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Hey,
I've started a thread on Battle.Net forums regarding performance of SC II (performance problems were discussed in a thread on TL.net here)
Maybe I'm arrogant for thinking that Blizzard would do something about it, but would you join in my arrogance and show support/help the thread live long?
Here's the BN thread
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From what I understand, effective parallelization is a huge amount of work and would provide minimal benefit on StarCraft's sequential real-time engine. The game depends on actions happening in the exact same order on every client, meaning basically none of the work done could be parallelized in a meaningful manner. The overhead required to distribute the work and keep every core in sync would exceed the amount of benefit you could obtain by doing so.
I believe they already offload as much as is practical, like UI and so on, but the game is ultimately limited by the main game loop. This is basically the reason very few games can utilize multiple processors effectively.
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Not going to ever happen.
Getting parallelization on the main game loop while preserving determinism would require a full engine rewrite as well as being theoretically difficult (though maybe doable if you started writing an RTS from the ground up today). Rewriting the engine so that it behaves the same way as before sounds nigh impossible.
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Czech Republic12116 Posts
It wouldn't be an issue, huge datacenters are all massivelly scaled. I'm just working on one Running this game in 200 threads wouldn't be an issue, but I don't think Blizzard will ever invest the money needed
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It will be nice if Blizzard improves performance because all other competitors (CS: GO and LoL) run a lot smoother. I shouldn't need to pay but if Blizzard offers a premium patch for $5-10, I'm more willing to pay for it rather than for commanders they sell.
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In theory, it's technically possible. The technology is there. In reality, no fucking way. Money, dear boy.
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cs, lol: a few units sc2: hundreds of units you can't compare them
-> no way +1
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On June 17 2018 05:31 bela.mervado wrote: cs, lol: a few units sc2: hundreds of units you can't compare them
-> no way +1
What about constant shooting and lots of people moving, calculating damage, etc?
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On June 17 2018 06:17 sc-darkness wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2018 05:31 bela.mervado wrote: cs, lol: a few units sc2: hundreds of units you can't compare them
-> no way +1 moving, calculating damage, etc?
thats done in sc2 as well....
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On June 17 2018 06:17 sc-darkness wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2018 05:31 bela.mervado wrote: cs, lol: a few units sc2: hundreds of units you can't compare them
-> no way +1 What about constant shooting and lots of people moving, calculating damage, etc?
That's not a big deal programatically which is why they can get by with server authoritative models.
On June 17 2018 04:35 pvsnp wrote: In theory, it's technically possible. The technology is there. In reality, no fucking way. Money, dear boy.
It would be cheaper and easier to make SC3 most likely.
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On June 17 2018 06:17 sc-darkness wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2018 05:31 bela.mervado wrote: cs, lol: a few units sc2: hundreds of units you can't compare them
-> no way +1 What about constant shooting and lots of people moving, calculating damage, etc?
with 10 players and 120 fps that can be handled on a 20 year old cpu. player models are controlled by humans, projectiles travel a straight line or an easily computable trajectory.
in an rts you have shitloads of units, when you have an sc2 4v4 with 8* 200/200 armies doing A-click the units have to find their way through the map, with path finding, collisions, etc. that is a waay much harder problem.
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On June 17 2018 06:44 ZigguratOfUr wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2018 06:17 sc-darkness wrote:On June 17 2018 05:31 bela.mervado wrote: cs, lol: a few units sc2: hundreds of units you can't compare them
-> no way +1 What about constant shooting and lots of people moving, calculating damage, etc? That's not a big deal programatically which is why they can get by with server authoritative models. Show nested quote +On June 17 2018 04:35 pvsnp wrote: In theory, it's technically possible. The technology is there. In reality, no fucking way. Money, dear boy. It would be cheaper and easier to make SC3 most likely.
I for one would 100% rather write five brand new games–or a brand new game engine–than try and refactor SC2 with a parallel game loop. Just thinking about the possibility gives me a headache.
Dunno about the Blizzard devs but I suspect they'd agree.
On June 17 2018 04:27 sc-darkness wrote: It will be nice if Blizzard improves performance because all other competitors (CS: GO and LoL) run a lot smoother. I shouldn't need to pay but if Blizzard offers a premium patch for $5-10, I'm more willing to pay for it rather than for commanders they sell.
You're gonna need a higher price tag than $5 or $10 to cover this one.....
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Russian Federation40169 Posts
On June 17 2018 03:32 deacon.frost wrote:It wouldn't be an issue, huge datacenters are all massivelly scaled. I'm just working on one Running this game in 200 threads wouldn't be an issue, but I don't think Blizzard will ever invest the money needed Huge datacenters do not run 1 program in 100 threads, they run 100 programs in 1 thread each (yes, even if only 1 executable is running in essence it is still usually 100+ independent threads doing their own thing each most of the time).
Running SC2 in 200 threads would be as good as slowing it down by a factor of 100 or something as ridiculous on any hardware you can think of, actually.
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SC2 has performance issues since patch 3.0, but no one really cares about that.
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Never had problems with perfomance in SC2 except maybe 4v4 when like 3 player massed carriers. I play on Medium settings.. and im between 100-200fps
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Imo this isn't Blizzard's fault. When they started development on SC2, even dual core was new and a lot of games didn't see any benefit from it. The trend in CPU development favored more cores over fewer, faster cores, and Blizzard did not having a crystal ball in 2006-07.
And as others have said, rewriting a core game engine is not trivial.
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I remember there being rumors of improved multi-core performance coming with heart of the swarm. Then that came and went and there wasn't a mention of it. I do agree that it is unfortunate that big team battles still lag on fairly modern PC's.
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Hmm... I used to be able to play it fine as well but now I have to upgrade to continue playing, I guess others are experiencing the same issue.
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On June 17 2018 08:30 Divain wrote: SC2 has performance issues since patch 3.0, but no one really cares about that.
Yeah this exactly.
It ran perfectly when it came out in 2010 (IIRC) on my shitty Dell.
I bought a new computer now, but when I try to run it on my old computer it barely runs in low settings. Definitely some bad optimization, even the menus feel heavy and laggy. You compare that to Dota where you can literally minimize the game you're in to look at stats while still in the .exe... Night and day.
Even in the remastered version of bw the menus lag and are badly connected to the servers (difficult to read server data IE: mmr).
I wish Activision / Blizzard could make a game run smooth with their ≈20 billions usd valued company. Just a thought.
Pray for Warcraft 4
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On June 17 2018 08:30 Divain wrote: SC2 has performance issues since patch 3.0, but no one really cares about that. Yup, ever since 3.0 stuff went down.
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