Epic’s base builder meets cooperative shooter meets battle royale game has been very successful so far, but Fortnite is still technically in early access. That means loads of more public problems as the game progresses through development, and Epic have outlined how they’ll address its most significant performance issues.
For help digging in, check out our guide to Fortnite.
That’s partly an issue of traditional optimization, and partly down to server and network performance, but they’re working on both sides of the problem. Epic plan to improve performance on minimum spec computers, after recent patches had seen some downgrades for low-end players. They’re also planning to work more particularly with GPU vendors to improve performance and driver integration. And they want to reduce “hitches,” which they’re defining as frames that take over 60 milliseconds, with the short-term goal of having less than one per minute.
The rest is on server performance, which has been an issue given the rapidly increasing popularity of its free battle royale mode, and there’s a load of technical work to be done when it comes to networks. That includes server optimizations for things as simple as taking damage, and general improvements to reduce rubber-banding. They also want to alter matchmaking to favor regional routing to keep players close to particular data centers playing together – without impacting your ability to play with friends, of course. And they want to ensure all 100 battle royale players are connecting to each other every frame, up from 50 per frame right now.
Epic also say they want to “improve our handling of edge cases that can result in wells of despair,” which is perhaps the noblest goal of all. They’re already tracking loads of server info on the back end, and they’re hiring more tech folks to make sure these changes are implemented.
Can you run it? Check the Fortnite System Requirements at PCGameBenchmark.