[GameGPU] ARK: Survival Evolved, GameWorks

[Silverforce11]

AMD cannot because they do not have that kind of a market share and even if they do than those poor developers is conformed to get bankrupt on PC side because 80% of PC user will not buy that game.

They can just turn off those features, right?!

ps. You are confusing quarterly results. There's still plenty of gamers on older setups.

 

[desprado]

They can just turn off those features, right?!

ps. You are confusing quarterly results. There's still plenty of gamers on older setups.

Yes which do not support DX11.

 

[TheUnk]

Game actually looks very nice with visuals cranked up but yeah performance is poor. It's far better than when it started though, at least for Nvidia cards, so there is hope.

Honestly though the gameplay is so fun that even with the bad performance and server lag its still worth the money. Plus the devs are very active and there is a steady flow of patches.

 

[n0x1ous]

is this game on a custom engine or UE4 or what?

 

[Stuka87]

is this game on a custom engine or UE4 or what?

It is UE4.

 

[AtenRa]

Yes which do not support DX11.

Every GPU sold the last 5 years supports DX-11.

 

[sandorski]

Is there or are there any GW game(s) without any major issue?

 

[Stuka87]

Is there or are there any GW game(s) without any major issue?

Tried to think of one, there may be some lesser known games, but none that I can think of. The Witcher 3 is plenty stable and playable, but having hairworks set to 64x tessellation and it not being adjustable basically makes in unusable unless you have a very high end nVidia card, or you use the AMD control panel to set max tess to 8x or 16x, which then makes it very playable.

 

[sandorski]

Tried to think of one, there may be some lesser known games, but none that I can think of. The Witcher 3 is plenty stable and playable, but having hairworks set to 64x tessellation and it not being adjustable basically makes in unusable unless you have a very high end nVidia card, or you use the AMD control panel to set max tess to 8x or 16x, which then makes it very playable.

That's the only one that comes to mind to me as well. As you say though, it also has a fairly big issue due to it. I suspect UE4 is going to be a bust, if another engine comes out using Open Standards especially.

 

[Subyman]

Indeed because currently its unplayable at 1080p unless you have Maxwell 2 970+ on medium settings.

Instead of worrying about that, they wanna add more GameWorks effects. Exact replica of Project Cars during development. To the t. That game turn out pretty well... only for Maxwell 2 users.

This brings up the question why every single GW title so far with the exception of Witcher 3 (kudos to Projek Red), have been plagued with major problems at launch, to a point of being canceled (Batman AK). Is it a case of bad developers? Lack of optimizations in GW itself?

Is the focus to implement GW drawing away precious time/$ (all game production are limited by budget & time) from the core of the game: optimizations & polish?

I think it is a symptom of the current games industry and their need to push things out before they are done. Part of the reason is publishers and developers being able to get a large quantity of money before the game is ever launched through crowd funding, preorders, and early access. It is almost to the point that games are only full priced before they launch and immediately hit their long tail on launch day with price cuts and incentives. Another reason is that development times are now longer than before especially for developers tackling open world games. The amount of time and money needed to flesh out the systems for a modern open world or medium-high fidelity 3D game is immense. Then there is the higher cost of producing these games. All those combine to set up a more complicated financial and developmental process which, as we have seen, brings on poor results or has businesses push out an unfinished product. From a business point of view they've already collected the preorders, crowd funding, and EA, so get it out. I'm hoping Steam's refund program begins to put pressure on this practice. So, no I don't think it is simply GW that is causing all of this.

As for those calling developers lazy for using "short cuts", developers have been using third-party tools to help them for years. They use third-party graphics engines, vegetation creation tools, menu tools, texture processors, shaders, physics systems, rigging tools, AI/pathing engines, and much more. One of the most important phrases for most programmers is "why reinvent the wheel?" If they can save a month buying a license to a tool that gives them the exact functionality they need, then they do it. Its not lazy, its smart. Instead of being waist deep in engine development for half the game redoing what others already have available on the market, they skip that and use the saved time to make the actual game.

I say all that to come back to the commonly tossed around comments about developers being lazy for using middleware (not necessarily by you.) That is absolutely not true. If they are smart about how they use the tools and middleware then they can shave huge time off of development or use that time to make a better game.

 

[Silverforce11]

Is there or are there any GW game(s) without any major issue?

Only Witcher 3.

It's a world of difference compared to AMD GE games that run so well on all hardware. We'll see a repeat when Battlefront, Deus Ex, Hitman DX12 come soon. Those I reckon, will be very well optimized.

 

[Alatar]

Here's another amazing contribution to the "GameWorks Effect*":

ARK does not have any gameworks in it.

(even the article you linked says so, they're just interested in adding them in the future)

Exact replica of Project Cars during development.

Project CARS does not have any gameworks in it.

(turbulence was planned, never added)

OP why are you trying to blame poor performance in games without any gameworks in them on gameworks?

Are you just extremely ignorant of how these things work or just purposefully trying to put dirt on gameworks?

 

[desprado]

ARK does not have any gameworks in it.

(even the article you linked says so, they're just interested in adding them in the future)



Project CARS does not have any gameworks in it.

(turbulence was planned, never added)

OP why are you trying to blame poor performance in games without any gameworks in them on gameworks?

Are you just extremely ignorant of how these things work or just purposefully trying to put dirt on gameworks?

I never take them seriously after they speculated that Fury X will 20% or either 40% faster than Titan X.

 

[Silverforce11]

NV sponsored game with plans to use GameWorks publicized well in advance of release..

Project Cars with NV logos everywhere..

Both games heavily use PhysX.

The taint is strong, cos whenever NV sponsor game development, turds are the result (thankfully its not a 100% rate, we managed to get Witcher 3 working very well on launch!).

With such a record (Batman AK the recent casaulty!), its better for gamers if NV quit shoving closed middleware at devs, we'll get much more optimized games like all the neutral titles & AMD GE titles.

 

[Erenhardt]

ARK does not have any gameworks in it.

(even the article you linked says so, they're just interested in adding them in the future)



Project CARS does not have any gameworks in it.

(turbulence was planned, never added)

OP why are you trying to blame poor performance in games without any gameworks in them on gameworks?

Are you just extremely ignorant of how these things work or just purposefully trying to put dirt on gameworks?

Good point.

So it is not just gameworks. It is whole Nvidia company to blame for the worst releases of 2015.

Thanks nvidia... NOT!

 

[3DVagabond]

Project cars problem is the PhysX run on the CPU.

 

[Alatar]

NV sponsored game with plans to use GameWorks publicized well in advance of release..

Project Cars with NV logos everywhere..

Both games heavily use PhysX.

The taint is strong, cos whenever NV sponsor game development, turds are the result (thankfully its not a 100% rate, we managed to get Witcher 3 working very well on launch!).

With such a record (Batman AK the recent casaulty!), its better for gamers if NV quit shoving closed middleware at devs, we'll get much more optimized games like all the neutral titles & AMD GE titles.

You can't possibly be trying to pull the "but they use CPU PhysX" angle here... CPU PhysX is extremely common and only gets complained about when people are grasping for straws. Not only that but it's perfectly fine multithreading and instruction set wise these days.

Also are you seriously so misinformed that you think that every gameworks product has somehow performed badly etc.? Have you thought about the possibility that it's just people like you that manage to complain about the bad apples but completely forget to mention everything else? (and you even include non gameworks games as gameworks games because it fits the agenda)

What happened to mentioning:

Killing floor 2
Wow (after modern updates)
the crew
far cry 4
lords of the fallen
warface
borderlands pre-sequel
FF XIV
Witcher 3
etc.
(not to mention the dozens of products from earlier AC games, to earlier batman games that had the same effects before they started being marketed as gameworks effects)

No, of course we can't mention any of those, it's always about:

-Watch dogs (only included HBAO, which could be turned off and had the same effect on AMD and NV, and AMD quickly fixed the perf in the game)
-AC Unity (which had some NV exclusive AA and some tesselation, both of which could be turned off and doing so didn't fix the game)
- Batman Arkham knight (which had a lot of effects that could be turned off, which again didn't fix the game)
- Project CARS (which isn't even a gameworks game in the first place)

The dirt on gameworks is 95% about ignorance and mud slinging campaigns. It's no wonder that the biggest offenders don't even know which game is gameworks and which isn't.

Yes there are more bad TWIMTBP games than there are bad GE games. But there are also more TWIMTBP games in general.

But the point here is that you're making a thread about the "gameworks effect" and the game you chose is NOT a gameworks game. I'm sorry but that's just crazy and tinfoil to the max.

Project cars problem is the PhysX run on the CPU.

Both AMD and Nvidia run the PhysX on the CPU and CPU PhysX is extremely common. I don't see the point.

 

[Silverforce11]

After the Batman: AK fiasco and the fact on steam, many NV GPU owners report massively increased performance by forcing PhysX to CPU (because it's offloaded to the GPU causing it to choke)... I'm not gonna claim that PhysX is ever only on the CPU in Project Cars or even ARK.

Only NV software engineers would know the fine details to say with certainty, which you're not and I'm not. I only see the end result.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

The game is currently a piece of crap. Benchmarks are pretty much irrelevant given that the games visuals, when optimized should be at least twice those fps if not 3 or 4x higher.

If you think Ark is a piece of crap now, you should've seen it a few weeks ago. I was getting in the low to mid 20s on my Lightning 780 with high settings. Now, with most things on high (I did turn down shadows since I didn't care too much about them), I was getting in the high 30s/low 40s. My brother was getting around that (+/- a 5 FPS or so), but I'd say he had more consistent scores. We didn't officially benchmark it or anything - these were just quick observations using the game's built-in FPS counter.

The devs are working hard and have 1-2 patches published almost daily, but I went ahead and asked for a refund yesterday (not sure if Steam will give it to me or not, as I show 4 hours of play time which, IMO, is not accurate). It is a beautiful game but I prefer other survival games.

EDIT: Update - they rejected the refund request and I submitted another and said they need to reconsider. It is worth a shot.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Complaining about optimization in an early access game is like complaining about the doneness of your steak when the cow is still alive. It's an utterly nonsensical argument. Is Ark poorly optimized? Absolutely. Is every single game in alpha poorly optimized? Indeed they are. That's how game development, or indeed all software development, works. Blaming a graphics card manufacturer for unoptimized alpha game code is mindless mud-slinging.

 

[4K_shmoorK]

Complaining about optimization in an early access game is like complaining about the doneness of your steak when the cow is still alive. It's an utterly nonsensical argument. Is Ark poorly optimized? Absolutely. Is every single game in alpha poorly optimized? Indeed they are. That's how game development, or indeed all software development, works. Blaming a graphics card manufacturer for unoptimized alpha game code is mindless mud-slinging.

^This^, whats up with the graphics forums lately? We need some more games to come out so people can spend more time playing and less time complaining about graphics settings.

That being said, how is this game? I was thinking about giving it a go but I'm not sure if its worth buying to play multiplayer by myself.

Any input on actual gameplay or is everyone here so enamored with sliders and tickboxes they don't actually play games?:biggrin:

 

[Face2Face]

Complaining about optimization in an early access game is like complaining about the doneness of your steak when the cow is still alive. It's an utterly nonsensical argument. Is Ark poorly optimized? Absolutely. Is every single game in alpha poorly optimized? Indeed they are. That's how game development, or indeed all software development, works. Blaming a graphics card manufacturer for unoptimized alpha game code is mindless mud-slinging.

+1

Well said.

 

[railven]

ARK does not have any gameworks in it.

(even the article you linked says so, they're just interested in adding them in the future)



Project CARS does not have any gameworks in it.

(turbulence was planned, never added)

OP why are you trying to blame poor performance in games without any gameworks in them on gameworks?

Are you just extremely ignorant of how these things work or just purposefully trying to put dirt on gameworks?

Wow is all this true? Holy crap, there goes that credibility.

Why is thread even allowed to stay open after this revelation? This is no different than the other thread "Gameworks is detrimental to PC Gaming" that too seemed based on wild expectations.

 

[railven]

After the Batman: AK fiasco and the fact on steam, many NV GPU owners report massively increased performance by forcing PhysX to CPU (because it's offloaded to the GPU causing it to choke)... I'm not gonna claim that PhysX is ever only on the CPU in Project Cars or even ARK.

Only NV software engineers would know the fine details to say with certainty, which you're not and I'm not. I only see the end result.

With new info on this game (since I have zero interest in I actually don't follow updates on it, I took your OP for what it was), it seems you just see what you want to see.

You lambasted a game citing Gameworks as the issue and it turns out it doesn't even have it. Bro, you're jumping on them AMD crosses now for no good reason.

 

[n0x1ous]

With new info on this game (since I have zero interest in I actually don't follow updates on it, I took your OP for what it was), it seems you just see what you want to see.

You lambasted a game citing Gameworks as the issue and it turns out it doesn't even have it. Bro, you're jumping on them AMD crosses now for no good reason.

but, but there is nvidia logos in the game - so conspiracy! /s