Remove the VRAM check

[Admiral Bubbles]

The forced VRAM check on starting the game is pointless, it doesn't need 4GB of VRAM to run. This game can run on a system far below the recommended requirements.

https://i.ibb.co/TMh8RDD/jwe2igpu.png

This setup uses a Ryzen 3200G APU, and only uses the onboard Vega 8 graphics chip. In addition, it's using a total system memory of 8GB, shared between the CPU and GPU, and only has 2GB of which allocated directly to the GPU. If the minimum specs were really required then this system shouldn't be able to run it at all.

There are plenty of systems out there with dedicated GPUs more powerful than this with less than the 'minimum' 4GB VRAM that could run this game just fine. Stop restricting your user base with arbitrary, and frankly unnecessary, requirements checks. Patch it.

[InvaderGrim]

Admiral Bubbles původně napsal:

High Flying Fox původně napsal:

So... I got an answer from the support team.

Unfortunately, it was really generic and shallow. In the ticket I did mention people over the specs being unable to launch the game, I pointed the issue was massively reported and pretty much summed up what we were discussing here... The whole shebang. I concluded suggesting the VRAM check might be overrated and hindering rather than helping.

"We do advise making use of a machine that meets the recommended specifications to play, or you may wish to seek a refund from your chosen retailer. We do not have a measure available to bypass those requirements."

First : Really ?
Then : duh
Finally : how didn't I think of that ?!?

The fact I joined a DxDiag copy of the CPU running with a GeForce 960 (the one I used for the test) was never even looked at. My guess is things aren't going to get better performance-wise. So if you are struggling with that issue - namely the "VRAM check fail : check your rig (you broke ass loser)" the very advice from the support team gave is to get your money back. If you're the glass half-full type, wait for a patch but you're on for a solid disappointment.

For me, this basically means I can't play when I'm away stranded with my laptop (one that exceeds specs) and I am forced to use the home rig. That's a major bummer and as Admiral Bubbles pointed out several times, the situation is arbitrary and unnecessary.

So really guys, if you're one of the unlucky and your rig does not meet the minimal specs : just make'em pay (... you back) !
If your machine does meet'em though... maybe just hang around a lil bit, and hope for a patch.

Then again I'm just voicing common sense here.

So the short answer is one of three things then?
1: They don't want to fix it
Kinda dumb considering the backlash it's been getting and the limiting of sales it does. Sure it's their product and all that so they get to decide how it functions (or doesn't in this case) but it does seem like a poopy move, given the review bombing they're getting for unintentional issues, to intentionally cause further backlash.

2: They can't fix it
If it's something they coded in then it's something they can code out. Given it runs as part of the application startup it could be as simple as adding // in front of the function call to have it ignored, or it could be something that was stupidly hard coded in by either themselves or a third party (Looking at you Denuvo). So not fixing it is either lazyness or incompetence.

3: They have no idea how to fix it
Would be pretty damning if a developer had no idea how their own product works given as far as I know it's an in-house game engine.


Either way, they need to say something about this sooner or later, not just keep us all in the dark.

Nah, there gonna keep us all in the dark, because doing otherwise would be admitting fault

[Last Mesiah]

to actually just start and run the game at super low settings a apu migth handle it but once you start gettign a few thigns going on at once in a park it actually gets pretty gpu adn cpu intesive id be interested to see an apu run this game on anything but full low settigns at 1080p. on one of my systems i only have a gtc1650 super i have it overclocked aswell and it barely manages high settigns at 55 fps with the larger parks/lnger games dipping it down to 48-50fps. but to be completely fair they say dont pruchase if you have below recomended specs.....people baught it anyway and are complaining its the devs fault

[Admiral Bubbles]

Last Mesiah původně napsal:

to actually just start and run the game at super low settings a apu migth handle it but once you start gettign a few thigns going on at once in a park it actually gets pretty gpu adn cpu intesive id be interested to see an apu run this game on anything but full low settigns at 1080p. on one of my systems i only have a gtc1650 super i have it overclocked aswell and it barely manages high settigns at 55 fps with the larger parks/lnger games dipping it down to 48-50fps. but to be completely fair they say dont pruchase if you have below recomended specs.....people baught it anyway and are complaining its the devs fault

I think you're missing the point. The problem is that far more powerful GPUs are being locked out of running the game because of an arbitrary VRAM check which somehow a far weaker APU can get past without meeting either the VRAM or system RAM requirements.

[archonsod]

Admiral Bubbles původně napsal:

Kinda dumb considering the backlash it's been getting and the limiting of sales it does.

From the latest Steam Survey results only around 20% of the user base have GPU's with less than 4Gb RAM, I'm not sure that's significant in terms of sales; certainly plenty of developers seem to ignore the 30% with VR hardware without it doing them any harm.

The other consideration is cost. Support isn't free, and given the 9xx series is already limited support (and EOL in 2024) why would a company want to waste time and money supporting those on obsolete hardware?

[Lord Haart]

Admiral Bubbles původně napsal:

The forced VRAM check on starting the game is pointless, it doesn't need 4GB of VRAM to run. This game can run on a system far below the recommended requirements.

https://i.ibb.co/TMh8RDD/jwe2igpu.png

This setup uses a Ryzen 3200G APU, and only uses the onboard Vega 8 graphics chip. In addition, it's using a total system memory of 8GB, shared between the CPU and GPU, and only has 2GB of which allocated directly to the GPU. If the minimum specs were really required then this system shouldn't be able to run it at all.

There are plenty of systems out there with dedicated GPUs more powerful than this with less than the 'minimum' 4GB VRAM that could run this game just fine. Stop restricting your user base with arbitrary, and frankly unnecessary, requirements checks. Patch it.

Yea pal but they don't want it to look rubbish.

[Admiral Bubbles]

Lord Haart původně napsal:

Yea pal but they don't want it to look rubbish.

Looks rubbish from a PR standpoint

archonsod původně napsal:

From the latest Steam Survey results only around 20% of the user base have GPU's with less than 4Gb RAM, I'm not sure that's significant in terms of sales; certainly plenty of developers seem to ignore the 30% with VR hardware without it doing them any harm.

Closer to 25%, a quarter of all steam users. This also doesn't include any under the 'Other' category, as well as people running APUs that are fairly weak but have lots of system RAM to use as VRAM. Looking at the cards directly over 10% of steam users use either a GTX 1060 or GTX 1050, the first and fifth most popular cards on steam respectively. Both of those ship with less than 4GB of VRAM, do you think they'll run the game worse than the Ryzen 3200G Vega 8 APU?

archonsod původně napsal:

The other consideration is cost. Support isn't free, and given the 9xx series is already limited support (and EOL in 2024) why would a company want to waste time and money supporting those on obsolete hardware?

You have this backwards. While we don't have the figures to know for certain, when you break it down logically it costs more in support time now with the lock in place.

As you pointed out, about a quarter of all Steam users are blocked from running this game. Many of those should in fact be able to run the game without issue other than the VRAM block. (Well, as well as this buggy mess can actually run). That means there are people complaining to support now about this that otherwise wouldn't be contacting support. There will always be people buying the game then complaining about being able to run it, all this block does is make more people who otherwise wouldn't be contacting support do so.

[Just Chill]

Last Mesiah původně napsal:

[just quoting as of the profile name]

Messiah is written with 2 "s". oO

[archonsod]

Admiral Bubbles původně napsal:

Looking at the cards directly over 10% of steam users use either a GTX 1060 or GTX 1050, the first and fifth most popular cards on steam respectively. Both of those ship with less than 4GB of VRAM, do you think they'll run the game worse than the Ryzen 3200G Vega 8 APU?

How well it performs isn't really relevant, minimum requirements specify that the game will run; how the dev defines 'run' and how the user define it aren't always the same. Usually they're based on the minimum platform tested; whether it works better, worse or at all outside of that is somewhat moot; you have neither the time nor resources to test on every possible hardware combination, what you do is say 'this is what I'm confident I can get it running on'; anything outside of that is entirely at owners risk.

That means there are people complaining to support now about this that otherwise wouldn't be contacting support.

Yeah, but the support guys answering those questions probably expect to get paid for turning up to work whether they have any work to do or not :P The main cost comes from development time; every hour spent patching an existing game is an hour not spent working on the next game (or DLC, or whatever else you're doing to actually make money).

[Admiral Bubbles]

archonsod původně napsal:

How well it performs isn't really relevant, minimum requirements specify that the game will run; how the dev defines 'run' and how the user define it aren't always the same. Usually they're based on the minimum platform tested; whether it works better, worse or at all outside of that is somewhat moot; you have neither the time nor resources to test on every possible hardware combination, what you do is say 'this is what I'm confident I can get it running on'; anything outside of that is entirely at owners risk.

How well it performs is the crux of the problem. VRAM isn't the only measure of performance since there are many weaker cards that have more VRAM than stronger cards. Using it as a reason to block use isn't a good indicator of performance. They aren't leaving this to user's own risk in this circumstance, they're outright saying they won't even let people try.

archonsod původně napsal:

Yeah, but the support guys answering those questions probably expect to get paid for turning up to work whether they have any work to do or not :P The main cost comes from development time; every hour spent patching an existing game is an hour not spent working on the next game (or DLC, or whatever else you're doing to actually make money).

I think you may not be quite 'getting' what I was trying to put across, so I'll try to rephrase.

For argument's sake I'll round up the numbers to a solid 25% of all steam users being unable to launch the game due to VRAM usage. Based on the 120m total users Google says, that's about 30m users. If 100% of them complained that they can't run the game then that's 30m complaints. (Obviously this won't be the case, but it's only an example)

Dropping the VRAM check would enable many of those in that 25% to play the game comfortably. The 1060 and 1050 users particularly should be able to since their performance is better than the Vega 8 I showed it running on. Those two cards are about 12.5% of the steam user base. While many of the 1060s will also be 6GB models that have no issues, it would still result in millions less people complaining about being unable to run the game.

Granted there would still be people complaining about being unable to run the game because of performance as they'd still be unable to run it, but support's answer would be no different to the current situation. In this example dropping the forced VRAM check altogether can only reduce the number of people complaining about the game not running, since you'd be going down from 30m users complaining about being unable to run the game.

Now it's not directly comparable to irl numbers but do you see where I'm going with this? People that actually can run the game will no longer complain about being unable to run it, and those that can't run it regardless will be complaining anyway, and those that can run it under spec that still complain about performance and bugs would still get the same response that support are giving them now.

[Ziggurt]

NoShotz původně napsal:

The limit should probably be removed though I wouldn't want to actually play the game with a machine under the minimum spec as that wouldn't be a very good experience graphically or framerate wise.

Yeah and then the forum would be swamped with people of how this game has low fps and cannot start with his "top modern" 486 DX2 with with overclocked ATI Rage XL :-).

[Admiral Bubbles]

Ziggurt původně napsal:

NoShotz původně napsal:

The limit should probably be removed though I wouldn't want to actually play the game with a machine under the minimum spec as that wouldn't be a very good experience graphically or framerate wise.

Yeah and then the forum would be swamped with people of how this game has low fps and cannot start with his "top modern" 486 DX2 with with overclocked ATI Rage XL :-).

At least then the calls to 'just upgrade lol' would have a valid reason.

[Admiral Bubbles]

Adding a bit of an update since it's relevant to the topic, I did some playing around with the game settings to get an idea of the performance.

720p Lowest Graphics Preset, Vsync on, Triple Buffering enabled - Locked 60FPS
1080p Same settings as 720p - 30 to 40 FPS

So not only does this game run significantly under the forced 'minimum' VRAM limit, it also runs surprisingly well. This is using the Ryzen 3200G with 2x4GB DDR4 2400MHz RAM for the entire APU, I have a 2x16 DDR4 3000MHz kit ordered right now which should improve performance further. I'll post those performance numbers once that arrives and is installed.

[Fuzura]

Hey sory,..
Are you run the game with very high setting?
And the game run smooth?

I just have lag problem
And spec of my system match with recommendes spec,..

[Admiral Bubbles]

unnoised původně napsal:

Hey sory,..
Are you run the game with very high setting?
And the game run smooth?

I just have lag problem
And spec of my system match with recommendes spec,..

Hi there, this topic is about running the game on low/under spec and the 4GB VRAM limit so you may not get much help here. From what's being said online the game has a fair few bugs and performance issues so you may get problems even if you meet the specs to run it.

I you're having performance issues it may help to read other people's threads about glitches and such, and post your system specs when posting for advice (or starting a new thread to discuss problems) so others can maybe see if there's an issue with your specs (or rule spec problems out!)

[Fuzura]

Oh Sory about that,.. :)
I start the discusion but no get reply..
I just search a clue for my problem, if you can run without the problem,. So my system have some problem..
Thanks man.. :)