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How difficult is it, realistically, to create a 60fps patch for a last-gen game [e.g. Ghost Recon Wildlands]

The fact that more games havnt been given 60 fps, especially big selling or games with a live service component, is one of the biggest bullshit things I can think of.

Imagine any developer not wanting their fans, the people who've supported them, to have the best experience possible for the hardware available. To me it's totally disgusting that they wouldn't put in the modicum of effort needed to give their customers 60 fps. Like Red Dead 2 ..for real? Sold like crazy, got a PC version with all the bells and whistles, and was even monetized well after launch with Rdr2 online. Absolutely no good reason with a game like that.
 

sn0man

Member
Ubi likely sees zero ROI on releasing a patch, so they simply won't do it. It would be very easy, of course. Maybe a couple of days of work for a handful of devs at most.
I agree. I’d go further and say I’m this case it’s probably quite easy.

I am not a developer but I would say the following flowchart applies:

1.) Is the developer a major dev that releases many franchise entries every year or two on a common engine?

No: hard.

Yes: question 2

2.) did the title in question release on the PC along with PS4/Xbone?

No: hard.

Yes: question 3

3.) did the PC release run at a higher frame rate with minor or no bugs?

No: hard

Yes: technically easy.


From a business perspective it might be tough. But really, an NDA and one developer watching over a couple of interns.
 
they just went in and made 60fps for AC Origins...Odyssey and Watchdogs 1 & 2. I think its in the realm of possibility. But if they were going to do it, it seems now would've been the time. Since it just launched on PS Plus and GamePass
 

El Muerto

Member
It would be easier on the Xbox, but Playstation not so much. The game company would have to consider the cost of labor for editing the game and testing to see if the game breaks. Also, uploading a patch costs thousands of dollars just to publish on PSN and the Xbox store.
 
Personally I don't buy the explanation that stuff like physics might be tied to 30fps. What about the PC versions then? They aren't that different from consoles since last gen. It's all about time & money required for playtesting. It's just better for the publisher to sell a remaster a few years later.
Any dev with a brain won’t code like that. And still if that was the case you would need to find every timer and tweening variable and multiply it with delta-time.

It’s annoying, not hard and still doable.

So yes, multiplatform games don’t have anything tied to a 30fps framerate, no way.
 
So that made me wonder what's stopping a company like Ubi from releasing a performance patch. I don't really need upressed textures, just a patch that unlocks 60fps and higher resolution would be fine. But how much work is that, really?

You should ask the Assassin's Creed Origins developer, because they just recently released a 60fps update for a game that had two sequels released after it.
 
Just depends on if any game logic is tied to frame rate. Usually it's not anymore, well in terms of 30fps to 60fps transition.

Plenty of games are unable to work at 120fps without bugs.
 

Shut0wen

Member
So Ghost Recon Wildlands released on PS Plus Extra and I love that game so I downloaded it on my PS5.

Needless to say the performance is questionable at best. Pretty poor resolution and 30 fps makes the entire experience play like my character is in molasses. It's still a beautiful game but unfortunately held back by last-gen performance making the moment-to-moment gameplay borderline unbearable. There's no reason the PS5 can't technically run this at 4k 60 fps.

So that made me wonder what's stopping a company like Ubi from releasing a performance patch. I don't really need upressed textures, just a patch that unlocks 60fps and higher resolution would be fine. But how much work is that, really? I know we're not game devs but as expert armchair analysts surely our collective genius can figure out if it's really adjusting some ini settings or if it's way more difficult and complex than I can possibly fathom.

I know there's a certification process to releasing patches and that shit costs money, but what is the cost/benefit balance? All I see are 60fps requests on Ubi's Twitter, youtube page, subreddits. So there's definitely a demand from players.
As much as i hate ubisoft there is a pretty big chance it will get a patch, i mean they did it for origins cant see why they wont as its on gamepass also, other devs chances are pretty slim im incredibly surprised theyre actually patching dbz fighterz
 

geary

Member
Depends on the game. I dont expect Ubisoft to backtrack their PS4/XBXO catalogue and do a patch for each and every game. They might have some KPI on which they base they approach on this. Didnt AC: Origin got a 60 FPS patch few months ago?
 

Skifi28

Member
The doubling of the framerate is editing a file in most cases which is a joke.

What's not so easy and takes time is you need to do some serious testing to make sure it actually performs as it should and the change doesn't introduce any game-breaking bugs. I imagine this is what's stopping most developers from updating older games.
 

Shut0wen

Member
it depends on the game. it can be easy as changing a small piece of code as in literally changing “30” to ”60”.

the problem is making sure it doesnt break the game. as already said there are games where physics are tied to framerate. for example, in the original Dark Souls PC version if you mod to 60fps you could go through the ground when going down a ladder or not being able to jump far enough. i remember having to toggle back to 30fps to jump onto something.

i would say that for most games it would be a simple patch but most studios/publishers dont want to bother having someone do it and spending the money on it.
So even though the remaster of dark souls was more of upscale with 60fps really they reworked most of the game?
 

Hugare

Member
Most games have PC ports, so they were made without having engine logic tied to framerate

So yeah, it's basically just editing a .ini file
 
So even though the remaster of dark souls was more of upscale with 60fps really they reworked most of the game?
I haven't played the remastered version. I only played the Prepare to Die edition so I don't know what the remastered is like but I imagine they must have made some engine tweaks for 60fps. In PTD 60fps works perfectly fine most of the time. In my playthrough I only encountered an issue with 60fps twice. I'm not a game developer but I think it wouldn't have been too difficult for them to fix the issues I experienced. I don't think they would necessarily need to rework most of the game.
 

Kokoloko85

Member
Ubi likely sees zero ROI on releasing a patch, so they simply won't do it. It would be very easy, of course. Maybe a couple of days of work for a handful of devs at most.

But didn’t they do it for assassins Creed recently?

Is it really that easy? Would it be the same for something like RDR2?
 

Kerotan

Member
Asked myself the same question regarding RDR2.
I really want to play this game again since I didn't touch it since I finished it some weeks after the release on PS4Pro, but 30fps is a gamebreaker.
I can't go back.
R* will probably save that 60fps patch for a remaster in a few years.
 
For games that have a PC version it's probably something like finding the .ini file for the graphics settings changing a few lines and call it a day.

The same is probably true for most other modern games, simply because they need to test different graphics settings, frame rate caps, resolutions, etc. (if they don't have a hidden graphics settings menu).

We have seen it in action on hacked PS4s and the Nintendo Switch as well.
 
Problem is without a resolution boost a lot of these fps boosted games look like total crao on a 4k tv.
a 1080p game still looks OK, obviously a true remake like TLoU 1 is getting would probably be preferable, but this is unrealistic.

I think that having a way to do this system wide would be the best way to go.
 
It's baffling why MS hasn't FPS boosted and resolution boosted some of their only exclusive games from Xbox One-

Ryse: Son of Rome, Sunset Overdrive, Quantum Break (it has high res from devs), Dead Rising 3

From the company who touted fps and res boosting its disappointing they wouldn't at least do this for their own exclusives...
 

01011001

Banned
It's baffling why MS hasn't FPS boosted and resolution boosted some of their only exclusive games from Xbox One-

Ryse: Son of Rome, Sunset Overdrive, Quantum Break (it has high res from devs), Dead Rising 3

From the company who touted fps and res boosting its disappointing they wouldn't at least do this for their own exclusives...

for some of them they might need developer approval. Ryse and Sunset Overdrive especially are not in their possession anymore... not sure about Quantum Break.
and if they don't get it, for whatever reason, then they can't do it.

it's not much of a loss in Ryse's case tho... what a terrible game that is. that game wouldn't even feel good to play at 2000FPS
 
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for some of them they might need developer approval. Ryse and Sunset Overdrive especially are not in their possession anymore... not sure about Quantum Break.
and if they don't get it, for whatever reason, then they can't do it.

it's not much of a loss in Ryse's case tho... what a terrible game that is. that game wouldn't even feel good to play at 2000FPS
Ryse isn't good buy the setting and visuals were great. Would love to play it again at 4k/60. Sunset overdrive is a big loss to not be able to play at 4k/60. I don't see why they can't boost it despite not having the rights anymore. They're not changing the games code. Should be up to MS if they want to use a tech to boost fps/res, similar to how the Series X increases games to 16x AF. Dead Rising 3 was a great game too.
 
MS purposely had games run with unlocked framerates on older gens specifically so they could easily increase framerate in later generations. That's why their are so many 120fps games on Series consoles. It's not much more than flipping a switch whereas on PS5, the devs need to go back and do a lot of work, so unless their is a lot of demand for a PS4 game to get an fps boost, it isn't happening
 

YCoCg

Member
I would think it could be automatically done on the console....
Not quite, many games need to be reviewed for such cases, that's why it's either up to the developers or up to Microsoft's BC team for example. A game needs to be tested a verified that it runs correctly under a different framerate and can be completed, too many games out there tie physics and logic to framerate and result in the game speeding up and playing at double speed or having broken physics/effects/etc when doubling the framerate. A great example of this is using RPCS3 to emulate PS3 games and forcing a double vblank, this way you can find out which games are easy to patch and which games become an absolute mess.
 

Shut0wen

Member
I haven't played the remastered version. I only played the Prepare to Die edition so I don't know what the remastered is like but I imagine they must have made some engine tweaks for 60fps. In PTD 60fps works perfectly fine most of the time. In my playthrough I only encountered an issue with 60fps twice. I'm not a game developer but I think it wouldn't have been too difficult for them to fix the issues I experienced. I don't think they would necessarily need to rework most of the game.
Ive played both version but i played the remaster on xbox, was 60fps all round, i mean prepqre to die edition i played on pc and it looked nicer then the remastered version but like you said 60fps mods imo caused more problems then it should of but id say the remaster version was the best just because it was 60fps, kinda hate fromsoftware not really giving a fuck about frames in pretty much all there games except for sekiro
 

OZ9000

Banned
Depends. Is it a flick of a switch (change 1 line of code from tick(30) to tick(60)) or is the whole game logic, scripting and physics hard coded to 30fps? Cause that aint so easy and takes some work to do.
I'm afraid brute forcing something isn't always the answer.
Works for PC games.

I brute force everything to 60fps and looks fine.
 

TheFawz

Member
It's less about the scope of the changes being complicated and more that bringing back years old projects to make a patch, test it, submit it and release it is A LOT more work & money on Consoles than most people think. It's much easier to do on PC, or if the title's last patch was more recent, but otherwise a huge hassle for Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo. Often the original devs are working on new titles by then and so dragging them back into this also causes distraction that's best avoided to not impact deadlines
 
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01011001

Banned

the PS5 and Series X are PCs, they run PC games, they simply run them with slightly different APIs

the difference between Assassin's Creed on PC and Assassin's Creed on PS5 is the same difference as running Doom Eternal in Vulkan on a PC with an RTX2060 Super vs running it in DirectX 12 on an RTX2070... sure the hardware is different and the API is different, but the game is fundamentally the exact same.

there's literally left over config files in some PC versions of games with PlayStation and Xbox settings.

how do you think the 60fps mods worked in Skyrim and Fallout 4? the guys literally modified the .ini files and changed a single digit.
And Bethesda's games aren't any super crazy exception here. if all games had mod support on console you'd see hundreds of 60fps mods
 
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DeepEnigma

Gold Member
the PS5 and Series X are PCs, they run PC games, they simply run them with slightly different APIs

the difference
The differences are a lot of games code lower api extraction layers than 99% of the PC side of things that can just be edited in the .ini, in those instances some things are tied to animation, physics, logic, etc when doing so on the console to get more out of the box with less. It is getting better going forward, yes, but last gen and the gen before that, had to be done on a game by game basis that did not have unlocked framerates already.
 
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01011001

Banned
The differences are a lot of games code lower api extraction layers than 99% of the PC side of things that can just be edited in the .ini, in those instances some things are tied to animation, physics, logic, etc when doing so on the console to get more out of the box with less. It is getting better going forward, yes, but last gen and the gen before that, had to be done on a game by game basis that did not have unlocked framerates already.

that might be true for a handful of games, but I'd bet the majority of games could be simply modded to run at 60fps with a simple change of a line in the config file.

Microsoft tried doing it by overwriting stuff directly through DirectX, and even that worked in many games... so imagine how many would work with actual access to the files of the game
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
that might be true for a handful of games, but I'd bet the majority of games could be simply modded to run at 60fps with a simple change of a line in the config file.

Microsoft tried doing it by overwriting stuff directly through DirectX, and even that worked in many games... so imagine how many would work with actual access to the files of the game
So... a game by game basis, as I said.
 
I think a lot of devs lurking on GAF are saving themselves the headache of explaining that this isn't just a case of some janitor down in the studio basement being too lazy to flick a mystic 60 FPS switch covered in cobwebs.
 

01011001

Banned
So... a game by game basis, as I said.

technically yes, but I fully expect that more than 80% of all PS4 games could be patched to run at 60fps by fans doing some surface level modifications to a few .ini files

even with the PS4 Pro running custom firmware many games have been patched by fans. with resolution changes and Framerate changes




I bet you the moment Custom Firmware becomes more wide spread we will see this become even more prevalent, as the PS4 Pro isn't even close to being a viable system to do that on
 
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01011001

Banned
So, game by game.

if you want to be that way, fine:
every game that is also 60fps+ on PC will work no issue and every game running on UE4, UE5, UE3, Insomniac's engine, Naughty Dog's engine, whatever Suckerpunch uses, Unity Engine, ID Tech 1-6, Source Engine 1+2, Snowdrop Engine, Anvil Engine, Anvil Next, Frostbite Engine, most of Nintendo's engines and 90% of proprietary engines used by western devs.

is that good enough for you?

and for the majority of the rest, a dedicated fan could most likely modify the game in a way to support 60fps with a few weeks worth of work, see Bloodborne... or a few hours lf work, see Dark Souls on PC
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
if you want to be that way, fine:
every game that is also 60fps+ on PC will work no issue and every game running on UE4, UE5, UE3, Insomniac's engine, Naughty Dog's engine, whatever Suckerpunch uses, Unity Engine, ID Tech 1-6, Source Engine 1+2, Snowdrop Engine, Anvil Engine, Anvil Next, Frostbite Engine, most of Nintendo's engines and 90% of proprietary engines used by western devs.

is that good enough for you?

and for the majority of the rest, a dedicated fan could most likely modify the game in a way to support 60fps with a few weeks worth of work, see Bloodborne... or a few hours lf work, see Dark Souls on PC
The games that are locked at 30, need to be patched in a game by game basis.

I suspect most first party by Sony takes a little more that just unlocking the framerate (Cerny even mentioned an example and some suspected it was GoW when he did so). Less of an issue for the later in the PS4's lifecycle since those devs knew about the PS5 and planned accordingly, especially with cross-gen.

Again, game by game basis, and that is the point of all this. Hoping that pubs/devs take the time, but some of the low hanging fruit games on the playtime or sales charts, may not see that.
 

01011001

Banned
The games that are locked at 30, need to be patched in a game by game basis.

I suspect most first party by Sony takes a little more that just unlocking the framerate (Cerny even mentioned an example and some suspected it was GoW when he did so). Less of an issue for the later in the PS4's lifecycle since those devs knew about the PS5 and planned accordingly, especially with cross-gen.

Again, game by game basis, and that is the point of all this. Hoping that pubs/devs take the time, but some of the low hanging fruit games on the playtime or sales charts, may not see that.

I don't know, a quick search for 60fps patches for PS4 Pro show most Sony games being patched. often with different modes even, with low res modes for a more stable Framerate and even with settings changes.

and that's made by a few fans for a console that is barely even able to run these at 50fps most of the time due to the shit CPU cores and only for the few people that actually run custom firmware


edit: I just realized what you said there with GoW and taking more work to unlock the Framerate... uhm, GoW already had an unlocked 60fps mode on Pro
 
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