Civilization: Beyond Earth the next Mantle game.

[cyclohexane]

You don't need anything more than ~20fps to play Civ. Whether it runs at 60fps or 30fps is irrelevant when playing a turn based game.

 

[chimaxi83]

You don't need anything more than ~20fps to play Civ. Whether it runs at 60fps or 30fps is irrelevant when playing a turn based game.

Wonderful opinion, but you can keep your crappy 20 fps. An RTS not "needing" decent fps is no excuse to accepting terrible performance like 20 fps just because of genre.

 

[tviceman]

This is the first really good / relevant target use case game for Mantle. BF4 isn't a low-spec gamers game and generally needs great frame rates to be enjoyable (increasing frame rates from 20 to 30 fps with low settings does very little to draw in players), but Civ 5 can run on a variety of hardware and doesn't need blistering high frame rates to be enjoyable. People are more apt to play Civilization on a low-end setup than a twitch shooter like BF4, thus more people will reap the benefits of better performance.

BTW, I see people in here using RTS when talking about Civilization. That is incorrect. Civilization is turn based, not real time.

 

[bystander36]

Mantle is a godsend for BF4 MP, minimums are massively improved, as one expects because those are often CPU limited situations.

I think all major RTS games will benefit from Mantle, even Starcraft 2 with a lot of units destroy top CPUs. As for CIV5, anyone who has ever played it knows how badly it chokes late game, turn timers were ridiculously long, and it scales perfect with a CPU OC.

If Mantle is a sign of things to come on DX12, then it will herald in a new era for RTS games, period, and do great things for FPS minimum chokes.

I question what Mantle can do for late Civ5 timers. Aren't those all A.I. stuff that happens? There is very little animation while waiting on timers. FPS aren't low. I am not sure Mantle will have any impact on Civ5 timers.

 

[Enigmoid]

I question what Mantle can do for late Civ5 timers. Aren't those all A.I. stuff that happens? There is very little animation while waiting on timers. FPS aren't low. I am not sure Mantle will have any impact on Civ5 timers.

Its not draw call based its all pathdfinding and such.

 

[tviceman]

As for CIV5, anyone who has ever played it knows how badly it chokes late game, turn timers were ridiculously long

That has been rectified since the game came out with it's numerous patches.

 

[bystander36]

Its not draw call based its all pathdfinding and such.

That's what I'm saying. Mantle won't likely have any impact on that.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

You don't need anything more than ~20fps to play Civ. Whether it runs at 60fps or 30fps is irrelevant when playing a turn based game.

Did you ever wonder what the Dev had to sacrifice from the game because it bogs down to 20fps due to a CPU limit? Its an interesting viewpoint to be OK with garbage pwrformance, but at least acknowledge that the developer had obviously cut back the scope of their game just to get you those measely 20fps.

 

[bystander36]

Did you ever wonder what the Dev had to sacrifice from the game because it bogs down to 20fps due to a CPU limit? Its an interesting viewpoint to be OK with garbage pwrformance, but at least acknowledge that the developer had obviously cut back the scope of their game just to get you those measely 20fps.

I'm quite curious as to when the last time you played Civ5. I've never had FPS like that. I don't typically zoom out to see the whole world at once though. Maybe that has something to do with it? Or have you not played it recently since possible patches?

 

[VulgarDisplay]

I'm quite curious as to when the last time you played Civ5. I've never had FPS like that. I don't typically zoom out to see the whole world at once though. Maybe that has something to do with it? Or have you not played it recently since possible patches?

It was in reply to a post about 20fps being fine in a turn based game. Not necessarily about civ5

 

[bystander36]

It was in reply to a post about 20fps being fine in a turn based game. Not necessarily about civ5

He does have a point though. Turn based games do not require hardly any control of animation by the user. You mostly stare at a mostly static screen. Granted, 20 FPS is lower than I'd like, but a turn based game is the only type of game I can tolerate 30 FPS, and I suffer from simulator sickness in most games with less than 60 FPS.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

I don't have a point either? What is laying on the cutting room floor at a Dev studio due to dx11 cpu overhead.

 

[Silverforce11]

Just scrolling around to control your empire and unit with 20 fps would be a stutter fest and vomit inducing. Even when I played the first CIV on my 286, it was smooth, at least 30 fps

 

[bystander36]

I don't have a point either? What is laying on the cutting room floor at a Dev studio due to dx11 cpu overhead.

It's a turn based game. Visual effects is not something people typically care about in this type of game. Much like a game of chess. We care a little, but it is not like an RPG or FPS game.

 

[f1sherman]

I love all my turn based games, and it seems that the genre has recently reinvigorated itself.

OTOH... I don't think there is a worse candidate for Mantle than a turn based game.
But since its a freebie, i'm not going to complain too much


PS
It took us two pages to figure out that Civ isn't RTS :ninja:

 

[Carfax83]

Its not draw call based its all pathdfinding and such.

Although I've never played Civ 5 myself, from what I recall, the large amount of variation in units and objects on screen in late game resulted in the need for lots of draw calls to be issued per frame..

Civ 5 was a showcase game for DX11 multithreading, which achieved over 15K draw calls at 60 FPS.. That was when Civ 5 first came out, using the first DX11 multithreading enabled NVidia drivers..

This latest Civ game will likely support DX11 multithreading as well as Mantle, so it should be interesting to see them face off. NVidia with it's hyper optimized DX11 driver, vs AMD with Mantle..

Ding ding fight!

 

[krumme]

If we look at mantle execution model, the dev can explicitely say where the task should go - and know its going there. It goes far beyond drawcalls.

Take eg. the very strong compute capabilities of the gfx beeing applied in a game like Civ?

And we know that compute can be also used to predict and plan the pipeline like we saw in ps3. There is tons of opportunities in a low level api.

Now what this could lead to is eg a quad core kabini in a desktop beeing able to play the new civ at low res. Or it could be used to create bigger maps and armies on midrange cpu/gpu and still get solid fps/time between turns.

 

[krumme]

Although I've never played Civ 5 myself, from what I recall, the large amount of variation in units and objects on screen in late game resulted in the need for lots of draw calls to be issued per frame..

Civ 5 was a showcase game for DX11 multithreading, which achieved over 15K draw calls at 60 FPS.. That was when Civ 5 first came out, using the first DX11 multithreading enabled NVidia drivers..

This latest Civ game will likely support DX11 multithreading as well as Mantle, so it should be interesting to see them face off. NVidia with it's hyper optimized DX11 driver, vs AMD with Mantle..

Ding ding fight!

Well that is just some skewed story about it.

It took 3 years.
A team of 20 man.
And a 1000usd higest end i7 6 core cpu to get to 15k
And 15k under very specific situations

And that actually says why there is a huge change to mantle.

The best of that team is now working on mantle in through Oxide engine. The rest is working with mantle for the next civ.

Everyone beeing part of this tour de force to climb Mount Everest without oxygen and boots, is going the low api road.

Giv Mantle 3 years and 20 man and guess how many drawcall you get on such a highend cpu + all the rest optimizations? lol - we are talking 200-300k (as said by Dan Baker).

If there is one story that explains why dx11 mt is broken, and all went Mantle, its excactly the civ5 story.

 

[Atreidin]

Before we get too far into Nvidia apologists desperately trying to downplay this, Civ 5 looks noticeably nicer with all of the visual effects turned up, and I'm interested in seeing how much they can pack into the new game with Mantle. I've played Civ 5 on systems where I had to turn down almost everything for it to be playable. That's fine if you just want to play the game but these days I'd also like some nice eye candy. I missed enough meals and forgot to sleep enough times going "just one more turn" playing Civ 1 and 2, if I'm going to do that any more times in my life I'd like to have some pretty things to look at.

And keep any comments about turn-based games not needing good FPS or graphics to yourself. I wasn't aware that FPS players were the only ones who deserved the nicest looking games. The latest Battlefield game or "Call of Duty: Black Ghost Squadron 6: Modern Knife Throwing: Updated Texture Pack" would have the exact same gameplay mechanics with stick figure models using software rendering on old 90MHz Pentiums, so you go have fun with that.

 

[Carfax83]

Well that is just some skewed story about it.

It took 3 years.
A team of 20 man.
And a 1000usd higest end i7 6 core cpu to get to 15k
And 15k under very specific situations

That was 15K plus according to the presentation, and it was on NVidia's first DX11 multithreading enabled drivers. Of course drivers now would be much faster as they've matured.

Look at Star Swarm. With the latest 337 drivers, NVidia is now very competitive with AMD on Mantle path (or faster) with deferred context enabled.

Giv Mantle 3 years and 20 man and guess how many drawcall you get on such a highend cpu + all the rest optimizations? lol - we are talking 200-300k (as said by Dan Baker).

In 3 years time, Mantle will be competing with DX12, which has similar attributes.

If there is one story that explains why dx11 mt is broken, and all went Mantle, its excactly the civ5 story.

DX11 MT is a major reason why NVidia dominated AMD in Civ 5, so I would hardly consider it broken.

 

[wand3r3r]

That was 15K plus according to the presentation, and it was on NVidia's first DX11 multithreading enabled drivers. Of course drivers now would be much faster as they've matured.

Do you think they said 15k+ meaning it could even be 50k or up to the 200k mantle may be capable of? Highly unlikely it's even more then 20k. Who cares if it's 15k or 15.5k. It's like the new NV drivers with "up to" 70% boosts all over. Marketing.

In 3 years time, Mantle will be competing with DX12, which has similar attributes.

Its looking like mantle will be copied or very similar to the concept with the changes in dx12 (obviously not all changes, the ones pertaining to the low level API, dx12 is much more than just that)

We're talking about a game coming out this year, who cares about DX12, in a few years, at this point (in this context civ BE), what does that have to do with anything?

 

[Silverforce11]

Say what you may but Firaxis knows strategy games, and if they use DX11 multi-threading, its for a good reason. Likewise for Mantle.

Whether turn based or RT, strategy games have massive amounts of units, city, terrain, and complex world maps that has always caused CPU bottlenecks. Very few in this genre (none that I know of) truly stress the GPU to cause it to become the bottleneck in high end rigs. This is where Mantle can help and where DX12 will take over eventually.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Well, personally, I am more interested in what the game itself will be like. A new setting could really reinvigorate the franchise. I have an amd card, so any benefit from mantle will be a plus, but I have a relatively low end system and thought the game (Edit: Civ 5) still played fine.

It will be interesting to see how they design the game to utilize mantle, since it will still have to work on nvidia hardware as well. Unless they make two versions of the game, I don't know how much they can add, because it still has to run on non-gcn cards.

 

[Gloomy]

Well, personally, I am more interested in what the game itself will be like. A new setting could really reinvigorate the franchise. I have an amd card, so any benefit from mantle will be a plus, but I have a relatively low end system and thought the game still played fine.

It will be interesting to see how they design the game to utilize mantle, since it will still have to work on nvidia hardware as well. Unless they make two versions of the game, I don't know how much they can add, because it still has to run on non-gcn cards.

It's using OpenGL also. Nvidia cards will probably run it well enough using OGL.

OpenGL is next in line to get stomped into the ground by Mantle :thumbsup:

 

[Bateluer]

Well, personally, I am more interested in what the game itself will be like. A new setting could really reinvigorate the franchise.

A good Civ title would be welcome, its been since 2005 since Civ4 came out.

It will be interesting to see how they design the game to utilize mantle, since it will still have to work on nvidia hardware as well. Unless they make two versions of the game, I don't know how much they can add, because it still has to run on non-gcn cards.

There'll just be a DX or OGL renderer too.