RAND0M VIDE0 GAME NEW5

[Mamoulian War]

12 minutes ago, Gfted1 said:

Removing Denuvo doesn't improve performance of Arkham Knight.

To be fair, that game was such a mess, that its performance would probably not be improved even if the God himself would touch the source code

[Keyrock]

 

[marelooke]

On 9/24/2019 at 7:16 PM, Gfted1 said:

Removing Denuvo doesn't improve performance of Arkham Knight.

tl;dr
Bottom line, if you have a beefy CPU with a bunch of bored cores (so any CPU with more than 4 cores for Arkham Knight) then Denuvo is likely to have little impact on your average FPS, while it does have a minor but noticeable impact on loading times and very much impacts initial game game startup time. There's also a minor increase in memory usage with Denuvo. No testing has been done with any hardware that has 4 cores or less (like i5 CPUs which are quite common still), as far as I know, and no testing has been done where the impact on the CPU has been measured either (as an alternative to using CPUs with less cores).

Long version:
Article doesn't list hardware used for testing, that I could find, so I'm going to assume they tested on some top of the line system, which obviously is not representative of what most people actually use. They also don't say anything substantial about testing methodology This makes their conclusions essentially worthless, so we'll have to focus on the linked YouTube video (which had a Reddit thread that was quite interesting and included a lot of details about the testing methodology and its shortcomings, but at least gave us something tangible to work with).

Since most current day games are GPU limited, not CPU limited (barring certain strategy games, especially the turn based ones), using top-of-the-line hardware is likely not going to result in a noticeable difference in FPS, so if they don't actually measure CPU load it's hard to tell how much extra work the CPU needs, or does not need, to do (and it obviously will need to do extra work, encryption is not free). Testing on something that's more reasonable (eg. a quad core system) would be interesting to see since most games are incapable of using more than 4 cores (and afaiu Arkham Knight is among those), so a system where Denuvo actually has to share a core with the game would, imho, be a lot more representative and indicative of the effect it has (or doesn't have) than a system where there's a bunch of cores that are doing sod all anyway.

The tests in the YouTube video linked from the article video appear to have indicated that while the FPS differences were minor on midrange hardware they were there (which makes sense, given that on-the-fly decryption can't be a "free" operation and will become more detrimental the slower your CPU gets), moreover they indicated a massive decrease in initial game loading times without Denuvo (which isn't taken into account with the benchmark) and minor increases of in-game loading times. It should also be noted that he only ran tests 3 times and let the game "warm up" each time (iow, only the first run for each (Denuvo and non-Denuvo) was from a "cold" boot, while in successive runs data was already cached from prior runs, as indicated by the fact that only the first Denuvo run had the slow game startup). This kind of decreases the value of the results, small sample size and not rebooting between tests isn't ideal, I'd argue.

Whether 1-3 fps is significant is debatable, it probably isn't on a high-end system (then again, it might well be more than this on a lower end system), whether the extra CPU cycles amount to anything tangible has, as far as I can tell, been tested by nobody, so far.

There also wasn't any testing done with regards FPS stability (people noted on the video that the Denuvo version appeared to microstutter at points, can't say I noticed, but hey), if the Denuvo version results in less stable FPS then an average isn't necessarily going to really tell us much about the actual quality of the gameplay experience.

Whether the increased initial loading times (40 or so extra seconds, iirc) are significant is also debatable, and probably up to the individual. I know slow loading games irritate me (hi Destiny 2), but ymmv. The slower in-game loading times might be worrying to people on lower end systems since Arkham Knight streams data while playing, so quick movement around the game world might lead to more issues with Denuvo enabled (like there used to be at the game's release)

 

Edited September 26, 2019 by marelooke

[Zoraptor]

Yeah, there's plenty wrong with the testing methodology. If it drops framerate briefly but fairly frequently there's very little effect on average fps because the drop is short, but quite a large perceived effect from the microstutter.

The slow start up is also pretty significant I would say. If you played a 60 hour game in 1 hour sessions it would be an extra 40 minutes load time overall, or about 1% of your time spent waiting unnecessarily.

[213374U]

Apparently Encased RPG released to early access. Post-apoc iso RPG by makers of DOS/2 and Age of Decadence. Or so they say. Looks good but... I've been hurt before.

So this isn't as much me posting news as asking for infos or opinions on this, as I had no idea this was being made until five minutes ago.

[daven]

1 hour ago, 213374U said:

Apparently Encased RPG released to early access. Post-apoc iso RPG by makers of DOS/2 and Age of Decadence. Or so they say. Looks good but... I've been hurt before.

So this isn't as much me posting news as asking for infos or opinions on this, as I had no idea this was being made until five minutes ago.

Huh?!?! Larian made Age of Decadence and this????

[Malcador]

1 hour ago, 213374U said:

Apparently Encased RPG released to early access. Post-apoc iso RPG by makers of DOS/2 and Age of Decadence. Or so they say. Looks good but... I've been hurt before.

So this isn't as much me posting news as asking for infos or opinions on this, as I had no idea this was being made until five minutes ago.

I'll keep an eye on it and see how it is when, or if, it gets finished. Does seem like it's Early Early Access, sort of annoying this thing is normal now, really.  

Edited September 27, 2019 by Malcador

[Keyrock]

14 minutes ago, daven said:

Huh?!?! Larian made Age of Decadence and this????

No, it probably means one of the devs that is working on Encased RPG used to work at Larian and another dev used to work at Iron Tower.

Anyway, this looks like every single crowdfunded RPG. It could be good, I hope it is. I don't touch early access, I have no intentions of paying to beta test somebody's game. As far as I'm concerned, Encased RPG is not out yet. I guess the nice thing about early access is that there are plenty of impatient suckers devoted enthusiasts out there that will buy this unfinished game and play it now, so by the time this game comes out for realsies, 3 years from now, or whatever, there will be plenty of data out there with which I can make an informed purchasing decision.

[213374U]

44 minutes ago, daven said:

Huh?!?! Larian made Age of Decadence and this????

Not quite. Poor choice of words, sorry. "They" worked on Divinity and AoD, but are not necessarily the makers. I couldn't find info on exactly who did precisely what, though. Could be QA people or an artist and it would still be technically true.

And yeah, I agree with you guys about EA. I barely have time to play finished games. Then again, they are at least upfront about the game being unfinished, instead of just dropping it to hit the quarterly sales target or whatever and then finish it later... maybe. Steam info page says they expect the game to be in EA for nine (!) months. So at least a year.

[algroth]

 

Not "news" per se, but a nice vid all the same!

[Keyrock]

Looks like YAXC (Yet Another XCOM Clone). It promises to deliver "a gritty story for a mature audience", as opposed to the lighthearted story in the XCOM games. On the positive side, the game does feature an Asian lady flaunting generous amounts of cleavage, so there's that.

[Malcador]

8 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

an Asian lady flaunting generous amounts of cleavage

Sold.

[HoonDing]

you mean Asian ladyboy

[algroth]

27 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

the game does feature an Asian lady flaunting generous amounts of cleavage

They certainly know how to target mature audiences at least.

[Melusina]

https://gematsu.com/2019/09/atelier-ryza-sales-top-150000-in-first-week-in-japan

[Humanoid]

New AMD bundles give you the choice of Borderlands 3 or Outer Worlds for a Ryzen CPU (or both for the top end models), but for a GPU the choice is instead one of of Borderlands 3 or the new Ghost Recon. (The 3 month Xbox game pass still applies to both)

Goddammit AMD, why not just let us choose any of the three?

Still, at least it's a competitive offer now, compared to when it was just the game pass while nVidia was offering permanent games. I believe their current bundled game is the new CoD.

 

P.S. If you want a bundled Borderlands 3, look into getting a Samsung SSD instead perhaps.

Edited October 1, 2019 by Humanoid

[Zoraptor]

That's cyclical. I got three (permanent) games last year with my Vega (AC: Odyssey, Star Control 3 and Strange Brigade; and could actually give 2 of them away unlike some of nVidia's offering which are tied to a specific video card) when nVidia was offering only one game- and for a while that offer was valid nVidia were offering none at all. That was a pretty amazing offer actually considering it was valid even with a 4GB 570.

AMD should probably be making sure their high end processors are actually available before bundling anything with them though. In a lot of places they're semi permanently out of stock and they aren't even managing to fulfill all the accumulated back orders when they do get new deliveries.

[Humanoid]

Yeah, bought a 570 for my sister last year and I ended up with the copy of Odyssey (because she couldn't be bothered making a Uplay account), not that I've played it. The launch incentives for Navi on the other hand were certainly weak, but understandable from a business perspective as they were hardly needed.

I wonder though whether Ghost Recon is considered a higher "value" product (still available with the 570 mind you) and why I couldn't trade down to Outer Worlds if I so desired. Then again, maybe it's just as well if I want my copy to be on the MS store platform. Oh well, the weak AUD is heavily disincentivising any hardware purchases anyway.

[Malcador]

 

On second thought, this isn't anything new, really.

 

 

[Malcador]

https://www.pcgamer.com/broken-roads-is-a-philosophical-crpg-set-in-a-post-disaster-australian-outback/

No word on a Bogan faction though.

 

[Gfted1]

Pug hired to make alien sounds for Halo Infinite.

[Malcador]

 

The subtle majesty of that collateral damage.  

Edited October 3, 2019 by Malcador

[Malcador]

RDR 2 coming out for PC  - https://www.pcgamer.com/red-dead-redemption-2-pc-announced/

Sort of meh on it, but seems like a lot of people wanted this.

[Hurlshort]

Queue the whining about it taking an exta month to arrive on Steam.

[Malcador]

1 hour ago, Hurlshot said:

Queue the whining about it taking an exta month to arrive on Steam.

Should have made it Epic exclusive just for the hell of it.