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Why Cities: Skylines 2 performs poorly

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Re: Why Cities: Skylines 2 performs poorly

#451

Post by LarsDu88 »

gamblor956 wrote: post #225
tus666 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a classic victim of shitty, shitty software developers who blames tools rather than taking ownership. Or shitty software dev companies that push out crap to meet marketing deadlines. Either way, take your money elsewhere.

Given that a number of other Unity-based games have had the same or similar performance issues, including KSP1, the Endless games, and others, it seems the problem is very much that Cities Skylines 2 is hitting up against the performance limits that the Unity engine is capable of without custom modifications to the engine-layer codebase.

This is simply not correct. City Skylines 2 even went through the trouble of using DOTs which is something you cannot take advantage of in Unreal Engine or Godot. To get more optimal than that on the CPU utilization side, you will be writing your own engine in C++ or Rust.

The fuck up here is whoever was handling the art assets. You simply do not ship a game with such detailed graphics and no LODs. They must've simply been downloading things off the asset store and throwing them in without any regard for performance.

Re: Why Cities: Skylines 2 performs poorly

#452

Post by hombre_fatal »

LtdJorge wrote: post #437
ok_computer wrote: post #404

This is my favorite video using the poor rendering in the game to make cool art effects. Full disclosure there may be an artistic license and post processing but it’s hilarious you can get these visuals in a modern game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ13OFmRF-4

Wrong video? I think that one is using Mirror's Edge Catalyst

They are referring to the video's focus on low-detail game assets that are only rendered in the distance. Though apparently something the game in TFA sorely lacks.

Re: Why Cities: Skylines 2 performs poorly

#453

Post by johnnyanmac »

mvdtnz wrote: post #322
clnq wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is one of the 1,000,000 things to pay attention to in game development. Someone or some software probably just made a mistake in setting up its LOD. Or some dynamic LODding code didn't properly cull the LOD0 mesh. Or that code couldn't be finished in time. Or it was something else. It's completely normal in AAA games to have a few imperfect and in-optimal things. Budgets are always limiting, and developmen…

> It's completely normal in AAA games to have a few imperfect and in-optimal things. No, mate, stop. The state of C:S2 is well beyond anything we should accept as "completely normal". It's a defective product that should not have been released. Stop normalising this crap.

you're missing the forest for the badly rendered tree in some E3 showcase that everyone nitpicked to death. Can we not treat this discussion like a Reddit rant, please?

Gamedev has many shortcuts, and some things simply fall through the cracks. Some are caught and fixed, some are caught and not fixed, some just aren't caught at all. I imagine it's the 2nd case here; There's a unfortunate large amount of bgs these days caught by QA but not given time to fix before publisher mandates.

Re: Why Cities: Skylines 2 performs poorly

#454

Post by johnnyanmac »

jiggawatts wrote: post #449
Dylan16807 wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because it is one of the 1,000,000 things to pay attention to in game development. Finding objects with ridiculous triangle counts is one of the easiest things to do when you have known performance issues. If they didn't have time to do the first, easiest chunk of the work, then something was far more dysfunctional than "it's one of a million things to deal with".

This is on par with: “Sure, there’s a raging fire in that corner of the office, but it’s just one of a million things I had to deal with that day. That’s why I didn’t call the fire department, okay!?” Staying on top of poly count budgets is like game dev 101.

Happen more than you think, despite the absurd metaphor. Maybe there was an inferno in the neighbohood and no time to worry about the fire in the corner of the apartment. Maybe your publisher doesn't care if your house burns down but wants to make money now for their own earnings.

I don't think it's uncommon even outside of gaming for modern software to have these sort of "hidden fires". Games just get a lot more conversation and a lot of niche problems as a 3D real time application.

Re: Why Cities: Skylines 2 performs poorly

#455

Post by johnnyanmac »

dimgl wrote: post #362
clnq wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is one of the 1,000,000 things to pay attention to in game development. Someone or some software probably just made a mistake in setting up its LOD. Or some dynamic LODding code didn't properly cull the LOD0 mesh. Or that code couldn't be finished in time. Or it was something else. It's completely normal in AAA games to have a few imperfect and in-optimal things. Budgets are always limiting, and developmen…

> Because it is one of the 1,000,000 things to pay attention to in game development. This is a cop-out. This doesn't seem like an oversight but rather blatant incompetence. You don't just "not pay attention" to this.

you call it incompetence, devs call it "publishers told us to ship now". You'd think a technical community like this would sympathize with such mandates given across the industry.

Re: Why Cities: Skylines 2 performs poorly

#456

Post by johnnyanmac »

harrid wrote: post #260
ripper1138 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The studio that made this has like 30 devs.

This doesn't fly with a one man team and not with a 1000. It's just badly done, there's no sugarcoating. Those meshes should never end up in the game files.

>This doesn't fly with a one man team and not with a 1000

sounds like someone never worked on a 1000 dev team. random quirks either go unnoticed or are de-prioritized all the time. Most are minor, more and more moderate to major ones are getting through. That's definitely a publisher issue.

Re: Why Cities: Skylines 2 performs poorly

#457

Post by johnnyanmac »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #450
ripper1138 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The studio that made this has like 30 devs.

I'm solodeveloping a game, and there's no fucking way a 100,000 vert mesh is getting in the game without a LOD. My game is running on the Quest 2 at 72 fps stable

sure, it's easy to catch major hiccups when one person has 100% knowledge base. Not so much when 30 devs each have different responsibilities and the optimizer guy is drowining in other fires.

Re: Why Cities: Skylines 2 performs poorly

#458

Post by johnnyanmac »

mcmoor wrote: post #374
Dah00n wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Someone has said "it's ok to be just 10fps on beefy hardware, we can fix that later, let's ship it now". Well, yes, because it doesn't matter. It is on the top seller list on Steam. I agree with you, but we can discuss fixes till our fingers bleed. In the end, the problem is capitalism. https://store.steampowered.com/search/?supportedlang=english...

I've learnt that (initial) success of a sequel is 95% because of its prequel. True performance may be seen if it has another sequel, or DLC, or heck, another 3 months.

That's the benefit about continual updating games. By the time CS3 is ready people won't remember CS2 2023 but whatever 3-6 years of updates does to CS2. For a modern example: who's still complaining about Cyberpunk in 2023?

It's not like Sonic 2006 that is forever broken, sold decently at launch and then cratered the series for the next decade to come.

Re: Why Cities: Skylines 2 performs poorly

#459

Post by johnnyanmac »

christophilus wrote: post #367
Dah00n wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Someone has said "it's ok to be just 10fps on beefy hardware, we can fix that later, let's ship it now". Well, yes, because it doesn't matter. It is on the top seller list on Steam. I agree with you, but we can discuss fixes till our fingers bleed. In the end, the problem is capitalism. https://store.steampowered.com/search/?supportedlang=english...

> In the end, the problem is capitalism. Is this sarcasm? I’m asking seriously. If not, then how is a poorly running game the result of capitalism, and what is the alternative economic model that would produce only high-performance / efficient games?

I don't think it's sarcastic. The game runs poorly because it needed more time for optimizations. It doesn't get more time for optimiztions because the publisher said it needed to ship now. The publisher can say that it needs to ship because they can advertise for good launch sales, because the a large portion of the customer base will buy it at launch as long as there aren't obvious showstoppers.

It's a bit trite to sum that down to "capitalism", but sure. it's the underlying societal buzzword issue

Re: Why Cities: Skylines 2 performs poorly

#460

Post by [deleted] »

solardev wrote: post #258
ajkjk wrote: post #211

Does the game have a campaign mode yet? I'm desperate. I loved C:S 1 for a few hours and then had nothing to do. Just need some kind of challenge mode and I'd be hooked for life.

Have you tried the mods yet? I had a lot of fun coming up with my own goals, like perfect happiness without cars (using only transit, bicycles, and walking paths), or flood-proof cities (the hydro simulation is pretty fun to mess around with), or rebuilding a city after an asteroid (or maybe fifty...) hit it...

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