During a conference call with investors, analysts, and press, Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, highlighted the issues with Assassin's Creed: Unity with an emphasis on the positive outcomes going forward. Their quarter itself was good, beating expectations and allowing them to raise full-year projections. As expected, they announced that a new Assassin's Creed game would be released at the end of the year based on the technology they created for Unity, with “lessons learned”.
Before optimization, every material on every object is at least one draw call.
Of course, there are many ways to optimize… but that effort works against future titles.
After their speech, the question period revisited the topic of Assassin's Creed: Unity and how it affected current sales, how it would affect the franchise going forward, and how should they respond to that foresight (Audio Recording – The question starts at 25:20). Yves responded that they redid “100% of the engine”, which was a tremendous undertaking. “When you do that, it's painful for all the group, and everything has to be recalibrated.” He continues: “[…] but the engine has been created, and it is going to help that brand to shine in the future. It's steps that we need to take regularly so that we can constantly innovated. Those steps are sometimes painful, but they allow us to improve the overall quality of the brand, so we think this will help the brand in the long term.”
This makes a lot of sense to me. When the issues first arose, it was speculated that the engine was pushing way too many draw calls, especially for DirectX 11 PCs. At the time, I figured that Ubisoft chose Assassin's Creed: Unity to be the first title to use their new development pipeline, focused on many simple assets rather than batching things together to minimize host-to-GPU and GPU-to-host interactions. Tens of thousands of individual tasks being sent to the GPU will choke a PC, and getting it to run at all on DirectX 11 might have diverted resources from, or even caused, many of the glitches. Currently, a few thousand is ideal although “amazing developers” can raise the ceiling to about ten thousand.
This also means that I expect the next Assassin's Creed title to support DirectX 12, possibly even in the graphics API's launch window. If I am correct, Ubisoft has been preparing for it for a long time. Of course, it is possible that I am simply wrong, but it would align with Microsoft's Holiday 2015 expectation for the first, big-budget titles to use the new interface and it would be silly to have done their big overhaul without planning on switching to DX12 ASAP.
Then there is the last concern: If I am correct, what should Ubisoft have done? Is it right for them to charge full price for a title that they know will have necessary birth pains? Do they delay it and risk (or even accept) that it will be non-profitable, and upset fans that way? There does not seem to be a clear answer, with all outcomes being some flavor of damage control.
Not the first and won’t be
Not the first and won’t be the last to launch something half-baked. It’s a bad decision all around, though. But being so much better on DX12 (assuming that ends up being true) will make it a Win10-only game, and people clinging to Win7 would be advised to avoid it.
BTW that wouldn’t really be optimization, as such. It’d be being lazy and waiting for Microsoft to fix it for them.
People could remain with 7,
People could remain with 7, and mantle, or OpenGL next, and Steam OS, or win 7. All the graphics APIs will be offering improvements. The very idea that anyone should be tied to M$’s latest, will not hold true going forwarded, and most of the time it’s the version of direct X running on the M$ OS with the largest user base that the developers target most, in designing DX based games. OpenGL has the mobile market, and STEAM OS market, when that becomes available as a final build, and the steam client is cross OS/platform anyways.
With all the movement towards HBM, and other solutions, it will be no surprise if eventually discrete GPUs get their own CPU cores to accelerate things, and become gaming systems in their own right, plugged into the PCI slot and running dedicated gaming OS distros on the PCI card and HBM/Other memory. STEAM OS, and the support that will build up around it, will offer an OS that can be pared down, unlike windows, where users will get all the metrics gathering, and others services and un-removable bloat.
Making an open source based gaming OS, like STEAM OS, will allow systems, graphics cards with GPU/CPU on board, to offer the console like low latency response between GPU and CPU, with the added advantages of HBM/Other memory, super wide data BUSes, and large amounts of ROP/EU/SPs, etc. The closer its gets to 4k gaming being the norm, the more need there will be to get latency between GPU, and CPU, down to a minimum, and putting CPUs on discrete cards, alongside the GPU, in various configurations like maybe interposers, or on die with the GPU, will become necessary, Steam OS will become very attractive on such gaming systems, as it will offer the smallest footprint, and be configurable to take up no extra CPU cycles than is absolutely necessary for the game, not something that can be done with windows, and its use as a general purpose OS. For gaming the Motherboard CPU, and general purpose OS, may be eclipsed by a resident CPU/CPU cores, along side the discrete GPU, and hosted gaming OS, and gaming engine, and getting that latency down for 4K and beyond may make it necessary.
Ubisoft games run like ass
Ubisoft games run like ass with hyper-threading enabled.
Its night day different once you disable.
Ive never seen a games/engine have such a neg impact with HT on I doubt DX12 will help this problem since the issue seems to be engine related issue.
It might help but not going to be significant so don’t hold breath on this claim.
Judging by Anandtech’s
Judging by Anandtech’s article on DX12 and Star Swarm and that Windows 10 would be a free upgrade for many users, it would be a good call for Ubisoft to leverage DX12 to improve Assassin’s Creed’s performance. After all, DX12 does allow for vastly reduced batch submission times.
Window 10 free upgrade, to a
Window 10 free upgrade, to a metered OS ecosystem, and after that first year, or whatever that “Supported Lifetime” is, then things may get costly. The upgrade may be free but the meter will begin ticking once the between the lines true terms become apparent. It will become windows 365, your 365 days are up, start paying…
Do you trust Tom’sAntech, where they not purchased by the same online company that owns Tom’s.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/12/anandtech-snapped-up-by-parent-company-of-toms-hardware-and-laptopmag/
This is false. It is a free
This is false. It is a free upgrade. It will not turn into Windows 365.
However it will be tied to the hardware. I am not sure how this is going to work for serial upgraders such as myself but I expect to still be able to make upgrades without much difficulty, except in the case of a motherboard. Even then it usually just takes a phone call.
It takes smart people to
It takes smart people to create and market and manage the #1 dominant OS on the planet. They know that if they charge a subscription for an OS that no one is gona pay-it. Windows 10 will be a FREE upgrade for home users, and Windows 365 is PROBABLY gona be the enterprise version, probably subscription bassed but it’s for sure gona include lots of technical support, and possibly be sold with the concept “Wana upgrade but worried about you’re old systems and software? Pay for WINDOWS 365, We’ll make it work so you can keep on working.”
MS needs to keep as many home users on Windows as possible because it keeps business on windows. I know that doesn’t make any actual sense but think back to all those annoying conversations you’ve had with the non-‘puter-geeks of the world:
“I just don’t like typing on a touch screen,” “Have you tried a touchscreen?” “No.”
“I’m staying on WinXP because I just hate the color of windows 7”
“I know my system is fucked but I’m not gona let you clean it because I have all my icons where I like them”
“You checked your e-mail on my computer and now my cable is down, you broke it and you are never trusted on my computer again!”(that’s my grandmother)
And so you’ll end up with the top executives, who make all the decisions but have minimal computer knowledge AND normally ignore everything IT says, with the thinking “I have windows, I know windows, I will stick with what I know”
Microsoft is a very big company with some very smart people working for them. METRO was a gamble, a big gamble that actualy could have worked it just didn’t. Subscription based OS is just a bad idea, a destructively bad idea, a suicidal idea, and I dont think they are gona go that way. PLUS how would they handle the international exchange? English version $200 a year Indian version $20 a year? Then what happens if you take your laptop on vacation? Will it be licensed for use on other continents? It’s all just too implausable.
All that said, tho, IF they charged very very little, less than netflix, like $20 a year, then that could work, I would probably pay 20$ a year for my OS, but I doubt that’s the plan.
What you do not understand is
What you do not understand is that M$ no longer cares about windows, it knows that windows no longer has growth potential, and most users have gone on to mobile devices running android, and iOS, and a few others, for their everyday computing needs. M$ will convert to a subscription revenue stream for its OS, gradually, as their attempt to do so cold turkey, wound up being just that. The windows ecosystem, as a percentage of the total devices market is not anywhere near its percentage of the total desktop market. And with Steam OS on the horizon, and competing consoles, M$ has no way of expanding the windows ecosystem like it did in the past, when the desktop market was the only game in town. M$ is already moving its main productivity software to the cross platform market, and the cloud, it has amortized as much profit out of the traditional OS market, and traditional OS licensing as it has been able to, and now things are winding down, with android, chrome and Apple’s ios, and OSX ecosystems, as well as steam OS ecosystems(coming online soon) M$ will not have the overall percentages ever again, that period of history is over.
what you are saying is true,
what you are saying is true, HOWEVER they are not just going to role over and die, obviously not. They are not happy with everyone using android tablets and phones, THATS WHY they are trying so hard and investing so much in new Windows tablets and phones, that’s why they are trying to integrate every device into one platform, (and if they can pull it off, if they can be better than everyone else, then that’s better for EVERYONE) and as far as growth goes, there are over 2 billion people world wide who will become internet connected in the next 10 years (at least according to most estimates) and EVERYBODY wants that market share, EVERYONE.
As far as SteamOS, we’ve been hearing SteamBox for a while (I still think they shoulda called them SteamEngines, it just kinda works) and we aren’t seeing them yet. In order for SteamOS to become dominant one of 2 things needs to happen. First you need to convince the majority of “big money” game developers to use something other than directX, and for anyone who is gona say that another/any-other API is better for whatever reason : that doesnt matter if no one big is using them. ORRRRRRR you need to convince M$ to license DirectX to steam-OS. I for one do not see that happening. Not now, not in the near future at least.
Assassins Creed is shovelware
Assassins Creed is shovelware by now.
Any question about what Ubisoft should ethically do with it can be answered with ‘They should end the franchise and start making games that sell based on gameplay and writing, not marketing’
Questions about what they should do with it the on the technical side don’t matter cause they’ll keep doing whatever brings them the most profit – concentrating on flashy graphics that look good in prerelease ‘gameplay’ footage, but don’t necessarily work during normal gameplay.
How dare you all question
How dare you all question Ubisoft and Ryan for that matter. The game runs flawlessly and they are no issues at all.
Ryan was right Ubisoft is great and you guys don’t know anything.
Not sure how serious i should
Not sure how serious i should take your comment but on both pc and xbox i haven’t had any issues with the AC series. i haven’t bought unity because i heard of all the bugs. Bought farcry 4 instead for pc because i really enjoyed farcry 1 on pc and farcry 3 on both 360 and pc.
I am really pissed at ubisoft because of how buggy farcry 4 is, i know for a fact that i have no plans to get unity. i have all the patches and the game still plays like shit. so if your post is just a joke then i guess that’s what it is.
every time i load uplay and it patches farcry 4 i hope that it works but i’m always disappointed. the game looks beautiful but i cant play because of the bugs. enemies either vanish or do do anything, i keep being told im on the wrong path which causes a mission failure.
There is something wrong with
There is something wrong with your install. There are buggs in the game, yes, sometimes weird phsics things happen like you stab a guy and he filies straid up into the sky, or a baddie spawns inside a solid object, and there is some minor flicker that can be mostly fixed with a edit to GamerProfile.xml but it still happens very little.
HOWEVER the problems you speak of are more serious. Are you running a Hyper-Thread CPU? I’ve heard that hyper-threading can cause problems. Also are your GPU drivers up to date? Are you using “GameWorks” features, they are very buggy ESPECIALLY on AMD GPU. Are you over-clocking your GPU?
If that’s not the problem try a clean install. The game has bugs but they are small and almost never a problem with gameplay, it’s all visual and normaly kinda funny when they happen.
CPU
Core2 Quad Q6600 @
CPU
Core2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.40GHz, 2394 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
GPU
gtx 560ti sc
no overclocking on my system and no gameworks features. i wii try a reinstall and see what happens.
I updated my gpu driver to
I updated my gpu driver to the latest and reinstalled the game. i’m having the same issues. I start off from the first mission and see no enemies by the river, when i hit ctrl alt del and get back into the game they appear out of nowhere. It’s the same issues i have seen since i started the game. Basically its unplayable unless i get a console version which i have no plans to do.
That is messed up! I can
That is messed up! I can guarantee you that something is wrong, just from here I have no way of knowing WHAT is wrong. You mentioned Uplay so I’m assuming you have a legit copy, but something is wrong. I have heard (and read) LOTS of complaints about bugs in FC4 but nothing like you have described. Things to try : Uninstall the game and Uplay with all files then fresh D/L and install; OR try a fresh OS install if you are set up to easily do so. Contact Customer Support at UBI, perhaps they have seen and can fix your problem. Other than that it’s all trouble shooting, try everything you can think of till it works kinda shit.
This sucks, the game is actually amassing! it’s Far Cry 3.5 and that’s AWESOME! I sincerely hope you can get it working, OR AT THE VERY LEAST whenever it is in the future, near or far, I hope that when you get/build your next rig you will try to install again and it works perfect.
Acording to UBI they have sold almost 2 million copy’s on PC, if all those copy’s were as fucked as yours there would be outrage world wide, and probably a class action lawsuit.
I really enjoyed farcry 3, i
I really enjoyed farcry 3, i enjoyed it so much that i have it for both 360 and pc 🙂
I will contact UBI to see what they can do, I have no intention to reinstall my OS just for this game.
Thanks for the help
I bought AC, because there
I bought AC, because there wasn’t much else out at the time. Stupidly bought the pass, too. Could barely force myself into finishing the game. Then they announced the first chunk of DLC woudl be free to everyone (so screw you, if you already bought the pass!). They announced people in that situation would get a free game. Of course, I already owned all the games except The Crew. So I chose The Crew. It’s also a piece of shit that I only played for about one hour and never touched again.
Fuck Ubi. Fuck their tired repetitive re-skinned single design style and fuck their business practices and fuck their continued and clearly intentional crapping on PC ports so that people stop buying them on PC so that they can justify dumping CPU support altogether (like most other publishers also seem to want to happen).
Got caught it the game key
Got caught it the game key Ban. Lost 2 games.
Despite reports that they were reinstating them they have not.
Customer care is menu driven auto reponce so useless.
So it doesn’t matter to me as I won’t ever buy a Ubisoft game again.
Usually by 3 a year………sorry that should say bought
Where did you buy your key?
Where did you buy your key? They said they would Re-Instate all keys that were PROVEN to be free from criminal influence.
Here’s how the scam works. Credit cards are stolen, massive amounts of game keys are bought with stolen cards, keys are sold for low price, 100% profit. In this case all the payment to ubisoft was canceled from the stolen cards, and ubi canceled all the fraudulent codes. IFFFFFFFF you bought a fraudulent code from a sketchy source they you were fucked NOT by ubisoft, but you were robed by organised crime. It’s no different than buying a VCR of the back of a truck and getting caught for it, you dont get to keep the VCR because “I assumed it was legitimate.” There are no deals on brand new products, you will never see “The all new ********* starting price 50% off”
HOWEVER, if you are one of the rare few who bought the game through steam that had your key de-instated, they admit it happened by mistake and yes, UbiSoft has promissed to Re-Instate your key. The question is, where did you buy your key, and did you pay full price?
tl;dr: the game was developed
tl;dr: the game was developed for consoles where API overhead for draw calls is minimal. No development time was allocated for optimising this for DX11/OGL where draw calls are limited.
Then it’s their fault for not
Then it’s their fault for not naturally developing a Mantle version where draw calls are optimized instead of being paid by nvidia’s to use gameworks which messed everything up severely.