Considering how much hardware resources PA is likely to consume on very big multi player games, and considering its scalable nature, i though it would be interesting to have an in game benchmark demo (like the one we used to have in supcom, but with the ability to spawn much more units). In many French PC hardware mags, Supcom used to be included in GFX/cpu tests. But unfortunately it was very scalable, when PA is on the contrary likely to be. Having such Tech/benchmark demo helps to promote the game if it's likely to scale well on more powerfull hardware. Hope to see such feature, even if of course, this is not the priority.
It's an interesting idea, but how does Uber ensure that PA appears in these magazines? I'd have thought that would be more of an editorial choice.
When supreme commander came out it was known as requiring lots of resources, thus, a good candidate for testing new hardware. I can even remember THQ had teased with Intel about Supcom being one of the first game being able to take advantage of their first end consumer quad core cpu. This helped i guess, and also helped my temptation to pay 1000$ my first quad core cpu and and getting very disapointed to see Supcom could hardly take advantage of it. This was when Dual core CPUs were not the most installed cpu among gamers. I remember i had first bough a FX-57, then FX-60 (double core) and then Quad core within a single year :mrgreen: just to ensure iwas going to get the best experience with supreme commander. I think that if PA is a great success and show evidence that it's designed to scale up/out then it's likely to be included in most of benchmarks as most of games taking advantage of all availble resources.
I actually just came here to recommend this very thing. It seems like the client is going to be pretty GPU heavy and the server pretty CPU heavy. It would be really nice if there were benchmarking tools for each available to both use as hardware comparison tools, but mostly to ensure machines are set up to play the largest games they can while still performing well.
Honestly, I don't think PA makes for a good Benchmarking platform due to it's scalability. If Uber delivers on it's comments regarding scalability there is possibly no limit to how much it could push hardware, you can always make bigger planets, bigger system, build more units, have more players. Compared to an FPS like Crysis that has set fidelity levels and more consistent 'hardware needs' I don't think PA is as good of a measuring stick. Mike
ya i was going to come to this particular post to say that pa is going to be made to be able to play on a wide range of computer types. you COULD scale it up to 11 and go all out to really pressure your system but it would be out of the way.
This is exactly why it makes a good measuring stick, because not only can you do things like "How many FPS do I get in X scene" you can say things like "How many units can my client process before dropping below 30FPS" and "How many players can my server handle assuming 1000 units per player" and those types of questions. It actually makes it a pretty great and flexible tool to measure both CPU and GPU performance separately.
That's good for measuring the extremes, but only against other systems for the intent of playing PA, PA has too many variables for performance to compared to most games which tend to be much more consistant. Mike
+1 for doud, i'm also voting for an integrated benchmark. i'm thinking of 3 presets of prerecorded benchmark scenes, like 1vs1 on a small planet, 3vs3 in a medium-sized universe, and 10vs10 big scale annihilation, showing actual gameplay like managing the base zoomed in, then zooming out managing space units and moons and stuff. having an integrated benchmark as a reference point makes a game very attractive to the tech-oriented gaming press, and if the benchmark is representive of the gameplay and shows good scaling CPU/MEM/GPU-wise then you get a lot of free coverage for your game in the tech press.
Personally I think see this being a great benchmarking game. The problem is, you just simply cannot use it for benchmarking until it becomes offline and true offline. Otherwises you are going to be hindered by internet connection server traffic, your broadband speed and the game actually has a broadband limitation inside it to make the gameplay smoother, its like limited just just over 2MB for upload or something, one of the devs posted this.
Seems like all you need to do is have PA load up in an alternate mode with a command line parameter and have it auto load a world with a 1000 + land units area patrolling a planet. Done.
Even on my overclocked i5-3570K (to 3.7ghz), and an R9-270X, When I played with 2000 Doxes moving at all once to stomp a base, the game becomes a slideshow of 0.5 FPS. Ironically, on Shogun 2, my comp can support up to 18000 roaming units stomping a fort at 15 FPS.
this is true but if PA, by nature pushes the limits of these testings further, then it is the magazines who will come to PA and not PA to them. People still run the Crysis bench as a test.
Absolutely, "but can it run crysis?" still is a valid question. And that's what i was thinking of when speaking of the different benchmark presets, like the current 3DMark has them. PA would be a great benchmark for years to come, with the smaller presets for current machines and the big one for future uber machines.
