RIP Unity. First they partnered with Ironsource. Who are the people behind InstallCore it’s a wrapper for bundling software installations. It tricks people into installing enough browser toolbars and other bloat to hurt their PCs. Windows Defender and MalwareBytes blocks it. Now Unity does this shit.
The gist is… streamers are gamer role models. The streamer itself is a drop in the bucket… but either they encourage people that like their behavior to play the game, or they encourage people who play the game to act like them.
I used to play town of salem, the social deduction game… the community was relatively small, but when a mainstream youtube channel like pewdiepie or someoen played the game there’d be a collective groan from the community. As it would always follow up with a huge spike if players who start up the game with zero interest in learning how to play (because the youtuber also didn’t learn how to play)… now in those cases that generally was only a week or 2 of annoyance as the obnoxious players either moved on to the next thing, or started actually trying to learn the game instead of just trolling everyone.
Lol league was extremely toxic in 2010 when streaming wasn’t a thing. I got sucked in and became toxic in 2011-2012 before I quit altogether. Best decision I ever made regarding video games.
It is the player base, not the streamers, that ruin the game.
Don’t want to sound arrogant, but most people here (including OP and the writers of the article) don’t seam to know much about video game development.
Because statements like “… Isn’t about graphics or frame rate; it’s memory” don’t make sense at all.
Because if you fast memory is to small you would either more often read from a slower memory which results in less frame rate or you would need to make the stuff that fill up your memory (most often textures) smaller (lower resolution) which “reduces graphics”
The article says something more business politics related: “Microsoft requires all games to run, feature-complete and without changes in quality or mechanics” on both Versions S and X. I’m not really believe this to be true because this would make the existence of more powerful X version completely pointless. However what I think can be the case is that Microsoft QA is forcing the studio to adapt the game for the series S before it could be published. This needs time. Since there is no low spec version for the PS5 there is no need for additional adaptations.
Microsoft is OK with the S having a lower resolution and frame rate, that’s why it exists.
They aren’t OK with the X having a feature that the S does not, and that’s what’s blocking Baldur’s Gate 3. Split screen is possible on the X, it’s not (currently) possible on the S, that’s what they’re working on.
Removing split screen from both isn’t an option because the PS5 version supports it. The Xbox version would get murdered if they do it.
The reason why split screen doesn’t work on the S is, yes, due to the available memory. At it’s best, it has 8GB that runs 1/2 the speed of the X, + another 2GB that are so slow as to be essentially useless for gaming.
What could split screen bring that it will not work with the S memory? Because one object will not take up twice the space just because split screen. The texture of it will (hopefully) only loaded once for both screens.
What can change is the total amount of objects that are loaded into memory since the players can now be simultaneously on two different places.
So as a Developer you will need to find a way to get around this. Maybe by reducing the textures of the objects even more, so that you can load more of them in the same space. Or maybe by remove non essential object from the scene at all so that by default less object needed to be loaded. Also the screen is now half the size so maybe limit the field of view more to start loading in objects a little later.
What ever they decide to do, this will require additional steps that are only needed because MS want’s the game to be optimised for the series S.
From a Developer perspective I could understand if they maybe decide to ditch the Xbox release completely because of this additional workload needed.
Plus: if removing background objects from the scene in order to save memory is something that needs to be consistent on both S and X version because of MS policy, you will get “less graphics” on the X then what would be possible, just because the S exist… What completely undermines the complete existence of the X.
And of course non of this is just because split screen. This will most likely be true for every game on Xbox. It’s just that for most games it’s enough to cut resolution down for the S and leave the rest as it is.
Each view of the world requires that the entire visible world be loaded twice, so that it can be seen from each players perspective independent of the other.
If we go into a dungeon, I go left and you go right, it has to render both pathways simultaneously. In a single player or single screen two player game, it only has one path to consider.
Loading in memory and rendering are different things. Of course it needs to be rendered twice but also you cut resolution in half so rendered both screens is not that much more of work.
Did I at some point say that I’m the most advanced expert?
I just pointed out that many of the statements in the article don’t make sense from a logical point of view. Split screen with this game on the S will be possible, I’m sure it will, but that requires additional work to do regardless of what the reasoning behind this is.
Now I just reading pointless sh*t Talk while I was trying to hold a technical conversation… But yes thank you all.
Dude, you rocked up saying both the writer and I didn’t “seam [sic] to know much about video game development,” then proceeded to be, well, loud and wrong about how split screen works. You can’t get defensive when you started out attacking.
Didn’t want to be offensive sorry if you felt that way.
I think I made my point clear. Maybe I’m wrong about some details about split screen maybe we talking all about the same stuff but misunderstanding each other IDK. But again my main point is a different.
Because all my statements about split screen are actually just coming from general knowledge about game development and working on a network multiplayer game and assuming what would not be needed in local co-op I actually did some research about this topic now to make sure I didn’t had false assumptions here.
This video here shows one Implementation of split screen youtu.be/tkBgYD0R8R4 of course this could be implemented differently by larian studios but I’m pretty sure the basic principle stays the same.
And the basic principle is not running the game two times. It’s running two Views at the same time in the same world. So obviously there is no need to have everything twice in memory. So right now I don’t see anything about what I said about split screen being proven wrong.
Of course there will be more load on the hardware for two players split screen but it’s not the game running two times.
No questions that the a slower RAM compared to X or PS5 is causing bottleneck on the series S, never denied this, but this bottlenecks will go down in FPS performance and all of this can be worked around by developers by “optimising” the game. At which point this optimisation is seen as reduction in quality is up to debate. That’s what I want to say.
BG3’s PC minimum specs list 4gb vram and 8gb normal ram. Assuming windows uses 3 gb, that’s 9gbs of total memory that the game needs. They could just use lower res textures when in splitscreen and be done with it, but I guess they want to compromise as little as possible
Edit: apparently Microsoft wants games to use less than 6 just in case someone tries to activate all background functions at once. That is indeed quite stupid.
I didn’t see any mentions of how much overhead the system has in the article? I had assumed it would be 2 gb as why else would they make 2gb of the memory slower than the rest. Someone else in the thread basically confirms that, but apparently Microsoft wants games to run within 6gbs just in case background downloads / chat etc takes 2gb more.
Because statements like “… Isn’t about graphics or frame rate; it’s memory” don’t make sense at all.
I get what you’re saying but it does make sense actually. The Series S has incredibly under-powered memory which has hobbled a lot of developers thus far. It’s the core reason why they can’t get split-screen working right yet. Framerate/graphics are more associated with GPU performance, which is not as big of an issue for the S. Everything bottlenecks on the very small, very weak memory they provided.
Nah, the specific issue they’re having is definitely a memory issue. Split-screen doesn’t really require that much more processing power, but it does need more memory, and preferably faster memory, to buffer everything.
In nearly 17 years at Valve, Wood helped build and ship the company’s most notable titles, including Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2, CS:GO and both episodes of Half-Life 2. He was a founding member of the CS:GO project and worked on that series for six years; he was pivotal in crafting Portal 2’s co-op mode, and he created choreography and combat scenes in Half-Life and Left 4 Dead. Level design was one of his specialties.
You have my attention.
“It really is more about cozy exploration,” Wood told Engadget. “The game has aspects of platforming, but it’s very light platforming. It’s more about exploring vertically, and exploring nooks and crannies. I’ve done a lot of things throughout my career, but one of the things I spent a lot of time doing was level design in video games, so I have a lot of personal interest in creating spaces that feel fun to explore, to sort of poke around in.”
“To be blunt, the frame rate is atrocious, likely due to the fact that bacteria were never intended to display 3D video games. It takes 70 minutes for the bacteria to illuminate one frame of the game and another eight hours to return to its starting state. This translates to nearly nine hours per frame, which means it would take around 600 years to play display the game from start to finish.”
Video game companies are going all-in on seeing just how greedy they can be and get away with it. I’m curious to see just how much consumers will put up with.
Wait, there’s a split screen on Baldur’s Gate III? Normally I’d expect split screen games are for games with shorter gameplay loop, e.g. FPS, racing.
It’s kinda interesting that there’s a split screen couch co-op for a long sprawling RPG. Also doesn’t that make all the UIs and texts even more busy / cramped?
I just read that some people are trying out split screen. on steam deck, that’s wild.
Yeah, from what I understand Microsoft demanded 2 player co op splitscreen on one Xbox, which the ps5 can’t do either. The whole splitting the party up would be impossible and I bet they’d have to enforce close close proximity between pc characters to only render one environment at a time if they somehow pull it off going forward, and even then multi-zone on on xbox? which I think is unlikely as my 3 year old top end gaming rig barely gets 60 fps 2k ultrawide.
Anyone have any idea why Microsoft was so adamant about this?
Or is all that just bs and the Xbox can’t push it? All the peeps talking about the steam deck pushing it. Yes, but few are mentioning the settings @1280x720@30 fps all settings on minimum.
The problem with Xbox is that Larian couldn’t manage to make it work on Series S due to memory constraints. It takes a huge toll on memory if you allow two characters be on two parts of the map at the same time.
Microsoft wants Series S to be a cheaper 1080p option of Series X. Any game Series X can play should Series S also play with lower visual fidelity. This turns out to be a flawed dream by the looks of it.
I don’t think Microsoft will abandon this cheap 1080p console vision just because of one game, but they might need to if more games start to drop Xbox support due to this.
MS probably wants to make sure that Series S doesn’t end up missing out on games or getting subpar experiences, given they promised their customers that it’s the same as an X just at a lower resolution. You can see how they want to avoid outcomes like Series S being confined to lower player counts, smaller maps, or other game-restricting features.
But they’ve painted themselves into a corner in this case. Split screen requires rendering the whole game twice, which the S isn’t powerful enough to do. It’s also probably a feature few players will actually use.
Seems like this case should be an exception to the parity requirements.
Larian already did excellent split screen in D:OS2 (Maybe also in other games, no idea). The controller UI is very different from the M+K one and split screen is only available with controller input.
Mind if I ask for information on what emulator u use? Been considering getting into a handheld PC one of these days, got a switch little over a year ago for mobile gaming and honestly I love it for what it is but it was a bit dated when new to put it nicely… And price of a switch 2 I might as well spring for a legion go or something if that nature
engadget.com
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