Updated Portal 2 Vulkan Rendering Code Yielding Great Radeon Results

[ivan.cwb]

You just described why I've never been able to finish Half Life. One of these days I'll get around to firing up Black Mesa....it's in the backlog.

Same with me...

FYI: Black Mesa guys put intended delays in the game, to mimic original 'screen loading' of HL... can you believe it?

[ceztko]

It would be nice if the loading screens didn't appear so often.

Not gonna happen unless they port the game to source 2 engine, where they should have introduced maps streaming.

[sarmad]

Great leap. I can finally play Portal 2 at ~750 fps.
But seriously, why are they updating a 10 years old game? It already runs very smooth even on integrated graphics.

[Black_Fox]

FYI: Black Mesa guys put intended delays in the game, to mimic original 'screen loading' of HL... can you believe it?

No, I can't and I donẗ have to. I've only ever read the opposite about all Source-based games (such as any HL or Left4Dead as far as I know) - the're taking Source engine to the limit and the loading times reflect that.
Here are my official sources disproving any intention - source #1, source #2 (excuse the pun). Is there any official source for your claim, too?

EDIT: fixed a typo
EDIT: turns out HL2 runs on Source engine and HL1 runs on Goldsrc engine, Black Mesa thus runs on Source and not Source 2; fixed my post accordingly

[castlefox]

Great leap. I can finally play Portal 2 at ~750 fps.
But seriously, why are they updating a 10 years old game? It already runs very smooth even on integrated graphics.

I am going to take a wild and guess this is practice for bringing Vulkan Rendering to additional titles. (Might be wishful thinking on me end)
I imagine that bringing Vulkan to and older game could be easier since it probably has (less bugs, better / more stable drivers, and know what the outstanding issues are).
In general the developers get more practice working with Vulkan. and the public gets to benefit from the results of this Vulkan project.

[humbug]

But seriously, why are they updating a 10 years old game? It already runs very smooth even on integrated graphics.

I think castlefox is correct.

They probably want to update the other old engine games like CS:GO and Team Fortress 2. But those have active online player bases who will freak out if something doesn't work properly. So they picked Portal 2 to hone the Source 1 Vulkan implementation before rolling it out where it matters.

[Guest]

I feel they're doing this for eventually publishing on a small console (e.g. Atari VCS or Intellivision Amico), or on mobile....

Or could be Stadia. Or their own game streaming thing.

[Guest]

It would be nice if the loading screens didn't appear so often. I've got this thing running on an m.2 SSD, 5700XT, and Ryzen 3600 and the loading times between scenes is super jarring.

Most likely inefficient code that's doing unnecessary work on the rendering/input thread. Or well, due to OpenGL API requiring some binding shader and texture objects for both configuring and using them.

The idiotic thing about OpenGL is that the API a very non-object oriented API which makes it tougher to do things in parallel.

[jsnjkl]

Posted my 6900XT results on gamingonlinux.com but I thought you might be interested as well.

Siduction (Debian sid based), kernel 5.11.1, Mesa git 21.1
8700K, 6900XT, 3440x1440

Portal 2 timedemo portal2bench (Reddit)
All video settings max/min, vsync off, multicore enabled. 3 run avg FPS.

Min settings vs Max settings, 2 weeks ago
OpenGL 722 vs 562 fps avg
RADV 981 vs 238 fps avg

Min settings vs Max settings, new patch today
OpenGL 745 vs 580 fps avg
RADV 1010 vs 805 fps avg

Screenshot with MangoHud up

Did you try amdvlk https://github.com/GPUOpen-Drivers/AMDVLK?

[microcode]

I feel they're doing this for eventually publishing on a small console (e.g. Atari VCS or Intellivision Amico), or on mobile....

INB4 steamdeck lol.