I have several computer systems here to test on, but this is obviously not the most awesome test-bed for determining requirements for the game.
I’ve got Early Access alphas available online for downloading, but without the money at the moment to spend on advertising, I don’t get a ton of hits/downloads right now, and only one real bit of feedback so far (More than I was expecting for only having 11 downloads at this point). Definitely not enough to make a good suggested/minimum requirements hardware profile.
Is there somewhere that has a good general suggested/minimum requirement that I should advertise for the game?
If you have a finished game with hardware requirements published for it, how did you come up with your suggestions?
It really varies, but I would guess that the Steam Hardware Survey is a good Place to Start.
Let me do a quick break down…
RAM: 80% of Steam Users have at least 4GB
CPUs: 47% have 2 CPUs, 45% have 4 CPUs, everything else is a small amount.
VRAM: Most People have 1-2GB of VRAM
When it comes to determining your Minimum/Suggested Hardware Specs, you’ve gotta decide what hardware gets “Acceptable” performance when you turn down your graphics settings, and what hardware runs the game at it’s “Ideal” quality with acceptable performance.
I have never published a game before (on anything other than iOS).
You can always turn off cores on your CPU and lower your GPU speed if you want to test that way, but It’s not the same as actually testing lower end hardware.
I think the best method is to build a computer with the specs that you want for a minimum requirement and then test your game and make sure it works on that hardware. Since every game is different, you can’t just go by what the engine uses, though there are some features that may be required like DirectX11 or Windows 64-Bit.