PSU-XBox 360: AOTI feature frameskip?

[AlphaMinotaux]

any word if the 360 version is gonna have frame skip. I quit the game but I keep coming back to this site. I really like the series.

I got both versions of the game but I didn't like the slower frame rates the 360 has in large parties. So has it been released anywhere whether or not it will have frame skip? If not i might as well go back to pc with its like 12 users.

I hate nothing more in video games than lag and low frame rates.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: AlphaMinotaux on 2007-10-24 16:41 ]</font>


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: AlphaMinotaux on 2007-10-24 16:42 ]</font>

[A2K]

There probably won't ever be a frameskip option for any console version; however, there's a good chance the game will be better optimized for the hardware. Similar improvements have been put into place for the Japanese PlayStation 2 version of Ambition of the Illuminus.

[Zorafim]

What improvements would these be? >.>

[Authenticate]

360 = Not Japanese. Not Japanese = Sonic Team doesn't give a crap.

Would be nice if they fixed their code up a bit, though. I usually only play in small parties just because of the slowdown in larger parties. It's not unplayable, but it throws off the whole pacing of combat.

[Esufer]

On 2007-10-24 16:41, AlphaMinotaux wrote:
any word if the 360 version is gonna have frame skip. I quit the game but I keep coming back to this site. I really like the series.

I got both versions of the game but I didn't like the slower frame rates the 360 has in large parties. So has it been released anywhere whether or not it will have frame skip? If not i might as well go back to pc with its like 12 users.

I hate nothing more in video games than lag and low frame rates.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: AlphaMinotaux on 2007-10-24 16:41 ]</font>


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: AlphaMinotaux on 2007-10-24 16:42 ]</font>

I never noticed slower frame rates in large parties. :/
Was the Xbox you were playing on extremely slim and black, with a top-loading disc tray?

[BanF]

Supposedly, the graphics engine will indeed be tweaked for AotI.

[Yusaku_Kudou]

On 2007-10-25 07:52, BanF wrote:
Supposedly, the graphics engine will indeed be tweaked for AotI.



Oh, really! I sure hope that add some HDR lighting to this game or something. And I love that it runs at 60 frames per second, but PSU was totally unoptimized for the North American 360 release (haven't tried the Japanese version), so any more than 3-4 people and it does slow down a bit more (especially with techers and dambarta). PSU doesn't need a lot to fix the graphics. It just needs better lighting to make everything look less flat and I think the art style will pretty much take care of itself after that.

[watashiwa]

On 2007-10-25 07:11, Esufer wrote:
I never noticed slower frame rates in large parties. :/


It's probably because you don't know any better and haven't played the game on a decent PC.

The 360 version, in my opinion, is probably the worst as far as slowdown goes.

We've been over this before, though, and there's a number of topics about this including links to YouTube videos someone made that I linked in an old topic which show how slow the 360 version runs.

A number of people have made complaints about how even though the 360 version moves overall slower than the other versions, the timer in timed missions or special events runs at "normal" speed, pretty much making it a bit harder to get a better rank or in the case of 1up clear the EX missions easier.

Even if YOU don't notice the slowdown, I'm 100% sure it's there.

[Carlo210]

360 doesn't have framerate problems. Why? Because, instead of skipping frames, it just goes into a slow-motion mode. It stinks. And yes, the game gets muddy and slow to play.

[HyperShot-X-]

On 2007-10-24 17:34, A2K wrote:
There probably won't ever be a frameskip option for any console version; however, there's a good chance the game will be better optimized for the hardware. Similar improvements have been put into place for the Japanese PlayStation 2 version of Ambition of the Illuminus.



is it certain that auto-frame skip built in-game would not be possible at all on all console versions? why can't it be done on console if it can be done on pc at this age of gaming era where console technology advancement is not behind that of pc's by all means, ??? any1 feel free to enlighten us on this?

[A2K]

What I said was there would never be an option to turn it on or off on a console. A game may very well have it enabled--many games do in fact (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for Xbox comes to mind). Consoles are fixed systems with no variation, unlike PCs, and in the best possible scenarios they would be optimized to utilize the hardware to the fullest with minimal detriment.

Yusaku: I think HDR lighting would require a bit more than just "tweaking" of the graphics engine, unfortunately.

I'm surprised PlayStation 2 importers have yet to chime in on the subject of AotI's performance improvements yet. The "Xbox 360" in the title must be scaring them off. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wacko.gif

[HyperShot-X-]

I take it then it is very likely that AOtI on X360 will implement auto frameskip enabled as default which would be a big improvement. I can take some frame rate loss over slow-mo action because steady pace of gameplay will be critical for all the new battle system on AOtI such as timed attack/PA combos for crits and just counter/attacks and all that.

But all of that would be unnecessary only if AOtI graphic engine is fully optimized on X360 to run at 60 fps with minimal slow down.

...only time will tell how much improvement is actually made on AOtI graphics engine performance... i shall lower my expectations from $20 expansion download...or should i ?

[Darkly]

They really should fix the slowdown, with the power of the 360 there really isn't an excuse. Likewise i will be dissapointed if slowdown is still a problem on the 360.

[Carlo210]

Nope, there's still massive slowdown, even when playing by myself in Sakura Blast.

[Broodstar1337]

On 2007-10-25 13:14, Carlo210 wrote:
360 doesn't have framerate problems. Why? Because, instead of skipping frames, it just goes into a slow-motion mode. It stinks. And yes, the game gets muddy and slow to play.



You have got to be kidding me... -_-

[Carlo210]

Why would I be kidding? I never said the 360 as a console doesn't have framerate problems with games (that'd be silly).
I was saying the 360 version of PSU doesn't have framerate problems. The framerate is always at 30-60 frames per second. But, in order to accomplish this, when 'stuff is happening', the game goes into a slow-motion mode in order to not drop below the target fps. PSU never has a low frames per second, where gameplay becomes choppy. Instead, it displays everything in it's entirery, just much slower.

And it happens all. the. time. To the point where if someone asked me how PSU's gameplay was, I'd tell them it's slow. While the combat is intended to be fast-paced, more than 50% of the time the xbox renders combat in slow motion, which makes it feel like I'm playing the matrix. It's pathetic. Clearing the cache doesn't help, either.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Carlo210 on 2007-11-25 14:11 ]</font>


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Carlo210 on 2007-11-25 14:15 ]</font>

[Miyuki-chan]

The slowdown makes the timing for Just Attack all wierd, have to wait longer for the animation to get to the right points.

[Alamar]

I have pc and was told AOTI does not have autoframe-skip. This caused me problems the first couple days had to keep messing with the settings. I finally got a new driver for my video card. It did help alot but there are still times I slowdown (running or weapons) like I am running in deep mud for a sec then its ok. also do you guys have the shadow option? or is all that automatic?

[Carlo210]

Not only that, it makes the game so boring and unbelievable muddy. I literally fight 50% slower than I am supposed to be. It's ridiculous and HASN'T been fixed in AoI.

Edit: To reply to someone else, the 360 doesn't get any graphical options, and there are no shadows other than the gray cirvle below our characters. Also, we know that the pc version runs better - this topic is talking about the 360.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Carlo210 on 2007-11-25 14:22 ]</font>

[AlphaMinotaux]

Gameplay is just fine cept at times in Neudaiz

This is my old thread http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif

[KnightHunter]

On 2007-10-25 07:52, BanF wrote:
Supposedly, the graphics engine will indeed be tweaked for AotI.



To bad this wasn't true. I am getting frame lag even when I'm all alone. It only happens every now and then when there are alot of monsters in the area but my questions is why is it that a higher end next gen system like the 360(No I am by no means a Xbox lover) have any kind of frame gripe over a game with lower end graphics.

[Carlo210]

Just because it's an old thread doesn't mean the topic isn't still discussable. I have huge slowdown problems on the 360.

Knighthunter, the reason why the game goes slow on the 360 is because SonicTeam poorly optimized the game for the 360. The way they programmed it and so forth makes the 360 do more work than it needs to.
It's not just a question of 'the game doesn't have great graphics, so it shouldn't go slow'. It's a question of 'how well is this game put together and programmed that it can run on an xbox360 efficiently?' The answer is: poorly. Hence the slowdown problems.

[AlphaMinotaux]

rebooting your xbox after a few hours of playing does help with slowdown.

[Alamar]

Well consoles always run games better. They are built with games in mind (obviously) PC use to look better cause of the higher res. on monitors. Not so with HDTV's now. 360 and PS3 look incredible these systems should have no problem running this game. I also lag solo after tweaking my setting for the umphteen time I would solo to test it. I never had THIS much problem in PSU. Does anybody know what changed? I even looked at my old settings and applied them to AOTI still the same problem. New game Glitch? I know they all get them and am sure ST knows and will patch it this or next Friday. I had same problem in Dimma S2 run when it came out. They fixed that.

[Carlo210]

Alamar, you don't really understand what we're talking about here. It's not a bug or some console generation performance topic. We're talking about the performance of PSU on the xbox 360 and how it doesn't run well not due to the console, but due to the programming.

I just started playing today. I am fighting some badiras. One casts barta and I use a PA = game slows down to 50% speed.

One of the wizard guys casts the spell that debuffs my accuracy and evasion while one of them is teleporting = slowdown, for some reason.

Three of more enemies attack me while I PA = slowdown.

Destroy a tree = slowdown.

Many enemies spawning or teleporting = slowdown.

Two level 21+ spells being cast = slowdown.

Being buffed while the party is fighting = extra slowdown.

Fighting more than one enemy with your party = slowdown, basically.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Carlo210 on 2007-11-25 14:48 ]</font>

[Alamar]

I did'nt mean to come off sounding like that i am sorry. I seen the topic for frame rate and been having trouble. Thought I would post my trouble. Was not trying to flame or cause any trouble here. It just seems I have read so much on these different problems. I will leave this topic to the 360'ers

[Achaiah191]

Did the expansion improve/fix the framerate issues with the Xbobx 360 version? Or are some areas still mind-numbingly slow to play on...I really want to play this game, but anytime I do a mission in the desert on moatoob I wanna break the game from how bad the slowdown is.

[KnightHunter]

Carlo that does make since. If the code isn't optimized I guess it would screw with the systems run setup. That sucks that they didn't rework it to run like it should. Another show of how little sega cares for all of their customers. This should have been taken care of pre-release of the original PSU. I never really thought of it in the way of code optimization. Heck at first I always thought it was that my 360 was screwing up again. In truth it is having some start up issues but this does make sense.

Alpha the only problem I would have with your reboot method is that last night when it happened I had beenplaying for only about fifteen minutes. I was in the Ruined City and had two groups of monsters spawn in close to the same time.

The sad truth is that if it is coding issues wouldn't it be hard to write them out? I'm not a programmer by any means and the most I have delved into was 3D-Graphical design so my knowledge is severly limited.

[KnightHunter]

No. This is actually talked about it a thread that will be below yours after this posting.

[Achaiah191]

Sorry for hoping that SEGA would actually make this game playable.

[Carlo210]

Of course. Heck, giving us a frameskip option would make me happy, even though I'd still know the game was poorly optimized for the 360. It's the same case with FFXI on the 360. If you have a lot of players on screen (10+), the game's framerate goes down and if you have more than that (15+ to 20+ people ) the framerate will go as low as 5fps.

In PSU, do you remember walking around Seabed with the tonnes of people that were there? Notice how the game slowed down, you ran slower, and so forth? In FFXI, the game's fps would take a hit. In psu, however, in order to keep the fps from going too low, it slows down the speed in which it does everything, alas slow-motion gameplay. However, the fact that the 360 is having trouble rendering a game such as PSU and processing combat actions while fighting, it's obvious that the problem is the way the game was ported and optimized. It's also obvious that this is Sega's fault, not the console's or the players' fault.

[Kimil]

It is, on the PC version http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif jk jk
but seriously, the graphics on the PC version are pretty nice... too bad I run it on a crappy Laptop =/

[Carlo210]

God, even turning the camera in combat slows everything down immensely.
Heck, even turning the camera while walking around slows the game down a lot. I'm playing in rozenom right now, by the way. I'm enjoying the slowdown when the mages spawn/teleport as well.

Amendment #1 We're all fighting one mini-jarba and it's slowing down. Fantastic.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Carlo210 on 2007-11-25 16:24 ]</font>

[Originalme8]

Well guys here is your first PS2 user. I have noticed a huge slowdown on the PS2 since the begining. I just accepted it as inevitable (plays on PC as well) because my PC does it too...at least the one that runs it. I don't know what the real solution is or if they will even attempt to mend it, so your options are either A) just get used to it is or B) go spend a few hundred smackers on a good PC. I can't afford a new computer right now so I will deal with the "Matrix Effect" while I play this game. It is well worth it.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Originalme8 on 2007-11-25 16:40 ]</font>

[Carlo210]

Well it makes sense for the ps2 version of the game to have some slowdown (as most games I've played on the ps2 run below 25 fps), but the 360 having these huge slowdown issues is unnacceptable. That's what this topic is about.

ps. the real solution is programming and optimizing the way the game runs. Every game developer does this and is a gargantuan part of the development of any game, but, by the looks of it, Sega doesn't seem to think how a game runs, especially on a powerful system such as the xbox 360, is very important.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Carlo210 on 2007-11-25 17:02 ]</font>

[Daremo]

As far as the 360 version goes I have notice an improvement in framerate. Still not perfect, but it only goes into slow motion when a lot is happening. Most of the silly slowdown issues (like when you break a tree) seem to be cleaned up. I think they just needed to look at their graphics engine and revise things for the 360. The same is true for FFXI. Another game that needs some fixing on the 360.

[Carlo210]

I still get the normal slowdown when breaking a tree, and also when we are fighting one enemy.

[Parn]

On 2007-11-25 16:51, Carlo210 wrote:
but the 360 having these huge slowdown issues is unnacceptable.
I'm going to assume you're still subscribed to the game, and so, your claim that it's unacceptable is obviously hot air.


On 2007-11-25 16:51, Carlo210 wrote:
ps. the real solution is programming and optimizing the way the game runs. Every game developer does this
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Let's see... Square didn't optimize much of anything for Final Fantasy XI when it was ported to PC from PS2, much less from PC to 360, so I guess Square sucks. Bungie didn't do much to optimize Halo 2 when it was ported to PC, so I guess they suck too. The Orange Box runs like crap on PS3 compared to the PC and 360 versions, so Valve must be incompetent. Knights of the Old Republic was infinitely more buggy on PC than it was on Xbox and had worse framerates, even on far superior hardware, so Bioware must be full of chumps. Beautiful Katamari has slowdown on 360 despite the graphics looking not that much better than it did on PS2, so Namco's a bunch of losers.

Wow, this is an interesting trend... it seems that just about every game developer on the planet is terrible at making games! Or, perhaps the more reasonable approach is that you don't know what you're talking about and like to oversimplify situations. Sonic Team pulled off something impressive with PSU considering the limited budget that Sega has to work with these days, and to act like game development is as easy as it is to write your whinefest forum posts is pretty irritating. Maybe it's just because I deal with software development that I see things differently, who knows.

[Carlo210]

I agree that unoptimizing any game that would easily run well on good hardware is a a poor decision on the developer's side. This includes Bungie with Halo2 and Square with FFXI. I didn't approve of how FFXI, a ps2 game, was poorly ported and ran badly my 360 either. Hardly anyone does nor should they.
The reason I mentioned Sonic Team is because *gasp* we're talking about PSU. Geeze Louise.

Edit: Heck, I feel this way about any game, ported or not. If it runs poorly, it's something the consumer should take into consideraton. Whether or not it's hard to do isn't of my concern. Writing a good story and creating realistic, 3-dimensional characters (in storytelling terms) is hard to do. However, I will admit when a story has a crappy story just as I will admit it runs poorly.
Of course, I wouldn't demand a better story from a game because it's a matter of personal taste.
However, when I'm paying 15$ a month, I can imagine I'm allowed to ask for something such as stability in the game. If the game were cheap or free to play monthly, then I'd understand the cutting of some corners, as I did with games like Diablo 2, Socom 2, and so forth.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Carlo210 on 2007-11-25 21:13 ]</font>

[B0Bomb]

Slowdown and/or Frameskipping is inevitable in any online gaming experience. While most of it can be chalked up to crap-lousy programming on the developers part, you have to remember also that you are playing on a server that is catering to a large number of other people who have variable connection speeds as well as who knows how many other devices running off of said connection.

If you are playing on 360 and have a problem with slow-down, then I suggest you suck up those tears and live with what you have. And even though we are paying 9.99/month to play does not mean that the system in going to be flawless. Ive noticed the slowdown too, but it doesn't make me want to stop playing the game. It happens, and has happened since console games have been on the market.

Parn has a point with Sonic Team too. It's not like they have gobs of liquid cash to invest into any venture that they have. If they did, we woudn't have 50 different half-assed Sonic games to wade through in order to realize that everyone's favorite Hedgehog is now a flagship joke.

[creativehope]

For all who seem to care, here is a little reminder about our beloved PSU. It was originally made for pc then ported over to the PS2 and the 360 meaning that optimizing it for a specific console was out of the question in the first place. A high end Pc should run a bit better than any console but because its Pc there is going to be a small bit of slowdown. Its a pc, these things happen Sure there is a lot of slowdown for the consoles but I've noticed that you all still play the game. So in the end when its all said and done just remember, when it slows down just say to yourself. It was made for PC, then everything will be okay

[drakkula]

ok.....but the x360 has less slowdown than it used to, right?

[landman]

It still has too much slowdown...