I stumbled upon an interesting example for why #CitiesSkylines2 has performance problems. This one in particular is hopeful because it's the kind of thing that can be fixed with a patch but also a bit worrying that it wasn't noticed and addressed before launch.
In order to create a more diverse roster of NPCs, they worked with a tool called Popul8 by a company named Didimo. It uses AI (somehow) to dynamically generate individual human characters based on a bunch of parameters and you can apply changes to those models in a simple programmatic fashion.
That's really cool. It enables amazing things like "in the 4 months after a park is built in a neighborhood, reduce weight of sims within a given radius if they have at least 5 hours of recreational time per week". You can watch individual people changing as a result of your policy decisions. That's incredible.
However, it looks like there was a miscommunication between teams working on it so LOD isn't accounted for. LOD means level of detail. The basic idea is that when you are on a huge city wide view, it's okay to use a simplified model with a lower polygon count since the player doesn't really care about individual characters' teeth or eye color at that distance. You want those details if you click their profile or are street level walking around but you kinda don't need it from an airplane.
That's the kind of thing that will melt graphics cards. Somebody just dropped the ball where both sides of the team assumed the other side would handle that. When development is rushed, it can be easy for a project manager to miss that kind of detail.
Let's just hope there's lots of other low hanging fruit like that.
Gram sobie w #CitiesSkylines2, nagle w pewnym momencie wszystko sie zawiesilo, ekran zgasl (na obu monitorach) - muzyka w tle dalej leci, chociaz zacina
Robie reset kompa, zamiast Windowsa widze ekran z artefaktami - juz myslalem, ze karta graficzna sie spalila... na szczescie za 3 razem system wstal, ale... 😬
Fajn, jen jsem to zapl, tak jsem si zazoufal, od kdy se stalo standardem vydávat takový neoptimalizovaný "odpad"...
Hra se vám načte v menu s rychlostí 10FPS. Hra samotná pak s 18FPS. Výkon spravilo vypnutí Depth of Field, ale "pouze na 40FPS". A že já nemám špatný stroj, i7 10700 (8/16) + RTX 3070 Ti.
Mají co žehlit v Paradoxu, tohle vážně není dobrý start pro hru. #CitiesSkylines2
Holy shit is #citiesskylines2 a mess, I ended up refunding, absolutely no reason it should be getting 5-10 fps on a pcie4 nvme drive, 128GB ram, 4090, and 5950x. There's unoptimized then theres "I could probably write a software renderer faster than this". I love city builders but I'm not paying a premium to get the game this week while it's unplayable, maybe once it's fixed I'll pick it back up.
#CitiesSkylines2 auf #ShadowPC ohne FSR nicht spielbar selbst mit Power Upgrade und 1080p in mittleren Einstellungen. Mit FSR ist auch "Hoch" möglich in 30+ fps.
One thing that I appreciate about #CitiesSkylines2 is that they will pay anyone to make content about it with few restrictions.
For example, Spiffing Brit absolutely tore the game to shreds in a long Twitter thread about it. He condemned the loss of features, poor controls, breaking bugs, and especially the absurd hardware requirements. He called it a stain on the beloved franchise pushed out before it was ready by people who don't understand what made it great. He even explicitly says not to buy it (until they fix it at least).
Yet #ParadoxInteractive didn't muzzle him with rules preventing that as a condition of getting a pre-release copy. I don't think he's in the slightest jeopardy of having future games published by #Paradox not going to him first. It's refreshing to see that in the video games industry.
Infos zum Content in dieser Woche: #CitiesSkylines2 wird via Steam am morgigen Dienstag 18.00 Uhr released. Falls es am Abend noch via #GeForceNow spielbar ist, werde ich spontan nen #Livestream starten. Andernfalls kommt zeitnah ein #FirstLook & ein späterer Livestream.
Very useful video in the lead up to the #CitiesSkylines2 release.
Sounds like the game will be very poorly optimised on release which is very disappointing, but almost expected these days. It's almost certainly why the game has been delayed on console as well.
I've been looking at the Cities Skylines 2 videos, and there are so many low-hanging fruits the dev team hasn't considered it's frustrating.
First, when placing bushes or trees manually, why don't they randomize their angle? Now it looks artificial when all bushes and trees have the same face of the mesh pointing at the user, they look like clones.
Secondly, the grass and road texture looks bland, and not realistic at all.
To co sie rzuca w oczy to... skopana optymalizacja 🤣 Animacja spada do okolic 20 klatek na sekunde 🤣
Ja wiem, ze do premiery jeszcze 5 dni, a w dniu premiery moze sie jeszcze pojawic patch, ale serio... czy w tym roku wyjdzie chociaz jeden potencjalny hit, ktory nie bedzie sprawial wrazenia niedorobionego? 😆 No i zeby w citybuilderze skopac optymalizacje to trzeba sie postarac