EPTCould they adapt to a skeleton crew?
Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread - Page 251
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Hider
Denmark9448 Posts
Could they adapt to a skeleton crew? | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands22578 Posts
Stormgate's problems are to big to fix with a skeleton crew working for a couple of months. | ||
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RogerChillingworth
Chad3132 Posts
On August 14 2025 19:58 Hider wrote: Shmer shmer shmer shmer? Yeah, wind the clock back to alpha build Chronosphere and build from there. Work it into the campaign that Amara has to go around snapping the necks of all the people who gave feedback that made the game worse. This whole thing has cost her and she's missing a limb now. Or she's blind like the Kill Bill chick. Have her break the 4th wall and like get up in the Tims' business and threaten them, because her existence is at stake. Better make this right, fuckin right up on his desk n shit. Tim's glasses are all fucked up and he's like OH MY GOD, shitting himself. Stuff steel wool in the feedback channels for a full year and release Timpossible: The Nightmare Ends in December 2026. BTW not taking the bait on this terrible T1 vs T2 debate. Wombat seems to be the only one with a brain stem, the rest of you need to be guillotined. Johnnie Cochran couldn't convince a jury that T1 is better. T2 is like the same movie but with 200% more dick. | ||
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Gescom
Canada3516 Posts
On August 14 2025 19:58 Hider wrote: Are people still optimistic Frostgiant will survive another 10 weeks with money about to run out? Could they adapt to a skeleton crew? Based on the LinkedIn post, the next milestone seems to be Tim going to Gamescom (Aug20-24) with hat in hand to scrounge up some cash. Odds of success are probably low -- user metrics are very bad and the game is not retaining players after the launch. | ||
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Miles_Edgeworth
United States141 Posts
On August 13 2025 18:16 Agh wrote: From interviews they're very much aware that money will come from the bigger multiplayer and team games and customs. The problem is the development in all of these areas is at a snails pace with an obvious lack of leadership and internal communication. The craziest part about this to me is that they're aware of it but still managed to shoot themselves in the foot so hard by having team PvP games unavailable for the entirety of early access and STILL unavailable at release. Given that 1v1 and co-op matchmaking and 2v2 maps already exist, I can't imagine it would have been that difficult to extend this to 2v2, and throw a few maps together for 3v3 and 4v4 as well. It feels like they're so hellbent on trying to reinvent RTS team games that they missed an easy win that would have been a draw to get their friends into the game and just make it feel like there's more to do. A lot of people complain about team games in SC2, but a hell of a lot of people still play them and I'd bet that it's a lot less effort to create compelling team games by designing the base game and maps with team games in mind than to create a completely separate ruleset for team games. Warcraft 3 has beloved team formats and is one of their main inspirations! Of all the weird missteps with this game, not listening to the community requests for team matchmaking feels like one of the weirdest. | ||
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Spirral
86 Posts
On August 15 2025 00:38 Miles_Edgeworth wrote: The craziest part about this to me is that they're aware of it but still managed to shoot themselves in the foot so hard by having team PvP games unavailable for the entirety of early access and STILL unavailable at release. Given that 1v1 and co-op matchmaking and 2v2 maps already exist, I can't imagine it would have been that difficult to extend this to 2v2, and throw a few maps together for 3v3 and 4v4 as well. It feels like they're so hellbent on trying to reinvent RTS team games that they missed an easy win that would have been a draw to get their friends into the game and just make it feel like there's more to do. A lot of people complain about team games in SC2, but a hell of a lot of people still play them and I'd bet that it's a lot less effort to create compelling team games by designing the base game and maps with team games in mind than to create a completely separate ruleset for team games. Warcraft 3 has beloved team formats and is one of their main inspirations! Of all the weird missteps with this game, not listening to the community requests for team matchmaking feels like one of the weirdest. This is also crazy to me and somehow I can't believe that was the plan. Stormgate was supposed to be team-first, social-first RTS - if I had to guess, they probably can't get good enough performance to bring in team games without further destroying their steam rating. And I would guess UE5 (possibly anti-cheat too) is the major reason for that. This engine has abysmal performance and high system requirements and is designed for first/third person games. Many features were heavily overmarketed and didn't deliver on their promise (e.g. Lumen). Most UE5 games I played in the recent years had pretty bad framerates, smeared graphics and weird lighting problems, so it's clear developers do have problems with it. Yeah tech demos look great but they are made by Epic and deliberately do not include fast camera movements etc. to not expose the issues. It seems most companies that are not Epic Games don't know how to make UE5 work efficiently though. | ||
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ChillFlame
327 Posts
On August 15 2025 01:06 Spirral wrote: This is also crazy to me and somehow I can't believe that was the plan. Stormgate was supposed to be team-first, social-first RTS - if I had to guess, they probably can't get good enough performance to bring in team games without further destroying their steam rating. And I would guess UE5 (possibly anti-cheat too) is the major reason for that. This engine has abysmal performance and high system requirements and is designed for first/third person games. Many features were heavily overmarketed and didn't deliver on their promise (e.g. Lumen). Most UE5 games I played in the recent years had pretty bad framerates, smeared graphics and weird lighting problems, so it's clear developers do have problems with it. Yeah tech demos look great but they are made by Epic and deliberately do not include fast camera movements etc. to not expose the issues. It seems most companies that are not Epic Games don't know how to make UE5 work efficiently though. Yep, optimization is an obvious culprit. Co-op was lagging hard at later stages before they nerfed supply from 300 to 200. And remember that 300 supply is 200 SC2 supply, so 200 is more like 133 per player. I don't know what's under the hood of the engine, but there were cases the entire game would freeze for all 3 players. You could scroll the camera, units played their idle animations, but nothing happened. Then all the animations played rapidly like a rewind. Doesn't seem like CPU, or GPU, or even connection problem, more like game engine logic was stuttering. | ||
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ChillFlame
327 Posts
Any software engineers? | ||
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qwerty4w
54 Posts
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ChillFlame
327 Posts
On August 15 2025 02:57 qwerty4w wrote: Tim Morten's previous RTS project is the cancelled 3v3 focused F2P live-service game C&C: Generals 2, some of that game's problems are bad netcode and abysmal tickrate, which was probably why Tim wants to try the same F2P 3v3 idea but with 60 tickrate and rollback technology. IMO Tim's C&C was just not fun and nothing like C&C But yeah, your reasoning might be true | ||
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Gescom
Canada3516 Posts
Well, I can only guess as to the architecture of Starcraft or Warcraft, but you may recall that even in 1v1, players are on "teams" of 1, which is a cute way ensure that a solo game (now there's no such thing!!) and a team game don't deviate too much and again we're strictly talking about Vs Melee. So, what does a 2v2 do that a 1v1 doesn't? Well, the map needs to be large enough to make sense... not that 1v1s don't already occur on 4 & 6 man maps anyways. You need 2 whole lines of code to ensure that a 2v2 doesn't occur on a 2 player map. Fog of war needs to be shared between allies. Okay, that's pretty simple. You may or may not have a system for sharing control and/or sharing resources. That's also not too bad, and also doesn't necessarily need to exist in an alpha/beta iteration of team mode. You're already in a hosted multiplayer session, and so I don't really recognize any netcode distinction between 2 people existing in a lobby and 4 people existing in a lobby. I suppose you need to extend MMR/Matchmaking to have a solo, 2v2, 3v3, etc, rank, but again pretty simple just have an MMR per mode rather than a Global MMR. You need to display these modes and their history in the UI.... So... what is next beyond that? Where's the rocket science? Or are they this woefully behind that they can't spare one dev for two weeks to do these things? Now... you're right. If it was that easy, they would have done it already, probably. I might also guess that Stormgate has some potentially rotten architecture given that even the CAMPAIGN runs a very brief matchmaking query (fffs...) before it boots up and it sits in a hosted multiplayer session and you cannot save when you want to. Perhaps they have painted themselves into a corner somehow. Hard to say. But... everything on Stormgate has debuted a day late and a dollar short. Maybe they have 2 programmers and 50 clowns sitting around eating snacks. I'm still thinking that in Blizzard RTSes, the foundation for all Vs Melee games is ~95% the same. *** Honestly, I can't grasp why these modes aren't there. I really doubt its an engine concern. It would be lazy of me to say they are literally incompetent, but again they couldn't even list the bundles properly on Steam for their launch, so.... earlier theories that its 2 programmers, 8 artists, and 40 discord mods masquerading as a company may still be the most accurate take. | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20344 Posts
On August 15 2025 02:11 ChillFlame wrote: Could it be because the engine can't handle lots of units with a tick rate of 60? Any software engineers? Tick rate is a problem for RTS performance yeah. Malfunctions or highly undesirable behaviors happen when one or more players in the game can't process ticks as fast as they're happening. SC2 handles this kind of okay by dilating time and halting time temporarily if somebody gets too far behind, but it's not perfect. Stormgate had major issues in the past, i'm not sure how much they were resolved. Although there's some reduction in work-per-tick with a higher tick rate, 60hz will be easily twice as hard to run as SC2's 22.4 hz if not closer to 3x. If rollback is enabled, it also throws away a handful of simulated ticks and resimulates them on each rollback which adds workload. If rollbacks are repeatedly triggered by e.g. spamming a slightly different move command 20 times, that can massively hit performance - suddenly you might have to sim 100hz to keep up instead of just 60. --- For unit count, the scaling is extremely unfavorable in RTS engines. Twice as many units doesn't take just twice as much CPU time, but can actually be 3-4x+. The exact scaling will depend on engine details, but a lot of stuff has x^2 scaling or even worse. Take for example pathfinding - 10 guys pathfinding around each other is 10x9 calculations, but 20 guys pathfinding around each other is 20x19, so you get 2x the units but 4x the collision calculation work. More units to process in the simulation tick also means that there is literally more critical data required for those calculations. More data means worse cache hit rates, which means a larger % of the time with the CPU sitting on its hands waiting for data rather than doing useful work. RTS games with large unit counts typically group them together, so like you have "10 footmen" but they're actually simulated as 1 unit for most or all of the important calculations. | ||
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qwerty4w
54 Posts
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ChillFlame
327 Posts
On August 15 2025 08:42 Cyro wrote: Tick rate is a problem for RTS performance yeah. Malfunctions or highly undesirable behaviors happen when one or more players in the game can't process ticks as fast as they're happening. SC2 handles this kind of okay by dilating time and halting time temporarily if somebody gets too far behind, but it's not perfect. Stormgate had major issues in the past, i'm not sure how much they were resolved. Although there's some reduction in work-per-tick with a higher tick rate, 60hz will be easily twice as hard to run as SC2's 22.4 hz if not closer to 3x. If rollback is enabled, it also throws away a handful of simulated ticks and resimulates them on each rollback which adds workload. If rollbacks are repeatedly triggered by e.g. spamming a slightly different move command 20 times, that can massively hit performance - suddenly you might have to sim 100hz to keep up instead of just 60. --- For unit count, the scaling is extremely unfavorable in RTS engines. Twice as many units doesn't take just twice as much CPU time, but can actually be 3-4x+. The exact scaling will depend on engine details, but a lot of stuff has x^2 scaling or even worse. Take for example pathfinding - 10 guys pathfinding around each other is 10x9 calculations, but 20 guys pathfinding around each other is 20x19, so you get 2x the units but 4x the collision calculation work. More units to process in the simulation tick also means that there is literally more critical data required for those calculations. More data means worse cache hit rates, which means a larger % of the time with the CPU sitting on its hands waiting for data rather than doing useful work. RTS games with large unit counts typically group them together, so like you have "10 footmen" but they're actually simulated as 1 unit for most or all of the important calculations. Thanks a lot! It was interesting to read. Why have they decided to go for 60Hz, I wonder? It made the development more difficult, limited their possibilities (like unit caps and interactions), and narrowed the player base (not everyone has a decent enough pc to run this). Will 60Hz tickrate provide some tangible benefit? AoE4 has 8Hz, and I never had any issues. | ||
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qwerty4w
54 Posts
There are many old RTS games run at 20hz to 30hz by default but allow the player to double or triple the gamespeed, which also increases the tickrate, at 60hz they often run much better than Stormgate. Of course these games have simpler graphics, but modern RTS games with multithreading like Stormgate and Starcraft 2 usually run game logics and graphics on different threads. | ||
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_Spartak_
Turkey459 Posts
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qwerty4w
54 Posts
Historically it was after it became possible to make the graphics of an RTS more smooth than its simulation you started to see RTSs with really low tickrate, like Supreme Commander and AoE4. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27365 Posts
On August 15 2025 17:22 ChillFlame wrote: Thanks a lot! It was interesting to read. Why have they decided to go for 60Hz, I wonder? It made the development more difficult, limited their possibilities (like unit caps and interactions), and narrowed the player base (not everyone has a decent enough pc to run this). Will 60Hz tickrate provide some tangible benefit? AoE4 has 8Hz, and I never had any issues. Is AoE4 only ticking over at that? Interesting. I’d be interested to know, if one took the same exact game, and had people blind testing it, what the thresholds would be. How low do you go to have it feel noticeably bad? At what point does increasing the number start to bring diminishing, or non-noticeable returns? Honestly you could probably do the same with frame rates and people would find the threshold of ‘playable’ and the upper bounds of what they can notice blind to be a bit lower than many claim. I’m not a pro dev, but I think it’s pretty common sense that any technical feature needs to do one of two things: 1. Noticeably improve something in the game, that the end user can feel. 2. If not 1), facilitate some other feature that does 1). 3. Not introduce some other problem, weird bugs or performance or whatever. I’m not really seeing going with such a high tick rate as satisfying these requirements. Indeed, a technical feature of theirs that could actually be of benefit, in rollback is negatively impacted by that choice too. And I think that’s a good feature to have I think there are probably 2 realistic possibilities as to why that choice was made, IMO. 1. It’s the next gen RTS, here’s our next gen tech, as a marketing angle. 2. If they were building an engine for future projects, or indeed licensing and figured they would aim high with an expectation of a combo of hardware improvements and their optimisation future-proofing it. | ||
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ChillFlame
327 Posts
On August 16 2025 08:22 WombaT wrote: I think there are probably 2 realistic possibilities as to why that choice was made, IMO. 1. It’s the next gen RTS, here’s our next gen tech, as a marketing angle. 2. If they were building an engine for future projects, or indeed licensing and figured they would aim high with an expectation of a combo of hardware improvements and their optimisation future-proofing it. Both are possible, the former is more likely, IMO. I don't understand the necessity of a 60Hz tick rate other than marketing. 3x tickrate is 3x CPU load (roughly) There are lots of SC2 pros with average APM over 400. Like Reynor. I've seen 600 average APM in his games. Does anyone know any serious cases of SC2 pros' complaints that the engine isn't responsive enough? I don't understand the necessity of rollback either. I play on the European server with ~20 ping. My units never jitter, and enemy units are never desynchronized. Why do I need a tech that will do nothing and increase my CPU load? To make it possible to play with the Oceania server? Thanks, I'm fine playing with 20 ping, I don't need 180 ping. It can't defy the speed of light and routing delay. So yeah, from the perspective of the average diamond player, I see no tangible benefit. Maybe someone more knowledgeable will explain why it is worth it. | ||
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ChillFlame
327 Posts
They scratched their heads and made a list of things they could sell as "innovative". It's innovation for the sake of innovation (or marketing), not for the improvement of players' experience. Because the only thing most people will experience is optimization problems. | ||
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