It’s not unpopolar opinion. I’m quite fine with the artstyle and some aspects of the game: terrains are very good and also Buildings look like pretty kind despite their size.
But the game doesn’t seems a true logical graphic step for the serie and this my concerns about the future of the franchise. Whitout a strong change to textures, models, water effects and animations, physics, etc., a new title with the same graphic would be simply old because thecnology Is going on. There are many graphic features to implement which can preserve also the FPS.
Probably and for the sake of manangement of the games,it does…
I hope they take more risk and get out of the safe zone for the futures titles…
Me too…i don’t have problem with the graphics (i play AoE Online,what has cartoon graphics),i have problems with the maps,are so empty and less life,what do I don’t like play them…
Who would it convince? What would you find convincing? It runs better than any previous Relic game using the Essence engine, possibly excluding DoW III but that didn’t allow camera rotation. It is using some of the newest things I’ve ever seen in a Relic game, based on close to 15 years of modding them (as in doing games mods, not forum moderation).
Many game engines are “old”, in that they’ve existed in one form or another for years. There’s allegedly some code in Civilization VI that’s reportedly the same, or very similar, to the original code written for Civ I. Unreal Engine has stuff in it that’s existed for years. Unity too. The Java programming language has stuff in it that people use in 2022 that was first introduced to the language in 2002. This is normal. “old” doesn’t mean anything useful.
Now “poorly optimised” does, but compared to past Relic RTS games . . . it ain’t.
runs better=/= be actually decent for aoe needs or actual standards
yup but aoe 4 required something better for the physics and collision. Add that for the pc requirements needed to run the game which it can be dissapointment like someone here said it looks like an old game compared to the actual ones
also
You asked me about the game being poorly optimised. “AoE needs” is a whole other story.
The physics and collision is fine (not that there aren’t bugs). What people criticise is the complexity of the animations and how choppy they can be. It’s a valid complaint.
So, not you. I figured
It doesn’t.
Is that representative of the game now? I don’t think it is. The game had notable performance issues that were an early priority for the devs
Also it’s funny that you link that video just because of the DF performance review. They have a lot of good things to say about the game generally. If their performance comments are to be believed, surely shouldn’t the rest be? Or are you cherry picking again to find anything negative you can about the game
No it doesn’t. I mean, at least not on my machine. How about on yours?
Doesn’t really have much to do with graphics at this point. I’ve played every Relic game for the past 20 years. Most of you are Age-first fans, I appreciate that. But Age IV runs better than pretty much any other Essence title, except maybe DoW III.
When I first got CoH 2, it ran at an average of 20 FPS on high detail, on a computer that could run DoW II on Ultra (at 60 FPS). Looked great for the time, sure. Ran terribly.
I get it: you believe Age IV is a bad game. I don’t care. That’s your opinion and I respect your right to have it. But if you’re going to complain about a game engine you patently know nothing about then sure, I’ll correct you.
The graphics in Relic’s RTS games are tied to their lower unit counts (compared to an RTS franchise like AoE). But if you want to look at, say, the Age DE releases - they’ve had a lot of issues with bugs and performance too. What’s the “right” approach here?
I play with the min. requisites, and i play fine. I just found some lag on a very saturated game, my game never crashed, even it said im using 3,8 RAM of 8 GB and my NVDIA controllers were old. So its obviously your PC
It runs fine-ish outside of performance in spots during bigger multiplayer games, but engages way too much computing power than it ought to. Especially GPU. Mine 2060 was running louder compared to the time when I was running maxed out METRO: Exodus. One or two effects might be responsible for that, but again- this game doesn’t look half as good to justify engagement of 100% of GPU juice.
The art style is not the same thing as what is being rendered. You may not like the visuals, or consider them decent, but that’s not all a GPU does. Especially nowadays. So many things are offloaded to the GPU, from physics, to shaders, to whatever.
But you did get me interested in looking at the values, because I’m tracking 95% and higher GPU usage on my 1070 (entering a standard custom game solo, with no AI). So I’ve been doing what testing I can with GeForce Experience’s performance overlay. Here are some ranges and how I tested them:
Age IV: 95+% (ingame, custom solo, no AI).
DoW III: 95+% (ingame, custom solo, one mandatory AI).
Halo the MCC Collection: ~50% (ingame, campaign mission).
Now, FPS in all titles was steady. Of all the games on that list, the only ones I regularly experience FPS drops with are BL3 (in certain situations) and DoW II (in certain situations / game modes). And probably CoH 2 as well, but I don’t play that.
What does this tell us? It tells us that GPU utilisation isn’t really linked to performance by itself, and doesn’t include poor performance by itself. It can be a factor, but given the range of games (some of which are many, many years old) and by including ones that are technically-demanding generally (BL3), I think this is pretty good coverage.
What’s interesting is DoW III and Age IV have very similar CPU and GPU utilisation (in the same scenario - stress testing both games might yield different results), whereas CoH 2 and earlier Relic / Essence engine games do not. And both run significantly better in terms of FPS (vs. similar level of game settings / graphical detail) than CoH 2 (and possibly even DoW II, because it gets bottlenecked on the CPU with its terrain deformation physics).
It seems to me that newer games are more capable of leveraging VRAM effectively compared to older games. This tracks. We used to have very limited VRAM compared to single-thread CPU speeds and regular (system) RAM. Nowadays, most mainstream graphics cards have multiple GB of VRAM available. My 1070 (which is getting on these days - I got it back in 2017) has a whopping 8GB (yeah, the DDR level matters too, but the sheer amount of memory is also important), compared to my previous . . . I don’t even know what my old card was. A 250 GTS? Had 1 or 2GB or something.
tl;dr: a modern game requiring modern hardware isn’t surprising, but there’s not necessarily a problem even if you personally think the game shouldn’t be as demanding as it is. It’s not just the graphical fidelity that affects performance, it’s what the game itself is capable of rendering (and Age IV can field some pretty large armies, even if some people want the population cap to be higher).
It doesn’t though. There were some specific issues at the beginning for some people and that was the first thing they prioritized fixing (much to the chagrin of people wanting them to fix other things instead).
Even in the beta the game ran really well for anyone not having those specific issues.
no, they are the same or have a lot in common as they need to cater to aoe need to have an route on how to optimaze.
Remenber the elephant collision with walls? There are other units that suffered on that. projectile ones still ingame as far I remenber. maybe fishing ships pathfinding can be improved with an readjust?
They have optimised. That’s why you can field the armies you can in Age, vs. CoH or even DoW.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by physics. The physics footprint of a unit can be adjusted without some magical change to the engine.
I think you’re confusing “stuff that can be changed or fixed” with “the engine is somehow deficient”. Which, to be fair, people do with the graphics as well.
Modders have seen what you can do with the map settings. There’s so much that can be played with to achieve cool visual effects. Relic have chosen not to do certain things. Why? I have no idea. But presumably there’s a reason, as the engine itself is capable of it.
Ofc it is hard to imagine it being a 2021 game when you are being deceptive. When you are using dishonest material, the valid points become muddled and you cause both sides of the topic to discuss problems that doesn’t exist, that do take away from the real discussion.
There are pointers in the graphics to make, there could be improvements and touch ups, post-processing and options to be added.
This is what the nest of bees actually look like and a close-up of some of the units, they aren’t bad and are quite smooth. There is effort in the models, even if there are design elements that I personally don’t agree with, the models themselves aren’t exactly low poly for a strategy game.
There are however level of details differences, to give more oomf to performance. Units themselves aren’t really “cartoony” either. But when zooming out team colors get brighter and a fair bit of the detail gets lost. Shading & lighting is also a big factor to why it does look like it does.
