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How Total Warhammer has been optimised. Using multi threading of CPUs.

S

ShogunDarius

Member
During Total War: Warhammer’s development, our programmers have dedicated more time to engine optimization than any other Total War game. The ultimate aim of this work is to utilise your PC’s resources more effectively, and balance those countless calculations the game performs at any given moment more evenly across CPU cores, while figuring out which tasks we can hand off to the GPU to execute. The net result is improved framerates across the spectrum of PC configurations.


We’re pleased to confirm that Total War: WARHAMMER will also be DX12 compatible, and our graphics team has been working in close concert with AMD’s engineers on the implenentation. This will be patched in a little after the game launches, but we’re really happy with the DX12 performance we’re seeing so far, so watch this space!


In non-DX12 news, our graphics team has spent considerable time on engine optimisations and there’s lots of good news in this regard, so let’s talk about specific engine optimisations which benefit everyone.


Total War has traditionally been quite CPU-bound, with the game-draw and graphics render processes both running on the same CPU thread. Over time, as the engine has evolved and become more demanding, this has become an increasingly important bottleneck for us. During the course of TWWH’s development, we’ve spent time separating these so they now run independently on their own threads. We’ve also optimized our task-system to have better multi-threading performance across the board.


In GPU terms, we’ve shifted our particle simulation pipeline from the pixel shader to the compute shader, which is a more efficient use of the GPU’s time. In fact we’ve done this with several parts of the rendering pipeline, further utilizing the GPU and letting the CPU focus on everything else it has to do.


Long story short: all of this means we’re using the CPU and the GPU more efficiently. TW: Warhammer takes better advantage of multicore CPUs, balancing the load across the cores so that no single core is maxed out and limiting framerates while others sit idle.


We’ve also switched up the Total War engine from 32 to 64-bit. While this brings no tangible performance benefits, we no longer have the 32-bit restriction of a maximum of 2GB of memory devoted to processes. The upshot is we can basically cram a greater variety of models, animations and textures into battles. One neat side benefit though is that it’s brought a reduction in end-turn times. Coupled with further optimisation we’ve done on the AI’s decision-making, this means you’ll enjoy quite noticeably reduced end-turn rounds while all the AI factions take their turns.


In the anti-aliasing department, we have morphological anti-aliasing (MLAA) and multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA x2, x4 and x8) as our AA options. While MLAA is a post-process effect, MSAA renders the same pixels in the scene multiple times, making it the most computationally expensive form of AA, and it therefore hits the framerate hardest. As you probably know, your typical Total War scene draws a hell of a lot of edges to smooth!


We’ve put time aside to optimize our MSAA implementation so that it runs computations in a smarter, more selective way. It doesn’t blanket multi-sample every part of every pixel now – it looks for pixel-edges and only multi-samples those. The upshot is nice smooth edges at a reduced GPU cost than before, and therefore a lower impact on your framerate. It’ll still have an impact of course; just less of an impact than in previous Total War titles.


It all adds up to a smoother-running Total War game, and we’re pretty confident you’ll feel that when you get your hands on it.
Click to expand...


http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Optimisation_Blog
 
R

RoyaleDuke

Banned
Will-Ferrell-I-dont-believe-you.gif


I really don't.
 
P

Pyros_Eien

Member
RoyaleDuke said:
I really don't.
Click to expand...

Review embargo should be lifting later today, but so far from the streams, including the ones not from CA themselves, it seems to run surprisingly well, on fairly high graphic settings. That's with most people doing skirmishes with maximum gold amount to buy the biggest armies possible too.

The game seems pretty solid so far. They've been streaming it everyday for the past week too and I don't remember it crashing or whatever(there were some connection issues at the end of one of the 3way multiplayer games when Yogscast were doing a preview, but that was about it and it looked like client desyncing issues).

So overall, at least from a technical point of view, it seems to be in a fairly good state. Although they haven't shown the higher difficulties so AI could be terrible.
 
Coulomb_Barrier

Coulomb_Barrier

Member
It's weird that on Gaf, the hype for this game is almost non-existent judging by the post count in threads on the subject, but outside Gaf it's pretty hotly anticipated.

OT this is great news, hopefully my 6-core CPU will help run this like butter.
 
ISee

ISee

Member
Well they recommend an i7 4790k (4.4 ghz boost speed), 8gb of ram and a 980 for 1080p/60 on ultra settings. And I even think this won't
be enough.
 
ISee

ISee

Member
Coulomb_Barrier said:
It's weird that on Gaf, the hype for this game is almost non-existent judging by the post count in threads on the subject, but outside Gaf it's pretty hotly anticipated.

OT this is great news, hopefully my 6-core CPU will help run this like butter.
Click to expand...

Maybe because normally it's not a good idea to buy a total war game on release. At least in my experience.
 
Coulomb_Barrier

Coulomb_Barrier

Member
ISee said:
Maybe because normally it's not a good idea to buy a total war game on release. At least in my experience.
Click to expand...

Oh I'm well aware, have been playing the games for nearly 10 years.

I still haven't picked up Rome 2 for this reason believe it or not, and I may never pick it up as this has me more excited and XCOM and Doom are on my radar right now. I'll try and wait 2-3 months after this is released on the 24th before I purchase. Normally I'll wait closer to 6 months.
 
Nikodemos

Nikodemos

Member
ISee said:
Maybe because normally it's not a good idea to buy a total war game on release. At least in my experience.
Click to expand...
There was nothing wrong with Rome, or Medieval II or Shogun II (or the early sprite-based titles). The only two games they've faltered on are Empire and Rome II.
 
H

Houndi101

Member
The Hat Films videos have been running really well even though their gpu is a 780ti and they have three player armies and a computer army in the fight.

What are the specs on Smith/Trott/Ross's computers?

They have their computers at the office provided to them by Chillblast. You can find more info here: http://www.chillblast.com/yogscast.html

Specs (taken from this video description):

i7 4930k CPU
Nvidia 780ti 3GB GPU
32GB 1600Mhz RAM
Asus X79 Deluxe Motherboard
Click to expand...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA0UmptI-f8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-jQnJXNH-s
 
ISee

ISee

Member
Nikodemos said:
There was nothing wrong with Rome, or Medieval II or Shogun II (or the early sprite-based titles). The only two games they've faltered on are Empire and Rome II.
Click to expand...

Still after Rome 2 I'm not giving them any kind of credit in advance... Especially not with their get the chaos warriors "for free" if you preorder tactic. I'd love to dear developers but that sounds too shady.
 
I

icecold1983

Member
havent followed this series too closely but am i wrong in that i remember them claiming some similar bullshit for one of the previous entries?
 
A

Agent_ShortBus

Member
Lol its gonna be a mess like all othe total war games for at least a month.

In other news this will be the first total war game I'll be skipping since Shogun 1 :(
 
C

Camp Freddie

Member
Nikodemos said:
There was nothing wrong with Rome, or Medieval II or Shogun II (or the early sprite-based titles). The only two games they've faltered on are Empire and Rome II.
Click to expand...

Shogun 2 was good but Rome and medieval 2 had major bugs.
In MTW2, shield bonuses were bugged to be penalties, some attack animations didn't work so the units did nothing and knight charges never triggered causing them to raise their lances and trot into enemies. It had horrendous balance issues.
Rome had massively overpowered cavalry where the cheap Roman cavalry could devastate elite infantry in a charge. I even wrote a "fan-patch" to fix some of the bugs.

I want Total Warhammer, but I'll give it a few months unless reviews are amazing.
 
P

Phloxy

Member
I was with you guys, but this was at Paxeast playable on multiple rigs and the game ran incredibly smooth. Much better than any of the early betas Atila or Rome ever did pre release. And the battles were both max unit 20 vs 20. I have much more faith. The funny thing is, one of the devs mentioned Halo Wars 2 as a big reason for there engine being optimized.
 
M

michaelius

Banned
Coulomb_Barrier said:
It's weird that on Gaf, the hype for this game is almost non-existent judging by the post count in threads on the subject, but outside Gaf it's pretty hotly anticipated.

OT this is great news, hopefully my 6-core CPU will help run this like butter.
Click to expand...

I kinda don't like the modern TW games - they added way too much micromanagement into them compered to first titles where whole economy was based on provinces without needing to chase small enemy units that occupied your production site.
 
Vigilant Walrus

Vigilant Walrus

Member
The hate is strong for the title already due to the Chaos DLC. We will see how the community reacts to this one.



I've been unhappy with Total War since Shogun 2. I hate the UI in Rome 2 and Atilla. Garbage. I hate the art style, I hate the ugly character models. I want it smooth and neat. Not bloated, runny dumpy garbage. GARBAGE! (I like saying the word garbage! Also great band!)
 
S

Skinpop

Member
tmespe said:
Guess you're not buying many games for a while then.
Click to expand...

it's a special case.
1. ca has a history of shipping games with horrible performance. vulkan would indicate that they at least are trying to fix their shit.
2. I'm not getting win 10.
3. I'm only moderately interested in the game to begin with, but vulkan would push me over the edge.
 
ISee

ISee

Member
Snooped_Dog said:
All of the press and releases seem very good.
Click to expand...

In this day and age I'm beginning to trust steam user ratings and word of mouth more than press previews or even reviews.

Edit: Man I'm beginning to turn into an old, grumpy man I guess.
 
S

samn

Member
Nikodemos said:
There was nothing wrong with Rome, or Medieval II or Shogun II (or the early sprite-based titles). The only two games they've faltered on are Empire and Rome II.
Click to expand...

I find it very difficult to read the text in Shogun 2 on a 24" 1080p monitor, and I have good eyesight. In DX9 mode it's fine but in DX11 mode all the text is slightly darkened and blurred at the edges. the end result is I can't play the game comfortably.
 
Lister

Lister

Banned
HariKari said:
Did they ever back off making Chaos DLC?
Click to expand...

It's still DLC but it comes free for both pre-orders and anyone who buys the game within the first... week, I want to say? Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Still exctied about this title, even though I know nothing about warhammer.
 
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