17 replies to this topic

[Deadwyng]

first off, kudos for having the most reasonably (read: lowest) priced per-purchase scheme's ive seen.

hawken's a good game, i like it better than mechwarrior online, since its more of a first person shooter than a walking tank sim. but it wont get my money.

first and foremost, its the graphical performance. i dont know what you guys did in the past few months, but in alpha 2 i had noticeably higher frame rates at higher detail settings. CB1-3, my fps has taken a nose dive.

under the default, fresh install settings, (720p, and what, High graphics/textures_) average of 21 fps according to fraps. turning all the options to low/off (ambient occlusion didnt seem to want to turn off and stay off) only offered a slight improvement, 38 fps, but back down to 22 at 1920x1080 resolution. it was a much smoother experience during alpha 2. here, the only time i get a smooth framerate is in the menus or while waiting to respawn (and when i do respawn, a second or two of <10fps, every time)

here's a single 5-minute section of a my framerates look like. FPS is generally below 30, the peaks are when i get killed and am in the menu waiting to respawn, and you can see that the FPS immediately drops off below the average as soon as i spawn.
 single-match.gif   14.48K   48 downloads

this is all on the two missile assault maps btw. the desert one runs smoother than the city map, but they both behave pretty much the same way.

here's a graph of the min/avg/max fps for 23 separate 5 minute samples (some of these are two samples in the same round, just an issue of when i remember to hit the benchmark key). the higher averages are rounds with very few players (4-6), the rest are full games (or nearly full)
 match-average.gif   9.33K   41 downloads

my hardware's the same as it was at the end of september for alpha 2, GTX660ti, 8gb ram, athlon II x3 445. i know that cpu is bottlenecking my gpu, but i dont believe thats the issue here, hawken only loads my cpu to about 75% anyway, if that much.

also speaking of graphics, the bloom, motion blur (this especially), depth of field and the heavy film grain on top of all that make it a pain to pick out enemies from the visually noisy (missile assault again) environment/background. maps are detailed, sure, realistic, fine, but there feels like a lot of clutter. visually noisy.

if that werent bad enough, the freaking hud is all over the place. i can accept the cockpit model bouncing around like a cracked-out 5 year old on redbull in a bouncy castle, but all this whackin' & jackin' from the reticle, thats rediculous. and the camera shake setting is on LOW.





hawken doesnt like alt-tabbing. im a chronic alt-tabber. fullscreen mode, comming back to hawken from alt-tabbing, black window, wont respond, has to be forcibly closed from the task manager. borderless windowed, hawken stays on top of other windows (like this forum post). not cool story, bro

mech design, while unique (and thats a good thing) is also rather fugly. in earlier versions the basic assault mech was a lot sleeker, rounder, like the current berserker and infiltrator. the current assault tho... ive heard it described as a walking TV, dishwasher or microwave. scout's kinda unattractive too, but the assault's the worse eyesore.

i like the AgencyFB choice for font, for the most part, but there's a lot of little text that tends to run together and is hard to read, especially on the default 720p resolution. good examples would be the S1/S2/S3 icons on the minimap (really, just white, yellow or red rectangles), the heading/elevation wobber around the reticle, teammate/enemy names, and the distance to that person below the targeting backet (hell, most of the time i dont even SEE it its so small)

settings dont stay where i set them. field of view like to reset to displaying 100, but the upper limit for the slider is only 90 (i prefer 100 over 90, but i dont think it's acutally 100). cockpit lag, whatever that does, likes to display 0, but the lower limit is 0.10 . camera shake is persistently rediculous reduced, even after i set to to low. show siege/missile assault rules re-enable themselves. over on video settings, the physx effects box is empty/null, rather than "off" or "on", which are the two options that drop-down has, and capped smooth framerate (which may well be capped, but certainly isnt smooth in my experience), always reverts to on. on the audio settings tab, the other player volume slider doesnt want to leave 0.5, which is too quiet to actually hear other players. mic volume behaves the same way, as do the rest of the volume sliders, reverting to default values whenever the client (re)starts.

last item, and its something else that i havent seen much improvement on from alpha 2 is the of the missile assault matches ive played, quite a few have been noticeably lopsided. like one team holding all 3 points for nearly the entire round. steamrolls are not fun to be on the losing side of, and not much better to be on the winning side of that either. in sample of 15 rounds played today, 7 of those the final score had the winning team with >875(50%) points remaining on their base.
ive got one screenshot in the attached bundle of a 3v1 match (with a 5th guy joining right at the end), and while the guy by himself lost the match, he had more than 3x as many kills as the rest of us put together. another match with the same guys went 17 to 2 in a 2vs3 setup, and the team of 3 lost that round.
other kill ratios stick close to 2:1 in favor of the winning team. so in my experience, typically the winning team will win by a significant margin close to half the time.



here's my benchmarks with fraps, and some end of round screenshots.
 New folder.zip   1.55MB   3 downloads

Edited by Deadwyng, November 25 2012 - 08:55 PM.

[Necro]

@fps.
They haven't hit the optimization point yet but expect things to get better sooner rather then later.

@menu options.
I haven't noticed any of these problems with reverting options, perhaps it's something to do with your system or install. Try editing the .ini file directly for now till you get a better solution to that problem.

@balancing.
Matchmaking and balance are currently being worked on there will be a lot of changes coming open beta.
(links to mod posts can be provided)

@Graphical opinions.
I love the mech looks, very nice to see something unique. The text is also something that I personally hope will be worked on. They are proving options to turn off a lot of things like bloom/motion blur.
(however yours aren't working which sucks but i expect that to be fixed as it's only some users)

@alt tabbing.
I can do it fine and do it frequently, must be your install or system.

Edited by Necro, November 25 2012 - 09:37 PM.

[Beemann]

Necro, on November 25 2012 - 09:36 PM, said:

@fps.
They haven't hit the optimization point yet but expect things to get better sooner rather then later...

...@balancing.
Matchmaking and balance are currently being worked on there will be a lot of changes coming open beta.
(links to mod posts can be provided)

Whether or not these are being fixed/worked on, you could see why he'd be hesitant to shell out money would you not_ Bethesda may PROMISE a less buggy game, but that doesn't mean that I'll buy their latest game before it gets patched a few dozen times
Not saying the devs wont deliver, but he has no real proof that they WILL, and erring on the side of caution has proved pretty useful when it comes to throwing money at games

Necro, on November 25 2012 - 09:36 PM, said:

@alt tabbing.
I can do it fine and do it frequently, must be your install or system.

Except it isn't. Hawken handles horribly after an Alt Tab for me for a few seconds, and sometimes takes a little while to actually display anything
Just because it doesn't happen to you doesn't mean it's an error on someone else's end. If you crash repeatedly in Hawken and I don't, it doesn't mean that I have a better setup, it means that the game is running into some issue that MAY involve your setup (see: all the AMD driver issues with various titles over the past couple of years), but is ultimately the fault of the game

[Necro]

Beemann, on November 25 2012 - 10:17 PM, said:

Necro, on November 25 2012 - 09:36 PM, said:

@fps.
They haven't hit the optimization point yet but expect things to get better sooner rather then later...

...@balancing.
Matchmaking and balance are currently being worked on there will be a lot of changes coming open beta.
(links to mod posts can be provided)

Whether or not these are being fixed/worked on, you could see why he'd be hesitant to shell out money would you not_ Bethesda may PROMISE a less buggy game, but that doesn't mean that I'll buy their latest game before it gets patched a few dozen times
Not saying the devs wont deliver, but he has no real proof that they WILL, and erring on the side of caution has proved pretty useful when it comes to throwing money at games

Necro, on November 25 2012 - 09:36 PM, said:

@alt tabbing.
I can do it fine and do it frequently, must be your install or system.

Except it isn't. Hawken handles horribly after an Alt Tab for me for a few seconds, and sometimes takes a little while to actually display anything
Just because it doesn't happen to you doesn't mean it's an error on someone else's end. If you crash repeatedly in Hawken and I don't, it doesn't mean that I have a better setup, it means that the game is running into some issue that MAY involve your setup (see: all the AMD driver issues with various titles over the past couple of years), but is ultimately the fault of the game

1st thing.
Yeah, good thing it's a free game then
(i know about the vangaurd thing but if your unsure then buy something later it may not be for you)

2nd
For me it just has a few textures that need to reload and does it in a second. For you it takes longer to respond.
It may need work but as for him Crashing everytime he does it i would assume it's either his install or his system.

Also system doesn't mean your system is broken/worse, it means that your system and the game are not working well together. Sorry for not clearing that up but I didn't mean it's not fault of the game, just not 100% the game.

Edited by Necro, November 25 2012 - 10:28 PM.

[DarkPulse]

Part of it is that the game does not run as well on AMD processors, part of it is that AMD processors are woefully underpowered compared to Intel (their best CPUs released today are about as good as four year old Intel tech), part of it is due to the fact your processor is even older than that.

The CPU is absolutely bottlenecking your videocard. Here's an example one review site used - of a GeForce 680 GTX - taking on Borderlands 2 in otherwise identical configurations:



As you can see, AMD's performance actually suffered a notch until their very latest processors (the FX-8350 would rank slightly higher than the Phenom IIs) but the Athlon IIs are really old processors for modern games. This is pretty much right in line with your processor: I'd expect you to score higher than the Athlon II X2 but lower than the Athlon II X4. Since in Borderlands 2 (which runs on Unreal Engine, similar to Hawken) it goes from between 20-36, your numbers fall right in the middle, confirming this.

So while it will probably improve somewhat, realistically, it's probably time to start considering upgrade. And you'll obviously not want to stick with an AMD system if you can afford not to. While you might get acceptable performance (and I even had an argument with some guy over this during CB1), if you want performance closer to that golden 60 FPS mark, you'll want something like a Core i5 3570k, or wait until Intel's Haswell tech comes out next spring for an even better boost.

[Decoy101x]

Your fps is lower this time in cb3 vs alpha because they're adding more to the graphics and textures and other things. Yeah your fps will drop. They'll still be low even after you turn options off. That's the nature of the beast. I don't blame the game at all, it's your system wether you want to admit it or not. Nice gpu, fuzzy bunny CPU.

Also I'm running a gtx480. And an i5 2400 CPU with 4 gigs of ram  and I alt tab fine. All options on and ultra settings with 2x aa and physx on 1920 x 1080 I stay around 50 fps. During HEAVY action ill dip to 30. Maybe even mid 25 but over all I'm happy.


It's your system brah.

[TemperWolf]

Why do the exact same Fanboys come out of the woodwork to sa the exact same thing in every game just before it's release_

Hey guys, don't critize the player if his CPU can't handle it. One thing the developers should account for is lowend computers and should be able to allow even low-end computers to sustain themselves on the Lowest Settings. That is actually the BEST way to make money. The user is actually pointing a big problem you should be agreeing with and supporting him with, instead you are turning against him like a bunch of dogs. I hate gaming these days, too many people foam at the mouth to defend what they like -- but they end up just ruining it more than helping it.

[JuiceBox]

TemperWolf, on November 26 2012 - 08:07 AM, said:

Why do the exact same Fanboys come out of the woodwork to sa the exact same thing in every game just before it's release_

Hey guys, don't critize the player if his CPU can't handle it. One thing the developers should account for is lowend computers and should be able to allow even low-end computers to sustain themselves on the Lowest Settings. That is actually the BEST way to make money. The user is actually pointing a big problem you should be agreeing with and supporting him with, instead you are turning against him like a bunch of dogs. I hate gaming these days, too many people foam at the mouth to defend what they like -- but they end up just ruining it more than helping it.

Its easier to develop a game with crazy requirements and then work backwards. Its MORE difficult to build a game with low specs and work up.

[TemperWolf]

From a development and game artist stand point -- it is only more difficult to build a game with low specs frist because you are actually putting the time in to do the proper work. It's easier to make a game with crazy requirements because you can cut the art department's work in half by telling them not to make clean work.

Honestly I think in the end if you keep letting the art department get away with shortcuts -- you'll just stock pile more work in the during the race to the deadline making crunch time HELL for everyone and at the same time MISSING your deadline.

[DarkPulse]

Well, the other fundamental part of the problem is that the days of AMD and Intel being at a relative parity are pretty much over. From 2000-2006, you could say AMD was better, and from about 2006-2009, you could say that they were roughly equivalent (Intel was slightly better), but since then, Intel has progressed per-generation; AMD has simply not. His processor is also approximately 3 years old, which isn't an insignificant amount of time when it comes to PC gaming.

You'll note that I said that the devs can (and indeed, likely will) improve performance somewhat, but there's a simple limit to how much his processor can do due to its age, as well as to how much it can do due to its architecture, an area AMD has been lagging behind in since 2009. Raw clockspeed doesn't mean anything anymore and it really hasn't since 2006, and neither do more cores; it's more about instructions per clock now, which is why my quadcore i7-2600K will still stomp an octocore FX-8350 in nearly anything, despite it being 800 MHz slower and having half the processor cores.

So if he's fine with performance in that 40-50 range, he should be okay once the devs tune the game up better, but if he's expecting all 60, all the time, he basically is going to be looking at an upgrade in the near future as his CPU just can't cut the mustard here. (Whoops, almost made a Fruedian slip there!)

[Snoof]

EVERYBODY STOP TALKING!!!! By now everyone should know that you do NOT challenge DarkPulse when it comes to "AMD vs Intel" subject, better yet dont even mention those 2 in the same paragraph, otherwise you would get pages, and pages, and pages, and..... oh did i mention pages worth of info_

[DarkPulse]

Snoof, on November 28 2012 - 04:27 PM, said:

EVERYBODY STOP TALKING!!!! By now everyone should know that you do NOT challenge DarkPulse when it comes to "AMD vs Intel" subject, better yet dont even mention those 2 in the same paragraph, otherwise you would get pages, and pages, and pages, and..... oh did i mention pages worth of info_

Not sure if serious or trolling.

That said, yes, game needs impovement on AMD processors - badly. But it's simply not going to touch an Intel in any CPU-dependent game, and UE3 (which Hawken uses a derivative of, the UDK) is an engine that is more about what the CPU can handle than what the GPU can handle. So yes, a better CPU will always improve your framerate in Hawken... unless we go like 5 years into the future where even budget models will outperform today's elite handily.

For what it's worth, I was mostly informing the OP that his CPU was quite old by gaming standards, and is likely the bottleneck, so he'd be well vested in upgrading fairly soon, and I would simply suggest he go over to Intel when he does so, as the best AMD offers still trail theirs by sizeable margins.

Edited by DarkPulse, November 29 2012 - 02:18 AM.

[phertiker]

Beemann, on November 25 2012 - 10:17 PM, said:

Just because it doesn't happen to you doesn't mean it's an error on someone else's end.

The reverse is also true. I alt-tab just fine.

[FluxX]

It's probably your CPU. I play on an Phenonem II and it plays fine (4 core mind). Granted, I've not checked FPS much, and need to play on normal or low, but I play fine and it's quite smooth.

Sorry, the athlon II x3 445 just does not cut it.

[cH_aos]

I reckon since the assault mech will most likely be one of the most played classes they made it look somewhat ugly to encourage people to go ahead a customise it.

Also I find it extremely early to judge this game...

If your on the fence about spending money; stay on the fence and judge wether or not you spend money after trying the released product.

[Beemann]

phertiker, on November 29 2012 - 08:35 AM, said:

Beemann, on November 25 2012 - 10:17 PM, said:

Just because it doesn't happen to you doesn't mean it's an error on someone else's end.

The reverse is also true. I alt-tab just fine.

If one UE3 game out of dozens (that all run at 60 FPS on high settings) has an alt tab problem it's generally more reasonable to assume there's an issue with the game, or its ability to play well with your system, than it is to believe that your computer has somehow become magically worse when running one game

[DarkPulse]

I have no alt-tab problems whatsoever, so really, it's not a fault with the game, it's a fault with someone's hardware configuration.

[BuDeKai]

ive experienced no alt tab problems either.