Steam How To Determine Minimum System Requirements

Hello, I'm getting ready to publish a demo to Steam and in the fields where they ask about the "Minimum System Requirements", how do I actually find that out?

Like, the only system requirements I could say works is my own. Is there some type of benchmark tool I can use?

How does anyone else do this?
 
I keep a 10+ year old PC with 4:3 resolution. You'd be amazed how many GameMaker games are terrible glitch fests in that resolution and how many problems that my hardware runs into. Also have friends try on their terrible PCs at work or school.
 
I keep a 10+ year old PC with 4:3 resolution. You'd be amazed how many GameMaker games are terrible glitch fests in that resolution and how many problems that my hardware runs into. Also have friends try on their terrible PCs at work or school.
So, it's basically just "trial and error" and there's no industry standard way of finding out?
 
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NeonBits

Guest
Like, the only system requirements I could say works is my own.
It's what I was wondering too. I was thinking about just writting my own system specification. And it's true that GM gives the amount of memory used once you close the game but I'm not certain on how to calculate it.

(a minute later...) ha! enter in google search, exemple: "how much 45632134 bytes" and you'll get the ram ^ ^
 

Rayek

Member
In my case at work the stuff I create is used internally, so I can rely on the average business workstations which are deployed throughout the various locations.
For my personal projects I test on an 8 year old i5 with intel junk graphics and 4GB, my wife's cheapo $300 laptop with intel sucky graphics, and on my own workstation with a nice 1080GTX. Mobile I ask friends and in particular nephews and nieces to playtest on their iPads.

I check memory and CPU performance with Process Explorer, and in the game engine debugger (if it has one). If the game works okay'ish on the 8 year old junk intel i5, I know I am good ;-)

But really, there nothing like having other people with various hardware setups play test your projects.

On a side note: quoted system requirements for any given game rely very much on the perception of the developers if they feel it is acceptably playable. I recall the minimum requirements for a game like FarCry not exactly giving a player a good experience - some would say minimum requirements are all over the place for games in terms of a "playable" experience.

And obviously it very much depends on the type of game: I don't mind playing Dungeons of Dredmor on that old i5 of mine, and while it can slow down at times, it doesn't really impact the player experience as much as trying to play a fast arcade game that should be running at 60fps.
 
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So, it's basically just "trial and error" and there's no industry standard way of finding out?
Well there are professional services with literally 500 phones on a wall that will test your game on Android devices. Most people think they are review farms, but no, they'll take your money for whatever service they can provide. Google has a machine that will test your game with 10 devices and take photos of each. It even keeps track of which devices crash. You can even input scripts for the robot to test the game.

Here is one of the pictures:

 
N

NeonBits

Guest
Well there are professional services with literally 500 phones on a wall that will test your game on Android devices. Most people think they are review farms, but no, they'll take your money for whatever service they can provide. Google has a machine that will test your game with 10 devices and take photos of each. It even keeps track of which devices crash. You can even input scripts for the robot to test the game.
Heh, people are begging for a salary and we say we care, but robots win; welcome to today's world.
 
J

JapanGamer29

Guest
How about the "OS version" field in Steam's system requirements? Are GMS games guaranteed to work on Windows 7 and above or does it just depend on the game? I've only tested my game on 64-bit Win 10.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Ideally you'd test your game on every machine you can think of, since systems aren't quite as linear as the concept of a "minimum requirement" suggests, but the easy way to find a minimum is...
  1. Find a really bad PC. (You probably have one of these in your storage shed if you never throw away your old computers when you upgrade to new ones, and if you don't, schools, public libraries, internet cafés or workplace computers all typically have way too low specs)
  2. Test your game on it and verify it works as intended.
  3. Write down its specs and say that's the minimum system requirements.
Or even easier:
  1. Write down the specs of your development machine. If people doesn't even obey Moore's Law they've got no rights to complain lol
 
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