Battlefield Bad Company 2 - Another Console port (from PC perspective) | |
First off, I hope you read this entirely and not just skim over it. Second off, My Rig: Operating system and processes: Drivers: CPU/Mem Usage: The Data: For the first test (1280x1024), I disconnected my normal 24 inch monitor and connected All tests were done with the desktop resolution matching the in-game resolution. I recorded the following by loading into battlefield with FRAPS running. I ran around, keeping my view on the battlefield (not at the sky or ground). I made sure to get into heavy combat, stand near explosions, drive several vehicles and fire my weapon often. I paid attention to the FPS shown by fraps, and recorded the highest and lowest FPS as I played (often getting me killed). My findings were as follows: Resolution Settings FPS Battle FPS (with smoke, taking fire, in vehicles) A little number crunching:
My conclusions: . If you look at the data starting at 1440x900, you will see as I went up in resolution, the 1080p (1920x1080) was resolution in which game was at it's best: The only thing I can come up with to explain that performance drop is that the game was designed Now, I must point out, that the _best_ frame rate and overall performance was in resolution from 1080p, while the gain in FPS was only 10.9%. However, the majority of PC gamers use 1280x1024 (21% of all steam users use it, out of 12 resolutions sampled - This game IS a port from a console designed game. Without optimizing the code for Gaming-Grade computer resolutions, and by their action of optimizing it for HD-TVs, the facts point to this game being a port. | |
The engine Bad Company 2 is using was specifically designed for consoles. So of course its going to feel like a port, because it is. That is why its optimized oddly compared to other PC games. This is probably why they are having a beta for it, to see how well it works and what they need to fix. | |
Yes it is a port, but it remains to be seen if it's a good one. They do exist, oddly enough. It is a bit sad that a franchise (battlefield, not just Bad Company) that got it's start on the PC has went for the porting option, but they still have time to redeem themselves. Extensive research there though, well done. | |
wow, much of this was just gibberish in form of numbers and data for me, but i got the last part, but since i have limited space in my apartment im changing my monitor out with a hd tv tomorrow (atm i got my consoles hooked up to the monitor and its not pretty) so the problem seems to become moot in my case, i do however no think that just because its not my problem that its not a problem. battlefield really tried sucking up to the pc community once some rather unpleasant news about CoD was revealed so for them to compensate on their coding and really how the game is going to be viewed is crazy, thats like shooting yourself in the foot with a really advanced gun. | |
Actually, the developers have told us many times that the game is _not_ a port from console to PC, as modern warfare was, but was designed for PC along side console, which is a bold lie. | |
Uhm, you are basing all those wonderful figures and data upon a public beta build. | |
You've got it wrong. First of all, testing environments might have been different. More/less players, more items on the ground, more trees, less trees etc. Conditions internally in the PC might also have been different, maybe your AV went on a small stroll through the system or something else started lagging the system. The next thing.. why did you disconnect your 24" to run the game in 1280x1024?
When it comes to that FPS-drop on the two last resolutions, I've experienced that myself in TF2. 1680x1050 vs. 1400x1050. First one runs bad, stutters, laggs, second ones runs just fine. 1400x1050 nice online and offline. Tested in sterile environments (local server, no players), multiple times in succession. | |
i dont care if it is a port or not, at least they have taken the time to impliment dedi servers, and not a cheap console match making system. How ever i cannot really comment on this as my bloody beta key has not turned up yet and i can only play the console version, which is good but im hoping its better on the pc =/ | |
Well, maybe it has something to do with time limitations? Revamping an engine like the Frostbite engine to include all of those new graphical extras in them would have to have taken up a large portion of the development cycle along with bug-testing the engine, developing the game and the multiplayer, bug-testing the game, etc. It is to my understanding that devs port their games to consoles if they want to bring it to more platforms, but lack the time allotted to them, so maybe that's the reason. | |
Well it was a beta... the point of a beta is to iron things out for when the game goes live to the mass public. | |
It was made to be like that, the only reason it's for the PC is because all the PC gamers felt that they were missing out on the first one (don't know why, though. It wasn't THAT great). | |
Guys im new to the pc gaming set-ups,,, so please bear with me.... i downloaded bf2 on steam but when the game loads to main menu the mouse is not in sync with the tabs.... ive tried reloading it but still this happens,....any ideas on who i can fix this as im stressed to my tits lol ..... your help would be much appreciate tks | |
As already said by others your test method wasn't best for comparison so I guess different scenes had the most impact on your results. Apart from that, how should one even optimize for a specific resolution? They'd have to cut somewhere else, a bigger resolution will just need more power. Some other thoughts that arise: | |
Not a port! :( MW2 is a port. And it sucks asshole..... | |
This is the biggest load of crap I've read in years. Lets put an end to it now. Almost all AAA studio games are written on top of cross-platform middleware and engines. Just because an engine debutes on a console doesn't mean the game is any less PC. You have to bare in mind that the vast majority of games are prototyped on a PC as a PC game product, and then differentiated from then on - the end game might be console only, but it was still a PC-developed game. What counts today is kind of resources a developer puts into individual platforms. The PC tends to lack focus today because its volume of sales is much lower than that of a console - there are fewer PC gamers out there. I'm not going to say why or even allude to "casual gaming" because everyone's been wrong about everything for the last 10 years (there are 80 million FarmVille players *right now* - who said PC gaming was dead?). A clear "console port" is where a studio gives the game to another shop to port and/or tune for a specific platform. In most cases they redesign the input and menu system or code their own off a more abstract design contract. Whether a PC game is a "console port" or not depends on many more factors than "it used to be on the console". Is COD a console game since COD3? No. You want to look at the effort put into supporting larger ranges of hardware - is audio offloading used where there's a high performance soundcard, can I specify shader, LOD or dithering options to increase performance, is it moddable? How else have to directly considered the PC in the fundamental design? The BC2 PC interface was done inhouse. It's as bad as BF1 was - remember that full screen FMV with the godawful crash-prone menu on top? - and no better than most other games out there through the years (most early 3D menu systems used more FPS than the game itself). The stats at the top, for different resolutions are a load of ignorant bullshit. Lets start by thinking about what a resolution is? A resolution is just a set of numbers that define a screen area - it's quite misleading because it has nothing to do with an actual "resolution", which would involve determining the smallest distinguishable measurement of a given distance or time and using that to determine a relative ratio. What the resolution doesn't tell us is how hard (or not so hard) a GFX chip is working and what it is doing. Just because, get this, a resolution doesn't scale linearly (or even positively) with performance doesn't mean a game isn't a "PC game" or is any more obviously a PC port. Because different resolutions mean different things to different cards and families and different implementations of different APIs/middleware, I can't really explain everything here, but ill answer the two common quesetions. Why does game performance drop when I increase my resolution? There are more pixels on the screen, the graphics card has to do more work to render each pixel and the computer has to do more work shifting the data around? Why does the fps not seem very consistent at different resolutions? Alignment and powers. A modern computer relies on data buses of specific widths (in bits and bytes). Usually data n bits long on an n-bit data bus takes 1 cycle to propagate. Data that is n-bits+1 requries two cycles to convey all the data, etc. And then you have assets, such textures at one aspect ratio and many sizes which all require more time to shift - the bigger the resolution of the end product, the bigger the resolution of your assets need to be so to avoid pixelation. Bigger bitmaps require more memory. When they don't easily fit into an internal buffer or structure, they have to be resized, taking time (huge kill with unaligned FBO and BVOs)... and lots more reasons along that lines. So why does performance get better at a higher res? That could be your drivers, that the internal hardware of your graphics card deals with that size/alignment better or it could be the neat engine has started to cull the very small things you can't see - reducing time for rasterization and memory bandwidth required (culls & scissors) to draw. So... stop it! I've had enough. Go get your own MSc! | |
This is the best first post. | |
not really... i guess it's where the money is. | |
If the demo/beta doesnt preform good... and the developers "promise" better preformance from the actual game... Dont buy that.. its a money making scheme. Can they promise 25% more preformance: the answer is no. For a PC game to sell well along with the console versions... PC version should contain something that makes it look better on PC vs console. Back when PC gaming was king... The PC version was always better Graphics than the xbox 1/PS2 version. Now we are gonna be stuck at the 1080 p for a while so ramping up the resolution on games is not the quick fix to make a pc game better. PC gamers were at HD before they even labeled it "HD". Im a PC gamer. I only purchase PC games when... either of the below happens: The Game is Better looking on PC than Console. PC gamers tend to punish companys for releasing crappy console ports. For instance. Dirt 1 was crappy console port but they redeemed themselves with DIRT 2. (all the dx 11 effects) I still didnt buy Dirt 2 cause of Dirt 1. But will buy Dirt 3 because they redeemed themselves with Dirt 2. Console People aren't so elitist and have no personal rules like that. | |