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[Kataploom]

That's the old line, and of course it is a challenge, but it isn't really the reason PC ports are bad as of late, because the games we're talking about are poorly optimized on every configuration.

I think the issue is really that console architecture has evolved to where it's PC like in a lot of good ways but also has some major advantages and porting from console to PC is a step backwards in certain ways (like not having unified RAM, for example), and devs don't want to put in the additional effort to optimize.

As a dev, I don't like calling other devs lazy, but after seeing how Jedi Survivor made the engine wait for almost a second instead of managing that asyncronously on PC, made me think the industry is full of unsupervised juniors at least...

TLOU, D4, Hogwarts Legacy, and others having memory leaks as main source of problems make me think devs just throw "whatever" memory management system without giving a shit about memory difference on each architecture, it's a good thing I barely ever get games day 1, but when I do for Nintendo games, that's my golden standard and won't go below that ever.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

So that's mean they are just being lazy as usual?

I don't know about lazy but very often mysteriously after a few rounds of patching they manage to fix it.

Unfortunately by then their game is already "old" and ready for a Steam sale.

 

[mrmeh]

I don't know about lazy but very often mysteriously after a few rounds of patching they manage to fix it.

Unfortunately by then their game is already "old" and ready for a Steam sale.

'Lazy Devs' is not a thing, management or publisher decide what to work on or when to release. If a game gets released and is not optimised/running well it is because it needed more time and was not given extra time due to financial reasons i.e needs to get money back asap or needs to hit a release window. All money..

 

[DGrayson]

Because they think they can get away with it financially.

Ding ding ding.

 

[In Cold Blood]

Not quite as devs can optimise ray tracing far better (more customisation options, the HW has more console like optimisations than PC's do) and engines do not deal with shader compilation at runtime, they can pre build them, but otherwise yeah well that is the point of moving from XDK to GDK.

I initially thought the GDK was a master-stroke by MS.
Most games used PC as a lead platform, and then convert to console towards the end. They would use the highest specification PC to set the upper benchmarks of textures etc. They would then scale down from there, which includes consoles.
By MS having the GDK, where devs can code for PC and Xbox together, it made sense that the GDK would be the lead platform for development. This should have meant that DX12 would have been the default API and it would get exploited more. The logical step would then be to convert to PlayStation from Xbox.

With a distinct XDK, it made devs code directly for the Xbox as a separate item, while now the xbox is just a profile on the GDK, the Xbox is just one of many different PC configurations.
That's how I see it going anyway.

 

[Zathalus]

made me think the industry is full of unsupervised juniors at least...

This is true, and it's not just the game industry. Software development is a shit show these days. Personally I blame Agile.

 

[SportsFan581]

As has been mentioned already, I think the real issue is just the jump from generation to generation has taken away most of the PCs headroom.

Previously the CPU/GPU combo and memory configuration that games were being optimized for on console was such an easy to match target for PC. Even if the PC ports required a 2x multiplier on all fronts that was something that wasn't much of a problem even for budget rigs. You have to figure by a few years in to the last generation you had cards at $250 that could not only match the base systems but could overpower the mid-gen refreshes as well. CPU and storage were even easier to match with a lot of headroom to spare.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

Because it's a Microsoft Word machine, not something to game on!!!!

Spoiler

s

Spoiler

 

[Buggy Loop]

Basically there's too many different configurations of PCs for them to do a good job of them all.

I asked developers to explain why PC ports in 2023 run like garbage

Nearly every major PC port has run into issues this year. Why? I asked some developers to find out.

www.digitaltrends.com

What a load of bullshit

You develop for an API, not hardware configurations. Did devs on DX9-10-11 era test for a 4090? No? Well goddamn! WHY DOES IT RUN?!

DX12 has been around for a fucking long time and they still fuck it up. It used to be for DX11 that the GPU vendors would actually FIX their fuckup at driver level, which is where Nvidia got most of its driver reputation because the team over there were beasts. So devs had no fucking clue either back then, but since vendors could alter the game at a fundamental level with the API, most of it was unknown to gamers. DX12 is all on the dev's shoulders.

Like the example below from Jedi survivor, this cannot be done by anything else than a junior developer with no peer review from seniors in the team. Like nobody should be pushing this code with the performance graphs it has








Let's not even go into the script kiddies who find problems or fix problems such as the Last of Us using a bugged Oodle version or the constant ultrawide screen support done by just changing an HEX entry.

They're incompetent and lazy. There's no other excuses. If the publisher gives them bread crumbs and a skeleton crew of junior devs for PC ports, i don't care, it's not an excuse. Do not accept this as an excuse, because they'll continue doing it.

 

[Toots]

Consoles on the other hand...

Always classy, not taking themselves too seriously, and smirking knowingly thinking how much fun they have playing with toys their neckbearded counterparts look down upon with contempt, only so they can feel better about themselves.
Harsh but true

 

[Guilty_AI]

Always classy, not taking themselves too seriously, and smirking knowingly thinking how much fun they have playing with toys their neckbearded counterparts look down upon with contempt, only so they can feel better about themselves.
Harsh but true

Someone got triggered it seems

 

[Aressa]

= PC Hardware
= Software

More like this to be honest:

 

[Zathalus]

Always classy, not taking themselves too seriously, and smirking knowingly thinking how much fun they have playing with toys their neckbearded counterparts look down upon with contempt, only so they can feel better about themselves.
Harsh but true

I mean, you took my post pretty seriously?

 

[_Ex_]

"Just get the game out, we'll fix it later, if it sells well enough."

 

[U n i o n 0015]

"We learned a lot of our knowledge about how to deal with in-game stuttering in Hi-Fi Rush from our experience optimizing Ghostwire: Tokyo," Miyashita told me.

A game with that much shader stutter is what they consider optimized?

 

[Toots]

I mean, you took my post pretty seriously?

Did you take mine seriously ?
The part where i said silly stuff in response to your meme was supposed to be a dead giveaway.
Please remember when you see someone with an ahegao tortoise as an avatar, you're not supposed to take everything he says at face value.

Spoiler: PS

i own a pc with a an i9-10900K, an RTX3080 and 32Go of ram, and also a ps5 so really i have no horse in the puerile pc vs console race.

 

[RoboFu]

"Just get the game out, we'll fix it later, if it sells well enough."

Basically this.

 

[LazyParrot]

Hard to buy the whole "there are too many configurations" when games releases running like shit on all systems and then magically get fixed just a few weeks or months later. Are there secret testing superpowers that only become available to developers after launch?

 

[Zathalus]

Did you take mine seriously ?
The part where i said silly stuff in response to your meme was supposed to be a dead giveaway.
Please remember when you see someone with an ahegao tortoise as an avatar, you're not supposed to take everything he says at face value.

Spoiler: PS

i own a pc with a an i9-10900K, an RTX3080 and 32Go of ram, and also a ps5 so really i have no horse in the puerile pc vs console race.

To be fair, people say dumber things here all the time and are 100% serious about it.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Are there secret testing superpowers that only become available to developers after launch?

We call it "user feedback"

 

[Guilty_AI]

A game with that much shader stutter is what they consider optimized?

Honestly this whole shader stutter thing feels more like FUD at this point. It has always been present in a lot of games throughout the years and no one ever batted an eyelash until DF started talking about it.

 

[crackajack]

I get why some same date multiplatform PC games stumble out of the gate, it's not their priority, but Sony does a weird job of releasing some of their PC ports on a date they could freely chose and still fumble it quite often, which feels just unnecessary. Just release it when it's done, it's anyway only for the crowd who either wants it a second time or have the patience to wait for it to come to their plattform. No need to embarass yourself.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Stopped reading when a Vice President for a publisher claimed games were tested throughout development.

Lying right off the bat.

Also using the excuse of multiple configurations, etc, yet developers manage to release games with the same issues on EVERY CONFIGURATION, as well as on consoles which have set hardware.

It's about pleasing shareholders not customers. Shove broken games out the door and issue the token apology.

 

[Doctor Hades]

Basically there's too many different configurations of PCs for them to do a good job of them all.

I asked developers to explain why PC ports in 2023 run like garbage

Nearly every major PC port has run into issues this year. Why? I asked some developers to find out.

www.digitaltrends.com

That is utter bull... because the main problems that affect PC games on *all* platforms is shader compilation and traversal stuttering (the latter an issue on PC as well). If developers actually prioritised both of those at the start of development instead of desperately trying to address them post-release then, in my opinion, PC gaming would be in a far, far better position than it is currently. There are other issues such as poor CPU utilisation, especially when using ray-tracing, but those issues also affect consoles as well and they use fixed hardware.

My own view is that developers are well aware of these issues but they are either not given the time to deal with them or the publishers just want the game out as soon as possible and so make it a low priority. Console games are generally in a better place than PC because of their fixed hardware but we still get games with traversal stutter (Dead Space Remake & Star Wars Jedi: Survivor) and poor performance (Star Wars Jedi: Survivor) on consoles. So if developers cannot fix those for consoles then what chance is there of them ever fixing it for PC?

P.S. There has *always* been a massive number of different PC hardware to support - that is the nature of the platform - but it is only in the last few years, post-COVID, that we have seen an alarming number of poor quality PC games released.

 

[Doctor Hades]

Honestly this whole shader stutter thing feels more like FUD at this point. It has always been present in a lot of games throughout the years and no one ever batted an eyelash until DF started talking about it.

Do you honestly believe that?

Shader compilation stutter is something that has only really become a "thing" since DirectX 12. Prior to that, all shader-related functions in DirectX 11 and earlier were handled by the driver. I play a LOT of games on PC, as well as consoles (all three systems) and I can say, hand on heart, that stuttering has only really become a noticeable and annoying issue in the last 2-3 years, particularly with games using Unreal Engine 4 and DirectX 12 (DirectX 11 was fine although you still had traversal stutters, just as you did on console).

But to accuse Digital Foundry of making stuttering a big deal because in has been present for years in games is just... well... silly, in my opinion.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Do you honestly believe that?

Shader compilation stutter is something that has only really become a "thing" since DirectX 12. Prior to that, all shader-related functions in DirectX 11 and earlier were handled by the driver. I play a LOT of games on PC, as well as consoles (all three systems) and I can say, hand on heart, that stuttering has only really become a noticeable and annoying issue in the last 2-3 years, particularly with games using Unreal Engine 4 and DirectX 12 (DirectX 11 was fine although you still had traversal stutters, just as you did on console).

But to accuse Digital Foundry of making stuttering a big deal because in has been present for years in games is just... well... silly, in my opinion.

Dude, i've played tons of unity and unreal games, using dx11 or dx12 or vulkan or whatever, both pre and post 2020. Vast majority of them had some form of stutter at certain points and you would notice them, though not necessarely be bothered by them.

I can understand complaining about really bad cases like with The Callisto Protocol, but then they go and make a problem out of every little case that happens. Stuttered a little bit when crossing this little segment between levels? #STUTTERFEST

 

[Toots]

To be fair, people say dumber things here all the time and are 100% serious about it.

You are right about that !
And to think it got trememdously better on that part after the nuking of the politics forum

 

[Doctor Hades]

Dude, i've played tons of unity and unreal games, using dx11 or dx12 or vulkan or whatever, both pre and post 2020. Vast majority of them had some form of stutter at certain points and you would notice them, though not necessarely be bothered by them.

I can understand complaining about really bad cases like with The Callisto Protocol, but then they go and make a problem out of every little case that happens. Stuttered a little bit when crossing this little segment between levels? #STUTTERFEST

The stuttering with Unity was an issue with the engine, something I am pretty sure Digital Foundry have also commented on over the years (certainly John Linneman has mentioned it several times), not the graphics API, which is the problem that is affecting many PC games now since the introduction of DX12 and the requirement to pre-compile shaders. Shader compilation was not required previously but other than Unity engine games (I am not a fan of that engine even now) then most games fine fine on PC. Sure, you could get the odd stutter now and again, if a background process kicked in while playing... that's just the nature of gaming on Windows, but they were never common enough to be an issue.

If you are fine with shader compilation stutter or having to wait 2-30 minutes for shaders to be compiled then fine but just because it isn't an issue for you doesn't mean it isn't an issue for everyone else. The problem now with shader compilation stutter, particularly, is that you cannot just brute force your way through the issue on a high-end system any more. It is an issue that affects *every* PC gamer.

 

[Deleted member 1159]

Because they think they can get away with it financially.

This. As others have pointed out, the "infinite configurations" "problem" has always been there for PCs, but there's a new trend of games running like shit then getting patched later. Well, if you can patch them later, you could've waited to release them in a better state…but somebody at the company decided they had other priorities.

And it's not like it never plays out in reverse either. Look at how a game like Control or Cyberpunk ran on consoles vs PCs at release. "Programming to the metal" didn't save those games from running like garbage on consoles and they still got released…

 

[Whitecrow]

Publishers wanting things good and quickly doesnt exactly help.

Programming is hard, and knowing to code doesnt mean you have the mental energy nor the time to write perfectly ever line of code. And money doesnt help either to avoid burnout.

A lot of times devs are kinda forced of doing things that work, demo it, and onto the next thing.

As in every job, there are devs who love to code, and devs who only code for money.
Life is not ideal.

 

[Guilty_AI]

the graphics API, which is the problem that is affecting many PC games now since the introduction of DX12 and the requirement to pre-compile shaders. Shader compilation was not required previously but other than Unity engine games (I am not a fan of that engine even now) then most games fine fine on PC.

Dude, you do realize shader comp isn't a new thing right? And you do realize waiting for shaders to pre-compile is a one-time process not really much different from installing a game right?

 

[phant0m]

Instead they should have asked the question: how are some PC ports so great but the rest suck ass?

Chief case-in-point: GTA V

I'm still stunned, even to this day, at how this game is technically possible. Yes, it's a 10-year-old game at this point.

But you know what? Only within the last couple years has it started to look dated. GTA Online instances run 20 players flying, driving and shooting in a huge open world with tons of AI pedestrians, traffic, cops, and other simulations going on in-world.

And that shit runs at 100+ fps maxed out on a 3080 with no DLSS or other fancy fps-boosting tech.

Meanwhile, games like W40K Darktide can barely hold 60 fps @ 1440p in a 4-player co-op shooter with DLSS on and a map 1/8 the size of GTA.

 

[ungalo]

Why did they ask HiFi-Rush devs ?

Ask Atomic Heart devs why their game is the only one looking good and running well on day one.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

Because they think they can get away with it financially.

By "they" you mean publishers, not developers.
It's publishers who manage the projects and determine how many resources go to QA.

 

[mrmeh]

Publishers wanting things good and quickly doesnt exactly help.

Programming is hard, and knowing to code doesnt mean you have the mental energy nor the time to write perfectly ever line of code. And money doesnt help either to avoid burnout.

A lot of times devs are kinda forced of doing things that work, demo it, and onto the next thing.

As in every job, there are devs who love to code, and devs who only code for money.
Life is not ideal.

I do not believe game development is paid higher than other dev jobs (in the UK at least when I have looked and have game dev friends) so I find most of the dev's doing it do so because they are in to it.. sounds much cooler than most dev jobs when you're trying to explain to friends what you do rather than "I wrote some really cool data layer SQL yesterday!" but then has shittier longer hours - that's just my experience, not invalidating yours.

If a bug is included in the final game its is not the dev's fault who wrote the code, it's QA for not finding it or management for releasing a game before the bug is fixed. Now if an individual developer keeps committing code with more bugs in than everyone else then the dev manager will need to have a word..

When I get asked to develop a feature for a project and the client/stakeholder asks "can it do this.." I always say "It can do anything you want however that's based on time and money" then its a matter of discussing the best way to realise the brief with the most features for the best timeframe/price. All development is the same for this. It is not the coding that is the most difficult aspect it is managing the project to spend just the right amount of time and money on all the parts of it and to make sure the scope is not to big for the time and budget allocated. This seems to have been Redfalls downfall, with devs leaving making the already ambitious scope of the project unobtainable if it ever was in the first place.

There is also a strong possibility game code is of low quality as I cannot imagine management allocating time for refactoring unless its part of a long term plan to reuse the code for other projects. Its hard enough to convince management that they need to spend money to pay down the technical debt on ongoing systems.

At some point someone makes the decision that the number of bugs is at an acceptable level and performance is good enough and they ship it.

 

[Damigos]

The same reason why androids have compatibility problems, dont get latest updates at the same time, need 4x ram and 4x cpu and 2x battery size to have the same performance as iphones.
The same reason a pc needs a lot more power to have the same performance as a console :

Optimisation.

This may be an unpopular opinion, especially among the pc master race, but the truth is there are so many possible pc specs configurations its impossible to optimise. Also another question is how far back a cpu/gpu combo should be supported.
Eg i have a gtx970 which i bought in 2017 and almost nothing is supported from new games. And for those that support it the performance is abysmal.

 

[winjer]

The same reason why androids have compatibility problems, dont get latest updates at the same time, need 4x ram and 4x cpu and 2x battery size to have the same performance as iphones.
The same reason a pc needs a lot more power to have the same performance as a console :

Optimisation.

This may be an unpopular opinion, especially among the pc master race, but the truth is there are so many possible pc specs configurations its impossible to optimise. Also another question is how far back a cpu/gpu combo should be supported.
Eg i have a gtx970 which i bought in 2017 and almost nothing is supported from new games. And for those that support it the performance is abysmal.

Your numbers are extremely off. But yes, Android used to have a performance deficit to iPhones.
The reason was that Google allowed devs to programs apps to Android using Java. Meanwhile Apple only didn't allow crap like Java to be used, and forced devs to use C.
So many Android apps had a bigger overhead in CPU and memory because of Java.

And like, Buggy Loop said, devs don't program a game on PC to every piece of hardware. They code to an API.
And you can't expect a GPU that is almost 10 years old, to still run games. That is unrealistic.

 

[mrmeh]

there are so many possible pc specs configurations its impossible to optimise

If that were true, then games would not run better a few months and patches after release or there would not be games that run well on both consoles and pcs with similar hardware.

The broadness of PC hardware will make it harder to QA games but optimising is certainly not impossible... though you could make an argument that its harder to achieve the same level of optimisation with DX and Vulkan as they address many different hardware configs than the PlayStation API which should be easier to get 'closer to the metal'.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Eg i have a gtx970 which i bought in 2017 and almost nothing is supported from new games. And for those that support it the performance is abysmal.

And you can't expect a GPU that is almost 10 years old, to still run games. That is unrealistic.

And it actually does



Pretty good for a card almost as old as a ps4

 

[Damigos]

If that were true, then games would not run better a few months and patches after release or there would not be games that run well on both consoles and pcs with similar hardware.

The broadness of PC hardware will make it harder to QA games but optimising is certainly not impossible... though you could make an argument that its harder to achieve the same level of optimisation with DX and Vulkan as they address many different hardware configs than the PlayStation API which should be easier to get 'closer to the metal'.

Exactly. Not impossible, but a lot harder, expensive and time consuming. Most publishers just release the game with whatever cost and think later on how to fix it.
Another day another bad pc port. Eurogamer just uploaded how bad the pc port of Street Fighter 6 is. It doesnt end

 

[Guilty_AI]

Exactly. Not impossible, but a lot harder, expensive and time consuming. Most publishers just release the game with whatever cost and think later on how to fix it.
Another day another bad pc port. Eurogamer just uploaded how bad the pc port of Street Fighter 6 is. It doesnt end

They said the port was ok, mostly complaining about having to make a capcom account, some weird decisions and a somewhat lack of QoL features. They also complained about weird texture and other graphical behaviours, though those complaints also applied to the consoles version.

Hardware-wise tho, no real problems, runs fine even on older gpus like the gtx 970.

 

[Damigos]

They said the port was ok, mostly complaining about having to make a capcom account, some weird decisions and a somewhat lack of QoL features. They also complained about weird texture and other graphical behaviours, though those complaints also applied to the consoles version.

Hardware-wise tho, no real problems, runs fine even on older gpus like the gtx 970.

Still, i would never run it on my 970. Btw Fighting games should be played on a console, feels wrong playing them on pc

 

[Guilty_AI]

Still, i would never run it on my 970.

eh, depends, if that 970 was all you had in hand it would work perfectly fine. But naturally if you have better hardware to play it instead there's no reason to not use it.

Btw Fighting games should be played on a console, feels wrong playing them on pc

 

[dcx4610]

I think people are too nit picky. I remember when you were lucky to get a PC port and they were truly bad and made from the ground up.

The "bad" PC ports people talk about now are typically unoptimized games or not giving you a ton of options to customize the graphics.

Yes, there are occasional buggy launches but they tend to get fixed quickly. I've played tons and tons of PC ports from start to finish in recent years and haven't had a single crash or anything where I thought that the port was bad.

Yeah, some games might not be much better than their console versions but I'll take that over nothing.

 

[Damigos]

eh, depends, if that 970 was all you had in hand it would work perfectly fine. But naturally if you have better hardware to play it instead there's no reason to not use it.

Still..no
They are meant to be played locally on a big screen. At least that is how i see it, being born in the 80s

 

[Guilty_AI]

Still..no
They are meant to be played locally on a big screen. At least that is how i see it, being born in the 80s

My experience with fighting games in times passed was with a small CRT TV from one of the bedrooms in my grandma's house. So can't say i relate.