Regarding performance
We're working diligently on performance, but improvements/fixes for performance are going to take a bit longer.[...]
I appreciate & commend your well articulated, and honest, communication. And you're not even some marketing/PR specialist, are you?
So often I find that companies employ omission of truths and outright lies, all to make something appear as positive to themselves as possible. But TW seems nothing like that. So refreshing.
[...]This will be ongoing until we get to the point where we feel the majority of users are reasonably happy with the performance they are getting.
So how can you help? By getting us perflog dumps which will help us get the information we need to improve the performance. Please check out this link here for information on how to do this:
http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=61789[url]http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=61789[/URL]
The more information we have, the easier it will be to track down these issues. So thank you for your patience while we get these issues sorted. And rest assured we're hard at work to make that happen.
I have suggestions regarding how to accellerate the performance improvement process. I don't know to 100% how your situation is like and what is technically possible or not. But my perception should be somewhat near reality.
You lack wide variety of machine combinations required for acquiring data. You require this data to be volunteered by the players. Meet a typical (passionate) player (me). I have the great hardware with nasty performance problem. I want to help you out. But the process is perceived by me (and probably thus many others like me) as too much hassle & complexity. First reading up on the process, then manually running the command during specific scenes, then going to find the logs, attaching this and that, preferably with comments etc. Then not being sure if it was done right and uncertainty regarding much help my particular effort will have given.
I propose the creation and usage of
timedemos. This mode may be triggered by players through a desktop or steam shortcut, or a "run performance test" in the main menu > options. Or (and this is far less ideal) as a console command.
The timedemo runs for one minute each. Varying amounts of AI bots repeating some simple action. Artillery. Smoke. Post processing effects. A fixed camera or moving one. Fov changes. Sudden direction changes. Does not have to be perfect or cover every possible situation. The conditions are identical for each test run. The logs should try to retrieve as much of the relevant specs of the machine automatically. Any files needed for submission should be unified as one file. Or more ideal - set up a machine to receive the logs from the RO2 client on the players machines.
Positive:
Your own developers will appreciate access to a steady enormous amount of reliable, standardized performance data. The infrastructure to keep doing it for the entire life of the product. Interpreting the data will be much easier and efficient, without need to figure out what players are really sending them. Work should proceed faster, less resources needed to fix the problems, higher results achieved, less patches required, game will be perceived to be of higher quality and this results also in higher revenue for the company.
The players will appreciate it for doing own performance comparisons, for finding the best setting for themselves, for being able to help you (and as such themselves) with the performance problems, and for being able to reliably track performance gains/losses from different game versions rather than relying on their own vague (and often incorrect) perception on the state of performance.
Negative:
Creating timedemos and the basic infrastructure to have them generate & send the data you need, will require developer resources right now which will not yield anything helpful until after it is finished and pushed out to the players. It may seem more tempting to just scramble for the 'urgent' fixes now for instant gains, rather than delay for much greater gains in the longer run.
