Jess Birch @shivoa@mastodon.gamedev.place

It happened to me: I was playing a game on PS4 (early gen, no Pro patch; boost mode did not appear to be helping the framerate as much as you'd hope) and decided to stop because it'll be on sale on PC at some point where I can brute-force rather nice visuals (SGSSAA to clean up aliasing at whatever near-4K res my card can handle) plus hopefully push it to a stable (60?) framerate. I'm clearly ready for a new generation.

Hoovering up some old games I'd not played enough of from early on in the PS4's lifespan & it's quite depressing how much of the infrastructure was torn down before the generation even ends.
CounterSpy was Sony published but can't even find servers for the leaderboards. Sound Shapes (again, only picking on Sony published titles) also has many non-functional buttons in the main UI today (this is not new, those servers went offline in 2018).

Chaotic lawful advice: library panic when given illegal (against your contract) input. The program was already in an error state or the caller didn't understand the contract so this needs to be caught before production. Production library code shouldn't panic when a fault occurs inside the library code is not the same as don't panic.
https://mastodon.social/@fribbledom/105098569004562309

Considering the significant reduction in content (complete removal of PS3, Vita, & PSP titles + additional content), the new PSN store sure seems to pack less functionality to explore what's still there.
Good luck to anyone who doesn't get a co-marketing deal with Sony now there's so much less information density & no quick navigation menus for browsers.

Does anyone know if the Xbox Series X|S auto-HDR is gathering additional info from the rendering chain or just working purely on the final 8-bit output data?
As they're saying each game is individually tweaked, it seems possible they might be able to point to worthwhile info before everything is quantized down (at least for some games).

To do my due diligence, as I have ideological concerns* with sharpening, I did turn on the nVidia Sharpening & you can get very similar sharpening (without any uneven double-wide halos from the poor upscaling) if you really want that with the internal dynamic res TAA. You can also use the slider to modify the strength of that sharpen filter!
* Especially at 4K, real-time rendering output isn't remotely softer than a film image so clearly we are already on sharp scale end. https://blog.shivoa.net/2019/08/the-sharpening-curse.html

So checking out F1 2020, outside of DLSS for RTX users there are several options to try to get both pixel fidelity & framerate. Linked, a 300% enlargement of two TAA options: FidelityFX CAS Upscaling & just the internal dynamic resolution scaling.
I'd say (clear at 100% but shouting out when blown up) the sharpening is quite detrimental & the upscaling is plain bad in one, to the point the tech should be rebranded if fixed to work well in the future.
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/qB5KSxZIxkmvpFdvtg0mOEwSQdVYCBOjrTnLloj1u5d/vzKj5XlJRBqgC5S0jddrZw

This feels like one of those 'if you were always taught it, it's just normal' things: "This one is a bit annoying because it returns a variable-sized structure, so you need to ask twice." https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20201021-00/?p=104387
I guess even if you're poking at Vulkan right now (which uses this pattern a lot), you might be using a wrapper that makes such queries more idiomatic to your main language rather than C-like.

Loading up NfS Payback on a PS4 Pro (PS+ offering this month), the aliasing is distracting but seems to veer out into "resolve may actually be broken" in spots. Seems other 4K console version doesn't have the problem. Video shows comparison here: https://youtu.be/ZzxC6PxA1gI?t=42

The discourse around cloud gaming is quite weird. You'd think Sony holding the Gaikai & OnLive patent portfolios + operating & expanding PS Now since 2014 would at least be worth mentioning when discussing the current Google-Microsoft-Amazon timeline. Even nVidia get more mentions (also an old service they repackaged & got headlines by widening availability).

Thinking about $15-20 indie games that made it onto Epic Store.
$15 is same dev cut as a $19 game on Steam/etc. But during a sale when Epic give customers $10 coupons? People are paying $5 & you get the same cash as if you sold for $19 on Steam.
Even $20 sticker price on Epic Store is very good: more money than a $25 purchase on Steam & that jumps to a purchase for only $10 of customer cash during a sales event due to the Epic coupon subsidy.

Thinking about everyone shipping projects in the next 12 months which need to be optimised for XB1S, PS4, PS4Pro, XSX, XB1X, PS5, & XSX (even without optimising for a range of PC hardware).

Would love to see more games criticism that doesn't hide from some of the topics touched on here. Very few reviewers want to go down a line of thought starting, "my dopamine drip of reward finally started drying up after playing dozens of action/open world games (usually played on 'normal' because of some idea that's the typical gaming experience so to review you must adhere to that) but Souls/BotW made the same treadmill marginally harder & less guided so 😍!"
https://twitter.com/metasynthie/status/1315777895483219970

Very "cool" interaction between UWP/the Win10 Store ecosystem & spinning platter drives: once you install a Package (any app) onto a drive, Explorer always holds open a handle to it; with occasional reads. So the drive will never be allowed to spin down & Eject Media will never say it's safe to unplug.
Surely "sometime the Store will want to update this" doesn't require this level of intrusive design? Can I reconfigure this behaviour?

AC Unity is highlighted today with XSX offering 60fps locked on next gen but... 900p (no 1X patch so 1S original resolution is it). Playing it last year on PC, I found 1800p was ideal (newer GPUs will definitely hit native 4K). Also video commentary notes good temporal AA wasn't available at the time but AC Unity shipped with TXAA on PC so nVidia users have that pioneering option (TXAA in retail games started 2012, before XB1/PS4 gen was even a thing). https://youtu.be/kQ5KaXdeod8

Some of the visuals in Alien: Isolation are still spectacular. Lots of material work that holds up excellently at 4K.
Resolve some of the aliasing issues with temporal AA/DLSS; maybe RTX the lighting & reflections (although some of that stuff is already very nice - proper planar reflections not screen-space); redoing character (animation) would really polish it up (& may make possible all in-engine cut-scenes); & see if there's more appetite for horror today on next gen?

PS5 Trophies are getting partial completion tracking API support (eg you have collected 5 of the 20 collectibles required to unlock this).
Excited for another feature to reach broad parity between platforms (Steam/​Xbox/​PSN/​Epic seem roughly equivalent with this update).

Yet more fun* with timers. As noted by MS docs, this timer is unrelated to QPC (the topic of several previous toots). https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2020/10/04/windows-timer-resolution-the-great-rule-change/
(* may involve the very opposite of fun if you want Windows to both cheaply & accurately work with single-ms small time increments & were reliant on sleep behaviour documented but not totally guaranteed.)

Turns out recasting the main character in your game for the remastering process is somewhat unpopular with many of the people who enjoyed the existing game after dozens of hours with a distinctive face they associate with the protagonist.
Interesting we're at a point of facial capture defining looks for a better translation. Presumably automated remapping will improve to make that unnecessary again while retaining fidelity in the future.

How ridiculous price inflation is getting over here: Miles Morales standalone expansion on PS4 is £50. https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/product/EP9000-CUSA20177_00-MARVELSSMMORALES
That's the same price as the Fallout: New Vegas Collector's Edition cost in 2010 (with all those physical extras). Last gen, AAA launch prices went from £40 to £44 (!) https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-11-18-video-game-price-rises-spark-uk-inflation-bump
More recently, Uncharted: Lost Legacy launched for £30 in 2017. And people staying away from AAA launch prices lowered inflation only last year. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-09-18-computer-game-price-drop-causes-uk-inflation-to-decrease