‘Beer’-ish (good enough) quality?
As judged by whom? Maybe I like drinking and drink the beer that comes in the biggest slab at the lowest cost (I want volume). A beer drinking friend might consider the cheapest ‘preservative free’ drop (COOPERS in my country). Or it might be St Patricks Day and Guiness is the flavour of the moment. Damn its’ big cans and bitter taste. (Actually in the aforementioned scenario-I don’t drink much beer, but would probably opt for the guiness for a lazy sunday afternoon)
Who deems something good enough, and to what standard?!..
(I will get back to this) (obviously its in the eye of the beer-holder)
Rockstar are the biggest in the industry.
They have a massive staff and have built their own engine.
It is to their advantage to do a ‘cookie cut’ clone of their other game (GTA5). They are practiced at making these games, and know how to sell a product with wide public appeal.
Having a massive staff and building most everything internally has major advantages when striving to a deadline (with quality and quantity).
I have been in teams where I have moved my desk closer to our ‘in house’ tools(/engine) software engineer.
I would give constant feedback on how to streamline the tools (to up content creation output), and I would get updates (with my new feature implemented) usually within half an hour, and that would allow me to focus on the task with little to no break in workflow.
I literally would drop a task list, and then leave the office to have a snack, and be able to return refreshed and eager to use the adjusted toolset.
Rockstar have this!
For the decade of thought gone into RDR2, its underlying engine has been a work in progress for many years. Massive teams with ‘unlimited budget’ with the ability to have mountains moved for them (as required) goes a long way when building a product.
(@Frel I am going somewhere with this 
)
Rockstar are one of the few software houses that optimise for both major video chip players (AMD/Nvidia). Some titles get a little bit of consult time/thought given by a specific manufacturer and may have a few code implementations to use physical hardware registers effectively. Generally only for one team. (Red/green).
Dice (battlefield) are one of the few others that come to mind, easily, when thinking of software houses quick to implement new video card tech, and make our cards VERY effective.
Consoles all use AMD video chips (except nintendo switch has an nvidia part methinketh), so it makes sense to optimise software towards AMD instructions.
This would equate to optimising a game and launching on consoles first, then sorting out the PC side of things later. (The NVIDIA direct x 12 pathway VS the defacto AMD one…)
When xbox first launched (the original) it had an x86 architecture CPU, what we call CISC,… whereas consoles generally used custom setups or benefitted from RISC (more customised) CPUs. Having an x86 console with equivalent spec to a decent (gaming) PC had the worlds game makers, generally writing PC games, see the XBOX ‘port’ as very doable.
The idea was; build for PC, test on PC, tighten the experience on PC, then release tighter console version.
To this end, the Witcher 2 was a geat example of a PC title making it to the console space.
Now, arguably, with enough cash behind you, you can build for console first. Gives you a market lead advantage over all the ‘PC ports’ due on console ‘as soon as they are ready’.
Grand Theft Auto has a history (infamous history) with regards to PC ports.
(Yes I played the first two GTA games back in the nineties on PC before they were ‘a thing’, but GTA ‘began’ with version 3… and that had a horrible PC port, showing just how effective the risc optimised code was on the PS2, vs the CISC running version requiring massive amounts more grunt to work)
With version 4 they had a very solid game. On PC too. It was a vastly better example of multiplatform gaming (done right). They still built for console first, then spent a lot of time before releasing a PC version (which made exceptionally great use of PC hardware).
Console first development requires ‘no bloat’.
Its why indies and developers in general work on PC (with crazy horsepower) and then optimise towards their target platform.
The ‘can we do it’ approach, typically built for PC first, where bloat is acceptable, is the path most taken as, well, not everyone is a rockstar.
So Warhorse using Cryengine (using someone elses toolset/engine get you to market YEARS sooner) is a great thing. Cryengine does natural environments better than just about any other engine. It is to do with the sheer number of triangles needed to make objects look rounded/analogue.
Using Cryengine for a medieval RPG makes sense. (Pundits like me were waiting for one!)
I personally might talk up the tech aspects of it, but that isn’t why I run the game. Only a few RPGS have pushed into new territory like KCD has. Ultima Underworld and Lands of Lore were notables. Arguably eye of the beholder and dungeon master before them…
one the bar is raised, people think the jump is repeatable, doable,… easy.
The development time for RPGS is huge.
Most businesses wont touch an RPG, and to have success in the RPG front you have to have the best product and even then you are selling to a niche audience.
(Every elder scrolls game that dumbed down the mechanics found wider and wider appeal, to the point where RPGS are now held up to ‘Skyrim’ (beautiful, but a joke vs other RPGS gone before))
Many argue Warhorse are indie. Maybe.
Its hard to say- very ‘grey area here’- indies are usually considered small teams and independants. The conjured image for me is friends working in a garage. Obviously modern game development is huge… but any game that takes years to build, requiring a huge team, and lots of expenditure obtaining assets (voice acting/music/textures etc) is hardly indie.
Warhorse are running a business and they need to turn a profit. Somebody will eventually need to be paid! selling an indie game for similar money as RDR2 or GTA5 is a thing!
The problem is that GTA5/RDR2 (Gran Turismo/ any game requiring millions of dollars to get to market) are a relative bargain for the prices put on them. Comparing two $60 products- I choose the one I will put more hours into.
Believe it or not, some of my best value games are dragons quest titles, Dragons Crown (arcade brawler), Persona etc… not necessarily Ni No Kuni or the ‘big budget set pieces)
Is KCD going to compare well on a ‘bullet points’ list vs the best value/most highly optimised software in the world… probably not.
Will KCD still be a vastly better medieval roleplaying experience? abso-freakin-lootly! (For those that want it)
Now with regards to optimisation/bloat…
Warhorse built for PC first. A staggered release allowing consoles to release later might have proved better for them… although hindsight suggests it may have hurt them more, with regards to sales… (and if sales were needed to keep the product flowing for a few more years, and remain a strong independant studio, then, yay! They are still going strong)
The game is designed to scale with various hardware setups. The idea being that we use less vertexed objects for lesser powered video chips etc.
Customised ‘medium details’ is what we are told the consoles run.
If the game was build for just one console, and didn’t require any aspect to be historically accurate, a games ‘world’ designer could place buildings/objects specific to the capability of the console-
It how asian houses used to develop software… reading around the PSX days, Namco (and others) would build tools to meausre the relative capabilities of the hardware, and then design software to suit. (Knowing just how many triangles can be in a given scene and hit a given refresh rate/resolution)
Building towards ‘suspension of disbelief’; this is one of the most important tricks; know your capabilities.
KCD in its present state has had a lot of quickpulls to math systems and rendering engine/system to get it ‘up to speed’.
The problem is not all bugs have been squished. Like a patch or two ago, the team found a whole subsystem or two that was bogging stuff down/being ‘overly heavy’ on resources. And a few RAM traps with allocated Pools, they found ways to streamline and improve.
YES- many of us expected this to happen around April (after quashing any major gameplay bugs). Problem was the studio was flooded with requests and had a hard time getting on top of them. To that end, optimisation hasn’t really happened yet.
Once optimisied I believe the game shall prove a reliable experience.
One that gives ‘better than launch’ quality at a higher/more consistant speed.
Whilst Warhorse’ learning an engine/toolset might mean a lot more scope for improvement, vs highly polished initial releases, we need them to get their game world right.
If the game delivers on what it should do from a story and ‘minigames’ perspective, the graphics and specific quest bugs will, in time, get to a level in line with consumers expectations.
I agree Joe Dirt doesn’t care if a flower is a two sided object, vs a rigid body (physics/wind responding/bend points) multipetaled affair that grows and flows naturally.
My missus and I do… we love walking through the fields in Bohemia.
Joe Dirt doesn’t care if they cheat and make fences from ten triangles (the whole fence), vs any given fence pailing being made up of twelve plus triangles and mapped to look round/organic.
I do!
I can appreciate many of the things this game does right.
The benefit?
When the sun rises and the fence pailings light up, subtley, light curling around their edges… the vivid sense of depth this creates is surreal.
Never seen a game like this before.
Present hardware CAN run it. (Better when optimised)
Seven years from now when playing RDR3, or GTA7, who will care about the older versions? Not so many!
Great RPGS come along, maybe a handful in any given decade.
RPGS are niche things… I prefer swords and slings vs laser weapons and shotguns; so I choose from a lesser pool of good RPG candidates.
Great organic environments is exceptionally hard to do.
The best thing about modding an engine that does ‘full fat’ effects is that we can rely on the full fatness.
Suspension of disbelief systems (every game uses), once scratched/revealed, can be hard to recapture that ‘special feeling’.
For all the awesome stuff KCD gets right (a lot of us KCD zealots forget that this games initial <100hr gameplay really grabbed us/excited us), it does have a lot of things that reveal it is all an illusion.
Much of that stuff will be righted by the studio, in time.
Much of that stuff will be expanded and given wider scope with official mods and eventual user community changes.
Some of the ‘nature/reality’ mods for other engines (that grind PCs to a standstill) look positively dated vs Vanilla KCD.
Modded KCD? This is the stuff dreams are made of.
Will missing a toolset that gives feedback on how much AI runtime is left affect modules? Sure.
Are all modders entitled muppets who think that free toolsets should give them industy standard cutting edge tools? No, but…
Given we don’t know what work is being done towards KCDs mod tools; we can only speculate.
I agree the product isn’t the most consumer friendly product launched.
As RPGS go it is all pretty standard affair (lead times for an RPG usually makes them four years older tech than every other game)
Generally (speaking from experience) a studio builds the tools THEY need. Making those tools ‘consumer friendly’ is generally a case of DOCUMENTATION.
In the world of programming DOCUMENTATION is so vital that engines are given for ‘free’ in the hope that a community builds the knoweledge base in a user friendly way to become used.
My ideal tree, even when beering, is a high watermark.
I run the Rattay Race without hiccup, and that is on three-four year old hardware.
I like Ultra quality, and enjoy the benefits that high visual detail and polish give.
Do I hope that Warhorse master their toolset and learn their limits and shoehorn more ‘suspension of disbelief’ (even to the console versions), yes, absolutely.
Would I try and compare the number of ‘hollow puppets’ that we can provide evidence for that have backend systems, complex ones even, going on, in say RDR, to what we see in KCD. Nope.
Good writing can make that so.
We know that consoles can do lots of bodies (market scenes in Uncharted4/Gravity rush 2/AC Unity) showed us that we can build it.
Depth of interaction is writing, writing, writing.
Budget and time can provide that.
As will users mods to KCD in due time.
Its not worth Warhorse throwing the baby out with the bathwater and trying to emulate something they neither have nor want…
Its just hard for us to see when the product hasn’t been fully delivered yet.
Beer still brewing
Its counterpart on console displays the full complex geometry of a sycamore leaf, veining within leaf and color gradation within leaf. Much beavering to do