KickStarter Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Dan Vavra's medieval chad simulator

[Wesp5]

Then after defeating an important enemy with bow and arrow I got a cutscene with a sword and stopped because this was even more annoying than all the other times when Henry was looking differently in dialogues or cutscenes

Literally unplayable.

No, this was only annoying. But the black-screen-reloading before and after each dialogue was what killed it for me...

 

[cvv]

No, this was only annoying. But the black-screen-reloading before and after each dialogue was what killed it for me...

Were you playing on PS4? On any moderately capable PC it's like 0,3 seconds, a non-problem.

 

[Wesp5]

On any moderately capable PC it's like 0,3 seconds, a non-problem.

I have an i5 and a Geforce 1050 that can run everything else besides this, probably because I don't have a SSD...

 

[Paul_cz]

probably because I don't have a SSD...

Exactly the problem. KCD loads in like 5 seconds on SSD, and the dialogue "loadings" take few milliseconds.
Meanwhile on HDD it's...the opposite.
I've had SSD for a decade now. How come esteemed chemist and modder still rocks ancient technology. Go buy SSD.

 

[vibehunter]

Are maces still stupidly OP in this game? I rolled sword and board in my first playthrough but I'd like to do another run just bonking people on the head.

 

[Gerrard]

Bladed weapons have that perk that increases chance to cause bleeding and poison if you've sharpened them yourself. You can't sharpen a mace.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

probably because I don't have a SSD...

what year is it?

 

[Wesp5]

I've had SSD for a decade now. How come esteemed chemist and modder still rocks ancient technology. Go buy SSD.

It's still stupid from a game designing point of view. Why does no other FPRPG need to create a seperate world just for a conversation? Cyberpunk e.g. works fine on the very same system...

 

[Tacgnol]

On any moderately capable PC it's like 0,3 seconds, a non-problem.

I have an i5 and a Geforce 1050 that can run everything else besides this, probably because I don't have a SSD...

SSDs have been affordable for near a decade. They are pretty much becoming mandatory with how engines load in assets.

Lots of games include them as a minimum requirement now for good reason.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I've had SSD for a decade now. How come esteemed chemist and modder still rocks ancient technology. Go buy SSD.

It's still stupid from a game designing point of view. Why does no other FPRPG need to create a seperate world just for a conversation? Cyberpunk e.g. works fine on the very same system...

If I had to guess, it's probably loading higher quality textures used only in dialogue(and perhaps cutscenes, etc.,) on demand when you begin a conversation.

 

[cvv]

I've had SSD for a decade now. How come esteemed chemist and modder still rocks ancient technology. Go buy SSD.

Why does no other FPRPG need to create a seperate world just for a conversation? Cyberpunk e.g. works fine on the very same system...

IIRC it's because the game world is perma-simulated, with autonomous NPCs independently acting and milling around. No other game does this. So they had to create a "safety bubble" to ensure your conversations aren't disrupted by some crazy emergent shit happening around. Same reason why passing time may take a long time on weak machines - the world outside is still simulated while you sleep.

Cyberpunk is nowhere near the same system btw. With millions of NPCs existing in the world instead of low thousands it's not even possible to perma-simulate all the NPC routines.

 

[Jrpgfan]

Just a reminder that the 1050 is a very weak GPU. Considering KCD is not exactly a low spec game, it might not be the SSD alone. Its not surprising it runs like ass with it.

 

[Jrpgfan]

SSDs have been affordable for near a decade. They are pretty much becoming mandatory with how engines load in assets.

Lots of games include them as a minimum requirement now for good reason.

And as much as the PS5 SSD is a gimmick, it is or is going to push the industry forward in that regard. They'll probably become mandatory in the near future.

 

[Gerrard]

Remember when the increasing amount of available RAM made developers manage memory better? Me neither.
Thanks to it becoming the standard in 5 years you will have games load as slow on an SSD as today's games do on an HDD.

 

[Melcar]

Remember when the increasing amount of available RAM made developers manage memory better? Me neither.
Thanks to it becoming the standard in 5 years you will have games load as slow on an SSD as today's games do on an HDD.

They already are. I'm baffled that many new games takes minutes to load even on an SSD. It's really some bizarre shit. The more hardware you throw at these fucks the more lazy they become. Optimizations are a thing of the past.

 

[Zariusz]

So what is the current state of that czech fan dubbing ?

 

[cvv]

So what is the current state of that czech fan dubbing ?

Who knows. They actually managed to dub all the cutscenes which itself deserves kudos. But in the grand scheme of things it's just a drop in a bucket. I suspect they'll run out of interest and will long before the finish line.

Plus personally I don't really give a shit about the dubbing since I'm bilingual and the English VO with professional actors will be inevitably vastly superior.

 

[Krivol]

Just a reminder that the 1050 is a very weak GPU. Considering KCD is not exactly a low spec game, it might not be the SSD alone. Its not surprising it runs like ass with it.

I finished KDC a few times on 970 on HDD with something like medium settings and got the time of my life so I have no idea what Wesp is talking about. Mods gonna mod I think.

 

[Beowulf]

Just a reminder that the 1050 is a very weak GPU. Considering KCD is not exactly a low spec game, it might not be the SSD alone. Its not surprising it runs like ass with it.

I finished KDC a few times on 970 on HDD with something like medium settings and got the time of my life so I have no idea what Wesp is talking about. Mods gonna mod I think.

Same here. But I recently reinstalled it on my new PC (albeit still running 970) and the loading time difference is really noticeable in every aspect.

 

[Funposter]

I've had SSD for a decade now. How come esteemed chemist and modder still rocks ancient technology. Go buy SSD.

Why does no other FPRPG need to create a seperate world just for a conversation? Cyberpunk e.g. works fine on the very same system...

IIRC it's because the game world is perma-simulated, with autonomous NPCs independently acting and milling around. No other game does this. So they had to create a "safety bubble" to ensure your conversations aren't disrupted by some crazy emergent shit happening around.

Skyrim actually continues to simulate all of the AI packages etc. while you're in dialogue and it does mean that you can technically be attacked after speaking to someone. Timestamped an example here (11:20):

 

[Paul_cz]

It's still stupid from a game designing point of view. Why does no other FPRPG need to create a seperate world just for a conversation? Cyberpunk e.g. works fine on the very same system...

In Cyberpunk (and most other RPGs) the interactable characters stand in a place or move in very limited space to be always ready to talk. In KCD characters can do variety of things and be in all kinds of places. Smejki explained here why the blackscreen is needed - the game has to prepare the character for the dialogue, e.g. you talk to someone who is working in a field, the game hides him and spawns second model of him that just stands ready to talk. It is a hacky way to do it, but it was likely much faster to implement than to make every NPC interactable during every action they can be doing and adding hundreds extra animations to get them out of their work into talking.

 

[Wesp5]

Smejki explained here why the blackscreen is needed - the game has to prepare the character for the dialogue, e.g. you talk to someone who is working in a field, the game hides him and spawns second model of him that just stands ready to talk.

They probably spawn a second model for Henry too, which would explain why most often he is wearing the wrong clothes. Indeed, this looks like a dirty hack to me...

 

[Wunderbar]

They probably spawn a second model for Henry too, which would explain why most often he is wearing the wrong clothes.

Henry only does that during pre-rendered cutscenes.

 

[Paul_cz]

They probably spawn a second model for Henry too, which would explain why most often he is wearing the wrong clothes. Indeed, this looks like a dirty hack to me...

That never happens during normal dialogue unless your game is somehow busted. As wunderbar says, it only ever happens during pre-rendered stuff.

 

[Smejki]

Smejki explained here why the blackscreen is needed - the game has to prepare the character for the dialogue, e.g. you talk to someone who is working in a field, the game hides him and spawns second model of him that just stands ready to talk.

They probably spawn a second model for Henry too, which would explain why most often he is wearing the wrong clothes. Indeed, this looks like a dirty hack to me...

We had natural transitions from any state to dialog in one of the earlier alphas. Unfortunately for it to work under any circumstance it meant there's a new transition state between minding-my-own-business and actually-ready-to-do-talking and this transition took way too much time way too often. It also meant we couldn't place the player in better position for dialog camera. The dialog had to happen wherever player was when the NPC reached the state actually-ready-to-do-talking (and if player was still close). It was wonky and grew annoying quickly.
So yeah, instead of that we now hide the original actor and spawn in an identical twin in their place, facing player (or sittiing if they did). We did not have the capacity to optimize this approach to the level we wanted so a lot of things about the NPC must be reinitialized and that takes time, the biggest culprit being the layered clothing system.
And no, Henry does not get his own twin in dialogs. If needed he gets moved to the closest possible place where dynamically claculated cameras are not obstructed by anything. When Henry does wear different clothes in 99% cases it's not a dialog but a pre-reneder cutscene (which are pre-rendered because the engine couldn't run them in real time with satisfying and consistent framerate).

BTW you can see all of it in action if you use cvar
wh_ui_FaderDebugAlpha= 0.8
It makes the dialog and cutscene faders semitransparent (might need the game EXE from the modkit)