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jeffnz

'Stationeers' a space station simulation by Dean Hall & RocketWerks

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As it appears on Steam Store:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/544550/Stationeers/

A back story about how I discovered RocketWerks:

I discovered RocketWerks while searching online for "game developers". I'd restrict the search by region or by *.nz domains only and I found articles about Dean Hall. The best part for me was reading about his battles with the immigration department and slow internet. I petitioned against Telecom's monopoly back in early 2006 so when I hear of someone criticising internet speeds in New Zealand, the person's name always stays in mind!

If anyone here (who isn't a New Zealander) has heard of RocketWerks then it's probably because of Day Z.

Stationeers development / a bitch and a whinge about my PC

Stationeers is currently in Early Release and I'd be following it very closely, if it weren't for my PC being a piece of junk. For 'Stationeers' it is recommended to have a NVIDIA GTX 980. I look that up and the GeForce web site says "The GeForce GTX 980 is the world’s most advanced GPU" ... um ya, maybe in a few years I'll upgrade. I never expected to run Windows on my PC and then beyond that, I never expected to run games. I thought stuff that's made by smaller companies would run on cheaper hardware but I find that I can barely run 8-bit Armies even on modest settings. Eventually I'm going to upgrade to a larger place, then I can have 2 desks and 2 PCs set up, one desktop PC for Linux and another for Windows 10 and high spec.

Anyway, I haven't got a clue how this Stationeers thing plays, but it's made by a studio in Dunedin and the studio began with plenty of experienced programmers from other countries. See Dunedin on the attached map, at the bottom of the South Island :)

Reminder to self: watch this half-hour video presentation this weekend

nz_map.jpg

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On 6/3/2017 at 1:20 AM, jeffnz said:

.... For 'Stationeers' it is recommended to have a NVIDIA GTX 980. I look that up and the GeForce web site says "The GeForce GTX 980 is the world’s most advanced GPU" ... um ya, maybe in a few years I'll upgrade. I never expected to run Windows on my PC and then beyond that, I never expected to run games. I thought stuff that's made by smaller companies would run on cheaper hardware...

Early Access periods never have accurate specs. Mind you, neither do full finished games. Optimisation is the key word here.

I've been well within specs and a game run awful. On the opposite side of the spectrum, I've had rubbish specs outside the minimal requirements of some games and have been able to run a game better than those who have shot way past the recommended specs.

The devs of Stationeers here are likely aware of this fact. So it's better in an Early Access period to set the bar much higher than the average. As an indie developer, you don't have all the data to hand from millions of previously sold titles. So instead you work on high end optimisation, then slowly adjust the minimal specs until they find that sweet spot. The spot where people's computers are really starting to nope-out on what they are aware the minimal settings and resolutions that engine typically supports.

That said. For the first time in a long long while, PC tech is starting to pick up at a more blistering pace. We got stuck on Dual core for ages, then Quad core was enough for quite some time. The architecture of that Quad core then mattered for a longer period, and now.. Quad core architecture is only feasible within a certain framework of i3, i5 and AMD A series processors and the majority of recent generation i7 and AMD FX Processors. Now we're heading towards Octo-core being a standard, yet more and more cores keep coming.

The issue is though, a lot of devs are idiots. Only a handful of games still have proper Multithread and Multi-core support. So the dependibility of a game running well is more down to the strength in the architecture of the primary single CPU core within a processor. So it's all very well saying there's a need to use bigger and better CPUs for games... But most cannot even uitilise what already exists, never mind what is coming. 

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