I think that a better way to do it is probably in the OS, rather than in-game, on a per-game basis
Low power mode on macOS gives that kind of feature. It works well because the computer never goes beyond a certain threshold of power. I guess it’s a simple downclock of some sort, but the caveat is that it won’t adapt to more demanding zones of the game.
Permit for two different sets of saved video settings, where the player can flip between them. Honestly, I think that this is probably more tweaking than most players are going to do.
I used to do exactly that with macros in World Of Warcraft. I had 3 different kind of setup for Efficiency, Balanced and Quality gaming. That game was the first that I know of to introduce built-in FPS capping during WOTLK extension, and 10 different settings mode plus the ability to make even more custom tweaks. My only wish is that every game developer to do the same.
Provide some kind of adaptive quality mechanism. Then, if the computer becomes “lower end”, then the adaptive quality system just twiddles settings until the target framerate is maintained.
Speaking of WoW, there is a target FPS setting that will make the game lower the compute demand, but it wouldn’t help in my case since it’s meant to use as much compute power as possible to reach an FPS goal. It could do the trick if it could be coupled to a Don’t use more than 50% of the compute power, but I’m not sure a game can understand how much a computer has without reaching its limit first. Maybe some kind of benchmarking could help though.
Speaking as a player, though, I don’t much care about power consumption if a system has wall power.
Me neither. But I do enjoy a silent machine !
For phones, I kind of wish that Google would consider providing a “battery usage” rating in the app store that provides some kind of approximate metric for how much CPU time the game uses while active.
That would be very useful indeed! And another incentive for developers to write better code.
As I travel a lot, I would love to see a true eco mode for my laptop. Something that would keep my fans quiet (2500rpm max).
Some games allow for FPS capping and lower settings, but it’s not always the case. Sometimes tweaking the settings doesn’t seem to make any difference to power consumption. Sometimes your only way to cap FPS is to rely on VSync, which doesn’t make much when you play on 120Hz screen.
Metro Exodus is a good example of an almost impossible to tweak game.
I think it would be nice to have a dedicated travelling mode. It would effectively help people with lower specs and entice developers to produce a more efficient code, rather than pushing for costly gears.
As a developer myself I know very well it costs money. But if I had a wish to make I’ll go for this one
Being a Mac user, this year is indeed a good year.
I’ve been a very longtime WoW player but couldn’t stand the game anymore. I dropped it after a few months of Classic WOTLK (my personal fav) both out of boredom and because Blizzard contempt for macOS users
Finding a game that I love and runs natively wasn’t easy but it finally happened. I never was an hardcore gamer (except maybe in the early days of WoW) so I never felt the need to get a dedicated PC (I had a PC but it only ran macOS and Manjaro)
I’m currently playing Metro Exodus and BG3 (which I absolutely love even in EA). I also bought REV, NMS and Cliff Empire, but they weren’t for me.
The other game changer is Game Porting ToolKit which allows me to test a whole bunch of Windows only games thanks to a friend who added me to its Steam family.
Most of the games run smoothly enough for me (60FPS) so I guess the times I was thinking about buying a gaming rig are over. This money will go in some overpriced Mac option.
Anyway, I never spent that much money in video games. It definitely must be a sign.