Primarily, texture size has increased, texture count has increased, audio quality has increased, and the amount of audio files in a game has also typically increased.
Its not really a deadlines or optimization problem. Compression always decreases fidelity, and many developers choose to compress as little as possible in order to achieve the highest fidelity. Since RAM and storage capacities have increased, the compromise of compressing everything at a great sacrifice to fidelity is not as obvious of a tradeoff anymore. Developers don’t have to choose between voicing an entire game with nearly unintelligible voice compression or only voicing important cutscenes. They can voice the entire game with minimal compression at the cost of a bigger install size, which is free for developers.
This will get better as NN/AI chips become the norm in gaming. Compression gains, on the fly generation of textures, voice generation when needed, etc.
I envision a future dev using rough shitty textures to conceptualise a game, and then an NN to bring it to life during runtime.
You might even be able to load your own NN interpreter to make the world more cartoony, or change the intended setting entirely, or unlock the nsfw filter on the vanilla interpreter.
It sort of is an optimization problem though because excess textures and audio files could be separated off into their own DLC packages (see Age of Empire II High-Res texture DLC and Steam’s Language Selection feature)
The really big problem is people being riddled with 4K textures on 1080p monitors and 20 audio tracks for different languages when they only need one.
I agree with the audio files for languages the player never plays, but 4k textures at a 1080p rendering resolution is not a problem.
Texture map size depends priparily on how the UV maps of models make use of the texture, and how close the camera is to the objects using that texture on average. A large wall texture will have more noticeable detail with a 4k texture than a distant tree in the skybox. The details will be visible on the wall whether the player plays in 720p or 8k, depending on how close the camera gets to it. You may be fine with environments looking like they were made for the Nintendo64’s 4kb of texture RAM, but 1080p players still gain massive benefits in graphics quality with 4k textures.
Being unable to uninstall/choose not to install the 4k textures tied to ultra/very high settings that you will never use so they clutter up your storage space is a problem. If they aren't installed then the highest settings can be disabled until they are installed.
A skybox using a 4k texture on low is fine, we are talking about the textures that are only used when the settings are set to 4k or ultra or whatever.
And even lossy compression is not inherently bad. AAC is completely indistinguishable from lossless for most people and hardware setups, and very close anyway when it’s not. It uses a fraction of the space, though. (Not a comment on game dev practices, more a comment on compression.)
Im excited for something like this as I would like to see more form factors. tv sticks, tablets, workstations, gaming laptops. I know anyone can do the last two but having a hardware vendor cover the software officialy is sorta a big thing
They didn’t abandon it, they opened it up to anything running at least Andriod 8.0 or newer. So basically every Andriod device made since 2015 can run Steam Link, maybe not at a quality seen as appropriate but it’ll run.
I believe so yes (tbh forgot it was a thing) but for example my smart TV does not have a steam link app available for some reason (LGC3) and I would definitely stream to it given the chance. Not sure why the steam app is not available.
The Steam Link tried and succeeded at this. My guess is only technical people understood its use-case at the time. For hardware to do well on a large scale it needs to be standalone. You turn it on and immediately see the benefit of it. Can’t be dependent on the customer’s other hardware.
well it will help if you can get many of the same internet streaming apps you have with firetv stick and such. so people might just buy it to steam netflix and be part of the market outside of the ones using the game streaming.
Set aside the china argument. In a random conversation about a video game, when do these topics come up? Unless the game is directly telling a story about those elements, I don’t understand why this matters?
If people wanna discuss a topic, fine, but I don’t see what it even has to do with an average video game.
I’ve seen game streams before where someone plays a random game while discussing a completely unrelated topic. It’s so strange to me and not my thing. But them again, ANY commentary over a game video is garbage to begin with. They never add anything to it. No commentary is just superior for watching videos of gameplay.
I’ve been watching Falcom drill down on sexual harassment as a form of humor in the Trails series. Now that they’re remaking Sky, I’m curious how well they’ll handle having a female lead for once in a long time.
Put short, feminism is an important value in games for me - and shouldn’t be a high goal to achieve.
It’s claimed that in addition to exploiting its dominant position, Sony bans other potential app stores from having access to the PlayStation platform.
It would be fascinating if this lawsuit forces Sony to open their platform to 3rd party stores. I am assuming they would be far more opposed to this than even any multi-hundred million euro fines.
To be honest that would just be the end of the consoles system as there is a reason Sony is selling the PS5 for so cheap.
As much as I understand why Apple shouldn’t be allowed to keep everything in the Apple Store, Sony’s situation isn’t the same.
But what would bother me more is if Sony starts to raise the prices of everything without justification.
I got a Steam Deck and I’m slowly migrating my gaming from Playstation only to Linux/Playstation gaming. Still a Playstation 5 is a great product, especially with kids and its ease of use and great graphics for your bucks.
If you have a dumb TV you can use a USB to CEC adapter that talks to the tv. If you have a smart TV it is probably supported by Home Assistant so you can rig your computer to wake the TV.
Edit: both of these solutions are arguably no-code-required but I agree they’re a bit technically involved.
Yeah I ran into these solutions but unfortunately I can’t seem to find any USB-CEC adapter other than the Pulse Eight, which doesn’t seem to ship to Australia in any economical manner.
I ended up getting a Flirc USB, couldn’t get the existing TV remote to work with that (once paired with the TV it stops sending IR signals, and the TV wouldn’t let me select the PC input as needing to activate the IR mode on the remote), ordered the Flirc Skip 1s… and now that’s working well enough we’re using the Skip1s as the primary remote for the TV as well. About 150AUD down the hole for this solution, and it’s not truly turning the PC off, but close enough!
No PC that isn’t a lower spec handheld can pick up and play like a console, and even that list is very short. Consoles are also, at least for a few years, the far more economical decision when it comes or acquiring the base hardware. It’s maybe changed now since we’re over halfway through this cycle but I’d challenge anyone here to match a digital PS4 for $400 USD with a PC. It’s a tall order.
I am now a strictly PC gamer. It’s better for most things. But consoles still make sense to a lot of people. No fuss, in your games fast, simple experience, plug into your tv and go with the controller they gave you.
Maybe it’s because I don’t use it enough but the last Sony console I bought was the absolute opposite of “no fuss”. It was nothing but mandatory unskippable updates and I constantly got signed out and had to sign in and the 2fa app kept changing names. And also all those updates and sign-ins had mandatory EULAS you had to scroll through. Such a hassle.
Edit: also it tried to talk to my Sony tv in some “smart” way over HDMI (so I couldn’t disable it) which would sometimes cause my TV to crash and reboot for several minutes.
As an aside. I fucking hate smart TV shit. We were gifted a like Samsung 80 inch 4K tv and I was so excited to get that as a gift. I’d never had a tv bigger than 35. But all the smart shit makes it such a miserable experience.
I’ve also decided I hate HDR. Who made the decision that the TV has its own HDR settings, the console has HDR settings, and then individual games have settings as well. I have no clue if my shit is looking the way it’s supposed to. I recently got a PS portal and on god everything looks better on it than the TV, I think because it’s preconfigured.
I miss just plugging in the game and it looking fine.
I mean if you read through EULA’s respect but they take seconds to get past. As for updates, I’m guessing you turned off auto updates and/or power your console down completely whenever you’re not playing it. Otherwise it should just be updating in the background and you never have to wait. That’s been typical for over a decade.
I’m not saying those aren’t viable decisions if you want to disable all that or read everything, but the stuff you were encountering was completely avoidable. I never triggered 2FA on either my Xbox (one -> XSS) or PS4 so I’m not sure what you did to trip that up.
Every TV lets you disable smart link so you could’ve killed that if you wanted to as well. I hate it as well! I don’t want the power button between my console and TV to be linked
For the updates: I put it to sleep. However my power cuts out every now and then. When the power comes back, the ps4 turns itself back on on and makes obnoxious beeping noises, just to tell me the power was cut. The dumb thing is it will stay on that screen until manually dismissed and won’t auto-update until you dismiss that screen, with no timeout. The hassle-free appliance experience!
For your claim that the eulas being easy to skip, keep in mind that sometimes there were back-to-back updates that each required me to agree to a eula. So I would babysit the thing, walk away when it was taking forever, and when I came back it wouldn’t even be ready for gaming. Even windows isn’t that obnoxious.
Also my tv at the time had no way to disable CEC (my new one does, and also doesn’t crash lol).
I mean dude that’s just a larger problem. If you were PC gaming that would be an even bigger issue. What appliance carries a backup battery?
Get a surge protector with battery - APC is a very affordable brand. I’ve had the same one for 5 years, cost me $150. I use it to keep my PC and RAID online.
No machine stays on without power, I’m not quite sure how you interpreted my statement that way. I’m saying all my other appliances recover gracefully from power loss and do whatever auto-updates they need to do in the background so when I go to use them they just work.
I don’t understand where the confrontation came from, but I guess if that’s what you want you can have it. I literally told you two posts ago about how it’s not just waiting for 20s and clicking a button. It’s an attended upgrade and scrolling process. I won’t bother quoting what I wrote 3 minutes ago, go scroll up and read it again yourself. No, my microwave does not present me with EULAs when the power goes out.
What “score” are you talking about? Do you take personal offense when a Sony product sucks? Did you invent the PlayStation or something? I was just sharing my lived experience.
at this point I have to believe you are simply skimming and not actually reading what I’m writing. You’re saying things that are almost valid but don’t make sense when you actually look at the content of my comments.
To be honest that would just be the end of the consoles system as there is a reason Sony is selling the PS5 for so cheap.
They stopped selling them for cheap as soon as they reached market dominance, so good riddance I say.
I’m also not sure how much the PS exerience differs from Xbox, but my last console was an XOne (got it for cheap) specifically because I wanted the “no fuss” experience, and it was such a headache that it convinced me to switch to PC instead.
Well I bought my ps5 a while ago, but I think that despite the price increase, it’s still cheaper than a comparable PC.
As for the no fuss experience, my Steam Deck, which I love and have had for a few month, has already given more to tinker and solve than my ps5 in a few years.
I just think that the Playstation experience isn’t as good and cheap as it used to be compared to PC.
Cheapness ended after PS3 era I think. Even if it (ps4, ps5) is cheaper than a comparable PC, online access after a year or two would probably ruin all the savings.
Agreed but you can play only offline without missing on much. I currently have the ps plus for a few more months, but I’m dropping it as the only one playing online is my son and hés playing fortnite.
But, if you’re an online player, it’s gonna be cheaper to play on pc.
Agreed but you can play only offline without missing on much
That’s such a bad take. Game companies are not allowed to have multiplayer that bypasses psn network.
The Sony and Nintendo have dominant positions in the game market for their consoles. The wallet garden must be breached for the consumer - why do you cate about company profits🙃
How is it even going to work though? The SDK is under NDA, there is no documentation and devkits are not sold freely, so random studios can’t just develop games for Playstation and upload to a 3rd party marketplace
Yeah what I was thinking, too. Someone stripped a bunch of long-deprecated old pipelines, but this is a nasty side-effect of it as the new pipelines all mandate that DRM being added.
Which is something that a manager decided to implement, and not allow the programmers proper time to do full testing before rolling it out?
Face it, there’s no way for managers to weasel out of the blame for this, b/c the buck has to stop somewhere.:-) We simply hold leaders to a higher standard than mere workers, especially if they pay themselves more every hour than a programmer makes in a month (I have not looked into what the pay gap is specifically for Capcom though, this is just programming in general).
No one properly optimizes games anymore. Devs used to have to work with extreme limitations, and make the absolute best of what little they had.
Now with tech advancing quicker than people can keep up with and get accustomed to, and megacorporations like Microsoft prioritizing deadlines rather than overall quality (or the mental health of their developers), that doesn’t really happen any more.
Far too reductive of an assessment. We simultaneously had a massive leap in resolution (higher quality textures needed) and a massive step back in dollar per gigabyte for storage, as we could no longer get acceptable read speeds from hard drive technology. At the same time, for better or worse, open world games are what a lot of these developers are making, which compounds that texture problem. Massive file sizes are what you get when games are optimized; they're just optimizing for performance and not storage space.
I have a problem with that last sentence. Because larger files do take longer to load from storage into main memory, and then longer to load into VRAM from main memory. Also, with larger files, you can't keep them cached and ready to be reused, because you have to free that memory for other large files.
Your argument might be true if computers generally had RAM and/or VRAM larger than the entire game. But when games are 200+GB and typical main memory is 16-32GB for most folks, and only 64-128GB at the higher end, you know data will have to be shuffled around. VRAM situation is more dire: typical is 6-8GB, high end is 12-16GB and absolute max is 20-24GB.
Yes, faster storage and faster RAM help, but all those loads and unloads of huge chunks of data do take up time, cause stutters, or absurdly long loading screens despite the high performance components.
OPTIMIZE YOUR GAMES. Lossy compression is fine, and uncompressed assets should be optional downloads.
Decompressing an asset so that it can be used is an operation that takes processor cycles as well. It's why Titanfall 1 came in so high on storage requirements at the time, because in order to meet CPU performance targets, they had to leave audio uncompressed. In this case, huge texture asset files are often LODs, high detail versions for when you're up close and low detail versions for when you're far away, so that the machine is always loading the right size version of the asset rather than just always using the best quality one in a worst case like you seem to be implying. This takes up a lot of storage space, but it means they aren't wastefully using high detail assets for a mountain a mile and a half away.
Uncompressed WAV files, lol I’ll never get over that
It doesn’t even make sense. Simple compression algorithms like in use by FLAC or AAC are pretty much free to decompress on CPUs from this century and the cpu cycles you save by not doing wasteful IO of huge files from storage easily makes up for that.
I’m sure game devs can make some argument to not use ‘expensive’ compression, but not using any is just wasteful.
Oh yes please. I’d still buy a steam deck bc of their hardware support but nonetheless, this is great news for all those other released handhelds that are held back by windows.
I feel like the issue could be largely resolved if developers would just make a lot of the downloads optional. For as long as I remember, installers for PC applications have given the user options for which parts of the applications they want to install. Yet for games these days, they just take an all or nothing approach. Let me skip the ultra textures, and all the extra choices in languages I don’t need. It seems like it should be such an easy thing to implement!
I get what you are getting at but “misinterpretation of gender” can also happen in indie games and so can micro transactions. They are much more rare but they do still on occasion happen
This is such a weird take. Of course, for the things you mentioned, yes.
But in the case of storage, it’s not like the devs purposefully increase the sizes of their game for some reason. If indie devs had the resources to easily make graphics as advanced and voice every little thing in their games, they would, and their games would become as big.
The only reason it doesn’t happen is because they literally can’t do that with their resources, which are better spent elsewhere. But this is not an inherent advantage of indie games, in fact, it’s quite the disadvantage. I’d love if my indie games at least had the possibility of cutting edge graphics and voice for everything.
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