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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Skyrim Dawnguard PS3: Punished for choosing wrong console

Scoobes on 17 October 2012
mantlepiecek said:
walsufnir said:
mantlepiecek said:

Skyrim is most definitely lacking in video memory, not system memory.


What is your opinion based off? To me it's absolutely clear that Skyrim has strong demand of *main memory* because of the complexity this game has - the growing save-file has already been mentioned by another poster.

Skyrim isn't really doing anything other than rendering huge open world environments - something which requires a lot of GPU memory.

CPU memory is still a requirement of course. But I can't see why specifically skyrim will need more system memory compared to other games that perform loads better than it.

Skyrim tracks a huge number of variables (most objects, NPCs, dragon positions, quests) and much of it is uses the system RAM. Any object you move is tracked.  Other open world games don't track anywhere near as many variables.




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binary solo on 18 October 2012
fillet said:
binary solo said:
PS3 just required a different technical solution, which is to only render items in the immediate environment of the player. That way there's a lot less demand on the RAM, despite there being hundreds or even thousands of item movements and placements across the entire game world. The only thing is that would require Bethesda to make major changes to the game engine, which would increase the cost of making the PS3 version immensely, and thereby make the game much less profitable.

Of course they could have started out by looking at the architecture of all the machines they'd be putting the game onto and design the software accordingly, rather than design the software to work well on 2 out of 3 of rhe machines and be sub-standard on the 3rd.

That is exactly what Bethesday - and ALL other developers do and have done since 3D gaming first came about on the PC in 1995.

All 3D graphics cards only render the image that is actually visible using memory on the graphics card. Other assets that could be needed before a load point are stored in RAM.

There is no solution.

Right, so it's 1995 thinking being used in 2012. No one's come up with a smarter way of doing it than loading it all on RAM. Why is that? Because more RAM has always been the answer rather than using existing resources in a different way. As pointed out above, you can stream stuff of the HDD but it takes longer to do so. If you have some of the data on RAM and there is a dynamic interchange between RAM and HDD then that's a hardware solutionm that merely needs the software to operate it. It can be done for Skyrim or Dawnguard because they software is already written.

PS3 presented a problem for Bethesda's ambition. Bethesda chose not to address the problem at the design phase, or more likely they had no idea it would be a problem so they didn't even realise they might need to find a solution.



“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell

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J_Allard on 18 October 2012

LOL thanks for the laughs in this thread ethomaz



lilbroex on 18 October 2012
binary solo said:
fillet said:
binary solo said:
PS3 just required a different technical solution, which is to only render items in the immediate environment of the player. That way there's a lot less demand on the RAM, despite there being hundreds or even thousands of item movements and placements across the entire game world. The only thing is that would require Bethesda to make major changes to the game engine, which would increase the cost of making the PS3 version immensely, and thereby make the game much less profitable.

Of course they could have started out by looking at the architecture of all the machines they'd be putting the game onto and design the software accordingly, rather than design the software to work well on 2 out of 3 of rhe machines and be sub-standard on the 3rd.

That is exactly what Bethesday - and ALL other developers do and have done since 3D gaming first came about on the PC in 1995.

All 3D graphics cards only render the image that is actually visible using memory on the graphics card. Other assets that could be needed before a load point are stored in RAM.

There is no solution.

Right, so it's 1995 thinking being used in 2012. No one's come up with a smarter way of doing it than loading it all on RAM. Why is that? Because more RAM has always been the answer rather than using existing resources in a different way. As pointed out above, you can stream stuff of the HDD but it takes longer to do so. If you have some of the data on RAM and there is a dynamic interchange between RAM and HDD then that's a hardware solutionm that merely needs the software to operate it. It can be done for Skyrim or Dawnguard because they software is already written.

PS3 presented a problem for Bethesda's ambition. Bethesda chose not to address the problem at the design phase, or more likely they had no idea it would be a problem so they didn't even realise they might need to find a solution.

The first console to do real 3D, to my knowledge, was the Virtual Boy. Tha twas released in 1995 as well. It was glasses free at that.



PearlJam on 18 October 2012

This is the PS3s fault, Bethesda is at fault for releasing the port as is. Anyone who knows anything about this engine would understand. Skyrim runs on PS3 the same way it would run on a crappy PC with a weak GPU and not enough RAM.

What they could have done was plan for lots overhead. They would have had to lower texture resolutions, simplify geometry, remove tons of junk, clutter and misc items as well as NPCs and creatures/enemies from the game. Many of the scripts that run would need to be simplified as well.

You basically can't use a pretty good chunk of the system's power (you leave some for reserve), so as the gamesave grows, and the active scripts and quests run in the back, the engine will have resources to pull from.

So for a large majority of the game many resources would be idle or go to waste but it would help with the problem down the road and with DLC as well. Either that or lower the settings dynamically as the game needs it (Creation engine is really bad at this), but who wants to play a game that keeps getting uglier the longer you play?

What this would lead to is a very ugly, simplified and basically gimped version of the game but it wouldn't have as many performance issues. Now why would they go through all that trouble for 1 system when the other 2 can handle the game just right? Just so that PS3 owners could complain about getting a gimped version?

The PS3 can't handle the game, simple as that.



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Hynad on 18 October 2012
lilbroex said:
binary solo said:
fillet said:
binary solo said:
PS3 just required a different technical solution, which is to only render items in the immediate environment of the player. That way there's a lot less demand on the RAM, despite there being hundreds or even thousands of item movements and placements across the entire game world. The only thing is that would require Bethesda to make major changes to the game engine, which would increase the cost of making the PS3 version immensely, and thereby make the game much less profitable.

Of course they could have started out by looking at the architecture of all the machines they'd be putting the game onto and design the software accordingly, rather than design the software to work well on 2 out of 3 of rhe machines and be sub-standard on the 3rd.

That is exactly what Bethesday - and ALL other developers do and have done since 3D gaming first came about on the PC in 1995.

All 3D graphics cards only render the image that is actually visible using memory on the graphics card. Other assets that could be needed before a load point are stored in RAM.

There is no solution.

Right, so it's 1995 thinking being used in 2012. No one's come up with a smarter way of doing it than loading it all on RAM. Why is that? Because more RAM has always been the answer rather than using existing resources in a different way. As pointed out above, you can stream stuff of the HDD but it takes longer to do so. If you have some of the data on RAM and there is a dynamic interchange between RAM and HDD then that's a hardware solutionm that merely needs the software to operate it. It can be done for Skyrim or Dawnguard because they software is already written.

PS3 presented a problem for Bethesda's ambition. Bethesda chose not to address the problem at the design phase, or more likely they had no idea it would be a problem so they didn't even realise they might need to find a solution.

The first console to do real 3D, to my knowledge, was the Virtual Boy. Tha twas released in 1995 as well. It was glasses free at that.

Glasses free?

Are you kidding me???



ethomaz on 18 October 2012

Hynad said:

Glasses free?

Are you kidding me???

He isn't.

The Virtual Boy is the first videogame console "that was supposed to be capable of displaying "true 3D graphics" out of the box, in a form of virtual reality".



Hynad on 18 October 2012
ethomaz said:

Hynad said:

Glasses free?

Are you kidding me???

He isn't.

The Virtual Boy is the first videogame console "that was supposed to be capable of displaying "true 3D graphics" out of the box, in a form of virtual reality".


Yes, I know what the Virtual Boy is.  But calling this:

... glasses free is quite laughable.

Oh, right. It's more like having goggles on.  Only thing is that those goggles were so damn heavy that they needed their own tripod, cause your neck would have gotten sore in 2 minutes if you had to actually have them strapped on.

So, be grateful that the companies that gave us the current 3D materials didn't take inspiration from Nintendo, and decided to go the goggles-free route instead.



Stilbon on 21 October 2012

I'm still trying to understand how Bethesda is having problems getting the DLC to work on the PS3. Even tho I am upset that once again PS3 owners are place at the back of the line when it comes to multiplatform content, I will not let it dictate what console I play my games on. I bought a PS3 because PSN has free to play multiplayer and the graphic are so much better than the Xbox 360. 

 

 



Failure is the act of standing still!

J_Allard on 22 October 2012

Well until they come out and detail it, all we can do is speculate.

But prior to the release of Skyrim they commented multiple times about how big of a hurdle the PS3's memory issue would be so it's safe to assume there was some unforeseen issue there when they add the DLC. And it probably requires a ton of reworking the engine. Maybe so much so that Bethesda has begun to question whether it's worth it or not.

They have had Sony's developer assistance team or whatever helping for awhile and still haven't fixed it. So that tells me it's a pretty critical issue. And I say unforeseen because it would be incredibly dumb of them to make such a big deal about the DLC if they knew PS3 owners would be **** out of luck.

I platinum'd the game on PS3 and got over 200 hours out of it so DLC or no DLC, Bethesda and Bethesda Game Studios are ok in my book.