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AC UNITY patch worsens NPC pop-in. Ubisoft actually puts in new spawning animation.

T

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
I don't see an animation in that .webm, just horrible pop-in.
 
B

bootymac

Neo Member
Palocca said:
Was it common for the NPCs to pop-in so close to the player character like that? I was going to borrow this game from a friend, but if that's going to happen often, I'm not even going to bother.
Click to expand...

I don't recall NPCs popping in anywhere near the player. I'm wondering if Ubi added artificial pop in to sell the "animus glitch" feature
 
M

majik13

Member
Crossing Eden said:
I remember it happening when new sequences would load or at least something very similar as the environments were loading. I've never seen them pop in that literally a as i'm running through the town however. I posted this earlier today in new threads.
http://a.pomf.se/zzhzgx.mp4
Click to expand...

yeah watched this earlier today, noticeable pop in here or there, but not nearly as bad as the gif and webm in the OP. This video makes it look perfectly playable.
 
S

Sawneeks

Banned
Waiting for that webm to load I thought it was going to be around Assasin's Creed Liberation for the Vita type of pop in. Seeing that it is actually worse than the Vita pop in is completely disgusting by Ubi.
 
T

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
Lukas Japonicus said:
The pop-in is animated to look like an animus glitch....
Click to expand...

...That's what I'm not seeing? It looks like bog-standard Sandbox pop-in, AKA: Horrible. But nothing that's "animated like the animus" to me.

I watched it five times. I only notice a "animus"-like "dropping civilians in quickly" pop-in on two of the... like... 50 popped in civilians. The others look like they just suddenly pop-in, no animation running.
 
C

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
CassidyIzABeast said:
Leaving out features can also be seen as anti-piracy measures rather than just being missing features as well.
Click to expand...
You're referring to FC4 right? How wasn't that a legitimate anti-piracy measure exactly? What's the point of bringing that up when it was known that installing the day 1 patch on pc after buying the game?

majik13 said:
yeah watched this earlier today, noticeable pop in here or there, but not nearly as bad as the gif and webm in the OP. This video makes it look perfectly playable.
Click to expand...
It's the typical gameplay experience for me after the patch.
 
A

Ahasverus

Member
giancarlo123x said:
I swear this was in there before.
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I think it was like that in the "loading" first moments of sequences, that's how it has always been in the AC games, now it happens in actual gameplay. And if it was like that before, well, it's hilarous too, and the aptch just made it more noticeable :p
Crossing Eden said:
You're referring to FC4 right? How wasn't that a legitimate anti-piracy measure exactly? What's the point of bringing that up when it was known that installing the day 1 patch on pc after buying the game?
Click to expand...
Haven't you sold enough copies already, Yves? You have our money, you can stop the damage control now.
 
W

WinterX

Banned
Ubi, from now on 2 AC games per year. Two times more bugs, two times more fun for us.

P.S: French broke the game about France... funny, isn't it?
 
F

fernoca

Member
Crossing Eden said:
I remember it happening when new sequences would load or at least something very similar as the environments were loading. I've never seen them pop in that literally a as i'm running through the town however. I posted this earlier today in new threads.
http://a.pomf.se/zzhzgx.mp4
Click to expand...
This has been my experience after the patch too.

Then again, I've been called a blind loyalist that loves to take it from Ubisoft, so...what do I know.

At least your clip saved me from uploading mine with my awesome 300kb upload speed. XD
 
A

Aquamarine

Member
I know they're just doing it to cover up their incompetence...but that's a pretty creative solution.

I actually mind it less now.
 
M

MvmntInGrn

Member
TheSeks said:
...That's what I'm not seeing? It looks like bog-standard Sandbox pop-in, EG: Horrible. But Nothing that's "animated like the animus" to me.

I watched it five times. I only notice a "animus"-like "dropping civilians in quickly" pop-in on two of the... like... 50 popped in civilians. The others look like they just suddenly pop-in, no animation running.
Click to expand...

The close ones show up black with a bit of shimmer before the detailed model comes in. Thats not how pop-in usually looks.

The distant ones are just popping in like traditional pop in does.
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
Vire said:
What I don't understand is how do those three extra NPCs that warp in make the scene better in any way? Watch the gif and tell me there are too few NPC's on screen prior to the pop in... Like what the fuck? All this does is detract from the experience.
Click to expand...

There are that many characters on screen because of the pop in. Look at the start of the video beyond the fairly dense crowd immediately surrounding Arno, and there's like 0 people there. If Arno moved forward from that crowd without pop-in it would be extremely sparse.
 
S

Summer Haze

Banned
TheSeks said:
...That's what I'm not seeing? It looks like bog-standard Sandbox pop-in, AKA: Horrible. But nothing that's "animated like the animus" to me.

I watched it five times. I only notice a "animus"-like "dropping civilians in quickly" pop-in on two of the... like... 50 popped in civilians. The others look like they just suddenly pop-in, no animation running.
Click to expand...

My bad, I didn't notice that you said webm.
 
M

MvmntInGrn

Member
Soulflarz said:
*Is running*
*hits an unloaded npc, who finally pops in as i get 2 feet away*

yeah that wont be annoying, not at all!
Click to expand...
Whats hilarious is that if they never loaded at all the player wouldn't miss them. Pop them in in the distance, sure, but I find it hard to believe they can't make it so some NPCs are skipped if they are going to load too close to the player.
 
A

Ahasverus

Member
MvmntInGrn said:
Whats hilarious is that if they never loaded at all the player wouldn't miss them. Pop them in in the distance, sure, but I find it hard to believe they can't make it so some NPCs are skipped if they are going to load too close to the player.
Click to expand...
It's probably hard programmed into the engine. That seems to be the problem here, they were really going for the "100000000 npcs" as a bullet point since the start.
samn said:
Oh don't start with that.
Click to expand...
It's hard not to. I've seen apologists, but then there's him. I respect him and everything, such devotion is not going to be unnoticed.
 
T

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
MvmntInGrn said:
The close ones show up black with a bit of shimmer before the detailed model comes in. Thats not how pop-in usually looks.

The distant ones are just popping in like traditional pop in does.
Click to expand...

I don't see it, honestly. I gotta be blind if it's in that .webm, because the thing that sticks out like a sore-thumb is the bog-standard pop-in at the distance. I can look directly left and right of Arno but the only thing I see is a "pop-in" of higher-texture detail(?).
 
L

Logash

Member
I haven't seen anything worse about the new patch and I have been playing it for like 2 hours getting chest and doing the side missions. The way i see it there are 3 reasons why that could be; One, I am just lucky and haven't run into them, Two, the animation is making it more obvious and the pop in is just as bad as it always was, and last, people love to hate on this game.
 
J

Javin98

Banned
ProfessorMoran said:
Pop-in is a feature.

20-25 fps cinematic framerate is a feature.

Shitty gameplay is a feature that makes you feel closer to nature, you can almost smell the great outdoors.

Ubisoft has hit the JACKPOT.
Click to expand...
Ok,I laughed harder than I should have. BTW, it's no longer pop in, it's now warp in! XD
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Toki767 said:
Are they seriously still saying that lessening the amount of NPCs won't fix the framerate even a little bit?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure it would. The size of the crowd certainly doesn't seem to affect the frame rate on the PC version.
 
T

travisbickle

Member
Amir0x said:
This shit is hilarious. It's remarkably clever if it wasn't also so sad lol

Ubisoft just admit you guys tried to make a game fit on platforms that couldn't do it and instead of appropriately toning down your "vision" - whatever loose tangle of objectives can be classified as a vision in your milked out world - you guys keep trying to find alternative routes to getting the game not to run like complete watery shit.
Click to expand...

There will be more ambitious, better looking games released this gen if not within the next year. This is a case of too many people working on the game to the point where no one knows what the fuck is going on, look at the bug fixing list that's not a sign of a competent development cycle.
 
M

MvmntInGrn

Member
Ahasverus said:
It's probably hard programmed into the engine. That seems to be the problem here, they were really going for the "100000000 npcs" as a bullet point since the start.
Click to expand...
Yeah, their engine though. Its not like they need to collaborate with Epic on a fix for Unreal.
 
T

TalonJH

Member
Has there ever been a fix for something that was more of a band-aid then this. Its almost comical. I wonder if they could just drop the population by 10% or something. As long as it runs a little better I'm going to jump back in.
 
C

Con_Smith

Banned
xion4360 said:
I think ACU has been shit on enough by now.. the patch got performance to acceptable level so im just going to go ahead and enjoy the game.
Click to expand...

nothing wrong with enjoying the game but pointing out the absurdity of this isn't as problematic as letting the bs slide in the name of fun.
 
M

MvmntInGrn

Member
Zefah said:
I'm not sure it would. The size of the crowd certainly doesn't seem to affect the frame rate on the PC version.
Click to expand...
If there is more pop in now than before than it is obviously related to this stability update. Instead of thinning crowds though, they just don't load crowds that are beyond a certain distance from the player. The result is the same - less NPCs on screen.

It is probably an easier fix for them even if it hurts the presentation more than thinning crowds near the player would...
 
H

hastethedav

Member
If they pop in is a glitch in the animus I'm assuming guards and stuff won't myseriously pop in. But if it were a glitch wouldn't they? Thus making the animus useless since targets could be glitches?
 
C

Celestia

Member
Soulflarz said:
*Is running*
*hits an unloaded npc, who finally pops in as i get 2 feet away*

yeah that wont be annoying, not at all!
Click to expand...

Maybe Ubisoft is doing this to improve our reaction times. Maybe they're training us in the secret underground war against the Templars.
 
Teletraan1

Teletraan1

Banned
The game wouldn't be so bad if it just had the useless NPC count of the previous games +25%. They went way overboard for no real benefit. The way the crowd pops is so distracting. Way more distracting than "There aren't enough people crowded on these streets OMG immersion broken."
 
B

benzy

Member
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