Benchmarking Demo

Harimau

<div class="IPBDescription">Less refund requests, less negative word-of-mouth.</div>I had this <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=115722&view=findpost&p=1890864" target="_blank">idea</a> in a thread in the general discussion forum - I called it a performance "test demo"; and then I saw that the developers of <a href="http://www.playcobalt.com/" target="_blank">Cobalt</a> (Alpha release, being published by Mojang) had the same idea, and called it a Benchmarking Demo. The idea is simply this:

With every major engine improvement, create a benchmarking demo (outsource to community?). This will simulate a game of NS2, and allow a potential purchaser to see if the game will run satisfactorily, so they can decide whether they want to purchase the game now or hold off until later.

Place this demo on your Pre-Order page. Most importantly, add the usual disclaimer of "This game is currently under development, and may not run well on all systems at the moment. If you wish to beta test, please download the benchmark demo to see if the current build will perform to your satisfaction. The game and its performance will continue to improve, and your feedback is valuable to us, so please check back occasionally, and consider supporting development by pre-ordering the game." etc.

This gives more people the opportunity to test "the game" before they put money down - so they'll be able to easily check if it will run on their systems in the current build, and they will have very little excuse to be upset with you (and generate that negative press). It'll also reinforce the fact that you're open and honest with your customers and fans.

Fluid Core

It sounds like a great idea. Could even be like a singleplayer demo where you can practise the different roles and lifeforms, kind of like you do when you create a game now, or like the target practice way back :)

Jibrail

I posted something like this a while back and I still hope they make it, though I think that its better that this could be done after some sort of record demo function is added to the game/engine so that the devs can record a game and use it in the benchmark tool that is if they dont just take the player models and make them do some random stuff in one place, might not look as pretty as a normal game recording though.

ZerZex

<!--quoteo(post=1891054:date=Dec 21 2011, 06:23 AM:name=Harimau)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Harimau @ Dec 21 2011, 06:23 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1891054"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I had this <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=115722&view=findpost&p=1890864" target="_blank">idea</a> in a thread in the general discussion forum - I called it a performance "test demo"; and then I saw that the developers of <a href="http://www.playcobalt.com/" target="_blank">Cobalt</a> (Alpha release, being published by Mojang) had the same idea, and called it a Benchmarking Demo. The idea is simply this:

With every major engine improvement, create a benchmarking demo (outsource to community?). This will simulate a game of NS2, and allow a potential purchaser to see if the game will run satisfactorily, so they can decide whether they want to purchase the game now or hold off until later.

Place this demo on your Pre-Order page. Most importantly, add the usual disclaimer of "This game is currently under development, and may not run well on all systems at the moment. If you wish to beta test, please download the benchmark demo to see if the current build will perform to your satisfaction. The game and its performance will continue to improve, and your feedback is valuable to us, so please check back occasionally, and consider supporting development by pre-ordering the game." etc.

This gives more people the opportunity to test "the game" before they put money down - so they'll be able to easily check if it will run on their systems in the current build, and they will have very little excuse to be upset with you (and generate that negative press). It'll also reinforce the fact that you're open and honest with your customers and fans.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Yeah fantastic idea, I think it would be good. People that havnt played NS1 have no idea how awesome this game will be when completed so yeah just while in such rough coding patches it might be nice for people to know whether to buy now or hold off.

Obraxis

I think it would be hard to put out a 'test demo' right now, as the game's rendering engine is actually very fast, it's mostly gamecode and prediction which is slowing things down right now. I would imagine that would be hard to make into a real-life stress test right now without letting people actually play the game.

Maybe in time, closer to or post release? I'd rather they spend their time working on getting the game finished than working on a 'test' version or benchmark.

Harimau

Well, they could simply outsource it to the community. I'd imagine something like this would be best implemented after some basic bots are put in place, just so you can actually test the gamecode, as you mentioned. Prediction depends on the relationship between server and client, but could this possibly be simulated?

Floodinator

On steam you can send some limited time copies of the game. UWE could give out some 24h demos of NS2 limited by 1 trial demo per steamaccount.
But that would be to much work.

Another solution could be radiance. With radiance it is possible to load whole presets of structures and units.
So someone generates a default loadout for the ents that we download here. We start the map, load the loadout and we add 11 bots. We should walk a TBD route in god mode while fraps does a capture of the framerates.
Complex but the only thing we can do now.