Blah blah blah GTA San Andreas

Discussion in 'General Game Discussion and Questions' started by kingofkings8183, Dec 22, 2013.

  1. kingofkings8183

    kingofkings8183 Well-Known Member

    Sep 22, 2010
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    Wow, so that means our latest and greatest device has to play it in a lower res despite having the best processor while previous gen owners play it in its full glory...
     
  2. kaibosh

    kaibosh Well-Known Member

    Jun 14, 2012
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    Yes, kind of how video games have worked since... Pong? Do you have any idea how many times the engine has to redraw every frame? They may be drawing each individual frame up to a dozen times even in an older game like this, to keep adding more stuff like shaders, effects, AA, etc. They then take that finished frame and show it to you - and they need to do this at a minimum of 30+ frames per second. Add AA to the mix and you are redrawing the screen another factor of 4 or more times just to smear the results together! Think about the math involved simply from changing the bottom line res:

    1024x768 = 786,432 pixels
    1280x720 = 921,600 pixels
    1920x1080 = 2,073,600 pixels
    2048x1536 = 3,145,728 pixels

    Do you not remember that the PS3 was touted as '1080p', when in fact in the end maybe two or three games in total were able to push above 720p? The bottom line is, if they can get away with fudging the res even just a little (and this gets tricky, because the resulting interpolation when upscaled after the fact must be a kind ratio of pixels or it will look muddy) it is always better for US, because framerate is *everything*. They only have so much ram to swap textures in and out of, they only have so much processing power for the graphics anyway because everything else going on in the game needs to get their snout in the trough as well. A HUGE part of development in a big game is the various teams arguing that they need more of a slice of the pie - the sound guys, the raw 'draw the engine frame' guys, the team putting textures on all those polys and trying desperately to cheat in every way with as few textures onscreen as possible, the net code guys (for multiplayer), the guys programming the AI and physics for every object and character at once...

    These new crazy high resolution tablets have outpaced the ability of the CPU and GPU to keep up. Resolution has always been enemy number one, and most of the time they are fudging the res without you ever even noticing it. Let's not forget, John Carmack never worked for Rockstar, just be happy he is now in charge of Oculus Rift. In the meantime we are dealing with decade old clunky code being dumped into someone's lap and forced onto even clunkier iOS devices. It is a MIRACLE that San Andreas was ported to our little toys. Patience, they may patch in a few key optimization over the next couple of months. If you find it unplayable, I am pretty sure there are many other games to occupy you in the meantime.
     
  3. redribbon

    redribbon Well-Known Member

    Jun 11, 2010
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    #3 redribbon, Dec 23, 2013
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2013
    don't get me wrong, I'm that "graphics" kind of guy too. but i bet you can't barely tell the different between 2560x1534 VS. 1920x1080 with 2xAA. So if it means that we can gain like 5-10 more fps then ill be fine with the game just running on a bit lower res. if you own galaxy on fire 2 hd just try it on your device, you'll understand what i mean.

    can you notice the framerate different when you inside the save house and when you outside the house?


    ps. i just install the game on my iphone 5, guess what, the framerate is butter smooth. so yes my suspicious is correct, this game wasn't optimised for the A7. just wait for fix then. enjoy the game guys if the framerate is no issue for you.
     
  4. kaibosh

    kaibosh Well-Known Member

    Jun 14, 2012
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    I would be the very last person to defend Rockstar ports, but the meaningless 'magnitude benchmarks' that apple feeds us are for the most part nonsense. Even though CPU's and GPU's have made huge strides they are still glomped onto the same basic architecture. The busses between your Ram and these components is everything. The PS3 was such a bold step forward in design that most developers never even touched the raw potential - Sony brought people in for 'schooling' but in the end a lot of games ended up being fudged and run through an emulator of sorts.

    In related news, the PS4 is basically back to being a raw PC, this means the PC ports of big money titles for PC will be *stupefying* on the right hardware. I mean, like a game spread across three 4k monitors with zero bezel, running with every bell and whistle cranked at 12,288x2560, rock solid 60fps (they just made a game changing breakthrough controlling v-sync at monitor level, this is the biggest thing in ten years). Maybe it takes $3k in video cards alone, but hey I can kick out a standard house breaker if I initiate Bitcoin mining on a three year old rig, so...

    Or, of course, gen 2 of Oculus Rift. ;)

    Bottom line, anyone who seriously wants to play GTA:SA on their iDevice should just let it sit for a couple of months... Me, it is very playable on my iPad 3 and I am not going to take the game seriously. Hey, at least they 'kinda' implemented a checkpoint system in the game! Now if they could just re-release an ICE-Enhanced GTA IV with full checkpoints and the driving camera fixed (dear God how did that slip through) for ANY system...

    (ps: The Android release of this game is supposed to be "up and running", some people report great performance on, say... Like a '13 Nexus 7... Ya know, like. The one I run with the CPU and GPU clocked to "burn your fingerprints off" specs... Bought'd and DL'ing now)
     
  5. Gov

    Gov Well-Known Member

    Jun 24, 2013
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    You can't expect a perfect initial port of the first release for ALL idevices. Right now it is doing an OK job (not great) but I'm pretty sure updates down the line will fix that like ALL games do. If anyone else tried releasing this game to iOS, they would to a worse job than R*

    Remember they've also released an enhanced version of smartphones, not the ps2 vesion.. With lower quality. The iOS version is totally different. Just like a brand new game with new code.
     
  6. kaibosh

    kaibosh Well-Known Member

    Jun 14, 2012
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    Much like Bethesda, Rockstar is not known for coding tight engines. The ports are always horribly optimized. Skyrim and Fallout 3 were lucky to average 20fps on the PS3, I wept for my friends who didn't know how much better it was modded and cranked on a pimped out PC.

    GTA IV was barely playable when they released it on the PC, and unlike Crysis as an example it wasn't a mistake in development arc vs. power. It just plain ran like crap even on a computer that should have been playing it @ 1080p and handily maintaining 60+ FPS. The outcry was terrible, but what were they going to do about it? Some things are just not fixable without a total rewrite from scratch. Throwing more power at some engines can make the difference, but it has never made a dent in a Rockstar engine.

    There will hopefully be specific fixes aimed at specific devices, people in this thread say WarDrum has a good track record for such things. They can't pull off miracles though, in the end their only resource may be to quietly gouge features in a desperate attempt to boost framerate. That is the preferable choice to the game remaining unplayable.

    I am honestly shocked at how good the performance is on my iPad 3, considering it is just iPad 2 guts with a lot more pixels crammed onto the screen. The game is a little hitchy and I would say averages about 25-30fps at the best of times while out and about, but given the sheer magnitude of the game it is truly amazing that we have the chance to play it like this.

    Let's not forget that the game was developed in 2004, when the Antikythera device was about the hottest processor around. The game didn't exactly run gangbusters on a PS2, and while the Xbox release was 'smoother' the game never quite fit that controller for some odd reason. Also, the xbox release was 480p 16x9 output, which looked fantastic back then but is only 852x480 resolution. That means the engine had to spit out 7.7 times fewer pixels per frame than it does on an iPad 3. Come to think of it, the original xbox port of GTA:SA is likely the penultimate edition of the game.
     
  7. kaibosh

    kaibosh Well-Known Member

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    #7 kaibosh, Dec 23, 2013
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2013
    Well folks, here it is. I have mentioned this before but the only reason I still own *any* apple product (an iPad 3) is because of Foursaken. I know they won't port to android, they are Mac boys through and through. To that end my phone is a heavily breathed on Note 2, and my gaming tablet is a '13 Nexus 7 that has a killer rom on it and is likewise overclocked on both CPU and GPU nicely (I got lucky on the speed binning, always do).

    And here... Is why:

    [​IMG]

    That is the graphics options for this game on my Nexus 7, a device by the way that is most certainly as lopsided as any apple product when it comes to resolution vs. raw muscle: 1920x1200 with an Adreno 320 - not the biggest powerhouse of a GPU. (Hey, it cost $250 for the 32 Gig model, take that apple.)

    Anyway, one look at that screenshot and you will see why I jumped ship. The game screams on my Nexus 7 - why? Because you can tinker with everything until it does. You think you will even really notice the lowered notches of res in this game? Not. It is like butter, because I can choose to have butter. It gets worse, too - from the moment I jumped on the bicycle in the game's opening, the bike handled like a dream. Same control config, same everything. Why? Because there is simply that much more processing power available to monitor input. This alone is worth as much as the framerate. The bike still swerves violently if you aren't on the ball, but it is under control. On my iPad, changing direction on the bike was treacherous, and it felt exactly as though the polling input for my controls had lag, that it was simply not crisp enough.

    I am not trying to rub anything in here, the point I want to make is this: Why couldn't WarDrum do the *exact* same kind of visual options in the iOS release? I can tell you why, and it isn't because "there is so much more fragmentation range for Android" - that is bunk and the list of various iOS hardware is enough to make this argument moot without needing to explain it.

    The reason we don't have these options in our iOS release is because apple won't let them. Apple is so suffocatingly and freakishly locked down and in control of every aspect of 'cross compatibility' that they would simply veto a slider to change resolution. Why? Because in their twisted and deranged philosophy everything they put out is perfect. A slider to turn something down would suggest that things weren't perfect, that you needed to compromise. They want you to buy the newest apple device every year, and they will go to these lengths to ensure it.

    Even after all these years, all these major revisions to iOS, apple still won't even let a person change the keyboard. I laughed my ass off when I saw the cool dark grey keyboard in iOS 7 that you see when entering your itunes password - I knew without even looking that there was NO WAY that they would even let you change to this keyboard in the options, and there most certainly isn't. Why?! Again, because to give someone the choice to even change the colour of the keyboard would suggest that the keyboard wasn't perfect. This lunacy applies to every single thing they refuse to change, or allow any tweaks of any kind to. And this is why I abandoned apple altogether until those rotten Foursaken guys put out H&C and then Block Fortress. I can't even sell my iPad yet because now I have to wait for Bug Heroes 2...

    All for the sake of a few sliders. I'm sorry for crapping up this thread like this, but I am done now. It is hard to discuss a game like this without pointing at apple for why some games simply don't work across the now vast range of hardware they offer. Their walled garden approach has choked off the oxygen to the arboretum and now there is no one left to enjoy the flowers.
     
  8. VaroFN

    VaroFN Well-Known Member

    Sep 28, 2011
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    Race After 1977 has LOTS of options for graphics, way more options that in most PC games, and it was updated a lot, so it's not like it passed Apple's reviews by luck. You could try asking some devs here if Apple allows sliders or not, but my guess is that they indeed allow sliders for graphics options.
     
  9. kaibosh

    kaibosh Well-Known Member

    Jun 14, 2012
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    Apple has many ways to frown at Devs, and the bigger the title the more they exert their control. I could list off a dozen major titles that have *zero* graphics options for iOS but Asphalt 8 is a perfect example. On iOS they simply surgically remove shaders and gfx touches altogether, where as in the android release you can set everything exactly where you want. When an iPod 4 is still 'supported' by 90% of apps (even with half the ram of an iPhone 4) and the iPad air is ten zillion times more powerful, isn't it time to let the user choose their "acceptable experience"?

    This rant would most certainly start to swerve towards apple's price gouging, needless to say the non retina mini sold HUGE and will remain the low end that devs will have no choice but to accommodate until the Sun turns into a brown dwarf and consumes the Earth. Apple themselves make it hard for devs to even be *able* to check what device an app is running on, the old "check for a flash" trick was the only way some apps were iPad only.

    I hope this port gets optimized for everyone, I really do. People need to come to terms with the fact that native res may be unattainable, and that done right they won't even notice a math friendly interpolated upscale. How much do you think Sony paid out of pocket to make good on the promise that Gran Turismo 5 would play at 1080p? 200 million or so? In the end they couldn't do it, lied and fudged it - it took people with hacked Dev kits to prove that the game was being rendered at 1280x1080 and only 2X AA. iOS devices can't cheat upscaling by letting a tv do the transmogrification - they need to push something to every pixel. What hi res portable devices need is a new standardized res scaling algorithm that is done with a dedicated chip - it would allow clunky engines to cheat and with the right AA you would never know the difference.

    In the meantime, I will muse about the days we played a heavily modded Duke Nukem multiplayer for hours on end, at 400x300 res. The framerate was so high that the CRT monitor was in danger of exploding.
     
  10. drez

    drez Well-Known Member

    Sep 21, 2010
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    You know anti Apple folks are just as crazy as the Apple fanboys. People actually think Apple takes the time to ensure developers don't include resolution sliders in a game? Seriously?

    I highly doubt Apple has any say in the matter, nor do they care.
     
  11. drez

    drez Well-Known Member

    Sep 21, 2010
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    If you actually think testers "approve" anything, you have no idea how the testing process works. All testers have the power to do is test, find bugs and report them. Actually making updates and fixing bugs falls in the hands of the developer and publisher.
     
  12. EatMyDst

    EatMyDst Member

    Aug 10, 2013
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    Yes exactly. Thank you. It's like politics or religion all over again.
     
  13. oldsnake

    oldsnake Well-Known Member

    Aug 19, 2012
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    ARALON:SWORLD AND SHADOWS HD have sliders for graphics,DEAD EFFECT too,they passed apple review for luck?I don't think this depends by Apple..
     
  14. drez

    drez Well-Known Member

    Sep 21, 2010
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    The point is none of that is in the hands of testers yet people always blame it on them as the post on the last page did.
     
  15. kaibosh

    kaibosh Well-Known Member

    Jun 14, 2012
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    Except unlike Obama or the Pope strongly suggesting lifestyle rules, apple has the power and uses that power to control things on a regular basis. The carrot always works better than the stick, you think they don't 'help' Devs who play along? How many apps that absolutely require iOS 7 *actually* require iOS 7? The answer is none, as jailbreakers who fudge reported OS requirements have proven.

    You know, along with the other several dozen things apple has blatantly lied about that jailbreakers have proven time and time again. The list of "impossible" things that apple insisted about was embarrassing and ridiculous. They will savagely cover things up by force if necessary. Private SWAT mercs raiding someone's home because they *thought* the guy had picked up a prototype phone in a bar? Did you see it on the news when tens of thousands of people were set free from prison because it was proven that SMS origin data could be merrily spoofed perfectly and apple knew for several years? Nope. How many Billions of dollars have they won with nonsensical patent suits that make a farce of the entire system, the whole while thieving every concept they have ever touted from Braun and other phone manufacturers? I am done with this, people who defend apple insanity cannot be reasoned with.
     
  16. kaibosh

    kaibosh Well-Known Member

    Jun 14, 2012
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    Thank you to the mod who surgically removed this crap from the game thread. When a game as big as GTA:SA is released passions can run amok.
     
  17. drez

    drez Well-Known Member

    Sep 21, 2010
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    Thanks for proving my point that anti Apple zealots are just as nutty as the fanboys are.

    You act as if shady corporate dealings and conspiracies are an Apple only thing. There is plenty of dirt on Google, MS, Sony and others. Welcome to business. Pick your poison.

    Anyways, I'm yet to see you respond to the numerous replies to your essay on how Apple forces developers to not allow graphic options in games.
     
  18. Ipad 4's will for a time be better than ipad mini retina or air due to 64 bit issues and others. But 6 months from now, I would love to have a 64 bit machine, though, I will wait for the ipad pro cause the current ipads are way too underpowered with too little ram.
     
  19. HeliPilot

    HeliPilot Well-Known Member

    Feb 28, 2011
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    Agreed, the human eye maxes at 24 FPS. So anything above 25 is very smooth.
     
  20. Mene

    Mene <b>ACCOUNT CLOSED</b>: <em>Officially</em> Quit iO

    Mar 18, 2012
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    I'm sorry but I read that all over the place and it's certainly not true.

    I have done many fps tests on my PC and I can very easily tell the difference between 20-25-30-35 fps. In fact only when the fps gets over 70 do I struggle to see an actual difference. I doubt I am the only one that sees it.
     

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