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alessandro @lemmy.ca

2mo ago

Veteran Starfield developer surprised by sheer number of loading screens added late in development – “it could have existed without those”

www.videogamer.com Veteran Starfield developer surprised by sheer number of loading screens added late in development – “it could have existed without those”

Veteran Bethesda developer Nate Purkeypile revealed his surprise at the large number of loading zones in Starfield on launch.

Veteran Starfield developer surprised by sheer number of loading screens added late in development – “it could have existed without those”

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nanoUFO @sh.itjust.works

2mo ago

Veteran Starfield developer surprised by sheer number of loading screens added late in development – “it could have existed without those”

www.videogamer.com /features/veteran-starfield-developer-surprised-by-sheer-number-loading-screens/

Veteran Starfield developer surprised by sheer number of loading screens added late in development – “it could have existed without those”

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28 comments

They should have added a computer on your ship for quests/turn-ins. Loading screens suck but making you go through eight of them in a row is inexcusable.
- As good as New Vegas is, it had the same problem.
  The most popular mod I ever put up on the Nexus was one that added fast travel points in New Vegas to get around needing to load multiple times to get to the actual destinations players will be visiting often.
  Like, in the vanilla game the FT point in New Vegas itself was outside of Freeside. So you load to travel, load into Freeside, then have to load into the strip and finally load into one of the buildings. There are several other locations that do it, too. Just absolute insanity.
  
  I think a big part of NV's fast travel points was because they didn't want you slipping by factions main security points if you were infamous with them.
- Strange I never encountered more then four in a row (and those numbers are rare for me) how can someone get to eight? This is a honest question, how?
  
  Travel in, then travel back out.

I don't want to dox myself, but I know what happened here. Performance was unacceptable on Series S, and it was unknown how effective optimization would be. BGS management is extremely risk averse, so they decided to add more loading areas. For example, making Neon multiple cells. Later the optimization team came through and it turns out that wasn't necessary but CK workflow is way too manual and bug prone to undo the changes that close to release. I don't remember if Purkey left before the buyout but Series S became the performance target and that made everyone freak out.
- Interesting. This is good news for modders though, because this means that combining cells (similar to mods for previous Bethesda games) should be straightforward, even on current hardware.

I don't think the loading screens are the failure, the fast travel system is. Depending on where you are and where you're going, you have different fast travel options. Sometimes you can pick your end destination directly (sort of). Other times you have to pick your planet (loading screen), land (loading screen), either run to your destination or pick a fast travel location on the local map (loading screen), enter a building (loading screen), take an elevator (loading screen) and now you've arrived. This is about the worst case I can think of with 5 loading screens.
Even in a best case scenario, like having the option to directly travel back to the lodge, you still have travel to the outside of the lodge (loading screen) and enter the lodge (loading screen). So, in most cases you'll have between 2 and 5 loading screens unless you're just traveling between outdoor locations on the same planet.
Which I guess takes us a step further and suggests that the pointless spaceflight feature of the game (or the pointless smuggling) is the real culprit. If you didn't need to scan ships for contraband, they could have built a more robust map system that allowed better point to point fast travel. You'd still run into issues of indoor/outdoor, or indoors with multiple areas, but it would have been much better.

I don't care for the loading screens, they are fast enough to not bother me. But I can accept that many people are bothered by them, even if I can't understand why.
My guess for why the game has so many loading screens? Resource constraints, maybe to get the game running on the Series S or to lower the specs generally.
- Probably the shit tier engine thats still being shoved to market with new makeup on after decades of use
  
  You would think old physic calculations would run on worse hardware
- I think it could be that my SSD must just be a little slower than yours. Adding a second to each of those loading screens adds up a lot (for me) and is constantly separating the gameplay
- These days, there are various techniques to have minimal to no visible loading.
  This is great for general immersion.
  But I think loading screens are only part of the repetitiveness of travelling in general: watching ship depart, selecting destination, watching travel animation, etc.
  The game wore out quickly for me, and I'd not hesitate to start skyrim or fallout run #10(0?) in its place.
- The Series S wouldn’t have had speed limitations but fidelity ones.
  So lower resolution and effects, but still able to load assets instantaneously. It still has lots of RAM and an NVME SSD at the end of the day.
  
  Mmhh, yeah true. Not much into Xbox so it was kind of a wild guess, thanks for correcting and context. Much appreciated 👍

They planned to place ads there?

I really feel like Starfield got a lot of unwarranted criticism. I paid $100 or whatever it cost for early access, I have about 200 hours into the game, and I feel like I got my money's worth. It's a fun game with an interesting story, New Game+ is still worth playing, and the graphics are fantastic.
Sure, it has its flaws, but given "hours of fun per dollar," the only game I've played recently that comes close is Cyberpunk.
- Just because you feel like you got your money's worth doesn't make the criticism unwarranted though. It's ok to enjoy something others don't like but that doesn't invalidate their criticisms.
  
  Starfield is the kind of game where everyone who enjoyed it got bullied off the internet though. It's ok to like things.
- I got it for free and I liked, Bethesda improved on the most problematic thing from the past games that is bugs, but the game has many flaws and some flaws completely broke the game, loading screen are one of them.

28 comments