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I mean, in the real world we build highway bypasses of particularly busy metropolitan areas because we have found that an increased flow of traffic and ease of travel are good for trade and the economy overall, so I think that doesn't need to be debated.
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Mar 22, 2021 20:47
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In skylines they will also use public transport for a commute that takes 6 days to get to work
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Mar 22, 2021 20:53
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Spek posted:Also the game has a depth of field effect, and using a mod to turn it off disables achievements. Like sorry I just wanted to see the game without it being pointlessly blurry. Depth of field effects are the loving worst and every game that has them should have an option to toggle them off. Or just get rid of them entirely. Unless you can track where on the screen I'm looking at you don't actually know which depth plane to have in focus and your best guess is as likely to be wrong as right. Depth of field effects are one of the loving worst things to ever be implemented in gaming, right up there with vignettes, chromatic aberration and 'motion blur'. The other day I tried installing a Fallout New Vegas + Fallout 3 modpack with Wabbajack, but I didn't realize that it came with a depth of field mod (presumably for 'enhanced realism') until I started playing. Holy gently caress, that was completely intolerable to try to play with. With Fallout, I'm almost never looking down the reticle and almost always scanning my surroundings, so it was just a blurry nightmare that literally gave me eyestrain.
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Mar 22, 2021 21:07
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I feel like Film Grain, Motion Blur, Depth of Field, and all their cousins were originally made for back when we needed the extra visual noice to cover up limited graphical detail and has just persisted due to inertia. Most people tolerate them but I don't know anybody who prefers them.
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Mar 22, 2021 21:11
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Man I was just gonna praise the tilt-shift DOF effect Spider-man gives you during the Black Cat surveillance missions in the other thread, it makes NYC look like an adorable tiny model town. Guess I have to post it here now.
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Mar 22, 2021 21:25
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Ambaire posted:Depth of field effects are one of the loving worst things to ever be implemented in gaming, right up there with vignettes, chromatic aberration and 'motion blur'. The other day I tried installing a Fallout New Vegas + Fallout 3 modpack with Wabbajack, but I didn't realize that it came with a depth of field mod (presumably for 'enhanced realism') until I started playing. Holy gently caress, that was completely intolerable to try to play with. With Fallout, I'm almost never looking down the reticle and almost always scanning my surroundings, so it was just a blurry nightmare that literally gave me eyestrain. This is also why many fan restoration/improvement projects keep failing, and Kickstarter-based fan-driven development is usually a huge mistake. The idea of what modders or superfans think as an improvement may in fact, not be an improvement when you consider larger group than your echo chamber. The restoration project for Fallout 2 did many things right, but also made non-violent play-through pretty much impossible by re-enabling the mini-boss fights with the previous Chosen One. There is a reason why some of that stuff is disabled. Der Kyhe has a new favorite as of 21:35 on Mar 22, 2021 |
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Mar 22, 2021 21:30
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Der Kyhe posted:This is also why many fan restoration/improvement projects keep failing, and Kickstarter-based fan-driven development is usually a huge mistake. The idea of what modders or superfans think as an improvement may in fact, not be an improvement when you consider larger group than your echo chamber. mod communities are always a mixed bag. there are the grog purists who adhere a hyperspecific vision of how the game "should" be (that happens to be incredibly unfun to actually play), people who make quality of life changes that really should have been in the original game, people who add their "my first oc" companion who doesn't fit in with the rest of the world at all, people who make a great mod that somehow causes an irreversible rift in the mod forums that results in a months long drama, people who make texture upgrades that look great in isolation but break the overall visual style of the game horribly, That One Guy who makes a popular mod and then 5 years later develops his own successful game.......
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Mar 22, 2021 21:49
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Grunch Worldflower posted:I feel like Film Grain, Motion Blur, Depth of Field, and all their cousins were originally made for back when we needed the extra visual noice to cover up limited graphical detail and has just persisted due to inertia. I've been playing games since the MS DOS era, and that's pretty much a perfect reason for their existence. Maybe from 2000 to 2010 or something, that stuff was helpful, but nowadays it just shits upon what could be a beautiful game without. From what I remember, motion blur was originally implemented in movies to cover up the gaps between 25/30 frames per second. With 60 fps, it's unneeded, and especially unneeded with higher framerates.
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Mar 22, 2021 21:56
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Grunch Worldflower posted:I feel like Film Grain, Motion Blur, Depth of Field, and all their cousins were originally made for back when we needed the extra visual noice to cover up limited graphical detail and has just persisted due to inertia. I like Film Grain No I won't be justifying myself.
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Mar 22, 2021 22:01
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I'll admit and own up to the fact that I actually kind of like lens flare. I think it's pretty.
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Mar 22, 2021 22:08
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Stexils posted:there isn't a way to measure that though since there's no control group for irl cities. you can't prove definitively "if this city was less congested / had better traffic planning it would be 20% larger/wealthier" It's not about scientific rigour or proof or alternate histories, I'm just saying that so many of our current "successful" cities have long had nightmarish traffic and it's one reason why I'm against putting too much focus on traffic sims and congestion management. These games are fine using a magic wand to make parking a non-issue even though parking and the whole network of vehicular movement are inextricably linked so one massive part of it is already out of the players' hands and ignored.
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Mar 22, 2021 22:17
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For me it's VSync. If the game doesn't default to having vsync on, it's a straight letter grade deduction. The  people who don't like vsync baffle me, screen tearing is just intolerableThank goodness for video card control panels having global settings
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Mar 22, 2021 22:22
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I've known about Vsync for decades, seen games with and without it, and haven't the slightest idea what it does to this day.
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Mar 22, 2021 22:28
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Evilreaver posted:For me it's VSync. If the game doesn't default to having vsync on, it's a straight letter grade deduction. The Gaming in the Obama years. Current graphics cards AND monitors sync up frames for you.
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Mar 22, 2021 22:29
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christmas boots posted:I like Film Grain I liked that and lens flare in Mass Effect, it really helped the visuals nail that old sci fi movie feel.
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Mar 22, 2021 22:29
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If your graphics card produces more frames per second than your monitor can display, it makes sure than only that many frames are used. Otherwise, you get screen-tearing, which is when half the screen is still on one particular frame and half of it is already on the next because the monitor can't keep up.
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Mar 22, 2021 22:30
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Ugly In The Morning posted:I liked that and lens flare in Mass Effect, it really helped the visuals nail that old sci fi movie feel. Each sequel getting progressively worse story wise, really helped that feel too
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Mar 22, 2021 22:31
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Captain Hygiene posted:I've known about Vsync for decades, seen games with and without it, and haven't the slightest idea what it does to this day. Not sure what your knowledge level is on the subject so I'll forgive me if you're already familiar with any of this. So VSync (and now newer technologies like NVidia's G-Sync or FreeSync) essentially ensure that the frame rate of your game (the number of frames per second) and the monitor's refresh rate (the number of times the screen refreshes per second) are synced up. If they're not, you can get what we call "screen tearing" This article goes into the nuts and bolts of it, but the gist is that it throttles the output of the graphics card to to keep it in line with the monitor (usually 60Hz unless you have a high-refresh rate monitor) by forcing it to wait until the monitor has completed a refresh cycle before letting the card feed any more information to the display https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/what-is-vsync/ VSync's big thing is that, because of how it works, you see a performance hit, which G-Sync and FreeSync are designed to improve. That's why often if someone is struggling to hit 30 fps one recommendation is often to turn off VSync to try and get performance up
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Mar 22, 2021 22:38
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VSync also breaks weird poo poo sometimes. The PC port of Dead Space had its aiming and, even weirder, load times go completely in the toilet with VSync on.
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Mar 22, 2021 22:40
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Thanks folks  I was aware of screen tearing but not that it was the same central issue.
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Mar 22, 2021 23:02
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I very nearly burned out a brand new graphics card on Crysis when it was still pretty new because the title menu didn't seem to obey vsync directives and was trying to push 700+ FPS. There was a noise.
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Mar 22, 2021 23:19
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Yeah I hate when games let menus run with unlimited framerate. I do not need my video card's fan to spin up to max for the sake of 1500fps menus.  Ugly In The Morning posted:VSync also breaks weird poo poo sometimes. The PC port of Dead Space had its aiming and, even weirder, load times go completely in the toilet with VSync on. The load screen thing is fairly common, especially in single threaded games (or at least games where loading happens in the main thread). The game probably loads an asset, then lets the frame finish, then loads another asset. They do this because if it doesn't let the frame present fairly quickly then Windows would think it's stalled and go grey and/or pop up that "application seems unresponsive" or whatever window. Since it's just a load screen it should render in a few fractions of a millisecond per asset but now that VSync is on it's taking 16.67ms easily multiplying the load time by dozens or hundreds.
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Mar 22, 2021 23:46
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Evilreaver posted:For me it's VSync. If the game doesn't default to having vsync on, it's a straight letter grade deduction. The Sometimes vsync introduces unbearable lag, like it has always done for me in Doom Eternal, Overwatch, and Team Fortress 2. It sucks to have it play with it off, but you'd be surprised at how quickly you stop noticing it.
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Mar 23, 2021 00:02
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Rockman Reserve posted:I very nearly burned out a brand new graphics card on Crysis when it was still pretty new because the title menu didn't seem to obey vsync directives and was trying to push 700+ FPS. Starcraft 2 did this for a while as well if you left it on the title screen. Was not capped in any way and would destroy computers.
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Mar 23, 2021 01:02
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Cardiovorax posted:For a game that revolves so heavily around constructing an efficient road and traffic network, it was astoundingly badly programmed to actually take advantage of one when you provide it. Just copy that one Sim City where after work people would drive to whatever random home they felt like.
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Mar 23, 2021 01:08
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Ugly In The Morning posted:VSync also breaks weird poo poo sometimes. The PC port of Dead Space had its aiming and, even weirder, load times go completely in the toilet with VSync on. Speaking of which... With Vsync on, Brigador load times take a long loving time. With Vsync off, Brigador load times are nearly instantaneous.
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Mar 23, 2021 02:21
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I will never not get over how many times I've seen someone brag about their totally sweet ReShade setup and it's just the saturation cranked to 300% and every dumb blurry filter mashed on top to make everything look maximally lovely. Sure there's certainly games out there where the graphics were compromised during development for some reason or another and could use a fresh coat of paint, but I'm fairly confident in saying that most of the time the developers actually knew what the hell they were doing and nobody needs to go in and "fix" things.Gort posted:I thought the issue with Skylines was that the car AI had no idea how to properly utilise a multi-lane road, so any city that relies on multi-lane roads inevitably gridlocks and fills with rotting corpses because the hearses can't reach the houses to remove them Pretty much. Though another issue is that the road tool itself can be pretty cantankerous, which compounds with the wonky AI. There's a whole collection of "ways to trick the game into actually functioning the way you want it to without mods by placing things Just So" videos on Youtube which says a lot I think. They eventually added extremely basic traffic control functions, allowing you to set traffic lights and stops signs at intersections, which bafflingly weren't in at launch despite the game's traffic focus. And the pressure to do so probably came from the fact that a much more robust and detailed traffic management mod was so popular. John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 03:31 on Mar 23, 2021 |
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Mar 23, 2021 03:26
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Captain Hygiene posted:I've known about Vsync for decades, seen games with and without it, and haven't the slightest idea what it does to this day. Vsync is that setting where some games run like rear end with it on and some games run like rear end with it off and you never know why but that's what people say and oh hey yeah it does run way better when I click whatever this is. (I know what it does on a technical level, I've just literally never noticed a difference. then again I've literally never had a top-of-the-line PC. My first PC was a 486 I got after pentiums were out and I've stayed behind ever since.) Phigs has a new favorite as of 06:13 on Mar 23, 2021 |
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Mar 23, 2021 06:10
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Reshade mods look horrible most of the time because wouldn’t you know it, the people who make video games for a living generally know better about scene composition and color balance.
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Mar 23, 2021 06:12
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The only mod that fixes coloring I've seen is RE5's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjNz0xWySDc&t=145s
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Mar 23, 2021 06:37
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wrong thread
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Mar 23, 2021 06:57
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the reshade for Mad Max that made the game look like Fury Road loving ruled but is also the exception that proves the rule imo
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Mar 23, 2021 06:59
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Removing the green/orange filters from Fallout 3/New Vegas is also a big improvement imo Skyrim is a bit washed out, too.
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Mar 23, 2021 07:13
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Since AssCreed Valhalla is still full of game breaking bugs, tonight I decided to start Remnant: From the Ashes. Less than an hour in, and I'm in a goddamn sewer level. Dear developers, stop putting sewers in your games, thanks. They almost universally suck. Stay tuned to find out what awful game I try to play tomorrow night! 
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Mar 23, 2021 07:26
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I thought ReShade was basically for when you play old pixelly games. (As opposed to new pixelly games, which are supposed to look like that, although I've seen screenshots of Shovel Knight through a CRT filter and that looked good to, so if that's your bag.) Some time ago I hooked a retrogaming laptop up to my TV and spent hours trying to figure out why I got screen tearing on the TV but not the laptop screen and it turned out the laptop could display 60 frames per second but the TV only 59.84 or something similarly silly.
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Mar 23, 2021 08:41
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Vandar posted:Since AssCreed Valhalla is still full of game breaking bugs, tonight I decided to start Remnant: From the Ashes. Less than an hour in, and I'm in a goddamn sewer level. One of the first things dishonored says is "escape the prison and get to the sewers!" Whyyyyyy
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Mar 23, 2021 08:59
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exquisite tea posted:There is, you can just hold the dodge button to let yourself drop from ledges. I tried that before, and also after reading your post, in case I missed something, but that's not extreme enough - I was scaling walls and trying to drop by holding the button, but it mostly allows to drop down level by level, and if I'm at a certain height and there's a ledge below me, the character will drop slowly. What I want is to be able to drop down all the way down, without stops - similar to how you can just just down cliffs. It's not a huge problem, but once in a while it's irritating. Also, there's an ability that allows you to tame wild animals in order to have a minion, but it's really inefficient - not only you have to actually find a wild animal, you have to actually beat it down (with paralyzing arrows or your fists), then you can tame it and then it follows you. It doesn't attack unless you break stealth/go into open fight, which is nice, and it also doesn't break stealth itself, but you can't order it to attack and whatever animal you got (so far only lynx and a wolf, I managed to beat down a bear, but couldn't tame it:(, even though I should, having gotten the Lv.3 ability), on its own it could reliably defeat a standard soldier, enything stronger and it's a short-lived distraction. Posts on GameFAQs suggest taming an Alpha Animal, which is stronger by itself, but it's even more work. And I do have the engraving to make the animals stronger, I imagine even a standard soldier would be too much for the poor beast without it. Szurumbur has a new favorite as of 09:52 on Mar 23, 2021 |
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Mar 23, 2021 09:47
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You know, I've never consciously thought about it, but it really is strange how difficult the new trilogy of AC games makes it for you to just drop to the ground even if you want to. I know I've struggled with that myself far more often than I think I should have, but I've never really mentally added it all together before. There are annoyingly many occasions where I accidentally got stuck on some ledge because autoparkour just wouldn't go the right way and then the game just wouldn't let me drop back out of it. It might be a holdover from earlier games, where dropping too far actually would have killed you.
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Mar 23, 2021 09:56
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It's almost definitely a holdover from trying to stop ezio from constantly pitching himself off various church roofs
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Mar 23, 2021 10:01
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Speaking of which, I'd be curious how other people feel about this: maybe memory is playing tricks on me there, but does anyone else feel like parkour was somewhat easier to handle in the early games just in general? Maybe because it was less dynamic, and handholds had to be more actively and consciously placed, so that there was more of a human-made and human-vetted path for climbing across most surfaces. The latest games basically just let you climb whatever in a procedural sort of way and it often seems like it ends up just making you go the wrong way, and I kind of wonder if it's maybe because the scale of the game worlds just doesn't allow for that kind of manual detail-work anymore.
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Mar 23, 2021 10:07
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