Respected Game Developers Prefer GCN Programming Documentation Over GameWorks “black boxes”

LtMatt · 8 Apr 2014 at 18:34

As a brief background to this thread I'm sure all the regulars here remember the ExtremeTech article 'Nvidia’s GameWorks program usurps power from developers, end-users, and AMD', as well as the thread i created here so we could discuss the ramifications of this. The general gist of the article was that NVIDIA’s Gameworks libraries were “black boxes” that could not be modified by developers and also left AMD unable to provide their own performance optimizations via their drivers when these libraries were used. There was a lot of debate, denial and deflecting in that thread and even though i asked Joel (the author of the article) to sign up and explain things it ended in a stalemate. Fast forward to today and as i was on holiday i saw an interesting conversation taking place between highly respected game developers on twitter. The general gist of the conversation was interesting, i thought. One of the things that interested me was first that they confirmed the original article was true, regarding the black boxes. What i found even more interesting was that they've started working more on GCN because of AMD's open programming documentation and AMD's involvement in consoles.

Here's is a snapshot of the conversation

At first i didn't recognize any of these names, aside from the legend that is Johan Anderson of course.

However after a little bit of googling, looking at twitter profiles and research revealed the people posting above are in fact:

·John Kloetzli is graphics programmer at Firaxis.

·Bart Wronski is graphics programmers at … Ubi Soft Montreal!

·Timothy Lottes is ex-NVIDIA and now works at Epic (the author of TXAA).

·Michal Drobot also works at Ubi Soft Montreal.

·Johan needs no intro.

Ubisoft seem to be in partnership with Nvidia and GameWorks at the moment and so are Epic, so i find it fascinating that they would speak this way regarding GameWorks and specifically GCN.

Comments, opinion and healthy debate welcome folks.

Source
https://twitter.com/repi/status/452812842132332544

andybird123 · 8 Apr 2014 at 18:57

Speak what way?
the only person speaking is Bart

As Nvidia have already said, Devs DO get access to the source code for gameworks when they sign up to the program

are you also Rizen on Hardforum, or did you just copy this thread idea from him (pretty much verbatim)

pgi947 · 8 Apr 2014 at 19:13

Johan has a nerve talking about loosing respect for someone who puts out something unusable

I wonder how much respect gamers (you know, the guys that pay their wages) have for dice?

Tonester0011 · 8 Apr 2014 at 19:18

Snapshot of a Twitter 'conversation' shows one person talking lol.

LtMatt · 8 Apr 2014 at 19:22

andybird123 said:
are you also Rizen on Hardforum, or did you just copy this thread idea from him (pretty much verbatim)

No idea who that is and i don't visit H often. Link to the thread?

I have my own account on H LtMatt though i think ive only posted there twice. I saw this as Johan's tweet popped up on my twitter feed.

pgi947 said:
Johan has a nerve talking about loosing respect for someone who puts out something unusable

I wonder how much respect gamers (you know, the guys that pay their wages) have for dice?

I blame your mouse tbh.

Tonester0011 said:
Snapshot of a Twitter 'conversation' shows one person talking lol.

Added a source to the OP. Its hard to post the whole convo as i have to shrink my browser to unreadable levels to fit all the messages in.

https://twitter.com/repi/status/452812842132332544

MjFrosty said:
.. removed ..

Nothing to worthy to add? Don't reply. No need for baiting.

Silent_Scone · 8 Apr 2014 at 19:26

Yeh, my rigs faster than yours and I've used GameWorks.

'Discuss'

Nobody is forcing developers to adopt GameWorks. I'm not sure if Watch Dogs is an official title; but it's kind of a big release this year. If not the biggest. It's just good to know it will put a few good features to use if so.

TheRealDeal · 8 Apr 2014 at 19:38

MjFrosty said:
Yeh, my rigs faster than yours and I've used GameWorks.

'Discuss'

Nobody is forcing developers to adopt GameWorks. I'm not sure if Watch Dogs is an official title; but it's kind of a big release this year. If not the biggest. It's just good to know it will put a few good features to use if so.

I will be playing watchdogs on my ps4 and i doubt Ubisoft would do anything to hard there console sales ruining performance using gamework's. It's probably the best way for any amd user to get away from Gamework's if they so wish to. Assassin's creed 4 was flawless on the ps4 and i believe some game works was used in that title.

Silent_Scone · 8 Apr 2014 at 19:41

I wouldn't buy it on PS4. They've had to remove a lot of visuals as the performance just wasn't there.

James J · 8 Apr 2014 at 19:43

I also like the idea of a completely open system where anyone can tinker to their hearts content. However, I do understand nvidias system using gameworks that is far more rigid, as it removes so many unknowns from directing drivers and optimisation profiles as they already know how a games engine will react with their resources.

Catch 22 situation it seems.

Rroff · 8 Apr 2014 at 19:44

Sorry... "highly respected game developers" ? 2 unknowns from I believe ubisoft? Johan lost any kind of respect after BF4. Not exactly people I can take seriously any more or have any claim to being highly respected game developers.

EDIT: To be fair the shoddy programming on BF4 might not be Johan's but as hes senior there he has a certain amount of responsibility.

mmj_uk · 8 Apr 2014 at 19:45

What developers think is irrelevent from an end user perspective, I buy my graphics card based on what it will be like to use day in and day out for gaming, that's all that matters to me.

There seems to be a new breed of super fanboy (particularly on the AMD side) that just sit trawling the internet all day to find any information which they can twist to suit their agenda and then rush to post it on OCUK. If you guys were as committed to gaming as you are promoting AMD you might actually come to prefer NVidia.

TheRealDeal · 8 Apr 2014 at 19:47

MjFrosty said:
I wouldn't buy it on PS4. They've had to remove a lot of visuals as the performance just wasn't there.

We shall see when the game is released but i doubt i will be disappointed after playing through Infamous and being happy with how the game looked. I have seen 30 mins of game play on the ps4 and it looked no different to the pc footage i seen. I was not looking for differences though and i always expect the pc to have the overall better Graphics. I doubt i would notice to much while playing though. I expect the biggest difference to be aa and slightly more blurry on console.

RetrogamerX · 8 Apr 2014 at 19:50

mmj_uk said:
What developers think is irrelevent from an end user perspective, I buy my graphics card based on what it will be like to use day in and day out for gaming, that's all that matters to me.

There seems to be a new breed of super fanboy (particularly on the AMD side) that just sit trawling the internet all day to find any information which they can twist to suit their agenda and then rush to post it on OCUK. If you guys were as committed to gaming as you are promoting AMD you might actually come to prefer NVidia.

Well said.

GoogalyMoogaly · 8 Apr 2014 at 20:34

Is this a bit like the problems with AMD cards black screening?
By that I mean it's the people with problems making the most noise. The people that are happy with it are less vocal?

Just on these forums and across both vendors there are probably more threads about having issues with a graphics card than people starting a thread to go "My card is ok, no problems at present". Does this mean that no AMD or Nvidia cards are worth buying as the majority of 'respected' members have had issues?

Sugarhell · 8 Apr 2014 at 20:42

Rroff said:
Sorry... "highly respected game developers" ? 2 unknowns from I believe ubisoft? Johan lost any kind of respect after BF4. Not exactly people I can take seriously any more or have any claim to being highly respected game developers.

EDIT: To be fair the shoddy programming on BF4 might not be Johan's but as hes senior there he has a certain amount of responsibility.

Sorry johan is part of frostbite team. Not dice.He only develop the graphic engine

LtMatt · 8 Apr 2014 at 20:45

Sugarhell said:
Sorry johan is part of frostbite team. Not dice.He only develop the graphic engine

Well said. He is not responsible for the bugs of BF4.

Rroff · 8 Apr 2014 at 20:50

Sugarhell said:
Sorry johan is part of frostbite team. Not dice.He only develop the graphic engine

The game shows problems as much at the engine level and/or border between engine and game code as it does game code, while not all the bugs/issues can be tied to danger close's work on the game some of the bugs while appearing to be at game level are due to being built on underlying engine code before they realised how broken it was. (Hence why when they try to fix them you either end up with band aids trying to hide the problem or fixing one issue to expose another that they didn't realise was underneath).

To be fair I don't know the specifics of what his work was on the engine and it may be that the shoddy workmanship is entirely the blame of someone else but the fact is both engine and game suffer from some people at best doing programming as a career with no real care or pride in the finished product.

shankly1985 · 8 Apr 2014 at 20:55

I don't have a single issue with bf4?the problems I have with the game is balance issues. So if someone would like to explain to me what game braking bugs they is please feel free.

Sugarhell · 8 Apr 2014 at 20:59

Rroff said:
The game shows problems as much at the engine level and/or border between engine and game code as it does game code, while not all the bugs/issues can be tied to danger close's work on the game some of the bugs while appearing to be at game level are due to being built on underlying engine code before they realised how broken it was. (Hence why when they try to fix them you either end up with band aids trying to hide the problem or fixing one issue to expose another that they didn't realise was underneath).

To be fair I don't know the specifics of what his work was on the engine and it may be that the shoddy workmanship is entirely the blame of someone else but the fact is both engine and game suffer from some people at best doing programming as a career with no real care or pride in the finished product.

Bf4 problem is mostly game code/network code.

Now this conversation is mostly for gpu architectures docs. And they discuss how they prefer to design for gcn because nvidia lacks docs about their architecture and the docs from amd are really good. Its a complain about nvidia relationship with developers.

Rroff · 8 Apr 2014 at 21:06

Sugarhell said:
Bf4 problem is mostly game code/network code.

Now this conversation is mostly for gpu architectures docs. And they discuss how they prefer to design for gcn because nvidia lacks docs about their architecture and the docs from amd are really good. Its a complain about nvidia relationship with developers.

Which is a load of rubbish

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/content/PDF/kepler/NVIDIA-Kepler-GK110-Architecture-Whitepaper.pdf

http://docs.nvidia.com/gameworks/index.html

etc. etc. not to mention extensive sample and game development whitepapers, etc. nvidia do and if you license the gameworks libraries you get far more access to the source and documentation than is available publicly let alone if you make use of the nVidia's developer relations programs theres a whole extra level of support even to the point they will build development drivers for specific needs and rollout the features into the release drivers for a game release.