If I’m not playing console I’m playing pc. I’ve never once seen a developer claim my game can only run on x fps. For example I can play any pc game at any speed. Technically I can run battle field 4. Counter strike or left 4 dead at 12 fps if I want its not like the zombies are going to derp or the games going to crash. 60 fps is obviously better but to claim that the engine requires it is rediculous. If that’s the case and it’s still the halo 4 engine from the 360 lord knows that game went from 30 fps down to 15 constantly. If their game can’t handle variable frame rates then that’s their problem not ours.
Some systems can be tied to FPS for performance of the engine. If you know that you can peg the FPS, then you can design your engine around that to get the biggest bang for your buck. Other games like BF4 would never do that because they would never assume that they can peg the FPS.
There was an interview that I saw a couple of months ago about this and they said that when they moved games to MCC and upped the FPS to 60, grenades got shot in mid air A LOT more than they did in the original versions so they had to reduce the hitboxes.
I assume it’s about dynamic resolution, when graphic engine is set for 60fps or 30fps - when some frame requires too much calculation for given time, it scales down it’s own resolution, so calculation takes less and can fit that target 16,67 miliseconds (in 60fps). E.g. when there’s a frame with very few objects/polygons resolution is 1920x1080, but when number of objects/polygons rises, resolution drops to 1600x1080, 1360x1080, 960x1080 etc. It’s not-so-new idea actually, and as long as vertical resolution doesn’t changes, changing of horizontal resolution is barely noticable in heat of battle.
Halo 5 engine is using this technique as well (but it currently is set at 810pixels in vertical), however Frank O’Connor stated, that 343i had synchronized physics with graphic render and he used that as argument for dropping split screen (because, allegedly, they cannot split framerate in half, so there are 2 screens running in 30fps - it all must be tied 1-to-1 with 60fps of physics framerate). I’d call it BS for 2 reasons:
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Graphic framerate and physics framerate are 2 separate things (e.g. Halo 4 graphics were in 30fps, but gameplay runned in 60fps), that are calculated by different processors (respectively GPU and CPU) and there’s really no reason for designing engine that somehow attaches one to another (because eventually you’ll have most un-stable technology possible, without any benefits: frame rate drop for graphics would result in frame rate drop in gameplay and vice versa)…
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…and even someone, for any reason had this idea, it’s not the case in Halo 5 as E3 build has severe frame rate drops and it still keeps working intact.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a games physics tied to the refresh rate. In CoD4, the higher your FPS the higher you’re able to jump. It sounds silly but it’s true. At 60 FPS (the standard regardless of system), the player jumps 39 units. At 125fps (more than double the default) the player jumps 40.5 units. At 250fps, the player jumps 41.5 units. At 333fps the player can jump 46 units.
This might not seem like a whole lot but it’s actually pretty significant. Something interesting to note is that once you reach 250 frames, you’re also more affected by gravity. You can jump a further distance horizontally at 125fps than you can at 333, despite the fact that you jump 4.5 units higher at the latter than the former.
Alright CoD4 physics aside, it’s possible that Halo 5 (and past Halo games) might have similar systems where certain functions are tied to the frames per second. In which case it’s understandable that 343i would want to keep the framerate uniform in order to ensure everything runs correctly
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> This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a games physics tied to the refresh rate. In CoD4, the higher your FPS the higher you’re able to jump. It sounds silly but it’s true. At 60 FPS (the standard regardless of system), the player jumps 39 units. At 125fps (more than double the default) the player jumps 40.5 units. At 250fps, the player jumps 41.5 units. At 333fps the player can jump 46 units.
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> This might not seem like a whole lot but it’s actually pretty significant. Something interesting to note is that once you reach 250 frames, you’re also more affected by gravity. You can jump a further distance horizontally at 125fps than you can at 333, despite the fact that you jump 4.5 units higher at the latter than the former.
Well, framerate of graphic and gameplay will always be affecting each other, but with Halo 5 it seems 343i done something much more radical - I remember Frank O’Connor said that lowering frame-rate will “compromise” everything. It suggests, that 343i created some unstable monster, that cannot even deal with framerate fluctuation. I just can’t believe someone would build it’s engine on such principle (I mean building for certain framerate - which is opposite to Q3/CoD engine that could operate at any framerate possible on given hardware).
Hit detection takes place 60 times a second, so if your FPS isn’t a factor of 60, you’ll fall through the floor.
…Honestly, only 343 knows exactly how their engine works. All we can do is guess.
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> > 2533274908238201;4:
> > This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a games physics tied to the refresh rate. In CoD4, the higher your FPS the higher you’re able to jump. It sounds silly but it’s true. At 60 FPS (the standard regardless of system), the player jumps 39 units. At 125fps (more than double the default) the player jumps 40.5 units. At 250fps, the player jumps 41.5 units. At 333fps the player can jump 46 units.
> >
> > This might not seem like a whole lot but it’s actually pretty significant. Something interesting to note is that once you reach 250 frames, you’re also more affected by gravity. You can jump a further distance horizontally at 125fps than you can at 333, despite the fact that you jump 4.5 units higher at the latter than the former.
>
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> Well, framerate of graphic and gameplay will always be affecting each other, but with Halo 5 it seems 343i done something much more radical - I remember Frank O’Connor said that lowering frame-rate will “compromise” everything. It suggests, that 343i created some unstable monster, that cannot even deal with framerate fluctuation. I just can’t believe someone would build it’s engine on such principle (I mean building for certain framerate - which is opposite to Q3/CoD engine that could operate at any framerate possible on given hardware).
I find it difficult to believe as well, especially in a game insistent on promoting high quality graphics and which contains a map editor. If the game is as tied to framerate as Frankie implies, it’ll make forging a nightmare due to the ease of which someone can create something that causes lag. At the very least there’s bound to be framerate drops for one reason or another, hopefully the game isn’t as frame dependent as they make it sound.
On another note, part of me is worried this could just be an excuse (or at least, inflammation of the truth) to justify dropping splitscreen support. I hope that isn’t the case, because that’s just a silly thing to do, yet I also hope it is the case because otherwise this game is going to have a lot more issues than the inability to play with the person sitting next to me.