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The Witness using 5GB RAM so far
- Thread starter shinobi602
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Sure, but the problem is that he expanded to how the whole next gen will play out and implied that 8GB is not nearly enough for next gen titles
And we all know that is not true
MarkMclovin
Member
Neogaf - does backflips when they find out a console has 8gb RAM.
Claims a game using 5gb is too much.
Jesus Christ.
Claims a game using 5gb is too much.
Jesus Christ.
Sutton Dagger
Member
If we compare the graphics of Witness to next gen graphics, then he practially said that we need about 32GB ram at the very least to have any chance to run those
I'm not being facetious, are you actually reading back your comments before posting? They don't make sense, how did you get that from his tweets?
.....no.
Yeah... From the outside, as a tech moron, I think of it within my own job - why do more if it doesn't net you anything? You're just wasting time and resources. It's like when people at my job say, "I'm thinking of creating a template that allows me to do X, Y, and Z," and you're like, "Yeah, we have that already. Use it, at least as a baseline, so you don't have to do all that tedious modeling, and then make changes if you think there need to be some."
Min-maxing does not somehow imply that a person is lazy. More often than not, at least in business, it's more about being pragmatic and efficient with your own time.
EDIT: Put another way... The constraints of development are really man hours and money. Anything that allows a developer to shave those down is a good thing.
You're really, really reaching there. He only implied that in your mind.
If we compare the graphics of Witness to next gen graphics, then he practially said that we need about 32GB ram at the very least to have any chance to run those
He is literally just saying, "8GB of RAM may seem like a lot but it's not when you consider the make-up of a modern (gaming?) PC."
Mr_Appleby
Member
I've never heard people complain about a game requiring too much out of the CPU, and that a next gen game should be able to run on a less powerful processor being provided in the next gen system.
I thought extra ram was a good thing, now people are writing that 88 in the Wii is more than enough?
Yikes.
When people refer to "optimisation" a lot of it is hacks and gangky stuff to make the game run under certain parameters. It's not always a good thing.
If you google it, there's a really good postmortem on Shadow of the Colossus, where they had to do stuff like have the far distance be an image then swap it with low res models and textures when a player approached, and swap it again for the high level stuff when in close. Also tons of stuff about faked shadows and fog. Optimised, but ultimately just a bunch of crummy hacks that were a necessary evil.
MGS1 swapped models when the camera changed positions as another example. If a dev doesn't need to resort to these "optimisation" tricks, that doesn't mean the game fails at optimisation.
I thought extra ram was a good thing, now people are writing that 88 in the Wii is more than enough?
Yikes.
When people refer to "optimisation" a lot of it is hacks and gangky stuff to make the game run under certain parameters. It's not always a good thing.
If you google it, there's a really good postmortem on Shadow of the Colossus, where they had to do stuff like have the far distance be an image then swap it with low res models and textures when a player approached, and swap it again for the high level stuff when in close. Also tons of stuff about faked shadows and fog. Optimised, but ultimately just a bunch of crummy hacks that were a necessary evil.
MGS1 swapped models when the camera changed positions as another example. If a dev doesn't need to resort to these "optimisation" tricks, that doesn't mean the game fails at optimisation.
It is true in the sense that budgets are inflating and not having to do cutting edge optimization can at least help not inflate them too much. In general, you're gonna see a shift (it's actually already started) towards optimizing production rather than the game itself. That's what many of the really interesting innovations (like sparse virtual texturing or scripting) are about, and having oodles of memory plays into that too.
gaf = realloc(gaf, sizeof(Witness)*2);
Extrapolation ?
I can use pictures if you like
This is 5GB
http://webassets.scea.com/ps4/webasset/witness_lower_marq.jpg
How much would those take ?
http://media.edge-online.com/wp-content/uploads/edgeonline/2012/11/Agnis-Philosophy.jpg
http://www.x360magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Deep-Down.jpg
Also
Note the "8GB isnt that much" comment
What exactly do you mean by "those graphics"?
Just because it's slightly cartoony doesn't magically make it use less space.
There's a lot of subtle detail and color shifts in the textures, the game has to draw lots of things in the distance and some pretty detailed meshes.
IncandescentPrecept
Banned
Actually he's saying that 8GB isn't enough.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Donald Knuth, founding father of Computer Science, 1974:
What Knuth is arguing is that optimization is a costly and complex process. This is not to say you write wasteful, sloppy code to begin with, but rather that writing code that is manageable and runs well is the first step, and efficiency is only necessary to improve things once you get to that stage. If developers can avoid having to deal with RAM limitations in a practical sense, and thus avoid having to write systems that can optimize around those RAM limitiations, it will make development a lot easier.
What Knuth is arguing is that optimization is a costly and complex process. This is not to say you write wasteful, sloppy code to begin with, but rather that writing code that is manageable and runs well is the first step, and efficiency is only necessary to improve things once you get to that stage. If developers can avoid having to deal with RAM limitations in a practical sense, and thus avoid having to write systems that can optimize around those RAM limitiations, it will make development a lot easier.
Well, i cant agree
Besides the nice lighting perhaps, the game seems rather basic graphics wise to me
As an artist who works on video games, I can absolutely tell you that how stylized a game looks has very, very little to do with how much RAM a game uses.
Jesus christ, the ignorance.
And what does that have to do with my argument ?
Sapphire Dreams
Member
Yeah because every GAF member that said it'[s too much have also said wow it has 8 GIGs of RAM.
Generalization FTW !
I don't understand why the hell GAF is so up in arms over this> When Resistance 1 came out and used all the room on the disk you didn't say it was going to an unoptimized POS. So what's changed now. At this point, there's no need to optimize as it's a first gen title, they can start reducing the RAM usage when they push the capabilities of the PS4.
Some feel that they are better informed about game development particularly coding I guess.
You're arguing from assumption when you say that the game can't possibly take up 5GB
when it fucking does
What do you... holy shit.
Also holy shit at people spewing vitriol at knowledgable people because THEY think they know what constitutes good programming. Do you guys know how long developers have waited for this?? Everyone has been clamouring for the day when he doesn't have to manage memories, selectively compress textures and stealthily cut vertices just so the damn thing fits and runs while still looking good.
Praise be nextgen and couldn't MS just do as Sony and simply double the RAM or has the density on those chips not changed for so long?
Not really, just feel that Blow is the not the right guy to tell us that 8GB ram is not enough, because he managed to almost fill them with his indie game
And the Witness graphics do not help either
I never said that, did i ?
The high-res PC screenshots thread is going to be a treat when this releases.
ElementalMage
Banned
this guy maybe should stay silient
Well, when you post screenshots from Witness and put it up next to Deep Down and Agni's Philosophy while saying "Witness takes 5GB, how much would these take", I can only assume that you're making some sort of argument that the realism of the latter two should somehow require more RAM. I'd say that's a pretty reasonable assumption to make about your argument based on what you said.
What I can tell you is that basing the assumed performance/resource consumption of a game or tech demo solely on it's looks is a foolish path to take. Just because the Witness does not look as graphically detailed as the other two does not mean that it shouldn't be using 5Gb of RAM. I don't understand why this is a hard concept for you to understand.
Cambridge University offered a degree in computer science a decade before Knuth had a PhD!
In general open spaces are heavier than more detailed closeups.
It is in the very first post
"8GB ram is not that much. The Witness is 5GB so far and is an indie game"
He said it's nice that he CAN fill 5GB with his game
it opens up a lot of neat things you can do with your time instead of spending months on memory optimization
he is saying that he would like more, not that it is not enough.
They made game on 200 MB of RAM available on PS3, I am sure they can deal with 5-6 GB of PS4... some common sense needed here.
Saying something is "not that much" is different from saying it's not enough.
Never said otherwise
But that does not mean the proper developer cant find ways to stream the world or partition it and fill any ammount of detail in the 8GB ram
Which is exactly what he was saying.
He doesn't want to have to deal with the streaming if he doesn't have to.
No reason to do something you don't have to.
Go for lower hanging fruit first.
Seems the same to me
And there is more
"Kind of makes me wonder why there is only 8GB"
Does that mean it is enough ?
That is only one part of what he is saying
The other part is that 8GB is very low for next gen, because his indie game takes up 5GB already
Which is the part that i disagree with and find rather laughable
IncandescentPrecept
Banned
We will to agree to disagree here. To me he is clearly saying that 8GB is not enough. Mind you, he is not saying that he cannot work with that - just that Sony and MS should have added more.
Exactly, it is rather clear in at least two of his comments
The argument was never about how he uses the ram for his game, that is irrelevant and a fine choice IMO, i would do the exact same thing
This is still being debated on, my god!
Look, an example is if you use an over abundance of AA on a game like this or even pong, it is going to use more resources. Resources are used in different ways that are not visual as well.
I'm no expert or game dev but this is common sense.
Also they did state that they are loading the entire game at start and not streaming, which does help a lot(not visual). This perhaps takes a lot of the ram.
Look, an example is if you use an over abundance of AA on a game like this or even pong, it is going to use more resources. Resources are used in different ways that are not visual as well.
I'm no expert or game dev but this is common sense.
Also they did state that they are loading the entire game at start and not streaming, which does help a lot(not visual). This perhaps takes a lot of the ram.
I think if he's making any comment about more mainstream, large-scale projects, it's that they won't be able to run without optimization with that much RAM. Which is something he's able to do with his indie title and is seeing some noticeable benefits from that, in both time and cost. How much the bigger titles would need to gain that same sort of liberty, he doesn't seem to speculate, but I think it's more of a side discussion on what it means to have 'enough.'
What is 'enough'? Is 'enough' having the capability, with great optimization, to run a title at all? Or is it when you reach a point where developing a title becomes less time consuming and costly because the hardware is no longer an issue?
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