-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Was Crysis poorly optimized?
- Thread starter MrOogieBoogie
- Start date
Dictator93
Member
Its gameplay code is single threaded. The only reason you will not get 60fps is because of that. Otherwise everything scales extremely well with modern hardware.
I wouldn't call it open world... Open level maybe
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
I had been having issues running Crysis at a decent frame rate on my 960GTX. I had to drop quite a few setting to medium/low just to get a framerare that hovered between the 30s-50fps. I couldn't understand how I was having such trouble.
My problem? Windows 7 had parked my CPU cores so I was only using 5% of it's power! So I unpacked them, and now I'm running it at 60fps at very high settings.
It seems the game is pretty CPU bound. My only issue now is the game is locking out the "Objects quality" setting to low. I can't change it, or at least haven't figured out a way around it outside of making a couple config changes.
But yeah, poorly optimized in my opinion.
Windom Earle
Banned
A quick search turned up this:
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/cryte...ysis-2-didnt-implement-tessellation-properly/
But I also remember a different article going into more detail on how the artists had no restrictions on how to build the levels, so when they put everything together it turned out to be a huge mess.
A long time ago I was also kinda involved with Crytek, so I know a little bit about how hectic and rushed the development got towards the end.
Edit: As you say above, the single threaded nature can even push top notch CPUs to its knees today.
0.1.1.2.3.5.8.13.21.34.55
Banned
8800 Ultra ran it pretty well at launch. I didn't have everything maxed, but I was able to maintain above 30.
Dictator93
Member
His quote is talking about scaling, making it so that all settings look great. To quote their Cryengine 3 tech presentation:
The settings on Very High ran so poorly back then because the samples, complexity, precision was just so darn high and hardware could not keep up. Hence why they made multi-tiered effects in CE3.
Unoptimized really should mean "made it scale visually better to lower end hardware" in this case.
Crysis is something I am really proud of.
A game made in germany which was undoubted one of the best (looking) shooters of all time.
A game that really took advantage of the pc.
The only game I remember doing something similar was Metro 2033 and Witcher series.
Man, have the mighty fallen with Crysis 2 and now I don't even know anything about them.
When I see games like MGS PP or Far Cry it's really sad that a lot of the greatness of Crysis is still missing in modern games.
A game made in germany which was undoubted one of the best (looking) shooters of all time.
A game that really took advantage of the pc.
The only game I remember doing something similar was Metro 2033 and Witcher series.
Man, have the mighty fallen with Crysis 2 and now I don't even know anything about them.
When I see games like MGS PP or Far Cry it's really sad that a lot of the greatness of Crysis is still missing in modern games.
Have You even read the article, which is stupid btw? Its a modder, not a dev.
They never said it was unoptimized mess, though they said it wasnt optimized as it should in some CE3 presentations. I cant point which, because i dont have PowerPoint installed.
Check: CE3: Reaching the speed of light, Secrets of CryEngine 3 technology,
---
Also this quote - http://crytek.com/assets/Crysis-2-Key-Rendering-Features.pdf
Crysis still today does things with its AI that few if any other games do. Especially Crysis 2 and 3, which were massively simplified.
In Crysis, the AI not only knows how to dynamically traverse complex terrain, but it can do so recalculating everything in real-time, allowing enemies to navigate around constantly changing destructed environments.
Knock a tree down? The AI knows how to move around it seamlessly.
Blow up a shack? The AI knows how to change directions or even modify their approach since they know certain cover no longer exists.
And compared to pretty much every other open-world game out there, the destruction isn't just dynamic, but it's persistent too. All that debris stays in the world instead of magically disappearing and falling through the world. Every tree you down stays there as real objects in the game. Every shack you blow apart has panels which fly everywhere creating new obstacles in your way or new pieces of cover.
As much as I love Far Cry 4 and other modern open-world games, still today none of them come close to what Crysis was doing nearly a decade ago.
Was it optimized? Well, I played through the entire game (except the final level) on high settings on a $900 computer when it came out. That included a modest dual-core CPU, a $200 8800GT, and 4GB of ram (I think). That was at 1680x1050 resolution.
In Crysis, the AI not only knows how to dynamically traverse complex terrain, but it can do so recalculating everything in real-time, allowing enemies to navigate around constantly changing destructed environments.
Knock a tree down? The AI knows how to move around it seamlessly.
Blow up a shack? The AI knows how to change directions or even modify their approach since they know certain cover no longer exists.
And compared to pretty much every other open-world game out there, the destruction isn't just dynamic, but it's persistent too. All that debris stays in the world instead of magically disappearing and falling through the world. Every tree you down stays there as real objects in the game. Every shack you blow apart has panels which fly everywhere creating new obstacles in your way or new pieces of cover.
As much as I love Far Cry 4 and other modern open-world games, still today none of them come close to what Crysis was doing nearly a decade ago.
Was it optimized? Well, I played through the entire game (except the final level) on high settings on a $900 computer when it came out. That included a modest dual-core CPU, a $200 8800GT, and 4GB of ram (I think). That was at 1680x1050 resolution.
It wasnt. Open an editor and put C2 and C3 NPCs to similar map to Crysis 1 and see how they behave.
Gamesadict
Member
Ran pretty well in my 8800gt (and previously 8600gt) + Athlon x2 at medium/high (mostly high) settings, around 30fps, back in 2008.
Played it a couple of years ago on a 7850 and Phenom II, everything Ultra, 60fps with very few drops.
Haven't tried it with my new i7, but if a Phenom II ran it so well at Ultra...
Never experienced problems running it. So I'd say no.
Played it a couple of years ago on a 7850 and Phenom II, everything Ultra, 60fps with very few drops.
Haven't tried it with my new i7, but if a Phenom II ran it so well at Ultra...
Never experienced problems running it. So I'd say no.
Rushersauce
Banned
Well, it looked better. At least vs vanilla 2. Also, IIRC, Crytek scrapped a lot of effects from Cryengine 3 to make it run on consoles.
Dictator93
Member
This thread just made me nostalgic.
Here are a bunch of images my friend took of the Crysis demo in 2007 and the subesquent email exchange.
If you look at the screenshots, they still look surprsingly awesome given the fact the game came out 8 years ago.
Here are a bunch of images my friend took of the Crysis demo in 2007 and the subesquent email exchange.
If you look at the screenshots, they still look surprsingly awesome given the fact the game came out 8 years ago.
subject: it's all over the place
body: No matter how nicely I asked it, Crysis refused to be gentle with my computer.
If only Crysis 2 and Crysis 3 did everything else I mentioned about dynamic and persistent environment destruction....
thelastword
Banned
It did not run great on the 8800 series of cards, unless you played at very low resolutions, even then, you could not play this on ultra. Even at medium settings it was constantly below 30fps on such a card. Tbh, even sli 8800gt's averaged around 35fps at med settings at 1900*1200.
I told You, open editor and make a map with dynamic destruction. You can do that easily.
http://www.crytek.com/news/the-crysis-2-mod-sdk-is-here
---
No, they didnt. They actually added a lot.
Stop throwing those assumption as facts, they are not true. There a lot of tech publications on Crytek's site to prove You wrong.
http://crytek.com/cryengine/presentations&page=2
By modern standards, Crysis is absolutely poorly optimized. As others have pointed out, it is severely thread-limited, meaning that CPU times often bottleneck performance even on systems that would be more than capable of running the game were the workload more evenly distributed. That's pretty much the definition of poor optimization. Let's not forget that the game also shipped with a 64-bit executable that famously ran slower than the 32-bit version, even on 64-bit hardware.
That's not to say that the engine was poorly designed. Crysis is definitely a product of its time, and it would be ridiculous to suggest that a game releasing in 2007 should have support for arbitrary CPU cores, or that they're responsible for the performance issues common to all 64-bit compilers at the time.
But regardless of the context, it's strange to see a game from 2007 fail to run smoothly on hardware from 6+ years after it was released. It suggests that they overreached, putting more detail into the game than machines could reasonably display, incorrectly assuming that hardware would scale in a certain way over the coming years. The result is a bottleneck that is so obvious and prevalent that people are still talking about it in 2015. It's an understandable mistake to make, but lets not fool ourselves into thinking it wasn't a mistake. There's a reason they built CryEngine 3 from the ground up after Crysis shipped. Major changes were needed if the engine was going to stay relevant.
That's not to say that the engine was poorly designed. Crysis is definitely a product of its time, and it would be ridiculous to suggest that a game releasing in 2007 should have support for arbitrary CPU cores, or that they're responsible for the performance issues common to all 64-bit compilers at the time.
But regardless of the context, it's strange to see a game from 2007 fail to run smoothly on hardware from 6+ years after it was released. It suggests that they overreached, putting more detail into the game than machines could reasonably display, incorrectly assuming that hardware would scale in a certain way over the coming years. The result is a bottleneck that is so obvious and prevalent that people are still talking about it in 2015. It's an understandable mistake to make, but lets not fool ourselves into thinking it wasn't a mistake. There's a reason they built CryEngine 3 from the ground up after Crysis shipped. Major changes were needed if the engine was going to stay relevant.
LordOfChaos
Member
I think it's most correct to call it a product of it's time. Even on consoles devs were scratching their heads at good multithreading in 2007. C2 and 3 also pulled back the level of details on distant trees and foliage iirc, whereas Crysis 1 drew a long ass ammount.
I miss those days though, these days good looking games are nothing unusual, but there's nothing you can quite point to like Crysis 1 in 2007 and say "that, that there is the best looking".
Some things like the amount of shading effects just in leaves and how foliage moved is still ahead of some modern games.
I remember when it came out people tried to argue Halo 3 or Killzone 2 or 3 looked better than it. Lol.
Yeah, that's fair, I think the thing is that single thread performance on desktops hasn't actually come that far from 2007, which they may have expected. Instead we've gotten more cores and the expectation for devs to use them well, we went wider instead of taller.
Even Valve was dragging their feet there hoping for higher performance single cores rather than additional cores.
I miss those days though, these days good looking games are nothing unusual, but there's nothing you can quite point to like Crysis 1 in 2007 and say "that, that there is the best looking".
Some things like the amount of shading effects just in leaves and how foliage moved is still ahead of some modern games.
I remember when it came out people tried to argue Halo 3 or Killzone 2 or 3 looked better than it. Lol.
Yeah, that's fair, I think the thing is that single thread performance on desktops hasn't actually come that far from 2007, which they may have expected. Instead we've gotten more cores and the expectation for devs to use them well, we went wider instead of taller.
Even Valve was dragging their feet there hoping for higher performance single cores rather than additional cores.
Dictator93
Member
Indeed. Assuming single threaded performance would keep increasing as it had before was the achilles heel of the engine.
It was also a heavy preference at the time, as people like JC and otherwise wanted the market to go that way as well.
edit: Durante, if you read this. Could you per chance post that one graph displaying single threaded performance over time vs. total multi-core performance?
Rushersauce
Banned
Wow, so defensive.
That's why I added IIRC. I didn't state anything as fact.
Sorry if I offended you.
Dictator93
Member
I am not sure if that would ever be possible even, the thing that slows it down currently is AI code which is all in lua if I recall.
icecold1983
Member
i think an area thats overlooked in these threads is whether or not the devs made decisions that have a good visual return to performance ratio. crysis 1 was not stellar in that regard.
I dunno OP, Crysis ran pretty damn well on my E8500 and 8800GT, ran even better with some custom ini files, rarely dipped under 30 fps. I don't know what Crytek did but even at 30 FPS Crysis felt really, really smooth. Was that just their motion blur compensating maybe?
So is FC3 just poorly optimized? I can't keep an even 60 for the life of me, dips into the low 30s in villages that has those weird christmas lights. Meanwhile BF4 on ultra is doing just fineee.
So is FC3 just poorly optimized? I can't keep an even 60 for the life of me, dips into the low 30s in villages that has those weird christmas lights. Meanwhile BF4 on ultra is doing just fineee.
The Janitor
Member
Crysis is also a game that doesn't have to be at 60 fps to feel smooth, frame drops aren't as noticable as in most games.
Danny Dudekisser
I paid good money for this Dynex!
Ran like shit when it came out, even on good hardware. You could drop the resolution and the visual effects to make it run a little better, but then it looked like crap. I built a new computer to run this game, but ended up never really enjoying it much due to the performance.
Portugeezer
Member
Played it in 2011 and it felt unoptimised.
xemumanic
Member
What I never got was (and I'm going to paraphrase here because I don't remember the exact wording) that CryEngine 2/3 was backwards compatible with art assets and other such file formats from CE1, and that's partially how the original Crysis was ported to the 360/PS3. An amazing port considering the hardware.
I don't get why this engine port wasn't released on PC. There's still a sales opportunity for a Crysis trilogy on the PC and consoles, but I guess Peter Moore isn't cool with that.
See? He gets the idea.
I don't get why this engine port wasn't released on PC. There's still a sales opportunity for a Crysis trilogy on the PC and consoles, but I guess Peter Moore isn't cool with that.
See? He gets the idea.
Complistic
Member
parts of it were, but overall, no.
He is former modder who has been part of the team since 2011. Wtf are you on about?
Dictator93
Member
He is mainly talking about optimizing for lower systems through scaling visuals though, and not saying "it was coded poorly".
Which, due to the nebulous phrasing of the term "unoptimized" in general, confuddles this thread.
We should probably reference optimization in three ways.
1. Changing some process paradagmitically to achieve the same result but with better performance
2. Reducing the hardware strain of some process so that it runs better
3. In the way Xzero and Cryengine documentation mentions it, "making the process scale visually on multiple configs"
GPU wise Metro is actually harder on your PC than Crysis 1 if you turn on Advanced DX11 DOF.
He said that xzero wasn't a dev which is bs. I say anything else about their post.
Dictator93
Member
Oh yeah, xzero was picked up. Funnily enough, most of his shader suite stuff was not used in crysis 2. Which is surprsing, given how similar some of them are.
This is still my dream.
Dictator93
Member
This one?
Yes! Thanks for posting it.
That orange line is the main reason why Crysis runs the way it does today. I really am not sure if any CPU can play a level like the Harbor or Assault @ 60fps, even today.
ShutterMunster
Junior Member
It made by XPS 720 melt. I had like a 2.6Ghz Quad Core in there and I OC'd my GTX 8800, I believe it was. Obtaining 30FPS on Ultra was a struggle.
2007 actually, 2008 had it's expansion.
lukeskymac
Member
I'm assuming you mean at stock clocks. Surely a heavily OC'd high end CPU can do it?
Dictator93
Member
The newest intels @ 4.5 or so could probably hit minimum 60 these days. Good point. A retro "can it run crysis?" thread on its anniversarry would be great.
This one?
Imo, a logarithmic distribution fits better the second set of points. :S
Windom Earle
Banned
I dunno? Why is it stupid? No need to fly off the handle, but I know you're the biggest Cytek fanboy on this board. Modder or not, he got hired by Crytek and should know this engine quite well. Another quote:
Anyway, as I said there were other sources for how unoptimized the engine is, even though it hurts some feelings here. Not sure why.
Similar threads
- Poll