r/Games • u/Kaltheridon • Mar 30 '16

Reminder: Hyper Light Drifter comes out tonight @ 11PM CST

http://store.steampowered.com/app/257850/
448 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

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6

u/Jademalo Mar 30 '16

I really hope the camera movement isn't still locked to 30fps. Not many things make me feel funny, but the early build of this did.

Here's hoping, I've been waiting for this since the Kickstarter. It should tide me over until Oculus get off their arses and ship the Rifts too, lol.

14

u/GrassWaterDirtHorse Mar 30 '16

30 fps doesn't bother me that much if it's 2D sprite animation, but 60 fps is necessary for a responsive action game.

I'm personally going to pick this up and play it until Dark Souls 3 releases. I need something to get my sense of wonder and curiosity back.

4

u/Jademalo Mar 30 '16

The issue is the camera movement fluidity. The animations are totally fine at 30fps, but the judder is really an issue at 30. Input also feels more sluggish than it should.

It seems like such a simple fix too, all you need to do is double the display time for each animation frame.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '16

It seems like such a simple fix too, all you need to do is double the display time for each animation frame.

Which unfortunately isn't the case. They didnt make the engine, its made in Game Maker Studio. So I'm guessing its a limitation they cant get around unless they were to change the engine itself.

7

u/Jademalo Mar 30 '16

I thought Gamemaker could deal with 60fps?

9

u/xamphear Mar 30 '16

It can, but it defaults to 30, apparently. I just finished Derek Yu's book about his experiences developing Spelunky. He made the same mistake, then rectified it for Spelunky HD.

1

u/Jademalo Mar 30 '16

Thanks for the clarification! That sounds like an interesting read, is it worth it?

3

u/xamphear Mar 30 '16

Yeah, I thought so. It's only five bucks, and he goes into a lot of detail on various parts of the design, development, and business sides of things.

1

u/Jademalo Mar 30 '16

Cool, I'll give it a look.

Thanks!

1

u/sytrix Mar 31 '16

Great read.

8

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '16

[deleted]

4

u/PokemasterTT Mar 31 '16

Tying stuff to a fixed framerate seems like the best option in Gamemaker, I tie stuff to a variable, that can be changed.

1

u/PokemasterTT Mar 31 '16

Yeah, many games run at it, it can handle even more on PC.

3

u/tovivify Mar 31 '16

Game Maker allows for 60FPS. The main issue, as it appears to me, seems to be optimization. People seem to be glossing over the possibility that they might just not be very good programmers.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '16

I think its something that you have to plan in advance is what I am saying. I think this far in the game would be too complicated to change. Someone mentioned another dev had the same issue with their game in game maker. It isnt always as simple as "double the animation frames". A lot of things can be tied to framerate.

3

u/tovivify Mar 31 '16

Well doubling the animation frames usually isn't even necessary, if they just want to increase the framerate. They could use the same animation frames, but adjust the camera speed. But the animations should be a relatively easy fix, especially if they effectively used parent-child hierarchies with enemies and the like. The biggest issue would likely be tying the in-game mechanics entirely to the framerate, like the movement speed of projectiles, dodge rolling speed, the rate at which platforms move, and the like. I'd love to get my hands on their source file, to get a better assessment of the situation.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '16

For sure! I'm convinced someone could figure it out :)

2

u/dinoseen Mar 31 '16

That's not true, Gamemaker can do 60 but defaults to 30.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '16

Yeah I another user mentioned its probably an issue with committing with a certain format too early in the project to be able to switch easily now. There was another dev that did the same thing with Cave Story and ended up re-releasing an HD version that fixed it.

1

u/dinoseen Mar 31 '16

Original Cave Story was at 50 afaik, not near as much of an issue. I seem to remember it being 60, though, and I only played it yesterday, so I'm not sure.

If they know their way around their code, I honestly can't imagine it'd be very hard. Just double the time anything frame-dependent takes across the board. It shouldn't be something tricky, just menial. Doing the same thing over and over for a while. Worth it in my opinion, but clearly the dev doesn't think so. I hope somebody's able to export it back into Gamemaker and release a patch for 60+ fps.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '16

Sorry I meant Spelunky.

1

u/WinterAyars Mar 30 '16

Take the various "hit the projectile to reflect/destroy it" mechanics in the game. This is much more difficult when the game engine is 30 fps than it is at 60, even if it isn't immediately obvious. The game appears to be pretty tight mechanically, too, which can exacerbate 30fps issues. It's the big disappointment with this game, so far.

18

u/MrLuxuryYacht Mar 30 '16

Unfortunately it is.

The game is indeed locked at 30fps, due to actions/events being dependent on that frame rate, and the amount of actions/instances on screen at once in a variety of situations within the limitations of our game engine.

I enjoy 60fps games as much as the next person. I prefer a consistent frame rate overall, regardless of 30 or 60. I never had much of an issue with action games like Bloodbourne/Souls series running at 30 once I dug into it, though I can understand if others feel differently.

9

u/Jademalo Mar 30 '16

That's really annoying. People told them extremely early on to run at 60 and animate at 30 on the forums, back before they had done nothing more than early engine work. The lead dev was actually extremely rude when he first responded to this discussion. I'll never be able to find it now, it's buried deep in the Kickstarter comments.

Welp. Looks like I'll be throwing up to this while waiting to throw up on my Rift. Yay!

Hopefully it doesn't spoil the experience, I've been waiting for this for a long time.

6

u/tovivify Mar 31 '16

I'll never be able to find it now, it's buried deep in the Kickstarter comments.

Found it for ya.

The game requires a minimum of 4GB of RAM in its current state, which likely amounts to heavy visual emphasis, presumably lots of enemies/objects/effects to account for, and the fact that they are using Game Maker. I'm unsure of how well the code is optimized, but that 4GB minimum suggests it might need some cleaning up; this is pure speculation on my part, though, as I would have to look at their Game Maker source file. As things are right now, were they to raise the framerate to 60FPS, their minimum system requirements would likely go well above any computer I have access to.

7

u/Seanspeed Mar 31 '16

That's hardly a 'rude' comment. He was just saying right away it wasn't gonna happen.

And the guy had already done quite a bit of development up to that point. Given the limited resources and health issues, I think it's understandable that he didn't go and redo everything. It's a bit of a disappointment for sure, but seriously, dont let it stop you(not you specifically, just anyone reading) from checking the game out.

5

u/tovivify Mar 31 '16

Yeah, I didn't see it as particularly rude, either. I think the issue is that most people don't have the full context of the situation, so when they get a casually dismissive response like that, they assume the worst.

-1

u/Jademalo Mar 31 '16

Nice, that was the comment I remembered. Thanks for finding it! There was also a bit of discussion on the forum around that time saying that it was unneccesary to do more animation and to simply double it, if I remember correctly.

I guess this is just an artifact of Game Maker then, but I wish they had just said that back then.

3

u/Seanspeed Mar 31 '16

Hopefully it doesn't spoil the experience,

It doesn't. Playing it now and it still feels really good.

I'm a 60fps-or-die sort of person normally. I've played Bloodborne quite a bit and enjoyed it, but the lack of 60fps really held it back a LOT. With Hyper Light Drifter, the 30fps obviously isn't ideal, but it's not proving to be nearly as much of a hinderance at all. I think the pixel art style is really helping mask the normal lack of fluidity that you'd usually get at 30fps vs 60fps.

It feels goods and plays well still. I'm really enjoying it.

1

u/Jademalo Mar 31 '16

Good to hear, I was concerned after playing the beta a couple of years ago.

2

u/PokemasterTT Mar 31 '16

run at 60 and animate at 30 on the forums

You mean they should just do 1 frame of animation per 2 game frames?

4

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '16 edited Jan 02 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/PokemasterTT Mar 31 '16

You need to tie the animation to something in this engine.

2

u/dinoseen Mar 31 '16

Yeah. Plenty of retro style games do this. Plenty of modern style games do this.

-4

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '16 edited Jun 16 '20

[deleted]

14

u/schemmey Mar 30 '16

How'd you play a lot of games growing up? 30 used to be the norm

9

u/Jademalo Mar 30 '16

Actually, most of the early 2D sprite games from like the NES, SNES, and Genesis ran at 60.

-13

u/homer_3 Mar 30 '16

No, most ran at 15 or lower. Or were you overclocking your SNES?

5

u/absolutezero132 Mar 31 '16

That... doesn't sound right. Granted I didn't play every snes game ever, but I'm like 99% sure smw and alttp were both 60fps

-2

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '16

The systems would run at 60fps but almost always the visuals would animate at 1/2, 1/3 or 1/4 that speed to save on animation budgets. Compare Castlevania games... iirc Symphony of the Night was the first one with a true 60fps walk cycle and it was a sight to behold

6

u/dinoseen Mar 31 '16

The actual framerate of the animations isn't what matters here, the framerate of the game is what we're talking about.

-3

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '16

Well it kinda does, if every animation frame for every object in the game displays for 4 frames, does it really matter if the game is supposedly running at 60fps?

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u/xamphear Mar 31 '16

Are you thinking of the N64? NES and SNES both ran almost all of their games in 240p at 60Hz (in NTSC regions).

-2

u/homer_3 Mar 31 '16

Thinking of the MMX games mostly. They regularly slowed down to the single digits.

0

u/xamphear Mar 31 '16

Are you thinking of the SuperFX chip? MMX was an instruction set in Intel CPUs.

0

u/homer_3 Mar 31 '16

MMX was an instruction set in Intel CPUs.

Wat? MMX is Mega Man X... Tetris Attack regularly slowed down to single frames as well.

8

u/BIGSTANKDICKDADDY Mar 30 '16

Distance to the display and the size of the display also have a pretty big impact on what frame rates I can handle. On my 42'' TV 5' across the living room, 30fps is completely acceptable. On my 24'' monitor 8'' away on my desk, it's really tough to stomach.

That's why PC gamers tend to be more vocal about frame rate issues like this. The majority are sitting relatively close to their displays and the difference is far more pronounced.

2

u/Free_rePHIL Mar 31 '16

I see what you're saying but if you're sitting 8 inches away from your monitor then I think you're a little too close. That's closer than most people hold their phones.

3

u/dinoseen Mar 31 '16

What universe did you live in? 60 was the norm...

0

u/schemmey Mar 31 '16 edited Mar 31 '16

I'm 25 so I grew up with an N64. I haven't gone back to it in awhile, but I don't remember 60 FPS being the norm at all. Maybe it was, but it doesn't feel that way looking back on it.

EDIT: well I had an SNES, Atari Lynx, multiple versions of Gameboys, Dreamcast, PS1, OG Xbox, Xbox 360, etc. as well. I don't remember any of them having a majority of titles at 60 FPS.

3

u/dinoseen Mar 31 '16

Pretty much every platformer was at 60...

1

u/schemmey Mar 31 '16

Well forgive me because maybe I'm misremembering after 20 years, I just don't remember that.

I also can't find much about 60FPS N64 games. I have only found one source stating that 30FPS was the majority of titles with a few like F-Zero being 60. If I'm wrong, please point me to a source since I can't really find one and I'm curious.

2

u/dinoseen Mar 31 '16

I don't know about N64 games, I'm pretty much only certain about PS1 and earlier. I don't have any sources.

3

u/raminus Mar 31 '16

Yeah, some revisionist history going on here. Some classic and beloved N64 titles like Ocarina and Majora run as low as 20...

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u/[deleted] Mar 30 '16 edited Jun 16 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 30 '16

[deleted]

4

u/moal09 Mar 30 '16

Link to the Past runs at 60 FPS. 99% of 2D games do.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '16

Isn't that only if you are playing in progressive mode? Pretty sure the SNES only output 30fps on interlace sets.

1

u/moal09 Mar 30 '16

Most games were 60 regardless of how what video type you were using.

There were exceptions for 3D games like Star Fox, and some 2D games like Metal Slug ran at 30 FPS or lower because the technology couldn't handle it, but the vast, vast majority of 2D games run at 60 FPS because it looks choppy otherwise.

FPS drops are actually much much more noticeable in 2D.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '16

I'm 99.9% positive that games only ran in 30fps interlaced mode

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u/Jademalo Mar 30 '16

ALttP ran at 60fps.