Just curious: why ToZ is capped at 30fps while Xillia 2 can run at 60fps?

[UltraZulwarn]

Just yesterday when I replayed Tales of Xillia 2 (PS3), I realized that it actually ran at 60fps!!! At least the 60fps (to my eyes) is quite consistent in battle.


Granted, I know very little about how the game was developed (hence I am asking haha) but doesn't Zestiria is built on the same engine as Xillia 1&2 (at least it looks that way to my eyes)?

So how come Zestiria is capped at 30fps on both PS4 and PC?? Hm......

[RykerrK]

Open world versus walled garden. CDP would be the first to tell you they're worlds apart.

[Soulen]

They decided to try something new with how the battles play on the world map instead of an arena like all the other games in the series.

I think it was a terrible decision.

[AntiRivet]

The general makeup of the game (linear vs open world) is irrelevant on PC and from a development standpoint, all this indicates is that they likely tied the game's logic to the FPS which is simply poor game desgin. If this is the case, unlocking the FPS would not be feasible, since you'd be running the game at double speed. I'm also worried that, like a handful of other recent PC ports (I.E PES from Konami or any of the garbage that Koei Tecmo has ported in the last year or so) they'll probably port the PS3 version, which of course would make absolutely no sense, yet...here we are in a time where that happens.

[Ezodagrom]

Originally posted by AntiRivet:

on PC

Game was originally designed to be on PS3.
PC and PS4 versions were after-thoughts.

[Fel]

Originally posted by caominhquancmq:

Just yesterday when I replayed Tales of Xillia 2 (PS3), I realized that it actually ran at 60fps!!! At least the 60fps (to my eyes) is quite consistent in battle.


Granted, I know very little about how the game was developed (hence I am asking haha) but doesn't Zestiria is built on the same engine as Xillia 1&2 (at least it looks that way to my eyes)?

So how come Zestiria is capped at 30fps on both PS4 and PC?? Hm......

Xillia 2 only ran at 60 fps on battles, but at 30 outside of it, because rendering the exploration areas does take a bit on the PS3 hardware, sadly.
For this game, they decided to have a "seamless" fighting arena, instead of a completely separate one, meaning that you are still on the exploration area.
This in turn implies that the renderring during the fights has to render more than just the usual flat, empty area with an image for background (usual tales of fights).
I don't agree with their choice at all, because this is the cause of the 30 FPS limitation for the PS3 hardware.

Given that it was developped for PS3 in the first place, and that japanese devs have that annoying habit of tying gameplay to frame rate deep in the core of their engine, it means that without a massive reprogramming of the whome engine, the other versions are basically bound to be locked at the same frame rate (because otherwise, weird things happen, and mostly makes the game unplayable).


The worst part about this is that this seamless-ish combat is something that comes from them listening to the community.
Usually, you would get a down time before and after the fight, as it loads the scenes, meaning that over thousands of fights, especially when grinding, it takes stacks up to quite a bit of down time.
Not to mention that flat, empty fighting arenas get old after a while.
The problem is that the idea was just one thrown in without regard to hardware limitations at all, it was just a wish of many players for an "ideal world" type scenario.
Now that we have an implementation of that, we can see that it was only a good idea if it was put on a machine capable to handle it without adding limitations to the fighting mechanisms.


I hope it answers the question.

Originally posted by AntiRivet:

The general makeup of the game (linear vs open world) is irrelevant on PC and from a development standpoint, all this indicates is that they likely tied the game's logic to the FPS which is simply poor game desgin. If this is the case, unlocking the FPS would not be feasible, since you'd be running the game at double speed. I'm also worried that, like a handful of other recent PC ports (I.E PES from Konami or any of the garbage that Koei Tecmo has ported in the last year or so) they'll probably port the PS3 version, which of course would make absolutely no sense, yet...here we are in a time where that happens.

Well, they stated that the PC gets all the improvements the PS4 gets, as well as a few points pushed a bit more, like view distance, so at least we are not getting a version worse than the PS4 (unless they strait up lied in their official communication, of course).

[Zunnoab #931]

Separate battle screens are a relic of the past. I applaud the effort, and look forward to experiencing this implementation.

[Fel]

Originally posted by Zunnoab #931:

Separate battle screens are a relic of the past. I applaud the effort, and look forward to experiencing this implementation.

On paper, I agree, but the conterpart for this particular implementation (the 30 fps lock for fights) makes it less worth it for me.

But then again, without trying out new things, it would also stop evolving and get stale fairly fast.

Let's just hope that with the next games not being on PS3 to begin with, we will be able to profit from the best of both worlds, the return of the 60 fps fights, along with less down times.

[LemonCakes]

Originally posted by Fel:

Originally posted by Zunnoab #931:

Separate battle screens are a relic of the past. I applaud the effort, and look forward to experiencing this implementation.

On paper, I agree, but the conterpart for this particular implementation (the 30 fps lock for fights) makes it less worth it for me.

But then again, without trying out new things, it would also stop evolving and get stale fairly fast.

Let's just hope that with the next games not being on PS3 to begin with, we will be able to profit from the best of both worlds, the return of the 60 fps fights, along with less down times.

The next game is Tales of Berseria, which was announced for PS3 and PS4. What's odd is that the reveal trailer is 60 FPS.

[Zunnoab #931]

Why is that odd? It is a different game.

[LemonCakes]

Originally posted by Zunnoab #931:

Why is that odd? It is a different game.

One of the reasons why Zestiria ran at 30 FPS was that the battles took place on the same field as exploration, and the PS3 can't really handle both at 60 FPS (especially since some of the areas are HUUGE).
Since this new game seems to be 60 FPS and is also being released for the PS3, there is a possibility that battle transitions are back, or the physics will not be tied to the FPS and will have something like a lock for the PS3.

[Albion Hero]

Originally posted by Zunnoab #931:

Separate battle screens are a relic of the past. I applaud the effort, and look forward to experiencing this implementation.

After Zestiria I'm not sure if they won't go back to separate battle screens. Tales games have almost always been 30 FPS outside of combat, and now the combat is part of the world so it also will run at 30 FPS. Unless they downgrade graphics for PS4 it'll be tough to get the whole game running at 60 fps.

[Zunnoab #931]

You just described why it is not odd. Perhaps I am too optimistic.

Originally posted by Albion Hero:

Originally posted by Zunnoab #931:

Separate battle screens are a relic of the past. I applaud the effort, and look forward to experiencing this implementation.

After Zestiria I'm not sure if they won't go back to separate battle screens. Tales games have almost always been 30 FPS outside of combat, and now the combat is part of the world so it also will run at 30 FPS. Unless they downgrade graphics for PS4 it'll be tough to get the whole game running at 60 fps.

The PS4 is way more powerful than the PS3. Zestiria is 30 due to the PS3.

[LemonCakes]

Originally posted by Zunnoab #931:

You just described why it is not odd. Perhaps I am too optimistic.

Well, I mean, it's odd if they keep having no transitions yet it runs at 60 FPS on PS3. Sorry for that misunderstanding.

[Zunnoab #931]

Yeah my optimism is that it is 30 on PS3, 60 on PS4, and arbitrary FPS on PC. That said my dislike of battle transitions is like my disappointment over 30FPS: I prefer otherwise but it is not a huge deal to me.

[Kamikaze Ice]

Originally posted by Fel:

*SNIP*

Fel made a great post in a thread that got deleted that covered some reasons why a "port" of a game only released in one country, which is not relevant to this FPS discussion, but my reply that added additional reasons also covered a good reason for "FPS locking", covering the why it was a thing to begin with, the potential "benefits" (good, bad, intentionally breaking things for results being a desired effect, etc). and why it is most commonly still experienced on Japanese PC games.

I'll try to sum it up, as I really dont wanna type all of that again. *shakes fists at mods deleting threads instead of locking for any reason*
Ahem.


PC gaming is not popular in Japan (MMO are the general exception). Consoles run the show there. Early PC games had no hardware acceleration, and everything was tied to the CPU clock via timestamp counters (and early event timers). These timers said how long a frame was, when to trigger each process, and basically governed the speed of the game. Ever try playing older games without emulation on newer hardware? Faster CPU (more MHz/GHz) the faster these older methods of controling a games speed carried over to early console development.

The obvious difference between consoles and computers is that consoles have one set of hardware requirements that never change (excluding revisions for lower temperatures or formfactor, etc.). Never having hardware that changes means there is no reason to fix what isn't broken. That being gamespeed tied to processing speed. This lets developers "optimize" their game to meet their performance target.
Consoles are played on "television" sets, which have defined specifications for watching movies, which are were between 24-30 on average depending on the type and era of movie you were watching. Doubling 30 gives us 60 (NTSC) and doubling 25 gives us 50 (PAL). I'll stop here on covering NTSC, PAL, movie frame rate origins and evolution, it's complicated and searching AVSforum can do far better than I can. This is the gist of it for 30/60 illustration purposes.

Now having a game tied to processing speed has one benefit, mentioned above as being able to be better "optimized". The quotations are there because some games have glitches and such intentionally created to get around some hardware limitations (ex: some NES/SNES games have "rectangle" pixels or a squished/taller screen that gets corrected by CRT curvature, or reaching the sprite limit to create a "strobe" effect" or to hide something (Megaman is a good example)).

Since consoles are the king in Japan, I hope you can understand why there was no real need to "fix what wasn't broken". Why spend time learning something new to do the same thing you already do?



Now that only covers why this is commonly found in Japanese games. It has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing with the target performance of X game. I don't have any real ideas as to why other than being lazy _OR_ new coders just not given the proper time to tune their engine because publisher says "feed me monies, release next tuesday". That and probbably all of the other cost assosiated with game development on a global scale that was covered by Fel and myself in that DELETED thread.


And just to touch on this topic: Why is *ported game* not 60+ fps?
A great example being Tales of Symphonia on gamecube at 60 fps vs 30 fps on PS2 version.
Both hardware is capable of 60+ fps, both have Tales games that achieve this. Please refer above where I talk about game "optimization". These "optimizations" rarely work on different hardware configurations (see: emulators that have to have special "fixes" for these "optimized" games so they run in a way that produces the "correct" end result.).
Having an engine built around one set of hardware requirements and getting it to run is alot easier than making it run the same on different hardware configurations (see: driver bugs or games that have bugs that are EXCLUSIVE to the specific hardware combination X user has that was not reproducible by in-house testers/debugers/developers and have to get detailed bug reports to fix what <1% of their userbase has encountered).
Take Batman Arkham Knight on PC for an extreme example. There are people who have the same hardware setup down to the brand, driver, firmware, but the only difference between them is the hard drive the game is installed on. It's broken for X guy, quite playable for Y guy, inconsistent on Z dude yet W person (warner bros./rocksteady) had it on an SSD and it was perfect. Again, extreme example, but this is the kind of "optomized" I mean above, as none of the issues PC players experience are found on the console versions. But lets keep that game out of here and in it's games' forum.



With that wall of text said, I do HOPE that developers take note of us who do throw a fit about 30 FPS LOCKED games. They need to stop it to make the games they create in the future better (able to be ported easier with less bugs or visual differences from lack of "optimizations"). Come join the PCMasterRace, atleast in development theory as we're always improving!