If there’s any upside to the entire situation, it’s that perhaps, maybe, developers will again start paying more attention to optimization instead of just throwing more powerful hardware at it.
Some of the greatest games ever developed for consoles were great because the developers had to get extremely creative with the limited resources at their disposal. This led to some incredibly optimized games that could do a whole lot with those very limited resources.
If there’s any upside to the entire situation, it’s that perhaps, maybe, developers will again start paying more attention to optimization instead of just throwing more powerful hardware at it.
Amen.
Long time irked that so many developers fail with the mathematics of the situation.
If hardware multiplies its resources 1000x, that does not mean you can make your program use 1000x resources, along with thousands of other developers failing at that mathematics too, making bloat radically outpace Moore’s Law.
If hardware multiplies its resources 1000x, that should mean that developers continue to keep their software tight, lean, and fast, and that should mean users have 1000x more resources available to do more with.
I think pretty much every dev understands the issue but they are limited in what they can do about it. Quitting a job because they won’t let you optimize is noble but unrealistic for the vast majority of devs.
I would love for optimizations to start being prioritized. More specifically, I would love to see vendors place limits on memory use in apps. For example, Steam could reject any game over 50gb. I do not believe for a moment that any game we currently have needs more than 50gb except maybe an mmo with 20 years of content. Or Microsoft could reject apps that use more than X ram. They won’t ever do that but without an outright rejection, this won’t be fixed.
Best I can do is mandatory Lumen and Nanite. You can get almost-stable 60 fps on a 5090 with DLSS Performance and 3x frame gen, which should be optimized enough for anyone.
My game will sell for 80 bucks, 150 if you want the edition with all the preorder-exclusive content.
You don’t even need to go that far back. It blows my mind that the 360 and PS3 have 512mb of RAM. Halo 4, GTA 5, and The Last of Us did some impressive graphics work with 512mb.
tbf, the PC version of console games of the time ran like utter shit on computers with less than 2GB RAM and graphics cards worse than a Geforce 9800. A lot of people were still on WinXP, which was bloated compared to WinME-2000, but by 2006 it was fine.
I always care about how much memory I end up using.
Problem is, most places won’t pay for caring about that. Those that would, are doing so because they are using the product on their own systems instead of some customer’s systems.
I’m not sure I know many Electron apps that are worth running.
There is WhatsApp, but I just run the browser version. For Matrix, there’s NeoChat, which uses QML and is definitely better than Electron.
android-studio : I guess that explains why it ran so badly back when I had to use it for work. jdk wouldn’t be an Electron app, right?
discord is the only 1 of those that I used in any meaningful sense before and I already stopped using it for reasons other than Electron. So, I guess it’s just a personal thing that I don’t tend to require stuff that is made in Electron.
I believe Android Studio is built on top of IntelliJ IDE which uses Java, so no Electron. That being said, Java applications are generally RAM heavy as well and Android Studio was always a pig on resources.
Visual Studio Code (not Visual Studio!) is Electron based but I’ve always had good performance with it.
Yeah, that’s one that I can’t talk badly about.
While I have used MS Visual Studio and know how slow it was, I tried VS Codium once or twice and it worked pretty smoothly. Someone probably put quite a bit of effort into making it so.
Apart from Android Studio, which ended up not even starting up properly on the work computer, Gradle itself also takes quite a bit of time and resources. I was using the NDK with a C++ project and it took way longer to setup than any BSP, despite only being able to compile for a single version of Android.
The upside to the situation is that electron has been a more successful cross platform development framework then literally anything that came before it, from Xamarin to Java. And it’s entirely based on open source software, and open web standards.
If there’s any upside to the entire situation, it’s that perhaps, maybe, developers will again start paying more attention to optimization instead of just throwing more powerful hardware at it.
Some of the greatest games ever developed for consoles were great because the developers had to get extremely creative with the limited resources at their disposal. This led to some incredibly optimized games that could do a whole lot with those very limited resources.
Amen.
Long time irked that so many developers fail with the mathematics of the situation.
If hardware multiplies its resources 1000x, that does not mean you can make your program use 1000x resources, along with thousands of other developers failing at that mathematics too, making bloat radically outpace Moore’s Law.
If hardware multiplies its resources 1000x, that should mean that developers continue to keep their software tight, lean, and fast, and that should mean users have 1000x more resources available to do more with.
*Dreamer*
I think pretty much every dev understands the issue but they are limited in what they can do about it. Quitting a job because they won’t let you optimize is noble but unrealistic for the vast majority of devs.
I would love for optimizations to start being prioritized. More specifically, I would love to see vendors place limits on memory use in apps. For example, Steam could reject any game over 50gb. I do not believe for a moment that any game we currently have needs more than 50gb except maybe an mmo with 20 years of content. Or Microsoft could reject apps that use more than X ram. They won’t ever do that but without an outright rejection, this won’t be fixed.
Best I can do is mandatory Lumen and Nanite. You can get almost-stable 60 fps on a 5090 with DLSS Performance and 3x frame gen, which should be optimized enough for anyone.
My game will sell for 80 bucks, 150 if you want the edition with all the preorder-exclusive content.
180 if you want to play before the day one patch that makes sure you’re can even finish the game.
Or you can wait two weeks and get it for 10 because the reviews were so bad we‘re happy to move any copies at all.
I hate that I know what game this is referencing
I don’t. Because there are dozens if not hundreds that match the description.
I was thinking Borderlands 4
I remember Robocop Rogue City launching with a high price (nothing crazy like that) but going on sale like 1 or 2 months later for 90% off
You don’t even need to go that far back. It blows my mind that the 360 and PS3 have 512mb of RAM. Halo 4, GTA 5, and The Last of Us did some impressive graphics work with 512mb.
Oh wow my mind is blown. Even more so that it’s 256mb of DRAM and 256mb of VRAM separately.
We have really gone down hill and fast ;(
In my brain memory I find it hard to believe all the textures loaded at one time could ever be so small. Im amazed.
tbf, the PC version of console games of the time ran like utter shit on computers with less than 2GB RAM and graphics cards worse than a Geforce 9800. A lot of people were still on WinXP, which was bloated compared to WinME-2000, but by 2006 it was fine.
I always care about how much memory I end up using.
Problem is, most places won’t pay for caring about that. Those that would, are doing so because they are using the product on their own systems instead of some customer’s systems.
I think we will first see a batch of alternative apps, which either will get shut down by manufacturers etc., or get tolerated as an alternative.
I’m not sure I know many Electron apps that are worth running.
There is WhatsApp, but I just run the browser version. For Matrix, there’s NeoChat, which uses QML and is definitely better than Electron.
I think spotify / discord / vscode (and derivatives) / slack are probably the most installed electron apps.
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages?O=0&SeB=nd&K=&outdated=&SB=v&SO=d&PP=50&submit=Go
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages?O=0&SeB=nd&K=&outdated=&SB=p&SO=d&PP=50&submit=Go
A lot of pretty popular packages in those lists are electron apps, unfortunately
android-studio: I guess that explains why it ran so badly back when I had to use it for work.jdkwouldn’t be an Electron app, right?discordis the only 1 of those that I used in any meaningful sense before and I already stopped using it for reasons other than Electron. So, I guess it’s just a personal thing that I don’t tend to require stuff that is made in Electron.I believe Android Studio is built on top of IntelliJ IDE which uses Java, so no Electron. That being said, Java applications are generally RAM heavy as well and Android Studio was always a pig on resources.
Visual Studio Code (not Visual Studio!) is Electron based but I’ve always had good performance with it.
Yeah, that’s one that I can’t talk badly about.
While I have used MS Visual Studio and know how slow it was, I tried VS Codium once or twice and it worked pretty smoothly. Someone probably put quite a bit of effort into making it so.
Apart from Android Studio, which ended up not even starting up properly on the work computer, Gradle itself also takes quite a bit of time and resources. I was using the NDK with a C++ project and it took way longer to setup than any BSP, despite only being able to compile for a single version of Android.
Best I can do is vibe-coded performance optimizations
The upside to the situation is that electron has been a more successful cross platform development framework then literally anything that came before it, from Xamarin to Java. And it’s entirely based on open source software, and open web standards.