Most of my work so far on my game has been lightweight and abstract. Designing and laying out how the systems interact.
But I’m transitioning into the next phase where I need to start actually filling the world with stuff.
I’m trying to build it so that it can scale and either direction. So that it can run on a potato but also a NASA computer. I’m going to fairly great pains to do this for no other reason than Love of the game.
But anyways I’m just wondering what should be my middle ground Target system specs? What is the “average” computer?
I’m asking this now because my terrain data alone for a world will be about 400 MB. I think it will probably be better to hold this in RAM, rather than constantly saving and loading to disc. But with world objects I’m guessing a world is going to be something like 2 to 4 GB?? No idea I haven’t gotten that far yet.
This depends on what you’re asking, but you can use a few tools to get statistics about current hardware, for example GPU Info which gathers data on GPU stats, you can search for other stats online, you can also use steam DB for stats for users of Steam
What a typical computer is changes constantly and it depends on what specifically you’re looking for, for example what kind of users you are looking for, general gamers, gamers on high-end hardware, gamers with hardware that’s relatively up-to-date, etc.
I’d suggest trying to figure out a minimum limit you think your game should support, for example what compromises you are willing to do for quality and scale. Let’s say a minimal number of items visible that you can still play the game reasonably well, and work from there. I’d also suggest making the game as flexible as possible
I think there are tools to check what features a running game requires, to see feature support on different hardware
Steam provides their own survey data for exactly this question. You should check it out.
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If you want it running on a potato you are already losing.
A low end computer isn’t the average computer and if you develop for average you cut out low end.
IMO the GPU is the bigger deal of it all and I have lots of issues using onboard graphics on my low end unit.
On that unit Windows 10/11 will not run at all. The latest Ubuntu does run but memory fills up quickly and noticeably.
Things to keep in mind if you truly want your game to run on a potato.
It is a good question, and sometimes you have to draw the line at how low you want to go. But if you have decent options in a simple start-up screen, players can switch things off that their machine cannot use, even before getting to the main menu. You could even give them options for general settings (“Potato”, “Slow”, “Average”, “Fast”, “All Singing”).
I love the idea of having “Potato” as an option! I might use that in my next game but I personally tend to target low end devices anyway.
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