Horror title Outlast recently came to the Nintendo Switch eShop and according to the developers it was a fairly easy process. It apparently only took a fewweeks for the team to port the Unreal Engine 3 title to Nintendo’s latest system. Impressive stuff.
What? pic.twitter.com/7OPW6E9gSG
— TheREALDrtre81 (@Drtre81) March 11, 2018
Tell this to Hat in Time developers
If they can port this game with almost no sacrifices at all in just WEEKS, many third parties should take notes from these guys on how effort and time is done. It’s like some questionable ports haven’t taken much seriousness on their work. Doom could’ve looked better for portable mode and Rime couldn’t have been screwed at launch.
Exactly. Now I’m curious of how much time Toby Fox needs to bring Undertale on the Switch and also I want to see all the FNAF game on the Switch
Screw the FNAF games. I wanna see Overwatch happen. XP
Yeah me too
I know it cannot be difficult to port it and that the Switch can run it. Look at Doom who many thought wasn’t possible to port over.
I think Jeff and his team wants to do a good port of OW with 60 fps. The resolution to me is irrelevant but they can do a option of more resolution and less FPS or more FPS and less resolution like in FEW
They can do what Panic is gonna do for Rocket League: Offer Performance and Quality modes. In fact, I think Nintendo Switch should natively support that feature in the console itself.
Although I must ask out of curiosity. If the Switch had 6GB RAM instead of 4GB but have 5.1-5.2GB total to use for the games like the other consoles, do you think the games would look/run better?
The games will run faster if Switch have 6 GB of ram
So, 60FPS almost universally?
I don’t think so. For have 60 fps it not only depends on how much RAM the console, there are also
– Level of Details of the objects
– Lights, how a console threat a light.
– Textures
– How the camera render everything.
-The hardware in the console how can control or simulate the physics and so on.
There are so many things to check and control for have a good 60 fps.
What if it has Tegra X2 with 6GB RAM?
The hardware can probably have 60 fps but you are pointing on the hardware side. You have also to think how a software handle these resources for have 60 fps but a Tegra X2 can handle more complex graphic elements
Well hopefully the updated model in a few years has those or maybe X3 when it’s ready before then.
I prefer to see an update version of the Switch in 2020 or 2021
Most likely 2020.
Who knows. Only Nintendo will answer us but for now we need to see FE, MP4, Yoshi, Bayo 3 ans Smash 5
Don’t forget GTA5.
The amount of RAM will generally have absolutely zero effect on frame rate unless a games frame rate is low from constantly ready from the cartridge or hard drive.
What matters more is memory speed and the speed of the shader ALUs. The TX1 is bandwidth limited, that’s why many games that run at 720p in handheld mode (at 307.2Mhz) can’t run at that same frame rate at 1080p despite having enough of a clock increase. If Switch had 4GB of 3733MT/s or 4266MT/s memory than it would more frequently hit high frame rates or high resolutions.
The TX2 is only has about 30-50% faster shader performance than the TX1 so any 30fps or sub-30fps games on Switch that are shader limited wouldn’t run at 60fps. The TX2’s biggest strength is that it has a 128-bit wide memory controller. That’s partly what allows it to support more memory but it also allows it to have over twice as much memory. Keep in mind though that taking advantage of that would require using more memory chips which uses more power.
Still, none of this means that a dev has to run there games at 1080p at 60fps. Developers could opt to instead increase the amount of effects. In the case of WWE 2k18, it entrances frequently run at 13-20fps with gameplay in multi-man matches topping out at 20fps with 8-man matches being removed entirely. It also has a dynamic resolution that can sit at 540p most of the time and this is all just in docked mode. It needs the kinds of boosts the TX2 can offer just to hit 720p30 more frequently. If it did hit that performance goal easily, they would sooner add ambient occlusion than pursue higher frame rates or resolutions.
If a game is CPU limited on Switch than I don’t have much to day on that front. If they used the A57 cores in the TX2 then it would probably get a small boost just because its manufactured on a 16nm process but I can’t speak for the Denver cores, I just know they weren’t received well in the past.
Really part of the issue is that, by choosing Nvidia, Nintendo chose a company whose chips have never really been impressive in the mobile space. TX1 was a 20nm chip coming out at a time when 16nm chips were already coming out which is why it was kicked from its top spot only 3 months after release. The TX2 was a 16nm chip coming out when 10nm chips were being released. Now NVidias next Tegra chip is targeting power envelopes twice as high as the TX2 and will still be 16nm when others will be targeting 17nm. Going with an off the shelf Nvidia part was just a dumb move.
Its not that it’s dumb but what choice/resources do they have? X2 didn’t exist yet and X1 debuted just less than 3 years ago so technically they didn’t cheap out on weaker hardware. That was THE only hardware they can get on an affordable level, consumer wise.
That’s not true at all though. They always had the option to go semi-custom with their chip like they did with the 3DS. They could have licensed the same or better ARM CPU cores, licensed a DSP from CEVA, and licensed a GPU design from ARM or Imagination Technologies. Past the initial cost of development, the chip would have been cheaper to produce overall because they wouldn’t have to include any of the extra stuff included in the TX1 that the Switch doesn’t use and they would have the option to use a 16nm process either boost performance, increase battery life, or both.
It would also have the added advantage of allowing Nintendo to continue iterating on the same design in future systems and allow them to upgrade what they need and in the way they need it. I’ve mentioned before that the TX1 has support things like dual 4K displays and like 4 cameras. These are obviously unnecessary to the Switch and unnecessary to any future successors to the Switch, yet part of the list of improvements in the TX2 include adding even more camera interfaces. The TX1 even has HDMI 2.0 built-in but the Switch doesn’t use that either and instead converts a DisplayPort signal to an HDMI 1.4 signal using external chips. There’s really so much waste in using off the shelf general purpose SoCs for a game console.
The other issue is that Nvidia uses an immediate mode renderer which is extremely uncommon in mobile GPUs for good reason. It means they’re always reading and writing back out to RAM which uses more power and means that it’s more reliant on the speed of external memory. ARM, Imagination, and Qualcomm all used tile-based renderers with Imagination using a tile-based deferred renderer. These types of renderers split the frame up into tiles which allows them to potential render the entire G-buffer in a really small amount of fast on-chip memory. This means the memory controller is invoked far less often which saves power and external memory is only really needed for initially reading the tile buffer and assets at the beginning of the frame. This would have had an additional benefit on the Switch running games at higher resolution increases texture and geometry bandwidth minimally but frame buffer bandwidth goes up linearly with the resolution. On a tile-based GPU, increasing clock speed would increase frame buffer bandwidth by the exact same amount. If you clock it 2.5x higher (as is the case with the Switch in docked mode) then the on-chip memory becomes 2.5x faster. The amount of bandwidth available to the Switch in docked mode is only 20% higher than in handheld mode.
More RAM can help in a lot of scenarios, but what’s holding the Switch bak the most must be the CPU. But everything must fit together. Can’t overkill with just one thing. More VRAM should make better textures if the bandwidth can handle it though.
Well Nvidia chips can handle both. I’m not sure if the Switch has VRAM although it’ll help.
Hat in Time? Developed on Unreal 3, which is a legacy engine not supported by the Switch. You try building a game on one engine and then switching it over to a new one. Many of the bigger indie games (the ones with the resources to do it) have sourced their games out to another studio that specializes in porting. Rocket League for example.
Yeah but also Outlast is made in UE3 and Hat in Time developers could ask for someone to do the job.
I’m not interested in that game but since people started to ask the game on the Switch, the developer answered with no
Yeah and it’s crazy that they were able to port it so easy, but it has to do with the way things are done from the get go. One set of code may have been done in such a way that it could upgrade engines easily and another could be impossible without a ton of work. I know a lot had trouble porting from UE3 to UE4.
Same as someone upgrade the Unity version in the last phase of the videogame
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Most Devs are lazy …they must be! With the size and and all of this game and it is visually quite demanding for Switch, it took no time at all… Well done to em
It is a given fact. We’ve seen it so many times.
Most developers I know work ridiculous hours.
I heard this port is performing well on Switch. Haven’t tried it though.
It basically runs the same as the PS4 and XBox One version, and you’d think the visuals were sacrificed on the Switch version… NOPE! The Switch port still looks amazing and there is very little, if at all, graphical differences between the Switch port and the PS4 port.
It’s by far the best port so far.
And they say the Switch is underpowered/weak. As I thought, just more hate talk proven wrong. lol
You guys are using Outlast 2 as a game being representative of the needs of most other games when most of the time you can’t see 15 feet in front of you do to lack of light or heavy fog. That’s not a knock on the game because it was clearly an artistic choice of the developer but it’s one that definitely comes with advantages in that much of the environment can be obscured.
First, it’s the first Outlast. Second, just stop being a buzzkill.
Read again. It’s both games. And I’m not being a buzzkill. They ported the games to Switch in a matter of weeks. That’s a great, but don’t look to this as validation for your theory that all other developers are lazy and that the Switch is more capable than devs make it seem.
Switch not underpowered, just not very strong. Outlast isn’t a proof that Switch is sick powerful, just that some games and some engines are possible to optimise for the hardware.
It’s not more powerful, just capable of being matched to PS4.
Why PS4 and not Xbox One?
….who even talks about XB1 specs? It’s a joke compare to PS4 thus explaining the X version existence. XP
Well, it is as a gaming console overall worse than PS4, yeh. And I do agree PS4 Pro and Xbox One X is there because those other two systems are beginning to get real old. But you know Xbox One has a better CPU than the PS4? :P Not that it saves it or anything.
Not that it’s getting old but they never uphold their original promises for 1080p. 800-850p for Xbox One and 900p for PS4? And yet Switch is the weakest console? lol Fuck that, even the Wii U manage to achieve native 1080p/60FPS a couple of times which is very funny.
Yeah, a pal and myself were jokingly saying “if you want a 1080p 60fps console experience — you need a Wii U” xP
I would try to explain why the Wii U was capable of 1080p/60fps for some of it’s games but I’m not very good with tech talk. The best I can say is Nintendo’s games just aren’t as graphically demanding. That & there are all kinds of tricks to reach 1080p/60fps but that doesn’t mean the system is some highly capable machine. I don’t know what those tricks are but I wouldn’t be surprised if a truly skilled programmer knew some.
It just down to what kind of graphics they’ve implement. Wii U has a lot more stronger GPU than CPU (not that they was particularly strong for 2013 anyhow). Wii U couldn’t handle heavy CPU use like tons of NPC or streaming a lot of data/use a lot of bandwidth. So Nintendo could use the GPU to handle res and fps.
Sonic Lost World was a 60FPS game and had simple stage designs and little action on the screen. They’ve just focused on a colourful environment to make it stand out.
Dont’ know why my post didn’t show up but part of the reason that Smash hit 1080p60 is because it used a simple forward renderer which isn’t as bandwidth intensive. The locked perspective also allowed them to get away with using cut outs for the background most of the time and in instances where they did use geometry in the background, they could manually cull back facing triangles so that the CPU wouldn’t have to do that. Sakurai also stated that assists and other background objects animated at only 30 fps to assist performance.
That’s right. I knew from the beginning, but those 30FPS assist trophies bother me a lot xP
You can notice of you pause during a match and circle around your character, it starts to drop frames a lot (at least on those stages I’ve played on).
XD Wow.
Hold up, Xbox One has faster CPU? Then why does the original model load like shit? I mean “PSN Store” level of shit loading times.
Well, downloads from Xbox/Windows Store at launch had more to do with slow servers I believe, even though MS said it was “because it downloads and installs at the same time” … Yeah…
Reason why it’s slow? Maybe PS4s have faster HDD(doubt it) or just another decompression tool. Can be anything really.
You can see in games like Hitman with unlocked framecaps, that areas with plenty of NPCs (which is CPU heavy) runs better on Xbox One rather than PS4, while PS4 runs a little better in areas without the heavy CPU-demand.
I mean UI wise but Xbox has another problem: Social Medium/Chat surges going off at once, choking up performance overall.
I was playing Ryse Son of Rome at Launch. Then I’ve played Halo when that got out (didn’t touch it in between) and I didn’t knew how to navigate anymore since they changed it up big time. Then we got Windows 10 there and I was trying to play A Lucky’s Tale, and a friend of mine there invited me to Party Chat and I felt like a 90-year old dude trying to figure out how to send SMS on a Nokia. They mess things up all the freaking time.
And Xbox One X? 6Tflops GPU for freaking nothing. Monster Hunter World have like 2 more FPS over PS4 Pro in general om X, and why is that? STILL THE SAME SLOW CPU!!11oneonexboxone
Wow. lol Goes to show these updated consoles ain’t shit.
They’re using ooooold AMD architecture on those consoles. They still beat Switch’s CPU, but they’re stationary consoles, so it’s a lot more embarrasing for them.
Problem is that those consoles are supposed to push “4K” , and that need more GPU than CPU. But when games need CPU, those GPU horsepower isn’t worth a damn at times.
Like I said, it ain’t true 4K so it’s a bullshit ad slapping in every confused console graphic whore’s face.
That’s why I said “4K” and not 4K :P It’s just a marketing buzzword. That’s all.
I even heard XB1X can only do up to1440p natively. That’s not even close to 2K. lol
I think Lucky’s Tale is native 4k 60fps. But the game isn’t that pretty so it should run great. Halo 5 have at least 4K native menu xP lol
Running Lucky’s Tale at 4K on XB1X as simple as running Undertale on Windows 98. lol
Heh, true.
MHW has checkerboard 2160p in resolution mode. I don’t know why they even bother with res that high when the game is having a hard time keeping 40fps.
Not only that, the game doesn’t even warrant for such resolution to be that high. It’s a freaking hide and go kill monsters type of game. Even this would have a great chance making it on the 3DS.
Higher resolution is always nice… too some degree. Most people can’t tell the difference from 1080p and 2160p from a sofa just some few meters away I think I read somewhere.
I have a 1440p tablet, and I have perfectly fine eyesight, and there so much on screen it takes longer time for my eyes to find something on it that it would do on my 720p tablet lol. And yeah, I don’t need to see water drops on leaves when my head is getting shewed of by a monster lol. Keep the framerate up instead so gameplay gets more precise!!
Like how people think 720p on Switch tablet itself is a joke when it actually emulates 1080p due to screen crunch size.
You’re right that they CPUs in all current systems are kind of weak though. That’s one area the Switch could have match them if Nintendo had used a custom SoC with A72s clocked at like 1.5Ghz. In cases where a task is single threaded the A72s would probably kick the shit out of the others.
Yeah, A72 could make up the difference. Hope Ninty upgrades the Switch in someway sometime soon.
Sadly I think they’re sticking with Tegra chips so that’s gonna shoot them in foot. If Nvidia was open to doing custom chips for Ninty, they really should have started with the Switch.
Things are probably going to end with “Works only in docked mode”-games in the future for ported games. And Pascal would make a lot more sense than Maxwell. Batterylife ffs!
Yea, it’s the portable mode that’s kind of preventing some games from coming over.
Nintendo stated that they would make accessories that used the USB-C slot. They’ve might come with batteryshells that might allow X1 too maintain docked performance on the go? Don’t know how much the battery need to output for something like that, but 3.1A should be enough, no? Still kind of stupid though…
Not sure. Never saw power usage measurements for it in docked mode with the display still on so it could go above 3.1 amp. Maybe 3.5a at max brightness? Thats potentially a third mode though as I’m sure any dev that targets 1080p or 900p when docked would want to know when the device is being limited to 720p so they can add more effects or use mobile oriented LOD biases and draw distances or so they can opt for a slightly revised clock mode. Any attachment would also make the whole docking process more of a pain.
Idk, it would be awkward.
Those speeds I listed for the PS4’s HDD were actually my own benchmarks. My mom’s laptop happened to have the same exact drive found in the PS4 and XBO so they’re definitely faster than Switch cartridges as long as data isn’t overly fragmented.
Yeah, HDD has a lot more writing and reading speed compared to SD-memory. But games reading from discs might be slower. Don’t thing they can pass 25MB/s when loading from Blu Ray (don’t quote me on that”.
If data is read sequentially from the Blu-ray which they tend to try to do, they can absolutely reach 27MB/s and the compression mixed with the hardware decompressor can would essentially multiply that speed by the compression ratio.
Before the Switch was announced, I had hoped that Nintendo would include some kind of hardware LZMA2 decompression both to try to counteract the issue of limited cartridge space and so that they can get better read speeds with slower cartridges. Once I found out that they were using an off the shelf TX1 though, I knew there was gonna be issues.
BotW would have particularly been able to take advantage of something like that because it was made to only use 1GB of RAM so it could have been placed on to the cartridge as a compressed file system with a 1.5GB dictionary and the whole game would have been small enough to fit on an 8 GB card.
PBJ, Lmao dude you need a different hobby.
And you need to study up what “STFU” means, dropout. Also, shouldn’t your BS opinion apply to..IDK, EVERYBODY here or you just wanna ask for an ass kicking because you think you’re funny or welcomed here with that crap?
You’re acting like a tough guy but whenever I ask you to prove that you know even a little bit about what you’re talking about you always run away like a chicken shit. Trust me, PBJ, you’re the last guy who should be talking like that.
Oh believe me. You really don’t wanna fuck with me with my patience being completely GONE, even right now.
And absolutely nobody cares or considers you a threat so save your energy. Who cares if your patience is gone when it takes so little to set you off anyway. Imagine my patience dealing with you and others who have strong opinions about things you clearly don’t know anything about or in some cases are willingly ignorant to.
And let me clarify, I don’t think I’m hot shit who knows everything. There are thousands of game developers who can school me on these things and I have some game developer friends who can school me various aspects of game development. I myself have a very, very, very super limited experience in game development, but I have written game code, I have made textures, and I have made 3D models. The degree to which you don’t know what you’re talking about is glaring though.
You’ve considered factual information about the Switch to be anti-Switch propaganda before even when people who have developed for the Switch are saying its true. In some cases you’ve even said this about shit that it’s in Nvidia’s own white papers about the TX1.
Take a breather, and before you go off an another rant about how lazy game developers are, spend some time actually learning about what goes into making a game first. Learn about the hardware, learn about software, learn about methodologies. Just put in some effort to learn about something before you speak about it.
Settle down there internet tough guy. I’m sure he’s shaking in his boots looking at your MLP avatar, don’t scare him too much.
kek
All I said was that it was a good port with very little in the way of sacrifices. So why am I getting attacked?
Also, Skeleton420, you might wanna get a better hobby if your only comeback is “Get a better hobby”… kind of makes you look like a dumbass.
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this agin proves there is zero excuse and the turd partys are piss takin with this dri drip shit with games
switch is dx12 Vulcan level 2016 level chipset..with a arm cpu and far newer tech thanps4 can we SORRY the sony fans stop with the it carnrt run it BULLSHIT
It “again proves” that only because you ignored anything that’s shown the contrary. Also the Switche’s chip came out in 2015 and thus isnt 2016 tech and both the PS4 and XBO are Vulkan (not Vulcan) and DX12 supported hardware. In fact, I’m pretty sure both the PS4 and XBO S have had there chips upgraded to a newer manufacturing process than the Switch.
I would expect someone with the name Vic Twenty would know just a little bit more about tech.
I love my Switch. Nintendo is the only console I ever bother with, since I’ve always had a gaming PC. But I promise you, the insides of a Switch are not as powerful as a Playstation, and it has nothing to do with the year that it was made.
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Snake Pass all over again: people using an indie game to prove (to only themselves) that the Switch is this powerhouse & that the devs of other games MUST be lazy.
The only thing the Switch is a powerhouse over is the Wii U, every system that came before Wii U, & the handhelds Vita & 3DS. It ain’t got shit on PS4 & Xbox One (at their base models) when it comes to power. It’s a shame (for Nintendo & their Nintendo only gamers) but that’s the reality. Just another gimmick console held back by the gimmick. The name might have changed but the Switch is still just like the Wii & Wii U. Only difference is the 3rd party support is actually great.
Nintendo putting out an underpowered console may be more of a blessing than you think. So Nintendo lives and dies by its first party games right? Fans demand tons of first party games from them. If we’re not seeing one a month, we start talking droughts. And the reality is that as gaming tech has improved, game development time and cost have been skyrocketing. A model that used to take an art guy just a few days work now take a whole team two weeks That’s done a lot of unhealthy things to the market, like causing most smaller devs/publishers to get eaten up by the few giant publishers, safe sequels and boring game design, microtransactions in premium priced games, DLC schemes, etc. And it’s why we see comparably fewer first party titles come out from Sony and Microsoft, even when Nintendo is underperforming in a generation. Now, Sony has just come out and said that they’re restructuring to focus more on first party releases, and I think that’s largely a counter to the threat that Nintendo has brought: they can’t just rest on being the most powerful, they need to match Nintendo’s first party big guns.
Nintendo needs to keep cost and development time down to meet the steady cadence of first party releases that fans demand. So rather than battle for the top spot in tech, you fill a niche and sell great first party games (the Switch’s gimmick is why I play it more than my PC by the way). If you want lots of Nintendo games, you need less powerful hardware, especially since most people expect first parties to be the front runners in how to max out their own tech. Crank up the specs and each project is going to demand more internal resources, increase your financial risk which means less innovation, new IP, etc, and honestly, it’s just not worth it.
Kalas X3 – Sonyendo King
“Gimmick Console held back by a Gimmick” Portability is a gimmick now? Mm…
you would’ve had a point with the Wii, Motion Controls was it’s focus, that was very gimmicky
Wii U again you would’ve had a point, the whole gamepad thing was pretty gimmicky and useless
but the Switch? this is the least gimmicky console since the GameCube, it’s very focused on great games that can be taken on the go, I wouldn’t call that a gimmick
yes, it’s less powerful than the Xbox One and PS4 but that’s to be expected, this system is the size of a tablet and despite that it’s very impressive what it’s able to do even if it’s not up to the standards of the Xbox One and PS4, which is why I don’t think it’s fair to compare it to those, it doubles as both a home console and handheld console
and well, if you consider it a gimmick well it’s a VERY good gimmick and is the reason the system is so popular and in demand, people want this “Gimmick”, being able to play home console quality games on the go is amazing, even third party stuff, sure it may not be as pretty as the other consoles BUT the portability makes those sacrifices worth it, as long as the games run well and look good gamers are happy and I think that’s what matters the most
this is why a ton of games that come to the system sell well and sometimes even outsell their PS4/Xbox One/PC Counterparts, the added benefit of portability matters :)
I don’t use the word gimmick as a negative since plenty of stuff that is standard today were considered gimmicks when first being used. So I use the general meaning of gimmick. So yes. The portability is a good gimmick but it’s still a gimmick holding it back from being truly powerful regardless. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the Switch is doing well but it’s just not as big of a deal to me as to others.
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