. The goal is to sell into peoples already existing ecosystem and sadly its hdmi dominant.
one time when I was presenting in class, my laptop only had displayport and I just stood there like a dumbass waiting for my files to be avail on a donor pc. Is dp superior? yeah, but the whole world is hdmi :[
okay so from what ive searched up, hdmi standard was a collaberation between hitachi, panasonic, maxell, philips, silicon image, sony, vantiva, and toshiba. Furthermore it “won” the support from a lot of entertainment companies like universal, warner, and disney.
;_; so basically, even though they came together to make a universal system, they spent money on it and therefore need to make the most out of it. All other manufacturers just follow along.
I also don't get it.. Just 1 DP port is sufficient for me.. And before people are saying.. just use a DP to HDMI adapter.. Well, I tried.. And it doesn't work either for some reason.. I still can not get 4k 120Hz. (yes my TV supports that, yes.. I also tried "gaming mode" on my TV)
Uh.. I bought this product (see link below) , but now I'm confused if this is an active or a passive adapter. Which adapter do I need for this.. A passive or active adapter to get DP++ working?
I’ll be the first to say I don’t like Linux gaming’s dependence on valve. I wish steam wasn’t the best experience, and I applaud all the effort that the FOSS community puts in to keep them honest.
But for the “gambling” monetization in particular, this is really a “don’t hate the player, hate the game” situation. It’s on people/govts to regulate this. If Valve said tomorrow, “you’re right, we’re not going to monetize gambling anymore because we think it is unethical”, they would just lose to a competitor who is less ethical.
It’s the same as saying, “if you’re rich and are pro higher taxes, why don’t you just choose to pay more? Nothing is stopping you.” Because that’s not going to fix anything, it’s just a losing strategy. What you need is a system where everyone is required by law to behave in a way that benefits the society.
To that end, Valve’s most ethical move would be to lobby the govt to ban unethical monetization. I know they’re making bank, but whether they’re making enough to out-lobby all the others who are also doing this, I don’t know…also we all know the US is not exactly positioned for effective FTC policies right now…
What you need is a system where everyone is required by law to behave in a way that benefits the society.
That’s not feasible, but it’s probably feasible to require everyone to act in a way that doesn’t hurt society, and make restitution when they do hurt society.
For example, I’m okay with gambling in games being legal, but there needs to be rules:
no kids
pay into a fund to help those with addiction
odds of winning are clearly posted in a way that’s accessible and understandable, and the odds are verified independently
there should be a way to buy something instead of gambling for it
must have a way to set spending limits to protect drunk gamblers
Valve could literally ban gambling on all Steam games if they wanted to. stop playing devil’s advocate for billionaires, Gaben has enough yachts already
You can install Proton by other means. It doesn’t have to be through Steam. And by now, since Valve made so much of the groundwork already, the development of Proton can be done by the community, like so many other FOSS projects.
And you can build your own PC and peripherals, yet every aspect of the gaming industry is funded and driven by corporations. Always has been, and Linux gaming is no exception.
I specifically acknowledged the FOSS efforts to eliminate depenence on valve, I think it’s great, but even Bazzite uses the SteamDeck UI. Do you know if there’s a FOSS deck UI replacement that unifies all storefronts/repos, and works as smoothly? I want that to exist.
Steam is just objectively the smoothest linux gaming experience for the largest number of people right now. It’d be awesome if that wasn’t the case, but for now it is.
Japan’s attitude to e-sports is so bizarre. between this, Nintendo constantly shutting down fan tournaments, and other companies acting like e-sports don’t exist until it becomes big enough not to capitalize on..
How the fuck do they think it’s going to work if they keep gatekeeping the few people interested in esports?
Sony (Horizon vs Light of Motiram) and Nintendo (Pokemon vs Palword), man. They really hurt the gaming industries freedom. Now we just need Microsoft (Blizzard) to sue Marvel Rivals for copying Overwatch in some form, then the Triforce is complete.
Tencent's Arena Breakout is very similar to Tarkov. Like, watching it, you'd just think tarkov got a bit of an update. They don't really care about IP unless it's their own.
You not being able to tell the difference in screenshots is not an infringement. These are two different games, that look similar and play similar. Its totally fine to do this. It’s sad that companies and even some players (like you) do not want that. Doing something similar should be okay.
Imagine cars couldn’t look the same, or websites couldn’t look the same or couldn’t be structured the same. Or imagine every music you listen to has to be vastly different from anything else. This stifles creativity and competition. Otherwise no one can improve on existing games.
As long as nothing directly is stolen, like the exact art, program code or whatever copyright is, it’s okay. I want more of the “same”, from more devs, more competition. I want more Pokemon, more Horizon, more Overwatch and I’m not even joking.
An identical sound means its a theft. That’s not the issue “we” or “I” am talking about. The issue with the games getting sued is, because they are similar. There is no audio, graphic or code being identical. It’s more like, if the music sounds similar, then you can sue someone.
Edit: Off course the situation with the “beat” being identical is petty and probably not under copyright anyway. I don’t think you can copyright a “beat”.
“Stifles creativity” when talking about this game is hilarious. Running defence of this game is ridiculous, it’s clearly a total ripoff which is why Sony is challenging them on it. Tencent has the budget to actually take risks and do something creative. This is just pathetic. Lots of games do what you are talking about. This isn’t one of them. It reeks of being designed in a corporate office by committee.
I’m all for game “copies” like this to exist, otherwise we end up in situations like Nintendo suing Palword or worse. And yes, I am talking about stifles creativity. No company should be in a position to sue for a game that looks, plays and feels similar or same. That should not be punishable. Even if they did not add much, it is a different game and should be treated as such.
Or we should start banning Mario Kart clones, fighting games like Street Fighter 2 because Capcom didn’t allow copies to exist in early history of videogames and so on. You are blind to see the problem if you want to ban this Horizon clone. At least it gives us a similar game to explore, without Sony having the full power over this type of game.
Imagine movies couldn’t look or feel the same as other movies before, because it is very similar to it. God i hate this idea of banning and suing similar games, even if they do not add much to it.
There are TONS of awesome RPGs out there to explore. lol you keep talking about creativity but nobody else seems to have that problem other than this team. This game is not creative or interesting, it’s just Horizon at home. Not to mention it hurts the reputation of other Chinese developers at a time when games like Black Myth are starting to blow up and get attention globally.
Good news, everyone! EA are still going to be profiteering shitbags who nickle and dime customers with season passes and loot boxes for content that already exists in the code.
So you’ll continue being a money sucking ghoul who infects my hobby with more and more micro transactions for things that should have been shipped with the game in the first place?
Phew, I was worried there for a sec I might have to credit SA or a fucking Kushner for fixing one of the shittiest publishers in gaming, nice to know they can remain on “pirate if it looks good” list.
Such a bad argument. There is no reason for the game to not support lower end hardware except for lazy development. Not a good sign for the future of borderlands. This is also the type of game that really sucks if you don’t get a locked 60 FPS. Borderlands 3 is still a laggy mess on my steam deck. Sometimes it just stutters forever. Constantly generating shaders or something. There is no reason for it to be that way and lowering the setting has almost no effect on the actual performance. This is 100% the fault of the devs. They are pushing half complete products to market not the consumer.
Also as many others have stated, not everyone has $4000 to drop on a PC. My most powerful machine is a Skylake processor with a 1070. It runs most games fine, it’s just the handful of unoptimized unreal engine games that run badly. I have nearly limitless options to buy other games from devs who actually care about us poorer folk. A 4070 ti is like 800-1000 rn. Probably won’t even run this game well. This is in an age where we have had nearly 100% inflation in a few years. Most people can barely afford to buy a car without spending half of their paycheck. They should be trying to make their games work on older hardware now more than ever. Ram is cheap, there are some things you can work around. It’s usually not worth it to target low RAM devices, but there is really no good reason for you game to not scale well to lower end GPUs. You don’t have to have only 4k textures on disk. You can easily automate a process to create lower poly, and lower resolution textures, implement modest lighting systems. It’s pretty easy in relation to other things. Cpus are mid, you shouldn’t necessarily target 10 year old CPUs if it’s going to make the game worse but your game shouldn’t be so unoptimized that you need 5.5 ghz on a single core to get 60 fps. You should at least have a proper lod system in place so that you can support lower end GPUs in many cases where it’s not very difficult.
The issue with many of these modern triple AAA games is they are trying to avoid as much work as possible. They are trying to avoid targeting lower end hardware because it’s a bit of work and they are struggling to finish their games. They need to plan for these things from the start and work them into their process.
Hell, I don’t know many people willing to drop 4k on a gaming rig. Most people I know with a gaming computer are in the 1-2k range and miss when you could get decent performance under 1k. Like, if I can’t get playable performance out of a several years old mid range computer I’m not buying your game, especially not for $70
That was a reference to a video I saw, something like, trying to play borderlands at 60 FPS on a $4k computer.
2k is about the minimum these days for a full system when you include taxes and shipping. That will get you a midrange system. You can get lower end stuff or buy a used graphics card. Personally I’m still rocking a 1070 and it’s excellent for like 99% of games. I’m lucky that the handful of games that won’t run on it I don’t care about anyways.
Also a less known fact, real inflation, not government reported is probably close to 100% over the past 10 years. So really a $2000 machine today is the same as a $1000 computer 10-15 years ago. Our wages didn’t go up of course. That’s the whole point of a fiat currency and inflation! It’s a clever and sneaky wealth tax. It’s a way to cut your wages quickly in a way that 90% of people don’t understand. They just yell at the gas station clerk because their soda is nearly $5. Their poor little brains can’t conceive of a concept so sophisticated as they are actually being payed less, stuff doesn’t cost more. People aren’t going to make stuff for free and give it to them. It’s just not a simple number so it confuses them. If businesses had to adjust your pay to match real inflation, guess what?, there would be no inflation and no fiat currency. No reason for it to exist because they couldn’t screw us out of our wages without telling us to our face Just extra paperwork and time for managers, little fake economic growth and no unnatural bubbling of markets.
Kind of divering from the larger point, but that’s true — RAM prices haven’t gone up as much as other things have over the years. I do kind of wonder if there are things that game engines could do to take advantage of more memory.
I think that some of this is making games that will run on both consoles and PCs, where consoles have a pretty hard cap on how much memory they can have, so any work that gets put into improving high-memory stuff is something that console players won’t see.
checks Wikipedia
The XBox Series X has 16GB of unified memory.
The Playstation 5 Pro has 16GB of unified memory and 2GB of system memory.
You can get a desktop with 256GB of memory today, about 14 times that.
Would have to be something that doesn’t require a lot of extra dev time or testing. Can’t do more geometry, I think, because that’d need memory on the GPU.
considers
Maybe something where the game can dynamically render something expensive at high resolution, and then move it into video memory.
Like, Fallout 76 uses, IIRC, statically-rendered billboards of the 3D world for distant terrain features, like, stuff in neighboring and further off cells. You’re gonna have a fixed-size set of those loaded into VRAM at any one time. But you could cut the size of a given area that uses one set of billboards, and keep them preloaded in system memory.
Or…I don’t know if game systems can generate simpler-geometry level-of-detail (LOD) objects in the distance or if human modelers still have to do that by hand. But if they can do it procedurally, increasing the number of LOD levels should just increase storage space, and keeping more preloaded in RAM just require more RAM. You only have one level in VRAM at a time, so it doesn’t increase demand for VRAM. That’d provide for smoother transitions as distant objects come closer.
You can divide stuff up into memory however you want, into objects, arrays, whatever. Generally speaking the GPU memory is used for things which will run fast in the streaming processors of the GPU. They are small processors specialized for a limited set of tasks that involve 3D rendering. The types of thing you would have in GPU memory are textures, models, shader scripts, various buffers created to store data for rendering passes like lighting and shadow, zbuffers, and the frame buffer and stuff.
Other things are kept in the ram and are used by the CPU which has many instruction sets and many optimizations for different types of tasks. CPUs are really good at running unpredictable code. They have very large and complex cores which do all kinds of things like branch prediction( taking several paths through code ahead of time when there is free time available) it has direct access to the PCI bus and access things like the south and north bridge, storage controller, io devices, etc.
Generally on a game engine most of the actual logic is happening on the CPU because this is very complex and arbitrary code that is calculation heavy. Things like the level data, AI, collisions, physics, streaming data and stuff is handled by the CPU. The CPU prepares frames by batching many things into one call to the GPU. This is because the GPU is good at taking a command from the CPU and performing that task many times simultaneously. Things like pixels for example. If the CPU had to send every instruction to the GPU in sequence it would be very slow. This is because of the physical distance between the GPU and CPU and also just that a script would only do one thing at a time in a loop. Shaders are different. They are like running a function across a large data set utilizing the 1000 + cores in an average modern GPU.
There are other differences as well. The CPU has access to low latency memory where the GPU prefers higher latency but high bandwidth memory. This is because the types of operations the GPU is doing are much more predictable and consistent. CPUs are very arbitrary and often the CPU might end up taking a path that is unusual so the memory it has to access might be scattered and arbitrary.
So basically most of the game engine and game logic runs in memory because it’s essentially a sequential program that is very linear and arbitrary and because the CPU has many tools in its tool boxes for different tasks, like AVX, SSE, and stuff like this. Most of the visual stuff like 3D transformation and shading and sampling take place on the GPU because its high bandwidth and highly parallel yet with some cores, yet you have many of them that can operate independently.
Ram is very useful but is always limited by console tech. It is particularly important in more interactive and sandboxy type games. Stuff like voxels. It also comes in handy when running sim or rts games. Engines are usually designed around console specs so they can release on those platforms. It can be used for anything even rendering, but it is extremely slow compared to GPU memory in actual bandwidth, which is usually less then an inch away from the actual GPU and has a large bus interface, something like 128-512 bit. This is how many physical wires connect the memory chip to the GPU. It limits how much data you can send in one chunk or cycle. With a 64 bit interface you can only send one 64 bit word at a time. Many processes can pack 4 of those into a 256 word and send them at once getting a 4x speed increase on a 256 bit bus, or 8x speed on a 512 bit bus.
So you have higher bandwidth, high latency memory on a wide bus which feeds a very predictable set of many simple processors. Usually when you want to load memory into the GPU you have to prepare it with the CPU and send it over the PCI bus. This is far too slow to actually use system ram to augment the GPU ram. It’s slow in latency and ram, so if you were to do so, your GPU will be sitting idle like 80% of the time waiting on packets, and then it will only get a 64 or 128 bit packet from the ram, not to mention the CPU overhead of constantly managing the memory in real time.
Having high ram requirements wouldn’t be the worse thing in the world because it’s cheap and can really help some types of games which have large and complex worlds with lots of physics and things happening. Ram is cheap. Not optimizing for GPUs is pretty bad especially with prices these days. That will not happen much because games tend to be written in languages like C++ which manage memory in a very low level way, so they tend to just take about as much as they need. One of the biggest reasons you use a language like C++ to write game engines is because you can decide how and when to allocate and free memory. This prevents stuttering. If the system is handling memory you tend to get a good deal of stuttering because the CPU will get loaded for half a sec here and there as the garbage collector tries to free 2 GBs of memory or something. This tends to make games engines very structured when it comes to the amount of memory they use. Since they are mostly trying to reuse code as much as possible, and are targeting consoles, they usually just aim for the amount of ram they know they will have on consoles. Things like extra draw distance on PCs and stuff can use more memory.
LODs can be generated in real time but this is slow. You can do nearly anything with code. It’s just if it’s a good fit for your application. In a game engine every cycle is precious. You are updating the entire scene, moving all your data, preparing a frame, resolving all interactions, running scripts, and everything else in just over 16 ms for 60 fps. The amount of data your PC in processing in just 16 ms will blow your mind. Usually 3-12 passes in the renderer. A very simple engine will draw a zbuffer, where during this 16 ms it determines the distance to the closest object behind every pixel, then using this data to figure out what needs to actually be drawn. Then it’s taking these objects and resolving the normals, basically figuring out if the polygon is facing towards or away from the player. This is cutting out rendering the vast majority of polygons. Then the lighting data and everything is combined with this and sent to the GPU which actually goes through a list of polygons need to be drawn, and then looking up the points to draw the polygons. It’s also casting rays from a light source and shading the scene. This is very simple, basically a quake or doom like game. Modern games are much more complex. They draw each frame many times with many different buffers Generating different data and using it for the next pass. Generating LODs is just something that isn’t done unless needed for some reason, like dynamic terrain or voxel terrain. In a game that is mostly static geometry there is not really any reason to give up that compute time when you can just pregen them. Generating LODs in real time is quite a process. You have to load a region into memory, reduce it’s polygon, downsize the texture. Generate a new mesh and texture, and place it in the world. This would be a back and forth between the GPU and CPU. Some games do it however. 7dtd, space engineers, Minecraft with a distant terrain mod, and I’m sure many others generate LODs on another thread, but these are usually fairly low quality meshes.
Most AI companies will die quite dramatically, but the big players will weather the storm and soak up all the rewards that come from monopolising on such technology. The ultimate product can turn to slop if you’re the only game in town.
in 3 years PC build guides are gonna be like "You need 3 drives in your gaming PC. One for the OS (this can be small, its not important), at least 2TB for games, and another 1TB for the shaders for those games. Oh and you'll need a top of the line Nvidia card because even a dumb UE5 asset dump game like Notary Simulator won't run on a budget card"
pcgamer.com
Ważne