4x splitscreen needs approximately 4x VRAM with modern approaches to graphics: If you're looking at something sufficiently different than another player there's going to be nearly zero data in common between them, and you need VRAM for both sets. You go ahead and make a game run in 1/4th of its original budget.

[–] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 18 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I can't do that, but you know who could? The people who originally made the game. Had they simply re-released the game that they already made, it wouldn't be an issue. Us fans of the old games didn't stop playing because the graphics got too bad. Even if we did, this weird half step towards updating the graphics doesn't do anything for me. Low poly models with textures that quadruple the game's size are the worst possible middle ground.

My flatmates and I actually played through a galactic conquest campaign on the OG battlefront 2 like 2 months ago. It holds up.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee -3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I can’t do that, but you know who could? The people who originally made the game.

How to tell me you're not a gamedev without telling me you're not a gamedev. You don't just turn a knob and the game uses less VRAM, a 4x budget difference is a completely new pipeline, including assets.

Low poly models with textures that quadruple the game’s size are the worst possible middle ground.

Speaking about redoing mesh assets. Textures are easy, especially if they already exist in a higher resolution which will be the case for a 2015 game, but producing slightly higher-res meshes from the original sculpts is manual work. Topology and weight-painting at minimum.

So, different proposal: Don't do it yourself. Scrap together a couple of millions to have someone do it for you.

[–] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Wait, are you under the impression that this is a rerelease of the 2015 battlefront?

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee -1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I had no idea and it was the game that was listed without "2" or "3" etc. so that's the specs I used.

Yeah no the 2004 thing should run in 16x splitscreen on a quadcore Ryzen with a 4G RX 570. With headroom.

The general point still stands, though, you can't do the same thing with a 2015 game. On the flipside you should be able to run the 2004 game in different VMs on the same box, no native support required.

[–] MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

and 1/4 of it's original resolution. Seems doable.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Output resolution has negligible impact on VRAM use: 32M for a 4-byte buffer for 4k, 8M for 1080p. It's texture and mesh data that eats VRAM, texture and mesh data that's bound to be different between different cameras and thus, as I already said, can't be shared, you need to calculate with 4x VRAM use because you need to cover the worst-case scenario.