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The Witness using 5GB RAM so far
- Thread starter shinobi602
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Dragon1893
Member
Yeah, I guess people just want to hate on the guy. Why should he go out of his way to use less memory if he doesn't need to?
graywolf323
Member
it's already become the common nickname
first thing that popped into my head...
I guess the thing devs will have to care is to load the game while playing the first time instead of a huge load.
I guess more ram means easier to port games for xbox->ps4 timed exclusives and multiplatforms
What is a "lazy" programmer? Do they come into work an hour late, skip out early for a long lunch, then spend the rest of their day watching cat videos on Youtube rather than optimizing code? And what is "optimizing code," for that matter? Was Bethedra "lazy" with their port of Skyrim for the PS3, or did it come down to a lack of PS3 programming talent that resulted in an inferior product?
I'm not a developer by any means (took a few introductory Java courses...), but I get the feeling that "laziness" has little to do with a game running like crap.
I'm not a developer by any means (took a few introductory Java courses...), but I get the feeling that "laziness" has little to do with a game running like crap.
TalesOfWin
Banned
Read what he wrote again.
also now it is easy to understand why Battlefield 3 and 4 versions were gimped on current gen consoles. 512MB ram wasnt simply enough.
Xbudz
Member
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
You can get 32GB of DDR3 for less than $100. He can use all the RAM he wants.
Funny how the word "optimization" to people who don't write code means "quality" pretty literally, while to anyone who has ever worked on a game engine, at least a moderately challenging one, it generally starts out meaning something like "a trap" and ends up meaning "that endless road you can travel down instead of making your game."
cyberheater
PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
The game is already on the hard disk. How hard would it be to implement a streaming technology. Surely they must be used to stuff like that from programming on PS360.
MGS MetallicA
Banned
Consoles didn't have full 512 MB RAM to work with as System memory, 360's RAM was unified between system/GPU and PS3 had Only 256 MB system memory.
The jump from 512MB to 8GBs was more than welcome, I can't believe some people actually thought it's "too much and unneeded", have some vision for God's sake these consoles might be around till 2020!!!!!
The jump from 512MB to 8GBs was more than welcome, I can't believe some people actually thought it's "too much and unneeded", have some vision for God's sake these consoles might be around till 2020!!!!!
Reducing directional lightmap, texture and sound quality should reduce the memory consumption a lot.
So textures on iOS will be significantly lower quality. And I guess audio will be more compressed.
Only 512 MB for the iPhone 4.
LiquidSolid
Member
Jesus Christ. I'm embarrassed by the people criticising him for unoptimised code. What the fuck do these fools think makes the PS4 easier to develop for than the PS3? Magic pixie dust? If he doesn't have to optimise and the game runs perfectly fine then THAT'S A GOOD THING! It saves him time and thus means that it's easy to develop for. Fucking ridiculous.
Doesn't matter, it is always better to have the data in RAM if at all possible.
And it will be using much lower quality art assets, thus using much less RAM.
Quick Thoughts.
Yes, it's unoptimized, but thats not a huge sin.
Memory optimization can take a lot of work to get right. Its why a lot of PC programs have horrible memory footprints, even when they're made by decent sized companies. For a small development team, with fewer resources to throw at a game, that sort of memory optimization doesn't make sense.
Larger teams will optimize for memory use, at least they will later into the console life-cycle. Even indie teams will do it eventually, though, probably not to the same degree they had to for the PS360.
Actually, I shudder to think just how much system memory the NEXT next gen consoles will have. I mean, what, are we going to see console with 32GB of system memory by the end of the decade?
Yes, it's unoptimized, but thats not a huge sin.
Memory optimization can take a lot of work to get right. Its why a lot of PC programs have horrible memory footprints, even when they're made by decent sized companies. For a small development team, with fewer resources to throw at a game, that sort of memory optimization doesn't make sense.
Larger teams will optimize for memory use, at least they will later into the console life-cycle. Even indie teams will do it eventually, though, probably not to the same degree they had to for the PS360.
Actually, I shudder to think just how much system memory the NEXT next gen consoles will have. I mean, what, are we going to see console with 32GB of system memory by the end of the decade?
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
This is what flies over the head generally when people are eager to dismiss hardware/technology jumps forward. The thought is always focused on AAA titles and how much more they could cost, or not, and not on the effects they have on small development teams/indies where time and resources are very tight/limited and the time not spent fighting against/learning the hardware is time spent making the game play better, feel more alive, polishing the overall game experience.
Surface of Me
I'm not an NPC. And neither are we.
Next next gen probably wont be out by the end of the decade.
intheinbetween
Member
Sapphire Dreams
Member
5 GBs of RAM ? that sounds way too much to be honest.
That's his point really.
Hardware can save development time by allowing you to side step optimisation, if it's powerful enough / has more capacity / whatever.
It's how more powerful hardware can actually make development cheaper.
dragonelite
Member
This is just a cheap shot too Microsoft. Because this game should also run on pc and tablets right. This guy is getting annoying and kinda sad. Just release your game. And bragging about using too much resources as a games programmer is a rep killer. If he said the game only uses 1gig then i would say dam.
This is a very specific memory count hence just a way too fire up the fanboys.
This is a very specific memory count hence just a way too fire up the fanboys.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
There is the idea that using RAM which you might do without is bad, even if it is a cache you can relinquish on a whim. See the way people read Windows's Task Manager memory usage vs what they want to see in their Linux based distribution setup (the "oh it is only using 1 GB out of 12 GB, 11 GB free!!!!" thing).
It's the new "entitled".
Seriously though, agreed. There are times when there might be legitimacy to the statement, but this is not one of them. You want to see "unoptimized"? Look at Skyrim for PS3.
If he wanted to fire up fanboys with the ram comment he'd say 6gb. XO has 5gb available ram, so him stating 5gb is being used doesn't mean anything negative to the XO.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
I do not think his team is incapable to optimize resources usage more if it had to, so excluding that... If he is able to bring out the game in time, if the budget is correctly predicted and kept in check, and if the quality of the product is high then this is not a rep killer but a rep builder so to speak. It shows management knew what the battles it had to fight were.
That's because you have no idea what you're talking about.
The amount of clueless people in this thread has made me say dam.
Lord Griegous
Member
It really is impressive, right?
dragonelite
Member
come on he has 2 more GB to fill up why even mention you filled up 5gb if optimization is not part of your plan. Also dont get why he isnt focussing on memory management if he plans on releasing on pc and ipad? Most gamer pc are quiet loaded but gpu still have limited memory size.
manzo
Member
Looks like he doesn't have 2gb more to fill up, if Sony has also mandated only 5gb for games.
All this talk of optimisation is really sad. On the other hand as much as I like Blow I really wish he'd pack in all he subtle and not-so-subtle digs at ms and xbone. The Witness sounds great, just get on with making it and leave the shit talking alone now, it's making him look like a bit of a cock.
We will see games within the next 10 - 20 years needing 1TB of RAM, and some
developers (me?
) will come around saying it's not enough, perhaps two or
three would be better.
One of the problem is that memory consumption isn't a linear function of the
problem size. For images it's an n² grow (width x height). For volumes it's
already n³. In one of those expected futures we will see some games where
almost all the objects or surroundings are (physical) volumes. Just doubling
their resolution, (2n)³, yields 8n³. So one would need an 8x increase in
memory just for doubling the resolution. Hence, in the future we will see a
much faster memory consumption as we have today. Techniques like adaptive
refinement (within a 3d material volume) will become key algorithms to counter
act this rapid increase in memory consumption.
So with each next-gen, the memory available is eaten away faster, since the
problem size doesn't stay the same. That's perhaps the observation made by
Mr. Blow.
developers (me?
) will come around saying it's not enough, perhaps two orthree would be better.
One of the problem is that memory consumption isn't a linear function of the
problem size. For images it's an n² grow (width x height). For volumes it's
already n³. In one of those expected futures we will see some games where
almost all the objects or surroundings are (physical) volumes. Just doubling
their resolution, (2n)³, yields 8n³. So one would need an 8x increase in
memory just for doubling the resolution. Hence, in the future we will see a
much faster memory consumption as we have today. Techniques like adaptive
refinement (within a 3d material volume) will become key algorithms to counter
act this rapid increase in memory consumption.
So with each next-gen, the memory available is eaten away faster, since the
problem size doesn't stay the same. That's perhaps the observation made by
Mr. Blow.
close to the edge
Member
Here's why using a lot of memory is not a bad thing and doesn't mean the game is unoptimized (it can mean that, if the high memory usage comes from memory leaks et. al. but I'm gonna assume for now that that's not the case):
The PS4 (or any console, really) usually runs 1 game at a time and the OS in the background, which generally doesn't matter as far as memory goes since the game and the OS don't share memory. There is virtually no disadvantage to using RAM if it's available, you're not taking it away from another application that might be running at the same time. Streaming from the hard drive into memory is a crutch developers had to come up with because of the lacking memory of the last generation of consoles. If you don't need to stream, you don't do it because it's complex and prone to bugs (think of the UE3 texture streaming snafus you'd see after loading)
The PS4 (or any console, really) usually runs 1 game at a time and the OS in the background, which generally doesn't matter as far as memory goes since the game and the OS don't share memory. There is virtually no disadvantage to using RAM if it's available, you're not taking it away from another application that might be running at the same time. Streaming from the hard drive into memory is a crutch developers had to come up with because of the lacking memory of the last generation of consoles. If you don't need to stream, you don't do it because it's complex and prone to bugs (think of the UE3 texture streaming snafus you'd see after loading)
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