[SPA] Not playable due to performance issues

[EldarOfSuburbia]

DX11 has been around for at least 6 years now (I remember Civ 5 came with separate DX9/DX11 options in 2010, much the same as TPA does).

It's like complaining that there's not a GBA version of the new Pokemon game 4 years after the DS came out.

 

[inspector42]

So, I understand that the new tables might not run as well on my hardware.

However, let's do a Frankenstein comparison. Runs great, smooth, and fast at a high resolution in TPA. The exact same table in SPA is incredibly slow and choppy, to the point where it's not really playable. I'm not a tech expert, but doesn't that mean that there is some issue with the app itself that can be fixed to make it run substantially better? Or are they actually emulating the old tables differently in the new app?

 

[The loafer]

inspector42: It's not the table causing your older hardware issues, it's the engine. Whether they use that engine to make an old table or a new one, it NEEDS modern hardware. That's not to say they can't optimize it further (likely this is "early access" for the engine as well as the release eheh) so hopefully things will improve.

 

[inspector42]

Didn't they just use the old engine and pord it over to the Stern pinball arcade though? Or did they drop their old files into a new engine?

 

[shutyertrap]

It's a newish engine. Whether the new engine has been fully implemented or not, I don't know. The plan though was for SPA to run on a new engine. I'd bet the way it is set up now is so it can just be dropped in when the time comes, as well as other features. The infrastructure is there, just maybe not the actual product. Once it becomes feature rich, the idea was that anything they could then drop into TPA tech wise that wouldn't break it, they would. With how SPA is built, they don't have to worry about breaking the game. So while Frankenstein might look the same at the moment, once the new engine comes online it might suddenly be a whole new beast.

 

[mortuus]

Android version is just as ****ed on my shield k1, it loads but then freezes and half the table is not even proper rendered or something.

 

[ncbrant]

Is anyone else having issues with Star Trek (iOS OS 10.1, iPad 4th Gen)? Mine will not start a game. When I click start, the app crashes.
I initially thought it was a performance issue due to the age of the iPad, but I've run Mustang & ACDC and they seem to work okay.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Kolchak357]

Is anyone else having issues with Star Trek (iOS OS 10.1, iPad 4th Gen)? Mine will not start a game. When I click start, the app crashes.
I initially thought it was a performance issue due to the age of the iPad, but I've run Mustang & ACDC and they seem to work okay.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Sadly a known bug. I reported it as well.

 

[ncbrant]

Sadly a known bug. I reported it as well.

Cool, thanks for that. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[tenparts]

DX11 has been around for at least 6 years now (I remember Civ 5 came with separate DX9/DX11 options in 2010, much the same as TPA does).

It's like complaining that there's not a GBA version of the new Pokemon game 4 years after the DS came out.

That is a horrific misunderstanding of how PC tech works and how Nintendo works as a business. It also ignores that SPA is not a new game, it's a license-mandated standalone expansion pack at absolute best. Last but not least, it ignores that TPA never had DX11 until recently, that it is fundamentally a DX9 game.

Here are some much better, if imperfect, comparisons: imagine if Nintendo found a way to prevent overseas releases of Pokemon Emerald (which were released after the DS) from working on GBAs, then imagine if there was suddenly a retroactive patch for Civ V that removed DX9 from the game just because. Or better yet, imagine if the Zelda Oracle games (a pair of GBC games with secret features if you play them on a GBA) only worked on a GBA, despite being GBC games. That's the kind of thing we have here.

So spa just supporting dx11 and more powerful hardware seems like a good place to start doing it clean as it's a separate product. It's tough to expect them to support 4+ year old hardware/software on a new release.

The IE6 problem isn't the same thing at all. There is way more nuance around that situation, involving no real alternative for years, and devout Microsoft loyalty by their non-computer sheep when an alternative finally appeared.

SPA is not a new or even separate product at all. It's just a hack of TPA with all the Stern tables in their own little box, probably as a specific demand by Stern. This is not people resisting change, but developers randomly deprecating a widely-used feature probably out of budget concerns. I wouldn't be surprised if they'll try to pull it from normal TPA as well. No, I shouldn't have to buy a new PC just to run the exact same game I bought months/years ago, that's ridiculous.

FS acts well below a B dev sometimes, yet we're supposed to treat them as better than the typical B.

 

[Ben Logan]

Shutyertrap, any word on timeline for improved ball physics in the new engine? I know from your podcast it's something you guys are interested in seeing.

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

That is a horrific misunderstanding of how PC tech works and how Nintendo works as a business. It also ignores that SPA is not a new game, it's a license-mandated standalone expansion pack at absolute best. Last but not least, it ignores that TPA never had DX11 until recently, that it is fundamentally a DX9 game.

Here are some much better, if imperfect, comparisons: imagine if Nintendo found a way to prevent overseas releases of Pokemon Emerald (which were released after the DS) from working on GBAs, then imagine if there was suddenly a retroactive patch for Civ V that removed DX9 from the game just because. Or better yet, imagine if the Zelda Oracle games (a pair of GBC games with secret features if you play them on a GBA) only worked on a GBA, despite being GBA games. That's the kind of thing we have here.


The IE6 problem isn't the same thing at all. There is way more nuance around that situation, involving no real alternative for years, and devout Microsoft loyalty by their non-computer sheep when an alternative finally appeared.

SPA is not a new or even separate product at all. It's just a hack of TPA with all the Stern tables in their own little box, probably as a specific demand by Stern. This is not people resisting change, but developers randomly deprecating a widely-used feature probably out of budget concerns. I wouldn't be surprised if they'll try to pull it from normal TPA as well. No, I shouldn't have to buy a new PC just to run the exact same game I bought months/years ago, that's ridiculous.

FS acts well below a B dev sometimes, yet we're supposed to treat them as better than the typical B.

Farsight stated, at the start of the SPA project, that it would be built on a new engine. It's not the same as TPA, despite what it looks like (it's a digital pinball table: just how much different can anyone make them look?). Just like TPA isn't the same engine as PHoF. DX9 wasn't randomly deprecated; it just wasn't a consideration. Name me one AAA title released on PC in the past 12 months that doesn't state that a DX11-compatible GPU card is required. Farsight are just following industry trends and stopping supporting older technologies that time has passed by.

 

[Crawley]

Farsight stated, at the start of the SPA project, that it would be built on a new engine. It's not the same as TPA, despite what it looks like (it's a digital pinball table: just how much different can anyone make them look?). Just like TPA isn't the same engine as PHoF. DX9 wasn't randomly deprecated; it just wasn't a consideration. Name me one AAA title released on PC in the past 12 months that doesn't state that a DX11-compatible GPU card is required. Farsight are just following industry trends and stopping supporting older technologies that time has passed by.

In addition to this I'm thinking DX9 probably wouldn't make it easy/possible to do some of the features on some of the Stern tables. Take for instance the upcoming Ghostbusters which has the holographic video display on the table. May not be possible or easy to do that effect in DX9. It's certainly going to be more hardware intensive to display that and the other effects going on the table. The upcoming Batman 66 has similar considerations with the video screen on the table and in place of the DMD. And who knows about the tables beyond that.

 

[Zappa]

Seriously, DX11 has been around for a long time, video cards are cheap if you want one that does DX11. Hell, I would like to see it in DX12.

 

[MisterVercetti]

The problem isn't just DX11, though - at the heart of it all, the true fault lies in a shoddily-optimized graphics engine. Take me for an example - my PC is only a couple of years old and sports DX12. It runs DX9 TPA smoothly with no problems whatsoever. Yet DX11 TPA is slow as molasses on my rig, and I'd imagine SPA would fare even worse based on what I'm reading here.

Now you might start to think that I just need a better rig. However, this very same machine is capable of running Overwatch, a game that came out mere months ago and is far more hardware-intensive, on high graphical settings at 60-80 FPS. So no, it's not outdated hardware, it's lazy design on FarSight's part. That, at its core, is what I think is the heart of the argument - we should not have to spend thousands on a top-of-the-line PC in order to run a freaking pinball app just because the developers didn't care enough to optimize their graphics engine properly. If they don't plan on releasing SPA on the DX9 engine (i.e. the one that actually works on a reasonably-tuned PC), then the DX11 engine needs a complete overhaul before I even consider purchasing the game.

 

[shutyertrap]

The problem isn't just DX11, though - at the heart of it all, the true fault lies in a shoddily-optimized graphics engine. Take me for an example - my PC is only a couple of years old and sports DX12. It runs DX9 TPA smoothly with no problems whatsoever. Yet DX11 TPA is slow as molasses on my rig, and I'd imagine SPA would fare even worse based on what I'm reading here.

Now you might start to think that I just need a better rig. However, this very same machine is capable of running Overwatch, a game that came out mere months ago and is far more hardware-intensive, on high graphical settings at 60-80 FPS. So no, it's not outdated hardware, it's lazy design on FarSight's part. That, at its core, is what I think is the heart of the argument - we should not have to spend thousands on a top-of-the-line PC in order to run a freaking pinball app just because the developers didn't care enough to optimize their graphics engine properly. If they don't plan on releasing SPA on the DX9 engine (i.e. the one that actually works on a reasonably-tuned PC), then the DX11 engine needs a complete overhaul before I even consider purchasing the game.

I'm not going to disagree about Pinball Arcade not being optimally efficient. I also don't know hardly anything about programming to know what hurdles FarSight has to go through to run their game. I will say my computer is 8 years old and runs TPA in DX11 just fine. It all comes down to the video card. Mine went down for a bit and I dropped a cheap one in temporarily, was no longer able to play TPA. Got old nVidea card back up and running, all was well.

 

[Fungi]

I recently just had my TPA running ridiculously slow as well. Turns out, TPA was accidentally running on the wrong graphics card. Made SPA impossible to even launch. Once I figured out the mistake, all ran well on the DX11.

My rig is just an i5 with a GT 640.

 

[soundwave106]

I do fine with just a GTX 560 (i7 2600 CPU). I don't think you need top line computing to run TPA in DX11 mode. (Not sure about SPA, I haven't tried that one.)

 

[warh0g]

You probably don't have enough graphics memory on the video card?
I checked how much SPA is taking in the main menu with the settings turned to max in 1080x1920 (I am running in portrait mode).
3,1 GB in main menu and 2,3 GB in Star Trek.

Settings:

In menu:

In Star Trek: