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[Zsinj]

Thanks!

Quickly pulling everything together now to get the first playable build ready for the PC Gamer Weekender in 2 weeks! Today's update is the first pass of getting furniture constructed, just needs a bit more polishing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjvvR_J5P2o

[ragnar119]

Really like the small details/new sprite when they carry items in their hands.

[Zsinj]

Thank you! Obviously it's a lot more expensive than not showing them a la Rimworld, but I really want to capture the feeling of the early Settlers games, and I think it's worth it

[Zsinj]

Slight improvement today - crafting stations are now decorated with the appropriate tools to help identify them to the player

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1HgMnHstq8

[Retropunch]

Thank you! Obviously it's a lot more expensive than not showing them a la Rimworld, but I really want to capture the feeling of the early Settlers games, and I think it's worth it

It's also very helpful for showing the player what pawn is doing what! If I see loads of people with pickaxes going one way and I know there aren't that many needed, I can reroute them, whereas in Rimworld I have to hover over each to see if what it is that they're going off to do.

I also wouldn't worry too much about optimising this too much for people with really rubbish systems. Whilst you shouldn't need a powerful PC to play it, I'm sick to the back teeth of people saying 'why can't I play this 2017 game on my Pentium II!' - it's kinda like arguing that you can't play PS4 games on a PS2, but somehow it feels ok for people if it's a PC.

Bare in mind that I'm without access to a good PC for at least 6 months of the year, so it's not like I'm saying this from a position of PC godliness.

[Zsinj]

Thanks I guess my worry is coming from the fact I'm developing on a fairly beefy PC. However I have seen it running on a somewhat old laptop with an integrated graphics card so yay! I'm building in plenty of tricks to spread out processing where it might be required so requirements should be really low, not that I'm aiming at such a system. I'd say recommended requirements are going to be a fairly modern PC but there's a good chance it'll run on nearly anything. Biggest limiting factor for hardware is actually going to be how large the sprite sheets get - they're currently up to 4096px a side, but around 90% of graphics cards in use support twice/4 times that size, which is what I think I'll end up on. Then again, the "reset all the spritesheets for this selection of mods" function could be configured with a max sprite sheet size to avoid that problem too, it's a tradeoff in time spent swapping textures into the GPU.

If I really thought it was worth the benefit (definitely not at this point) I could write some fancy graphics pipeline so that all spritesheets are bound onto the GPU all the time and the sprite/vertex data would have to supply which texture it was on, which is possible. Hopefully/probably never needed though!

Actually I was really just saying how expensive if it is in terms of development time and resources Really just a cost in terms of artwork at this point with the systems in place to deal with "any" kind of tool/item.

[ragnar119]

Thank you! Obviously it's a lot more expensive than not showing them a la Rimworld, but I really want to capture the feeling of the early Settlers games, and I think it's worth it

It's also very helpful for showing the player what pawn is doing what! If I see loads of people with pickaxes going one way and I know there aren't that many needed, I can reroute them, whereas in Rimworld I have to hover over each to see if what it is that they're going off to do.

I also wouldn't worry too much about optimising this too much for people with really rubbish systems. Whilst you shouldn't need a powerful PC to play it, I'm sick to the back teeth of people saying 'why can't I play this 2017 game on my Pentium II!' - it's kinda like arguing that you can't play PS4 games on a PS2, but somehow it feels ok for people if it's a PC.

Bare in mind that I'm without access to a good PC for at least 6 months of the year, so it's not like I'm saying this from a position of PC godliness.

If a game looks like it was made 10 years ago, than it should run on those 10 years systems also (not saying this game looks like one). So its kind like arguing that game that doesn't look that great should not need beafy new systems. And as this is a 2d game, it should be optimized for low end systems, and not need a good and new PC to run it. So yes, people should complain that graphical fidelity and calculation the game needs to do (if there are a lot of background calculations and simulations)are on par with system requirements. And developer should always try to optimize the game as best as possible.

[forsaken1111]

I'm sure they could add options to turn off the fancy graphical stuff so older hardware can run it, but just because the game is 2d doesn't mean it's graphically or computationally cheap to run.

[Zsinj]

Ah good point, forgot there's already some debug commands to turn off/on some of the extra graphics effect, surely they'll make their way into an options menu.

[Retropunch]

If a game looks like it was made 10 years ago, than it should run on those 10 years systems also (not saying this game looks like one). So its kind like arguing that game that doesn't look that great should not need beafy new systems. And as this is a 2d game, it should be optimized for low end systems, and not need a good and new PC to run it. So yes, people should complain that graphical fidelity and calculation the game needs to do (if there are a lot of background calculations and simulations)are on par with system requirements. And developer should always try to optimize the game as best as possible.

Not to go over what forsaken said - but 2d in no way equals being computationally cheap. There's no way (unless you have access to the source code) that you can possibly guess how expensive each calculation is, and by that work out what type of PC it 'should require''

I don't think it was ever the idea that people would need a brand new GTX1070 to play it, and I'm sure that Zsinj will optimise it as best as possible, but the point I was trying to make was that Zsinj shouldn't purposefully downgrade the game/hobble the graphics just to cater to the few people that still have really, really old PCs.

An example is Dynamic lighting - it's a big overhead, but it looks great. I'd hate for people to influence the inclusion of that feature just because their PC can't handle it.

[Mephansteras]

If a game looks like it was made 10 years ago, than it should run on those 10 years systems also (not saying this game looks like one). So its kind like arguing that game that doesn't look that great should not need beafy new systems. And as this is a 2d game, it should be optimized for low end systems, and not need a good and new PC to run it. So yes, people should complain that graphical fidelity and calculation the game needs to do (if there are a lot of background calculations and simulations)are on par with system requirements. And developer should always try to optimize the game as best as possible.

While I get your point, to an extent, Dwarf Fortress is a perfect example of how this logic can break down. Just because it looks like it should have run back on an old 386 doesn't mean that it could have.

[ragnar119]

If a game looks like it was made 10 years ago, than it should run on those 10 years systems also (not saying this game looks like one). So its kind like arguing that game that doesn't look that great should not need beafy new systems. And as this is a 2d game, it should be optimized for low end systems, and not need a good and new PC to run it. So yes, people should complain that graphical fidelity and calculation the game needs to do (if there are a lot of background calculations and simulations)are on par with system requirements. And developer should always try to optimize the game as best as possible.

Not to go over what forsaken said - but 2d in no way equals being computationally cheap. There's no way (unless you have access to the source code) that you can possibly guess how expensive each calculation is, and by that work out what type of PC it 'should require''

I don't think it was ever the idea that people would need a brand new GTX1070 to play it, and I'm sure that Zsinj will optimise it as best as possible, but the point I was trying to make was that Zsinj shouldn't purposefully downgrade the game/hobble the graphics just to cater to the few people that still have really, really old PCs.

An example is Dynamic lighting - it's a big overhead, but it looks great. I'd hate for people to influence the inclusion of that feature just because their PC can't handle it.

2d is computationally cheaper compared to 3d. There is no denying that in any way (just think if DF was in full detailed 3d graphics, you would not be even able to start the game on top of the line PCs from the 5 years future  ). You can guess how "expensive calculation is" if you comparing it to the games of similar type. You dont need to look at source code for that (you can look at it if you want to see how badly it is written if the game is not optimized good), just what the game is, and how it looks. I am guessing this will not have simulation and calculations on the level of DF, but more be in the line with gnomoria, rimworld, prison architect and similar games.

Downgrading graphics  and optimizing games best as possible are two different things. Also this is a PC game, where its standard to have graphical options for purpose to cater games to as much  people as possible with different power of their PC, old and new. We are not playing on consoles (that by the way also have graphical options for some games) and no one is asking games form today to run on pentium 3, but to run on hardver that other games of similar look and style run.

[Retropunch]

2d is computationally cheaper compared to 3d. There is no denying that in any way. You can guess how "expensive calculation is" if you comparing it to the games of similar type. You dont need to look at source code for that.

Downgrading graphics  and optimizing game best as possible are two different things. Also this is a PC game, where its standard to have graphical options for purpose to cater games to as much  people as possible with different power of their PC, old and new. We are not playing on consoles (that by the way also have graphical options for some games).

I'd suggest reading Mephansteras comment below. Check out Aurora too - that'll grind to a halt after a while due to the amount of calculations it has to do and that's just a GUI. It's about the system it's designed in and what it's doing behind the scenes. DF *looks* the same as Rogue/any other Roguelike, but is a completely different beast altogether. As such you can't compare games on graphics at all.

So yeah, that's me denying it point blank.

I also don't think it's standard to have graphics options to cater for the whole range of PCs. The Witcher 3 is not going to play on a 10 year old laptop in any usable fashion.  Again, I'm not saying that it shouldn't have options or whatever, just that the devs shouldn't be beholden to people with vastly outdated hardware.

[ragnar119]

2d is computationally cheaper compared to 3d. There is no denying that in any way. You can guess how "expensive calculation is" if you comparing it to the games of similar type. You dont need to look at source code for that.

Downgrading graphics  and optimizing game best as possible are two different things. Also this is a PC game, where its standard to have graphical options for purpose to cater games to as much  people as possible with different power of their PC, old and new. We are not playing on consoles (that by the way also have graphical options for some games).

I'd suggest reading Mephansteras comment below. Check out Aurora too - that'll grind to a halt after a while due to the amount of calculations it has to do and that's just a GUI. It's about the system it's designed in and what it's doing behind the scenes. DF *looks* the same as Rogue/any other Roguelike, but is a completely different beast altogether. As such you can't compare games on graphics at all.

So yeah, that's me denying it point blank.

I also don't think it's standard to have graphics options to cater for the whole range of PCs. The Witcher 3 is not going to play on a 10 year old laptop in any usable fashion.  Again, I'm not saying that it shouldn't have options or whatever, just that the devs shouldn't be beholden to people with vastly outdated hardware.

I did, and it doesn't change really anything. I updated my post (to make it more clear what I mean) before your reply so read it again

[Mephansteras]

So...to sum up this conversation:

"Please make it so that graphically computational operations can be turned off as an option, if possible, so that players with older machines have a better shot at playing this game."

Have I got that right?