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[LectureMaster]

Galaxy-brained NPCs thinking too much were the source of Dragon Dogma 2's performance woes in towns, say devs

Big brain.

www.pcgamer.com

Well, turns out, Capcom's got the answer—the NPCs were thinking too hard. That's as per a Famitsu interview in the wake of a recent patch, which tidied up some performance woes (thanks, Automaton, for the translation):
"In Dragon’s Dogma 2, CPU power is allocated to process the thoughts of each NPC as well as the effect on character physics. Therefore, in scenes where many NPCs appear at once, like in towns, the CPU load would get extremely high, which in some cases affected the frame rate."

Which means that, yes—the psychic noise of the game's NPCs going about their daily lives was the culprit. While it was known that these NPCs were the root cause, as Capcom told IGN back in March, the idea that it was rich internal lives causing a hiccup seems to be new information.

The team says it's been "reworking how NPCs’ thoughts are processed and making small tweaks, including changing the order in which processes are executed" to help tamp things down, which is a small mercy.

 

[Skifi28]

They don't appear to be doing anything special when compared to other games. What's the point of wasting all that processing power for no visible result?

 

[cormack12]

They called this patch TU1: Twitter

 

[Roberts]

Here goes my plan of making thinking man’s RPG with Plato, Socrates, Kant, Nietzsche and Aristotle as npcs

 

[StueyDuck]

Well of the statement i imagine computing characters physics when their nowhere near the player is probably the bigger factor.

But either way, where's the culling Capcom. The performance sounds quite distracting which is why I haven't jumped on it yet (also that DD1 didn't click with me)

 

[mansoor1980]

skyrim was ahead of its time with the dynamic NPCs , capcom developers need to buy that game and study it thoroughly

 

[Thief1987]

Or it's because their programmers think too little

 

[Agent_4Seven]

How about making it a toggle in the options and turn it into a feature for future PCs/CPUs which can handle such load, just like GPU can handle PhysX right now like it's nothing?

 

[Kurotri]

I cab relate

 

[SJRB]

I love how this is a revelation to Capcom and not the first thing they noticed when testing three years ago.

 

[Radical_3d]

Here goes my plan of making thinking man’s RPG with Plato, Socrates, Kant, Nietzsche and Aristotle as npcs

As long as they spawn at 5cm of your character you’re safe.

skyrim was ahead of its time with the dynamic NPCs , capcom developers need to buy that game and study it thoroughly

Or it's because their programmers think too little

Hey! I…

 

[Juza]

Here goes my plan of making thinking man’s RPG with Plato, Socrates, Kant, Nietzsche and Aristotle as npcs

 

[Lux R7]

lol, well the important thing is that the game runs fine now

 

[Guilty_AI]

They don't appear to be doing anything special when compared to other games. What's the point of wasting all that processing power for no visible result?

Processing too many actors in a scene isn't an uncommon cause for poor performance, and this tends to be one of the known things the dev must worry about when making games with too many complex objects and NPCs in a single place (we've seen other rpgs suffer from similar issues, like BG3 when you reached the city).

The normal way to do it would either be either to simplify the less important actors routines or freeze stuff that isn't close to the player, maybe a mix of the two. There may be multi-threading solutions for this as well. My guess is that this game has a generic template for all NPCs that covers everything a NPC may be capable of doing - highly versatile but also performance costly - then they just used it as is for every NPC in the game.

 

[Wolfpact1983]

skyrim was ahead of its time with the dynamic NPCs , capcom developers need to buy that game and study it thoroughly

You mean Oblivion

 

[Bernardougf]

They don't appear to be doing anything special when compared to other games. What's the point of wasting all that processing power for no visible result?

Open world bullshit in a nutshell

 

[mansoor1980]

You mean Oblivion

we need to go deeper....................morrowind

 

[MMaRsu]

Were they thinking about Denuvo?

 

[owandeseis]

Then focus on improving CPU's next generation instead of more graphics because playing most single player games, be it sports, racing, shooters etc make me feel like im playing vs monkeys

 

[Hrk69]

As a developer you should scrap that useless shite to maximize performance

Admitting to is one thing, but keeping it in? Lol

 

[vkbest]

Shenmue doing this and better 25 years ago in a now ancient hardware, but 30fps warriors told me current CPU are not strong enough

This guy is the example

Then focus on improving CPU's next generation instead of more graphics because playing most single player games, be it sports, racing, shooters etc make me feel like im playing vs monkeys

 

[Vick]

Haven't played DD2 admittedly, but I would imagine a RE Engine, Capcom-made RDR2 would barely reach the 10fps treshold then.
Below that at camp and in Saint-Denis.

 

[Mister Wolf]

The more I played this game the less I enjoyed it.

 

[Bojji]

Haven't played DD2 admittedly, but I would imagine a RE Engine, Capcom-made RDR2 would barely reach the 10fps treshold then.
Below that at camp and in Saint-Denis.

At least they know what caused this and they are trying to fix this, that's more than some other publishers/developers.

 

[Vick]

At least they know what caused this and they are trying to fix this, that's more than some other publishers/developers.

 

[MagiusNecros]

The more I played this game the less I enjoyed it.

Inversely the more I play Dark Arisen the more I enjoy it. DD2 feels so limiting.

 

[adamsapple]

At least they know what caused this and they are trying to fix this, that's more than some other publishers/developers.

Very true.

 

[RoadHazard]

I cab relate

Cab you though?

 

[GermanZepp]

The more I played this game the less I enjoyed it.

I have kinda the same experience. And I really liked the first one.

I dropped cause I lost progress, the game only saves right on the freaking houses and not well in camps.

And there was a mission in which you have to go in disguise and the npc guards became hostile because I was wearing an arisen ring. What a joke.

 

[Thief1987]

At least they know what caused this and they are trying to fix this, that's more than some other publishers/developers.

These things should have been figured out during the development, not a year after release when game already forgotten and no one cares.

 

[adamsapple]

These things should have been figured out during the development, not a year after release when game already forgotten and no one cares.

It hasn't been a year and lots of people are still actively playing it. You're kinda wrong on both fronts here.

 

[StereoVsn]

They don't appear to be doing anything special when compared to other games. What's the point of wasting all that processing power for no visible result?

Well, it’s like with Metaphor where they are rendering scenes through doors so performance tanks when you get close to a door, lol.

It’s technical incompetence or lack of thought toward optimization. This sort of shit should be caught in alpha/beta testing.

 

[ScHlAuChi]

 

[mhirano]

All that precious CPU cycles wasted on artificial thoughts just to reach the brilliant conclusion that:
“Wolves hunt in packs”

 

[ahtlas7]

Yeah, thinking of Denuvo

 

[adamsapple]

Yeah, thinking of Denuvo

There's no Denuvo on the console version.

 

[hyperbertha]

What exactly are they doing that needs all this thinking?

 

[RoboFu]

They don't appear to be doing anything special when compared to other games. What's the point of wasting all that processing power for no visible result?

That's what I was going to say. They just walk around in set paths like everything else. Just take out whatever things they have going on. It's not working anyway. lol

 

[Sanepar]

The game design on this is so bad. The dragon's quest for endgame is just stupid. Dropped the game after that and never came back.

 

[Buggy Loop]

So it'll be fixed soon I imagine

Not sure I want to go back in though, pretty disappointing sequel.

 

[digdug2]

Haven't played DD2 admittedly, but I would imagine a RE Engine, Capcom-made RDR2 would barely reach the 10fps treshold then.
Below that at camp and in Saint-Denis.

If you're planning on playing it, get it on deep discount. It's a good game, but there is so much other stuff out there too so why pay full price!