PC vs Console (featuring Fallout: New Vegas)

[Zixinus]

Ugh, console vs. pc again. The game is buggy for us too you know. We'd like to be able bug-free too.

But honestly, how many of you are software develops with the experience and training of such large-scale projects as an open-ended, sandbox mainstream game? Do you guys know the process that went on at Obsidian? Do you know how many resources they had and whether they could have done better?

It doesn't excuse poor QA or bugs of course, but can we please stop pretending that we know shit that we obviously don't?

It shouldn't need fixing at all. But then again the developers probably realize there's a horde of apologetic morons out there like you ready to make excuses for them and do the work that they're too fucking lazy to.

If you honestly think that is true, then you just as big an idiot.

If a game turns out to be crap I can always trade it in.

The developer doesn't care, because the publisher already got money out of you. Devs have already got their money while you developed the game. Right now, you at best could hurt the publisher a bit by a trade-in (which they get no money off).

Its years later and the engine is still fundamentally broken.

Newsflash: FNW isn't made by Bethesda. Bethesda didn't work on the engineh. Obsidian made content for the existing engine, with a modified existing system. That is usually considered a good idea, as you don't have to spend x time to develop a new engine with developer tools and instead skip to content creation, which was their job. Unless you can show me otherwise, Obsidian didn't promise to re-work the engine and never promised to fix all its problems of the engine. Bethesda should have done that.

He doesn't consider this acceptable - doubly so since console users haven't been trained to tolerate QA failure the way PC users hav

Can you prove this statement? That PC players are "trained" to tolerate lower QA?

[General Zod]

If you honestly think that is true, then you just as big an idiot.

It certainly looks that way when PC gamers just shrug and go "oh well someone will mod it".

The developer doesn't care, because the publisher already got money out of you. Devs have already got their money while you developed the game. Right now, you at best could hurt the publisher a bit by a trade-in (which they get no money off).

Then you're missing the point, which was to point out that if I spend money on something that turns out to be shit, I'm not stuck with it.

[General Zod]

All I'm reading is waaaaah post complete with a fundmental misunderstanding of the nature of software development.

Oh look. More excuses.

Games have utterly microscopic development times for how complex they are, they have to prioritize what inevitable bugs they can fix. Throw in multi-system ports which have fundementally different hardware and often major consessions in game design for it even fit on the consoles, it's a wonder the game even works to begin with.


No shit the console version runs like ass. It has between 1/8 to 1/4 the memory, and signficantly less CPU power to throw at it, and has the design constraint that it must allow streaming off the DVD media rather than just loading purely from the harddrive. Fallout New Vegas is also an RPG, which historically have many areas in which gameplay takes place and will require moving between these regions frequently.

Technologically wise, you picked an utterly inferior system for the type of game you are playing. This is going to have major impact on what the game can do, and the perceived performance. Fallout New Vegas has had slightly more than a single year of development time, it was never going to be dramatically distinct to Fallout 3 engine wise, and it isn't. Almost all the issues you are bitching about existed in Fallout 3.

Except for all the console games that turn out to actually run better on consoles than PC?

[Xon]

Except for all the console games that turn out to actually run better on consoles than PC?

If your game fits within the memory and GFX limitations of the console, a console is an awesome target for development. Something like the Call of Duty/Modern warfare series is basicly the ideal development cycle from a development point of view. The entire thing fits in memory, no swapping/paging required during game-play, and they get payed to release regular incremental updates with effective planned obsolescence of the older titles. The target hardware isn't moving, but the software is effectievly supported on the hardware dramatically longer. Any thing goes wrong on a console, it's either the console is broken or the software developer will release an update quickly because it is clearly thier code.

In contrast, PC games have an unholy hell of a hardware target and troubl shooting games not working(or kinda working) with various drives is closer to voodoo than anything recognisable as a modern approach. Both for the end user and the developers. The issue with open-ended RPG-like games (ie Fallout New vegas) is they are notoriously buggy if they have significant scripting complexity and require lots of memory because they have a significant amount of level geometry around. That puts some hard design constraints on level design or requires continuous background loading which is really hard.

For example, the Unreal Engine 2 is quite good at handling fast multiplayer games in a large arena. But it doesn't implement zone-based loading/unloading. This means you get walls everywhere with load zones. This made Deus Ex: Invisible War a painful game because you hit a loadzone almost every 10-50 metres depending on the area, and then you had mission bits required crossing 3-4 load zones to play fetch. You would literially spend more time moving between zones than actual game in those cases. Newer versions of the engine aren't horrible at handling that type of thing, but they aren't remotely perfect.

[General Zod]

In contrast, PC games have an unholy hell of a hardware target and troubl shooting games not working(or kinda working) with various drives is closer to voodoo than anything recognisable as a modern approach. Both for the end user and the developers. The issue with open-ended RPG-like games (ie Fallout New vegas) is they are notoriously buggy if they have significant scripting complexity and require lots of memory because they have a significant amount of level geometry around. That puts some hard design constraints on level design or requires continuous background loading which is really hard.

Which doesn't have anything to do with my primary complaints at all. A bit of googling turns up that at least some PC users are getting lagged to hell in pipboy menus too.

[Xon]

Almost all of the performance issues on the PC can be fixed by altering the perload cache size and max numbers of cell to hold in memory. And not using a nvidia card, something about the latest drivers shoots performance to hell.

[MKSheppard]

I gotta say I'm getting mighty sick of the load times in this game. Every single time I enter a new area, fast travel or even open a fucking menu I get hit with lag from hell.

I never had any problems with load times in Fallout 3 or in New Vegas on my system; and I don't have a doom monster -- my system dates to Summer 2007, albeit with minor upgrades -- another HDD and going from 2 GB to 8 GB of RAM when I upgraded to Windows 7.

[White Haven]

Ugh, I have to agree with Shep. I feel dirty. >.<

No performance issues here, although I can trigger minor ones at absolute max settings in dense-packed, wide-view outdoor areas. The game's got its problems, but performance isn't one of them.

[General Zod]

Ugh, I have to agree with Shep. I feel dirty. >.<

No performance issues here, although I can trigger minor ones at absolute max settings in dense-packed, wide-view outdoor areas. The game's got its problems, but performance isn't one of them.

Which is precisely why it's bullshit that I'm experiencing this kind of lag at all. The engine is old enough that these kind of problems simply shouldn't exist.

[MKSheppard]

Which is precisely why it's bullshit that I'm experiencing this kind of lag at all. The engine is old enough that these kind of problems simply shouldn't exist.

You know, I wonder how NV's load times are on PS3s, given that PS3s have half the memory of a 360.

EDIT: Checked around, and the PS3 is experiencing many of the same issues that 360 ones are. I also liked the fact that on a 360; New Vegas apparently crashed 12+ times over 33 hours of play.

I only experienced 1-2 crashes in my 47~ hours on the PC version.

EDIT II: Apparently if you install it to the 360's HD, it saves a lot on load times. Have you tried that Zodsie?

[General Zod]

Which is precisely why it's bullshit that I'm experiencing this kind of lag at all. The engine is old enough that these kind of problems simply shouldn't exist.

You know, I wonder how NV's load times are on PS3s, given that PS3s have half the memory of a 360.

EDIT: Checked around, and the PS3 is experiencing many of the same issues that 360 ones are. I also liked the fact that on a 360; New Vegas apparently crashed 12+ times over 33 hours of play.

I only experienced 1-2 crashes in my 47~ hours on the PC version.

EDIT II: Apparently if you install it to the 360's HD, it saves a lot on load times. Have you tried that Zodsie?

I'm not sure if I have the hdd space to install it. As it is I'm not sure that's related because it didn't start lagging seriously until yesterday. Until then it was fine but now it's taking me a minute or more to load between areas. (I've got about 70 hours of playtime on it and I'm sitting on level 26 or 27.)

[Xon]

Which is precisely why it's bullshit that I'm experiencing this kind of lag at all. The engine is old enough that these kind of problems simply shouldn't exist.

Depending on the region you are in, Fallout New Vegas is crazy memory constrained. According to task-manager the game will hit maybe 300-400 mb in the starting regions and stay that way for most of the open areas, but once I starts zoning around New Vegas memory usage shoots up like crazy. And this is with multi-monitors so I don't need to alt-tab out to check.

[General Zod]

Which is precisely why it's bullshit that I'm experiencing this kind of lag at all. The engine is old enough that these kind of problems simply shouldn't exist.

Depending on the region you are in, Fallout New Vegas is crazy memory constrained. According to task-manager the game will hit maybe 300-400 mb in the starting regions and stay that way for most of the open areas, but once I starts zoning around New Vegas memory usage shoots up like crazy. And this is with multi-monitors so I don't need to alt-tab out to check.

Except I didn't experience lag in any of these areas until recently. I half suspect it's related to the number of locations I've discovered.

[SilverWingedSeraph]

I have only experienced the occasional instance of lag until recently, usually just a bit of wonkiness after area transitions that comes right after a while, but now running around Nellis helping the boomers with their mundane tasks, the game is lagging terribly and I have no idea why. It's really starting to frustrate me, the amount of lag I'm getting running around.

[Chardok]

Dudes - I installed it to my HDD and my load times are literally seconds. when transitioning between my house and the overworld, I have no load screen whatsoever. max load time between large indoor area and large outdoor are is 10 seconds MAYBE so I dunno whats up with your guys' systems. Also - I've played for dozens of hours by now and have had precisely zero crashes, which is not to say that I've not experienced bugs, (Broken AI, previously friendly creatures going hostile, etc.) but nothing like what you guys are talking about.

[General Zod]

Dudes - I installed it to my HDD and my load times are literally seconds. when transitioning between my house and the overworld, I have no load screen whatsoever. max load time between large indoor area and large outdoor are is 10 seconds MAYBE so I dunno whats up with your guys' systems. Also - I've played for dozens of hours by now and have had precisely zero crashes, which is not to say that I've not experienced bugs, (Broken AI, previously friendly creatures going hostile, etc.) but nothing like what you guys are talking about.

I've been hearing rumblings that clearing the game's cache can clear up a lot of load problems. I'm not sure about exactly how to go about doing it (I've seen different methods) but I'm going to give it a shot when I get home tonight and see if that does anything.

[Stark]

There's something wrong with the world when you can say 'all the issues can be fixed by changing these values' instead of 'wow this needs patching'.

Zod, clearing the 360's cache probably won't help unless you're on a 20Gibbby.

[Chardok]

Dudes - I installed it to my HDD and my load times are literally seconds. when transitioning between my house and the overworld, I have no load screen whatsoever. max load time between large indoor area and large outdoor are is 10 seconds MAYBE so I dunno whats up with your guys' systems. Also - I've played for dozens of hours by now and have had precisely zero crashes, which is not to say that I've not experienced bugs, (Broken AI, previously friendly creatures going hostile, etc.) but nothing like what you guys are talking about.

I've been hearing rumblings that clearing the game's cache can clear up a lot of load problems. I'm not sure about exactly how to go about doing it (I've seen different methods) but I'm going to give it a shot when I get home tonight and see if that does anything.

Clarify this for me - you do *not* have it installed on your HDD, correct?

[Chardok]

Almost all of the performance issues on the PC can be fixed by altering the perload cache size and max numbers of cell to hold in memory. And not using a nvidia card, something about the latest drivers shoots performance to hell.

HAHAHAHAH WHAT? The game doesn't run on more than half of the installed PC userbase [nvidia cards] and somehow this isn't a sign that PC gaming is fucked?

I was going to mention this earlier, but I decided to wait for someone else to jump on it and then i'd interject my question because I wanted to make sure I understood what he was saying...or at least that someone else read it like I did.

Xon - I defy you to show me joe-average windows user who understands what in the world a "perload cache" is, much less how to "alter the cache size and max numbers of cell to hold in memory". I myself don't know what you're talking about. What is a "cell" in this context? As far as I know, that's a thing what you put data into in Microsoft Office Excel. Or it's the name of the processor in the PS3. And I have to be honest - even if I DID know what you were talking about, Why in the WORLD would I be okay with paying 50 bucks for a product and then be required to jigger with a quantum windmill in order for it to work how it should be working in the first place?

[Stark]

Indeed, why can't they push out a 5kb patch to fix it?

I mean, the answer is 'PC autopatching sucks' but still.

[Xon]

HAHAHAHAH WHAT? The game doesn't run on more than half of the installed PC userbase [nvidia cards] and somehow this isn't a sign that PC gaming is fucked?

Older nivida drivers apparently work fine, but the latest drivers just after Fallout New vegas was released had some wacky performance regressions. Nvidia apparently has some newer drivers which help, and the next patch is slated to hopefully fix it.

Xon - I defy you to show me joe-average windows user who understands what in the world a "perload cache" is, much less how to "alter the cache size and max numbers of cell to hold in memory". I myself don't know what you're talking about. What is a "cell" in this context? As far as I know, that's a thing what you put data into in Microsoft Office Excel. Or it's the name of the processor in the PS3. And I have to be honest - even if I DID know what you were talking about,

It's "preload cache", looks like I transposed some letters again. The preload cache is basicly a chunk of memory the game loads crap into based on which way it thinks you are going, while the cells are basicly chunks of level geometry. The whole idea is to keep as much stuff in memory so the harddrive(or DVD) doesn't need to be touched.

It is actually baffling that theses values aren't been automatically determined.

Why in the WORLD would I be okay with paying 50 bucks for a product and then be required to jigger with a quantum windmill in order for it to work how it should be working in the first place?

As shown by the Civilization series, there is a market for that

Except I didn't experience lag in any of these areas until recently. I half suspect it's related to the number of locations I've discovered.

I wouldn't be suprised, there are some fairly bizzare choices made for this game. Playing off the DVD is just going to exasperate problems.

Indeed, why can't they push out a 5kb patch to fix it?

The QA cost & time for a 5kb fix is often just the same if it was a few hundred megabytes.

[Vendetta]

Almost all of the performance issues on the PC can be fixed by altering the perload cache size and max numbers of cell to hold in memory. And not using a nvidia card, something about the latest drivers shoots performance to hell.

HAHAHAHAH WHAT? The game doesn't run on more than half of the installed PC userbase [nvidia cards] and somehow this isn't a sign that PC gaming is fucked?

It's better than that, there's a custom fan made .dll file to replace one of the shipped ones to make the game not shit on nvidia cards.

[phongn]

Older nivida drivers apparently work fine, but the latest drivers just after Fallout New vegas was released had some wacky performance regressions. Nvidia apparently has some newer drivers which help, and the next patch is slated to hopefully fix it.

Bad GPU drivers, news at 11? :p

It is actually baffling that theses values aren't been automatically determined.

They can't even do things like handle /LARGEADDRESSAWARE! Automatically profiling all those values would be much too much work, surely.

It's better than that, there's a custom fan made .dll file to replace one of the shipped ones to make the game not shit on nvidia cards.

There's apparently a serious problem in its GPU detection code; the fan-generated d3d9 DLLs more or less force the game to properly select the right path.

[Xon]

Bad GPU drivers, news at 11?

Yup.

They can't even do things like handle /LARGEADDRESSAWARE! Automatically profiling all those values would be much too much work, surely.

The sad thing is Fallout 3 would actually handle /LARGEADDRESSAWARE correctly and wasn't render unstable because of the flag. It was actually required for some of the more massive mod packs. It is just the developers never set that flag.

It is quite amazing how few games come in 64bit flavours when it can make a major difference due to all that extra memory address space. And the number of development houses which never bother with /LARGEADDRESSAWARE when it can make a major difference is just horrible.

[General Zod]

Turns out installing the game was enough to return load times back to normal and eliminate the pipboy lag. What a bunch of horseshit.