Why game needs to build shaders?

[GoldInfinit7]

Seems like a bad game design decision. A lot of games don't have people waiting for "shaders" to be "built" or whatever. For example, Resident Evil 4 (remake). You just start the game and at the title screen in a matter of seconds.

[Sol3]

HZD did the same thing but that was quicker

[azogthedefiler25]

And even after it builds shaders you still have to wait for the little circle to finish. Ridiculous.

[lainiwaku]

building every shaders at start, less stutter ingame, game that don't have shader built at start, have hidden loading time/stutter

[Zaphre]

Bad game design decision?

Compiling shaders should be MANDATORY on PC.

You know thats how console works right? The difference is that with the hardware and software standarization on consoles, shaders can be precompiled, this doesnt work on PC.

You know steam has a feature built in for Vulkan based games to build cache? The whole steam deck magic is the hability of distributing pre-compiled shaders cache by download, because thats the magic of hardware and software standarization.

Yeah, the implementation of this on TOLU was poor, but saying "hurddurr cache shader bad" just shows how stupid you are. And there are ways to build shaders, and RE4 has shader caching also, just uses a different method, which again, it can't be globalized, since this is also game engine based. TOLU probably used the same method they used to pre-render cache for consoles, which is what their game engine was firstly conceived for.

Really, just shut the ♥♥♥♥ up =)

[KwizatZ]

Freaking noob, building shaders before the game is one of the good technical stuff of this game

[Wurst Kaese Szenario]

Every game did it faster, but when did these whole compiling disaster began? Two years ago you have installed a game and was able to play it after you had adjusted your graphic settings.

[Weaver]

Pretty much all games do this now, they just do it while you are playing, but that can impact performance. If you get it over to start with you free up more resources during actual gameplay, allowing better performance. If you don't you have to design everything else with it in mind and performance is lowered.

Building shaders also goes much faster if you simply sit back and let it with minimum other programs running, so all resources can be devoted to it. Took less than 15 minutes for me.

Consoles don't need to do it because they only have a single hardware configuration, so it can all be done and included in the initial download.

[Zaphre]

Originally posted by Whity Whitemann:

Every game did it faster, but when did these whole compiling disaster began? Two years ago you have installed a game and was able to play it after you had adjusted your graphic settings.

Well, the more complex games get, the more common this will become. As i said above, on consoles EVERY GAME have shader compilation, it's mandatory for good performance.

The thing is, since shader compilation is pretty much a calculation of a combination of software and hardware, developers are able to pre-compile shaders and just make them available for download or even install directly from disk (most common).

PCs are not standarized, there are infinite combinations of hardware and software. An NVIDIA 4090 from ASUS is NOT equal to a NVIDIA 4090 from Gigabyte, the simple fact that their BIOS is different requires the shader chace to be different from one to another. Same goes from Driver Version and so on.

The problem with TOLU is that they probably used their in-engine tool used to pre-compile shaders for the consoles, the engine was concieved to run on consoles firstly. And building a tool to compile shaders is not a simple task, is one of the most complex algorithyms in game development.

[episoder]

it's necessary to improve the ingame performance. the materials/shaders of tlou2 models i checked out looked very complex. i reckon they use a similar system on this game.

the cache is big and takes time to build, but it's totally worth it. you get very smooth gameplay without hitches. you may get hitches from asset loading if you run a slow cpu or slow ssd but defo not from compiling big shaders. yep

[Just Chill]

The time it takes also strongly depends on hardware.
I've heard horror stories of 4hrs, 3hrs, 2hrs, etc.

It lasted almost 18 minutes for me, luckily. Sitting there for 4hrs would be utterly awful.

[Laguna]

shader compilation screens mean the game has bad technical planning. it's not a good thing people. resident evil 4 compiles shaders as you play but it does it so fast and effieciently that the user doesn't notice it. it means the game is excellent at managing its shader pipeline. if a game has a shader compilation screen pausing your gameplay for 30+ mins its a horrendously bad game.

[sajmon]

Originally posted by Laguna:

shader compilation screens mean the game has bad technical planning. it's not a good thing people. resident evil 4 compiles shaders as you play but it does it so fast and effieciently that the user doesn't notice it. it means the game is excellent at managing its shader pipeline. if a game has a shader compilation screen pausing your gameplay for 30+ mins its a horrendously bad game.

optimization was the last thing ND or whoever cared about with this release. main concern was to push it out before HBO TV series hype is over

[Just Chill]

Originally posted by Mr. A:

Stop stalking our profiles. It's disturbingly insecure.

I've invited you to do it privately instead you delete my posts and you come here to write that?

Not having the guts to comment on a private group instead of posting anything here rather appears to be insecure.
The group is open for comments, have a go. :)

[Hazy]

Originally posted by U_Go_6FT_BeLOW:

Shader Cache building = Inexperienced rookie developers porting.

It is a product of DX12/Vulkan. Nothing to do with "rookie devs".

[GoldInfinit7]

Wow, some people triggered by a simple question. It is definitely bad user experience to have people waiting a long while. Why should this game be excused when other games do it so well that it is hidden that the person playing the game doesn't notice it at all.