Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Switch got a touch screen as well?
A teeny tiny one in comparison.
And not a great one, as well.
The journey to Nintendo Switch
61–70 of 169 posts
Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch
#62If the switch proves anything it's that you don't have to pay $1600 for a GPU to enjoy amazing games. Or the other way round, if you pay $1600 for a gpu it does not mean that you'll be able to play any good games.
Depends entirely on what you play. Cyberpunk 2077 in 4K with DLSS and raytracing is exquisite...
I looked up what this meant, and I think it means this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk8Id06dcAQ
Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would absolutely love an iPad version. Much more than the Switch version (which I am going to get anyway).
Might be the only thing that can utilize all the power of an M1 Pro!
The devs have talked about performance bottlenecks a lot - the real benefit of Factorio on the M1 would be the RAM interconnect, as most of the performance issues are related to RAM latency. Upgrading your PC from (e.g.) DDR3 to DDR4 gives you a whole lot more FPS per $ than upgrading your graphics card or CPU.
Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m kind of surprised (and bummed) that they ported it to the Switch and not the iPad. The Switch is a bit slow (can’t imagine big bases performing well) and I’m not convinced using a game pad will work well. By contrast, modern iPads are smoking fast and I bet an iPad touch interface would suit the game fairly well. Ah well, maybe some day.
For anyone who wants a Factorio-like on iOS, there's a great game called Builderment. It's not as complex as Factorio but it does get rather involved. Works well with touch and even works well on the smaller screens of iPhones.
I was going to check it out, but IAPs are full of gem packs, which is not very encouraging. How is the freemium aspect?
Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch
#65> It allowed me to make many Nintendo Switch specific optimizations, and even some optimizations for the PC version Are there significant CPU-specific optimizations that can be made for the Switch / ARMv8 that wouldn't apply to x86-64? I've never really dug into things at that level, I wouldn't know where to begin except for like vector instructions.
My understanding is ARM has less strict memory (ordering) guarantees, as well as the inability to explicitly trigger cache line flushes from user-space. That being said, I imagine most of the optimizations would come from the particular aspects of the GPU/graphics pipeline, which I imagine is substantially different from the standard PC structure.
Yeah you can always cut corners with the GPU if you have to, but Factorio has the large problem of making a CPU-intensive deterministic simulation run at 60 Hz.
Thinking about it some more, there are also probably some tweaks you could use for situations with limited resources which wouldn't apply to most PCs, but would affect the Switch.
Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch
#66> Removing all uses of undefined behaviour is probably a fool's errand, as it would require significant changes throughout the code that would take time and come with a performance impact, all for no immediate practical benefit. So I just hunted down the undefined behaviour cases that actually broke determinism. This was easy enough, as we have plenty of tools we use to test determinism. By comparing the game state C…
Automated testing is great! More game developers should get serious about using it, even if you're not doing full coverage unit testing like business software.
Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
BotW got some after-launch patches that significantly reduced the launch time. They did this by overclocking the Switch during load. I didn't see any mention of boost/overclock in the Factorio writeup, though.
Do you know if this technique is available for all games or just Nintendo's own? It seems like it would be easy to cause issues if games were allowed to mess with the clocking willy-nilly, so I assumed that it was only done on Zelda because it's a first-party title (and one of the biggest on the console).
This is available for any game since 2019, here’s an article talking about it: https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2019-nintendo-switc...
Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m kind of surprised (and bummed) that they ported it to the Switch and not the iPad. The Switch is a bit slow (can’t imagine big bases performing well) and I’m not convinced using a game pad will work well. By contrast, modern iPads are smoking fast and I bet an iPad touch interface would suit the game fairly well. Ah well, maybe some day.
I think you could say this about a lot of games. IMO, Apple doesn't make it easy to port a game from PC to iPad (app store guidelines in particular), and I doubt there are as many iPad gamers as there are other platforms.
This is true but Factorio is not Madden; for example they have a sizable (for Factorio) built-in audience of everyone making iOS apps. The pencil would work well for input, I'd gladly buy it again.
Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you know if this technique is available for all games or just Nintendo's own? It seems like it would be easy to cause issues if games were allowed to mess with the clocking willy-nilly, so I assumed that it was only done on Zelda because it's a first-party title (and one of the biggest on the console).
I've used this technique in the past on various shipped Switch games. It's an API that puts the Switch into "CPU Boost Mode". It overclocks the CPU at the expense of GPU. It's suitable only for loading screens or other areas of the game where you don't need to render at more than single-digit FPS, but can produce a 20-50% improvement in loading time.
Interesting, curious if Factorio is using it then.
Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would certainly blow the Switch version out of the water performance-wise.
It would... on the other hand, iPads also cost a lot more.
It’s more a case of playing it on an iPad I already have. Otherwise yes, getting an iPad specifically for Factorio is some serious commitment.