What do you want in a horror game?

[MC.Morrado]

I'm a new game dev looking to hear what all of you have to say! PC Gaming is what I am trying to help improve given you most likely have been paying through the nose for modern AAA titles that lack the quality they once had in the past. I do not care about game journalists or their opinions; the only thing that matters is feedback from gamers like you and how the player experience can be improved upon.

 

Tell me everything ranging from absurd system requirements to other complaints regarding having to buy new hardware for your PC just to play a game. Detailed build specs are appreciated; I am trying to have everything optimized to run smoothly on low to mid-range computers and want to know what kind of specs a typical PC gamer has. I can't optimize properly if I can't find a proper target to set based on an average gaming computer's specs... TLDR; input regarding your PC and its specs, besides what you want to see in a survival-horror game, will help me know what to do.

 

Your input is very much valuable.

[Hinjima]

17 minutes ago, MC.Morrado said:

I'm a new game dev looking to hear what all of you have to say! PC Gaming is what I am trying to help improve given you most likely have been paying through the nose for modern AAA titles that lack the quality they once had in the past. I do not care about game journalists or their opinions; the only thing that matters is feedback from gamers like you and how the player experience can be improved upon.

 

Tell me everything ranging from absurd system requirements to other complaints regarding having to buy new hardware for your PC just to play a game. Detailed build specs are appreciated; I am trying to have everything optimized to run smoothly on low to mid-range computers and want to know what kind of specs a typical PC gamer has. I can't optimize properly if I can't find a proper target to set based on an average gaming computer's specs... TLDR; input regarding your PC and its specs, besides what you want to see in a survival-horror game, will help me know what to do.

 

Your input is very much valuable.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

 

This is the average PC specs from steam users that participated in the hardware survey, maybe this helps

Scroll down and under Category you can click RAM, CPU, GPU etc to get a drop down for further information.

 

For me what I like in Horror games is something to be actually scared of, not silly cheap jumpscares.

Maybe something like Alien Isolation.

[MC.Morrado]

8 minutes ago, Hinjima said:

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

 

This is the average PC specs from steam users that participated in the hardware survey, maybe this helps

Scroll down and under Category you can click RAM, CPU, GPU etc to get a drop down for further information.

 

For me what I like in Horror games is something to be actually scared of, not silly cheap jumpscares.

Maybe something like Alien Isolation.

I'm not a big fan of cheap jumpscares either. Playing FNAF has made me feel nothing when getting jumpscared 95% of the time.

 

My only real goal is having the game (for console release) be optimized to run smoothly on my stock 2019 Xbox One S which is the newest console I own but the same copy of the game to also work for PC or on the Steam Deck. Is it bad that I am basing my optimization qouta on my Xbox instead of a PC?

[Hinjima]

1 minute ago, MC.Morrado said:

Is it bad that I am basing my optimization qouta on my Xbox instead of a PC?

Not at all as long as its optimized for PC as well.  You know how PC players are, if it runs like ass on hardware it SHOULD run on... You will be review bombed or boycotted.

If it runs on your 2019 Xbox One S but can't run on a Ryzen 5600 and a RTX 3060 you will face backlash.

Remember that console players are mostly happy with 30fps ( Thank motionblur and other trickeries ) While PC players demand 60fps now'a'days.

[BiotechBen]

Mess with your mind horror is the best, (see: Alien Abduction 2014, Fourth Kind, etc) where the more you pay attention, the more you see. Well executed and unexpected jump scares where it doesn't jump, and just keeps going, getting your blood pressure and heart rate up, and then as soon as you are killed into a false elsense of security: nothing happens, then BOOM. 

 

I like horror that triggers primal fear, brain in a state of fight or flight that causes hallucinations and paranoia, forces you to lock your bedroom door and hide under the blanket. 

(Watched a video of what the cretaceous jungle would look and sound like with raptors doing birdlike clicks and shrieks, and lizard-brain cold anxious fear set in and it was so weird). 

[MC.Morrado]

7 minutes ago, Hinjima said:

Not at all as long as its optimized for PC as well.  You know how PC players are, if it runs like ass on hardware it SHOULD run on... You will be review bombed or boycotted.

If it runs on your 2019 Xbox One S but can't run on a Ryzen 5600 and a RTX 3060 you will face backlash.

Remember that console players are mostly happy with 30fps ( Thank motionblur and other trickeries ) While PC players demand 60fps now'a'days.

If I were to base my Xbox One S specs on a PC level...

RAM: 8GB

CPU: 1.75 GHz

Storage: 1TB HDD

 

Should be enough to run my finished game on a 2011 MacBook Pro that I upgraded to have a 1TB SSD and 16GB of RAM. Working with Godot and the Hammer editor will make things complicated but I like a challenge when I see one.

[podkall]

1 hour ago, MC.Morrado said:

Detailed build specs are appreciated; I am trying to have everything optimized to run smoothly on low to mid-range computers and want to know what kind of specs a typical PC gamer has.

A good baseline is,

 

3600 Ryzen with 16GB of RAM and GTX 1050/GTX 750ti

 

46 minutes ago, Hinjima said:

Not at all as long as its optimized for PC as well.  You know how PC players are, if it runs like ass on hardware it SHOULD run on... You will be review bombed or boycotted.

Cities Skylines 2 stuttering sub 60fps on RTX 4090

[podkall]

2 minutes ago, podkall said:

A good baseline is,

 

3600 Ryzen with 16GB of RAM and GTX 1050/GTX 750ti

But game optimization differs, some manage to be so light they could be played on slower 2/4 core CPUs that aren't that new,

 

but it's tricky, usually those games are very simple, like some esports games.

[MC.Morrado]

1 minute ago, podkall said:

But game optimization differs, some manage to be so light they could be played on slower 2/4 core CPUs that aren't that new,

 

but it's tricky, usually those games are very simple, like some esports games.

using techniques like baked lighting and a few other tricks in Godot will help me run my game on a mid-spec PC from 6 years ago. I only plan on having 1080p textures at most given the tools I'll have to work with. I am avoiding proprietary stuff like Unreal Engine or Unity because the games made in them are needlessly bloated messes.

 

Imagine the potential of a whole game made using Godot and the Hammer editor. Who says Hammer has to be exclusive to just Source Engine games?

[rippy4500]

In a horror game you should have good audio, things like dynamic range can help alot with loud jumpscares or quiet/distant sounds so dont use compression, loudness equalization, whatever. Also use WAV (probably sfx) or FLAC (probably music) for audio, not mp3, ogg, etc. Also use 24 bits 48KHz if possible, windows usually sets that by default so it'll give the best clarity.

You can also try 3D positioning filters but im not sure how easy/difficult it is to make that work well.

[podkall]

5 hours ago, rippy4500 said:

In a horror game you should have good audio, things like dynamic range can help alot with loud jumpscares or quiet/distant sounds so dont use compression, loudness equalization, whatever. Also use WAV (probably sfx) or FLAC (probably music) for audio, not mp3, ogg, etc. Also use 24 bits 48KHz if possible, windows usually sets that by default so it'll give the best clarity.

You can also try 3D positioning filters but im not sure how easy/difficult it is to make that work well.

mp3 isn't bad if it's not too compressed, at least I think, not saying it's perfect, I'm more saying that mp3 320-192kb/s > 160kb/s and below

[podkall]

3 hours ago, podkall said:

mp3 isn't bad if it's not too compressed, at least I think, not saying it's perfect, I'm more saying that mp3 320-192kb/s > 160kb/s and below

don't trust me on this, I just listen to music I'm not a game dev

[MC.Morrado]

In my game you will be playing as a sentient animatronic. Not possessed or cursed or anything freaky like that... Just sentient like Johnny5 who is curious about the world.

More details here: https://www.youtube.com/@HeartOfCircuits

 

Changing things up by doing something completely different is one of several goals I have in mind. What's the point in playing as an animatronic if you can't slay other robots with melee weapons and cannibalize parts from your own kind? Maybe I can get some practice by releasing prototypes of maps as custom campaigns in Left 4 Dead 2 for beta testing.

 

[podkall]

37 minutes ago, MC.Morrado said:

In my game you will be playing as a sentient animatronic. Not possessed or cursed or anything freaky like that...

[rippy4500]

7 hours ago, podkall said:

mp3 isn't bad if it's not too compressed, at least I think, not saying it's perfect, I'm more saying that mp3 320-192kb/s > 160kb/s and below

My point is that there's no reason not to with modern storage capacity. Can the average player people tell? Probably not. But they also won't notice much increase in disk space taken either. 1 hour of 24 bit 48KHz WAV (2304kbps) is ~1GB, and 1 hour of 320K mp3 is ~140MB, that's a big jump but it's also a relatively small amount of storage by todays standards, especially when many modern games take up tens or hundreds of gigabytes in comparison. And use FLAC for long music files to bring it down to 400-600MB total. Keep using WAV though for short SFX so there is no decoding delay.

Whatever real time effects are used make a bigger difference to quality, and also having the game audio engine mix and output with 24/48khz (regardless of input files) will allow sounds to mix together far smoother and have less loss from audio processing. Doesn't take much processing power AFAIK.

[ToboRobot]

16 hours ago, MC.Morrado said:

I'm a new game dev looking to hear what all of you have to say! PC Gaming is what I am trying to help improve given you most likely have been paying through the nose for modern AAA titles that lack the quality they once had in the past. I do not care about game journalists or their opinions; the only thing that matters is feedback from gamers like you and how the player experience can be improved upon.

 

Tell me everything ranging from absurd system requirements to other complaints regarding having to buy new hardware for your PC just to play a game. Detailed build specs are appreciated; I am trying to have everything optimized to run smoothly on low to mid-range computers and want to know what kind of specs a typical PC gamer has. I can't optimize properly if I can't find a proper target to set based on an average gaming computer's specs... TLDR; input regarding your PC and its specs, besides what you want to see in a survival-horror game, will help me know what to do.

 

Your input is very much valuable.

Specs don't really matter, good game play matters.  You seem to be focused on aspects that do not really matter. 

If you are a game dev, start off with coming up with game design document.
 

[MC.Morrado]

1 minute ago, rippy4500 said:

My point is that there's no reason not to with modern storage capacity. Can the average player people tell? Probably not. But they also won't notice much increase in disk space taken either. 1 hour of 24 bit 48KHz WAV (2304kbps) is ~1GB, and 1 hour of 320K mp3 is ~140MB, that's a big jump but it's also a relatively small amount of storage by todays standards, especially when many modern games take up tens or hundreds of gigabytes in comparison. And use FLAC for long music files to bring it down to 400-600MB total. Keep using WAV though for short SFX so there is no decoding delay.

Whatever real time effects are used make a bigger difference to quality, and also having the game audio engine mix and output with 24/48khz (regardless of input files) will allow sounds to mix together far smoother and have less loss from audio processing. Doesn't take much processing power AFAIK.

I don't know anything about frequencies, you'll have to explain that.

 

Notes: use 320K mp3 instead of ".wav" for less storage space used on your hard drives. A ton of small seemingly insignificant ways to optimize eventually add up to big savings in the long run. Being efficient with GDscript and C# code will also help but that's another story.

 

In my eyes as someone who is used to mainly writing books on word processors and pasting images from the web onto mock resumes; an image that's 1 megabyte or larger is considered huge to me, I try to keep all of my images to be less than a megabyte each to save space on my MacBook's hard drive. My textures will all be 1080p or less: my eyesight is too poor to tell the difference between 1080p and 4K.

[MC.Morrado]

1 minute ago, ToboRobot said:

Specs don't really matter, good game play matters.  You seem to be focused on aspects that do not really matter. 

If you are a game dev, start off with coming up with game design document.
 

I am working on drafting a lot of gameplay mechanics, boss fights, weapons, healing items, enemies, etc. on pen and paper using a composition notebook before I officially start modeling something in Godot. I am mainly focusing on specs on this forum for now because I don't want to give y'all any spoilers for what I'm working on yet.

 

Heart Of Circuits has a lot of scrapped concept art, textures, voice lines, and other work that didn't make it past the drawing board since the project officially began in October of 2022. I am a perfectionist to an autistic degree where I won't rush something out the door; I take my time to do things right, rushing development on a passion project will only make it suck.

 

Your input on what you want to see in a survival-horror game is still very much appreciated.

[rippy4500]

2 minutes ago, MC.Morrado said:

I don't know anything about frequencies, you'll have to explain that.

48KHz is how many times the audio waveform is sampled per second. 48KHz should be standard for shared mode apps as it's usually the default set by the OS, and therefore it doesn't have to go through a resampling filter which reduces quality.
 

 

4 minutes ago, MC.Morrado said:

Notes: use 320K mp3 instead of ".wav" for less storage space used on your hard drives. A ton of small seemingly insignificant ways to optimize eventually add up to big savings in the long run. Being efficient with GDscript and C# code will also help but that's another story.

My argument was to not use MP3. If you need to use lossy compression at least use OGG Opus, it's far more efficient than MP3 which is outdated IMO.

MP3, OGG vorbis, OGG opus, AAC, etc. and other formats apply lossy compression, meaning they don't retain all the audio data. WAV and FLAC use lossless compression meaning they retain everything for full quality, they're way bigger but not for no reason.

[podkall]

14 minutes ago, rippy4500 said:

MP3, OGG vorbis, OGG opus, AAC, etc. and other formats apply lossy compression, meaning they don't retain all the audio data. WAV and FLAC use lossless compression meaning they retain everything for full quality, they're way bigger but not for no reason.

yes but lossy doesn't mean the quality will magically decay over time or changes, also MP3 is widely supported since it's a standard format

 

25 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

Specs don't really matter, good game play matters.  You seem to be focused on aspects that do not really matter. 

If you are a game dev, start off with coming up with game design document.
 

I think it's good to think about this aswell, if they for example already have an idea what the game is going to be like.

 

And while they can just make a game, it is far easier optimize the game during it's production, then editing the spaghetti code that comes out afterwards.

 

At least that's how I see it, I don't even program.

[ToboRobot]

14 minutes ago, MC.Morrado said:

I am working on drafting a lot of gameplay mechanics, boss fights, weapons, healing items, enemies, etc. on pen and paper using a composition notebook before I officially start modeling something in Godot. I am mainly focusing on specs on this forum for now because I don't want to give y'all any spoilers for what I'm working on yet.

 

In order to not waste time, maybe consider the time it will take to develop the project, and then prioritizing the steps to take.   

If you are at the pen and paper stage, finding out PC specs isn't the most important thing to do right now.

If you are serious about this project and expect others to aid you, it may be best to have a solid, realistic plan and have some ideas on what will make your project unique and good.

I feel like you are asking for advice for interior design, before selecting a location to build the house, let alone laid the foundation!

Do you think game devs studios pick a genre, and then go straight to market research asking people about PC specs?
 

[ToboRobot]

5 minutes ago, podkall said:

I think it's good to think about this aswell, if they for example already have an idea what the game is going to be like.

 

And while they can just make a game, it is far easier optimize the game during it's production, then editing the spaghetti code that comes out afterwards.

 

At least that's how I see it, I don't even program.

And since the game engine has already been selected, that gives you a pretty good idea of what the target will be. 

But what do I know, I am a computer science drop out.

[MC.Morrado]

44 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

In order to not waste time, maybe consider the time it will take to develop the project, and then prioritizing the steps to take.   

If you are at the pen and paper stage, finding out PC specs isn't the most important thing to do right now.

If you are serious about this project and expect others to aid you, it may be best to have a solid, realistic plan and have some ideas on what will make your project unique and good.

I feel like you are asking for advice for interior design, before selecting a location to build the house, let alone laid the foundation!

Do you think game devs studios pick a genre, and then go straight to market research asking people about PC specs?
 

I am already programming the project and trying to learn both GDscript and Python. I'm just a bit old fashioned in how I write ideas that come to me. I am way past the pen and paper stage but I still use a composition notebook to make notes for myself.

[rippy4500]

1 hour ago, podkall said:

yes but lossy doesn't mean the quality will magically decay over time or changes, also MP3 is widely supported since it's a standard format

I don't see why opus can't be used, youtube uses opus and im sure it's in many other places too. If opus can't be used, AAC and vorbis would still be better than MP3 and many games already use ogg vorbis.
I recommend against lossy because I feel that the storage space advantage isn't that big anymore when you can get terabytes of ssd storage for very cheap these days. And if you use FLAC it makes files way smaller than WAV, like 40-60% smaller depending on settings used (idk exact numbers but it's way better than WAV). You should always use the best quality if it's available and there's no significant benefit to not using it.

[podkall]

14 minutes ago, rippy4500 said:

I don't see why opus can't be used, youtube uses opus and im sure it's in many other places too. If opus can't be used, AAC and vorbis would still be better than MP3 and many games already use ogg vorbis.
I recommend against lossy because I feel that the storage space advantage isn't that big anymore when you can get terabytes of ssd storage for very cheap these days. And if you use FLAC it makes files way smaller than WAV, like 40-60% smaller depending on settings used (idk exact numbers but it's way better than WAV). You should always use the best quality if it's available and there's no significant benefit to not using it.

yeah but your excuse for using less lossy format is "other games are 500GB so it's okay"