Enjoying The Game BUT

[KWAiRT]

I'm really liking this game and I'm very curious to see what kind of post release support it gets. However my biggest and by far largest complaint at this time is the performance. Stock unity defaults with little to no difference on performance. I am aware of the performance issue with the grass and it is most certainly better with it off however for the detail and amount of load on the CPU and GPU the game should be performing MUCH better. Im hitting 20 fps with 16-24 units on screen. Are we using Unity 4 or 5 here?

My gpu never even clocks up and barely gets used. My CPU will use 4 threads but clearly it's not the bottlebeck as it's usage levels are also moderate at best. We need some focused optimization on the game and I don't just mean grass. Move more aspects over to the GPU and accelerate them. Even the grid turning on and off you can see the popping as the texture slowly draws. Strategic view works well though and I really like how the unit icons are displayed but the map scrolling jankyness and overall performance is really bringing my view of this game down.

I really want to recommend Oriental Empires but I can't based on performance alone. I hope with some updates we can see some performance improvements because this game is too good to be running this badly. I know high end rigs are just brute forcing it and dealing with it but on the mid to low end range the game is atrocious. I'm only running in 1080p and barely using 1GB of VRAM. I can even live with the janky map scrolling and grass off but everything from the winter snow terrain can be seen drawing in slowly and we shouldn't even see things like these textures poping like this.

Again I'm really enjoying the gameplay but performance is just BAD. It's so nice to play a tbs that actually works on release. I mean I was impressed with the diplomacy right off the bat and how it continued to work with me and not just against me. Hell one of my allies even saved my city all by himself I was shocked. The combat in my opinion is good and Im loving multi hex battles and movement during combat/movement phase. I'm just having a hard time playing due to performance. I fear I would get very bogged down in any mid to late game.

On another note as another user has mentioned the fog of war is also very janky and only updates at the end of the movement phase. I can see how some users would prefer to have the entire map visible. If this is an option I would also like to at least see the shape of the map and trees before exploring it.

Lastly I just wanted to say I tried everything I could to get some more performance out of this 2600K and ye old 780GTX 3GB but alas no matter what custom profile or settings I used the game just continues to struggle. Nvidia 375.95 drivers on Windows 7 64. The game does look a tad better using a post process AA filter such as MLAA or FXAA on a nice low setting. Adds transparency aliasing and in general makes the trees look quite a bit better. As long as it's a subtle post process filter it doesn't blur the image much but looks quite a bit better. For testing purposes though I ran a plethora of settings and spent a good three hours just testing those settings alone. Anyways hope to see some post release support. The game most certainly deserves it. I love the map scale and the way the battles play out all at the same time on the map. Really good stuff here just needs an optimization wizard to clean it up.

[Neutron]

Glad to hear that you're enjoying the game even with the performance issues, and thanks for taking the time to write a long post. Unfortunately improvement is harder than you think.

If the game was written today with the latest version of Unity, many aspects would work better. Unfortunately games take many years to develop, so the graphics were written when Unity was far less capable. For instance, when you zoom in on a large army the performance isn't great. This is because in the past Unity's animation system was very poor for that sort of thing, and couldn't handle hundreds of models, so we had to write our own. Our own system is pretty well optimized, animation takes place on its own thread, and the skinning takes place on the GPU. Unfortunately, Unity causes a big bottleneck passing the skinning data to the shaders, which I haven't found a way around.

I'd agree that the fog of war reveal could be nicer, but that's really a function of team size. If you have a dozen programmers, you can have someone spend time to make it nice. If you don't, then at some point you have to stop with graphics, and start writing an actual game.

I do intend to upgrade to the latest Unity at some stage, but at the moment don't have any plans to rewrite major game systems to use systems that Unity has added while OE was in development. That said future development will in large part be guided by the concerns the community have, so your points are noted.

[KWAiRT]

That is probably the best response I've ever had to a performance based thread and I really appreciate how detailed your response was. I'm more and more impressed with Unity moving forward. I have around three or four Unity games installed right now and it's most certainly getting better and better.Thread usage did seem well optimized. I wonder how much performance you would gain by just resolving that bottleneck. I'm not too worried about the grass either but it would be nice if it was working with no performance hit ;)

The fog of war is not a deal breaker since the movement phase happens at the same time. It's not like you miss anything. It just took me a while to get used to it. I'm a performance guy thanks to my eyes but I do understand what you're saying about developing graphics to a point and focusing on the gameplay. Gameplay and AI in Oriental Empires is good and does stand out which it should in a strategy game right? You can see this in just a few hours of play. I know you will make improvements here also but I was impressed with the gameplay and AI on release.

In fact I was so impressed I bought a copy for a friend to play. Looking forward to trying COOP campaign and watching closely for any updates. Again I do appreciate how active you've been on the forum answering questions about the game and gameplay itself. I love the map scale and strategy view is fantastic the way it shows units and stacks. Or even how it adjusts the flags on the cities as you move the camera away. Sometimes I will just sit the camera in a custom place before ending my turn and just watching the carnage unfold. Really cool how it tells you where battles are firing off on the map or the battle of such and such. The quick swap to battles on the bottom and the widescreen letterbox view that takes place in combat phase all work really well for me.

Wish you all the best and already looking forward to the next game in the series. Hopefully it's Medieval themed I'm still waiting for a follow up to MTW2 ;) Keep up the good work you guys and gals should be very proud and again thanks for the detailed response and honesty. I need to upgrade this toaster like yesterday ;) Thankfully my buddy has a beast of a host.

[KWAiRT]

I'm going to have to stick my foot in my mouth here. As I have already gifted a copy to a buddy and recommended it to another who was asking questions about the game mechanics. I actually can recommend this game as it's very unique and if you turn the grass off it's playable even on a toaster. I'm still a noob at this game but really enjoying learning how to play it. I do really love the multi hex combat mechanics. Multiple phase battles in a single turn with reinforcements joining in etc. So cool ;) If you are a tbs fan you really need to try this game.

[Neutron]

Thanks KWAiRT. Glad you're enjoying it even with the occasional slow down.

[Μολοχ]

Hey, everyone. I've played this game in beta testing for many hours, but I remember it not performing very good on my computer (I have weak processor). I also remember, there wasn't many graphic settings. I was thinking of buying it now, but I just wanna ask, if the graphic settings were expanded, or maybe if there is some other way to optimize it for weaker PCs? Thank you.

[Neutron]

Should work fine at 1920 x 1200

Sorry, haven't made much change to graphics settings. It runs quite well on my 9 yr old machine, so it's not really that much of a resource hog.

[Μολοχ]

Originally posted by Neutron:

Sorry, haven't made much change to graphics settings. It runs quite well on my 9 yr old machine, so it's not really that much of a resource hog.

Thanks for the reply. My machine is only 2.5 years old, but it's a laptop, so video and RAM are okay, but processor is weak. I remember it lagging a bit. I will buy it and look for ways to manually increase performance then.

[Havie]

Originally posted by Neutron:

Glad to hear that you're enjoying the game even with the performance issues, and thanks for taking the time to write a long post. Unfortunately improvement is harder than you think.

If the game was written today with the latest version of Unity, many aspects would work better. Unfortunately games take many years to develop, so the graphics were written when Unity was far less capable. For instance, when you zoom in on a large army the performance isn't great. This is because in the past Unity's animation system was very poor for that sort of thing, and couldn't handle hundreds of models, so we had to write our own. Our own system is pretty well optimized, animation takes place on its own thread, and the skinning takes place on the GPU. Unfortunately, Unity causes a big bottleneck passing the skinning data to the shaders, which I haven't found a way around.

I'd agree that the fog of war reveal could be nicer, but that's really a function of team size. If you have a dozen programmers, you can have someone spend time to make it nice. If you don't, then at some point you have to stop with graphics, and start writing an actual game.

I do intend to upgrade to the latest Unity at some stage, but at the moment don't have any plans to rewrite major game systems to use systems that Unity has added while OE was in development. That said future development will in large part be guided by the concerns the community have, so your points are noted.

This is like the most detailed best response ive ever seen from a developer. Informative and Impressive.