Nvidia Driver dev speaks about Drivers coding [gamedev.net]

This forum post by Promit, is really interesting... Gives me a lot of insight to the driver developement. I had a feeling Nvidia & AMD was having to do some crazy hacks to fix games. But honestly I had no idea it was this bad. It's crazy games ship out in such a broken state. And Nvidia & AMD have to fix all the buggy crap that game developers ship in a half-working state.



http://www.gamedev.net/topic/666419-what-are-your-opinions-on-dx12vulkanmantle/#entry5215019

[copy/paste]
The first lesson is: Nearly every game ships broken. We're talking major AAA titles from vendors who are everyday names in the industry. In some cases, we're talking about blatant violations of API rules - one D3D9 game never even called BeginFrame/EndFrame. Some are mistakes or oversights - one shipped bad shaders that heavily impacted performance on NV drivers. These things were day to day occurrences that went into a bug tracker. Then somebody would go in, find out what the game screwed up, and patch the driver to deal with it. There are lots of optional patches already in the driver that are simply toggled on or off as per-game settings, and then hacks that are more specific to games - up to and including total replacement of the shipping shaders with custom versions by the driver team. Ever wondered why nearly every major game release is accompanied by a matching driver release from AMD and/or NVIDIA? There you go.

 

Thanks for the read.

 

Shame for those game developers, taking the ez route and leaving nVidia and AMD with all the mess.

 

Really interesting read i did not understand parts but overall it was clear that drivers are a nightmare and game developers really do need to improve.

 

Looking into future with Dx12 titles this is only going to be worse as most coding/debugging will be on game dev side , but I guess Nvidia and AMD will have to still keep eye out even if driver won't fix it (they will work with dev's to help fix on there end).

 

This doesn't make any sense. Because if this was true, then those AAA games wouldn't work while being developed and they would release a non functioning game. But if they were given BETA drivers during development, then it would make more sense. But then it also raises the question : Who is at fault ?
Since I don't believe NVIDIA nor AMD is given access to games in early development and if they have no access then how can they fix anything.

EDIT :

Surely games released using one of the well know engines doesn't have these kind of problems. I.e Unreal Engine, FrostBite etc.

 

Thanks for the read. I wonder if people saying that dx12 will be adopted quickly actually think about matters like those described.

 

It's less likely if they use those engines, but sometimes companies get 'creative' and break things. It does make sense, because the game works fine (at least functional) on the consoles on release. The PC version is usually an after thought. As long as the game launches they move on, usually next to no testing is done. Sometimes they don't even make sure the thing launches and a day one patch is needed to make the game even go, let alone be properly optimized.

@fantaskarsef; I've made the same point. If we are lucky, DX12 will be an excuse to be even more lazy. You're game works like crap when it shouldn't so just lock it to use DX12 and hope that helps things along enough to get it playable. At least that's what I foresee happening.

 

i wonder how broken AC-Unity was when NV got the software ?

 

Ubisoft: is the game at least 70% done yet? okay release! we'll make up the "5%" through patches

 

sounds about right... i wonder how many of those violations where done by ubisoft as of late and how many api violations Swtor has still in this ****ty code

 

That was quite an interesting read, we will have to wait and see if DX12 improves the situation or makes it worse.

It does make it sound like most of the violations were back in the DX9 days though.

Reading that it sounds like it could make things better, as while it might be harder to use at the start, it's easier in the long run as they can fix things quicker.

 

DX9 was a mess by itself, at the beginning. Until the last moment, MS & co. weren't even sure of what numerical format the pixel shaders should be codified... and they didn't (until DX9c). That's why the IHVs came with what they thought to be "close enough" and economically viable. Nvidia implemented in a hurry FP16 capability in their infamous GeForceFX line once they realized how slow the default FP32 mode is, while ATi stuck the middle ground with FP24 as a sound compromise between die-size, performance and shader precision. It was one of the reasons Half-Life 2 was delayed several times.

 

Can't say i'm surprised. It makes pretty much total sense. And this is one reason, to the metal APIs for PC can be risky. Imagine Ubicrap on a to the metal API, it would be horrible I imagine.

Might also explain why SLI support is so shoddy.

But also, the guy's comparison between a 480 and 980, is Interesting. Though when HQAA comes into the fold, the difference is really massive, ten fold and where it really shines.

 

Ubiport could damage our pcs :eek3:

I keep saying, if some game has problems, it´s dev´s fault first. Carmack said it himself, these days driver coders all know what they´re doing.

Now, expecting all game devs to know what they´re doing is simply unrealistic. Particularly now with x86 consoles, they have cheaper programmers working on games... it´s not coincidence we are getting all these abomination of ports, even consoles are getting more crappy stuff than ever.

 

It looks like AC Rogue for PC runs very good and it's "optimized".

 

That was also a late port of a prequel for the larger mess that is Unity.

 

I am not surprised, It only supports FXAA and it doesn't support soft shadows like Black Flag. The LOD looked slightly worse to me as well.

 

Good things for people with old computers like me

But I think they should put the whole spectrum of graphics options from a crappy ps3 quality (or even worse) to something visually stunning that it can only be played with an ultra mega super high end pc (and that would make everyone happy)

 

in their earning meeting or whatever they basically admitted that ACU engine was still kind of a beta and a test to see if it would cut it, so there you go, they actually sold a unfinished engine with unfinished game to the public and to cover their asses gave "free" dlc and a game with terms and agreement that you will not sue them for the state of ACU...