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Hardware Manufacturers Making PC Gaming Too Elite?
Thanks to AVault for its editorial discussing whether PC hardware/graphics card manufacturers are fragmenting PC gaming too much with constant hardware upgrades, thereby "making it a sport for only the serious few." The author argues: "With the impending release of Valve's Half-Life 2 and id's Doom 3, we're looking at the first required hardware upgrade in gaming history... the reported minimum requirements for these two heavy hitting titles include fully DirectX9 compatible video cards. This demand excludes all low-end and many medium-level computers out there today." He discusses the "partnership" of "hardware manufacturers turning over reference equipment that won't see the retail market for some time to software developers to use in the creation of their games", and queries the "expensive process of habitual upgrades" by suggesting: "If everybody turns to an Xbox or a PlayStation for entertainment, who's going to need new PC equipment?"
He says that this is the first required hardware upgrade in gaming history (boldfaced lie), then implies that consoles don't have this problem? Excuse me?
Rob
Forced upgrades for PC games is not only nothing new, but it's been *REALLY* toned down as compared to 10 or 15 years ago. An upgrade from a 486-SX 25 to a P-1 133MHz cost $2000; an upgrade from a Geforce 2 GTS and an Athlon 1.2GHz to a Radeon 9800 and an Athlon XP 2500+ is what, $600? I'd much rather spend less money than more money, neh?
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
we're looking at the first required hardware upgrade in gaming history...
The hell we are, this happens at least once every two years, games are constantly pushing technology, what else would? Who cares about the "little companies"? Millions of people buy(and anticipate) these high-end PC games for a reason.
I would expect such blatant racism on Fark, but on Slashdot? Mods please ban this asshole.
queries the "expensive process of habitual upgrades" by suggesting: "If everybody turns to an Xbox or a PlayStation for entertainment, who's going to need new PC equipment?"
I think that this is going to be more and more relevant as next-gen consoles come into being.
For me personally its more convenient to buy a ps2 game stick in the machine and play it. I dont have to consider whether or not my PC is up to spec to play it. I also like the way that with a console, all the games are configured for the same controller. Apart from the occaisional game of Vice City , I hardly use my linux box for gaming. The console is also more sociable than the PC which tends to sit in the back room.
I dont mind the seperation of PC and Gaming console and find that the idea that one is for work/education and the other is purely for fun. I kinda like that distinction.
nick...
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
I haven't, and won't spend money on PC hardware just so that I can play a new game. I still play the original Half Life, and haven't upgraded my video hardware past my TNT2.
The high prices he is complaining about are the price you pay for the biggest and the best. His comparisons to console systems are way off the mark.
People buy consoles for the steady stream of games w/o hardware upgrades, knowing full well that the state of the art will leave them behind.
People buy PC gaming hardware so they can keep up with the state of the art, at their own pace. If I want to plunk down $$ for the latest video card to play the new games, I can. But I can also be like a console owner and stand by and watch my equipment slowly become obsolete.
I've got a pretty fast gaming machine (XP3200+, 1GB RAM, GeForceFX 5900), and it's pushing it with some of the *current* games (at reasonable detail levels) like FarCry, Splinter Cell:PT etc..
PC Games have, are, and always will, push the envelope in terms of what is possible technologically - because the leading edge hardware is a lot more powerful. Its also a heck of a lot more expensive.
The revolution will not be televised. It won't be on a friggin blog either
The biggest problem right now is that there are new graphics cards coming out every 6 months with architecture changes every 18-24 months. Games have been behind the development curve for a while. Finally the two big game engines come out with new versions, trying to aim at what should be reasonable at the time.
Unfortunately, the rest of the PC hardware has turned into complete commodity and its unclear whether its worth spending another $500 on the rest of the computer to hold the FX6800 when it comes out (things are relatively quiet in the land of CPU and memory, where spending 3x the money may get you a 20% increase).
If you're a 3D software developer trying to pick which features to use to get decent market penetration (yet still take advantage of the new programmability), you're pretty-well hosed right now with the various flavors of pixel/vertex shader instructions and program lengths available on the various cards.
ATI 9600, NV FX5600 - these are the cards/capabilities I would depend on to be widespread in the installed base by Xmas 2005.
I guess the author doesn't remember when 3D shooters stopped offering software renderers and you were required to own a 3D hw accelerator to play.
Gamers, as a market group, want progress regardless of whether or not that helps line the industry's pockets. We WANT games that inspire and utilize new hardware.
If any particular software company leaves too many people behind with a game, then they are taking a risk with their product (by possibly making a poor prediction about how many potential customers will want to upgrade their hardware), not engaging in a conpsiracy to manipulate consumers.
Jesus saves....And takes 1/2 damage.
Not only does the constant and incremental card upgrade cycle alienate a ton of potential consumers, increasing power continually drains on developer's resources to provide polys to push.
I've been thinking for a while now that it isn't hw accelleration efficiency we need to improve on, but rather level designer and modelling techniques. Every iteration means more polygons have to be made up, which generally means more work for the artists-- higher poly models, higher resolution textures, smooth animation of characters, and lighting details are generally pushing the cost of development upwards with diminishing returns in sales, and very little influence with reviewers.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
The minimum requirements for Doom 3 are, essentially:
* 1 GHz CPU
* 256 MB RAM
* GeForce 1 or equivalent
In other words, a medium-range (or even low-range, depending on definition) computer today. Just to set things straight.
did you RTF or even the article summary?
He discusses the "partnership" of "hardware manufacturers turning over reference equipment that won't see the retail market for some time to software developers to use in the creation of their games"
mod this guy down, hes just your average karma whore...
I typically buy games 3-4 years after they are released, when they are usually on sale for $2-$10 a piece. Even my new PC's won't run new games, as I tend to buy the cheapest systems and max out the ram and hard disk. Plus my newest PC lacks an M$ operating system, ruling out the chance of me ever buying a new game that requires DirectX.
If game developers don't want my money, it's their loss. If you limit yourself to 1% of the market, so do you limit your profit potential to that 1%.
What saddens me about PC gaming is that the only boundary which is regularly pushed is the graphics. What happens then is that you need to buy a new $300 graphics card every year to be able to play the latest games nicely. My GF4Ti4200 is pretty much useless now, even Far Cry at 1024x768 is basically un-doable.
Half Life was an amazing game, but it wasn't because of the graphics. It's because it had a good story, it led you through the story well, the graphics weren't awful, and it had good playability. So why didn't we see a lot of games try to be like Half Life? Instead, they all tried to become graphics-fests. If some games with the depth (and graphics) of the original Half Life came out now, but at, say, $20, they'd sell like hot cakes! In a way, I'd say Return to Castle Wolfenstein almost did this. It took the old Quake 3 engine (which was a couple years' old by then), and wrapped a game with improved AI and playability around it. Result.. worked good on old kit, and was a good game.
Let's see boundaries of AI, playability, story, and concept being pushed, rather than just graphics all the time!
Web Hosting Reviews
If these system requirements are bad, imagine the ones for Duke Nukem Forever.
If you don't like constant upgrades, that's what consoles are for. I like PC Gaming because of the constant flow of new technology, and I think this is one of the main reasons to game on a PC instead of a console.
Let's take Civ3. The AI in that game made using larger maps with slower computers pretty unplayable, but the normal sized maps were very playable. So if you bought a brand new computer today, you'd get extra playability out of this game (which, coincidently will run on a Pentium 133 on smaller maps (Min sys req P3 450)). My point is the game scales.
So what's different with FPS? Well, for starters, the genre's physics and basic premise hasn't really changed since Quake (where they added rooms on top of rooms, jumping, and free look). While graphics are nice, good graphics are certainly not required to make a great game. (Tetris anyone?)
Though not meant as a blast to FPS people, the genre doesn't require huge ammounts of processing power except for the friggin' graphics. As an analogue to the Civ scenario, people with worse GFX cards should still be able to play the game with worse graphics. Unless there's some sort of wiz-bang AI or complex physics, I'd hope processor power wouldn't matter too much either.
People played the original Half-life on P2 300s and they still play it on Athlon64's. All I can say is I hope the new Half-life will try to be as accomedating as the original and provide the same evolutionary gameplay that made it a classic.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
"ATTENTION: Read this before posting upgrade questions! Due to the influx of "Should I upgrade" threads recently, I have decided to post the minimum and recommended specifications for Half-Life 2 in this topic.
The current information we have regarding the minimum specifications needed for HL2 are:
"At least a Pentium 800Mhz and a DX6 (Direct-X)-class video card."
On top of that, I'd take an estimate of 128mb of RAM being the absolute minimum that the game will run on.
Recommended specifications are as follows:
"...A Pentium 2Ghz and Geforce 4 for the best visuals."
If you want the game running smoothly, I'd recommend having at least 512mb of RAM. This is just my opinion.
The specifications above may also be subject to change as the game changes. The specs may go down, they may go up.
Thankyou."
There certainly isn't anything about DX9 in there. Not that that helps me, unless it runs in Wine.
As a software developer, I actually don't want to have to produce a game with that much eye candy. But I feel compelled to concentrate on that, given that gamers and press go (in part) by screenshots and aesthetics.
Regardless of what I'd like to concentrate on, I think the hardware vendors, the software developers, the press, and the consumer are all in cahoots together. You, me, everyone -- we all want to see prettier games.
We're indie. We're working on our 14th game.
Um...huh? What about 3DFX-only games? And didn't the latest EQ patch add a DX9 requirement (thus prepping people's PCs for EQ2)?
That's a really dumb article. Even if the nvidia does "turn advanced hardware over to game designers," it's still the game designers who set the intensity of the required tech specs, so blame them if anyone.
Read jack phelps dot net
Uhh... I call Shennanigans? Reading the Half-Life faq, you will find:
Q: What are the minimum hardware specifications?
The bare minimum you will need is a Pentium II 800Mhz processor, 128MB RAM and a DX6 class graphics card.
Michael C. Hollinger
...don't buy it. Vote with your dollars. If nobody is willing to upgrade to some next-gen hardware, then it's not going to work. However, if everyone but you is willing to upgrade, this is good news: tha means the prices on the previous generation of cards will plummet, vastly increasing the value of the second-tier hardware for those constrained by budgets.
People buy games that push the envelope because they want the next big thing. If you want to stay back in the Q2 era, go ahead. There's still plenty of great games from that era that you haven't played yet.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
As graphics go, I generally feel that good games allow most folks to play them, even if they have to turn some settings down. No big deal really.
Now, the one area where folks should definitely be forced to upgrade is their Internet connection. Dial-up users regularly degrade my gaming experience. To the point where I feel that quitting is the best option.
Broadband should be a minimum that is enforced by online games.
Yeah, this isn't about PC games in general, but Penny Arcade definitely addressed this.
[o]_O
No, that's just the bare minimum ncessary to pirate the source code off of KaZaa.
"If everybody turns to an Xbox or a PlayStation for entertainment, who's going to need new PC equipment?"
:|
What about a GameCube? What is it with people excluding GC from the console lists? GC is outselling X-box, yet I see things like this all the time: "Which console do you have? X-box, or Ps2?"
It gets kind of annoying.
you only need a Direct X 9 card if your going to jack everything on.
CD Rom drives.
Sound Cards.
VGA cards (like DOS was using it).
Color Monitors.
Joystick ports.
All of the above upgrades were essentially driven by gaming. What use was a sound card before Roberta Williams started supporting them in King's Quest? What did a CD Rom drive do before Myst? Sure, windows would eventually come to rely upon 2D graphics processing, much like the plan is to integrate 3D processing into Longhorn, but the cart in this case did not lead the horse. All of these were driven by gaming, with the operating system and applications expanding to take advantage of these new additions.
If anything, this upgrade generation is the first in the past few years that has been driven by gaming because people started jumping on the Internet and buying machines. People had a more compelling reason to upgrade for a while: I.E. was a dog, and you need really fast hardware to run it satisfactorily. Now, I won't say how Firefox or Opera might fit into this equation more cheaply, but this did mean that people were upgrading their hardware and it had little to do with gaming. We are, of course, back on the gaming upgrade cycle.
It's not a new phenomenon, it just took the back burner for a little while.
The ______ Agenda
The only things that are really pushing the limits are FPS games. Maybe some MMORPG's as well.
Look at teh sys. requirements on Sims 2. Look at Warcraft III's sys. requirements.
The only types of games I use my PC are those where the use of a keyboard and mouse is better than a controller (ie. FPS and RTS games).
Insert Sig Here
I also believe that it's computer hardware manufacturers taking PC gaming out of the mainstream and making it a sport for only the serious few.
Sounds like just what these companies want to do-- shrink their target audience to something completely unsustainable.
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
Same with upgrading from an adlib to a soundblaster. Gigantic difference.
Again when I inserted a 3Dfx card.
All my upgrades are for games. My work PC is a linux dual P3 that is so ancient the manuals on top have turned to coal.
Hell Doom3 may in fact not require me to upgrade. I already got the hardware for it. Half-Life 2 is another story. I think this pc will have turned to dust by the time that one is actually released.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
HL2 doesn't require a DX9 card. It will run on DX6 hardware. Deus Ex: Invisible War is the first title to require a hardware upgrade. All hardware must be DX8 compliant and must support Pixel Shaders 1.0. Doom III... I don't know about Doom III but I think that Id should just stick with OGL instead of D3D.
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Pretty much all of them. ::shrugs::
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Good point. Half Life 2 has the ability to scale for the hardware, and while a 3GH machine with a DX9-class video card would certainly make the game look better, Valve has said that the game will be absolutely playable with the minimum requirements.
It's a smart move, too. Half Life's popularity was in part due to the fantastic "after market mods', but even those would have failed had the game not been playable on just about every hardware configuration.
Guess what he played the game on? Some crappy 8 or 16MB video card with all textures, details, resolution, and everything else all the way down. He had sound through what can only be described as a $2 pair of speakers, but they were enough for him to locate people (which was plain scary). The processor in the box wasn't anything spectacular either. He managed somewhere around 50-60 fps on that thing.
Quake 3 looks terrible at 640x480 with no detail, but it is perfectly playable. Heck, it's even fun multiplayer, because the gameplay is the same, it just isn't so pretty. But it doesn't have to be pretty to be fun. Pac-Man is fun and the graphics on that are terrible. I'm going to guess that Doom 3 will be perfectly playable on minimum specs as well, probably just not as pretty. Also, a $70 GeForce FX 5200 is a DX9 card last I checked. If you want the highest available resolution and textures and want the game for it's glitter then yes, you'll have to shell out cash for it.
That's the way its always been when you want the best right when it's released. I know people who bought a bunch of RAM to play Wolf 3D or Doom or whichever without windowing to a 3" box. You could, however play it in that 3" box. And those RAM upgrades were spendy. Sure, it helped the rest of the system, but when the box was games primarily and other things secondary it hardly matters. Cutting edge has always been expensive.
If not now, when?
486sx baby! They have just been optimizing the game for the last 5 years thats all ;)
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
HL2 and Doom3 are coming to Xbox which really shoots this conspiracy theory down. (Sure there will be ported differences).
You know the Microsoft destroys the night, Linux devides the day...
Does this mean I won't be able to play Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 at 1600*1200, AA and AS cranked up, while having Winamp play in the background, while burning a DVD, and hosting a Quake 3 Arena server? This is outrageous (sarcasm).
Considering "low end" PCs at the cost of roughly $500 come standard with 256 megs of RAM and at least 1 ghz of processor speed, plunk down an extra $100~200 (depending on where you look) for a good video card and you're good to go. You'll average about 25~40 FPS depending on the game assuming you have nothing major running in the background. A couple clicks at Pricewatch and you could build a mid-level gaming PC for under $1000.
We wouldn't be experiencing this if we weren't so "wowed" by graphics, instead of innovative gameplay. I like the original half-life because of the skeletal animation, and marine AI - not the graphics.
Unfortunately, Doom also hearlded a rush to create the latest and greatest in graphics. Now, with titles like Far-Cry out there. I no longer care to even see, much less play a new game just because it's "pretty".
I've been working on a 3D engine of my own for awhile. As of now, I'm tearing it down and rewriting it as a 2D isometric. No hardware upgrades necessary. There is no way in hell that I'm going to "upgrade" my expensive-ass GeForce FX 5200 w/128MB of memory, processor, or anything else - just so I *CAN* play a $50 game that isn't even bundled.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
I'm one of these few people who has a rather fast PC by today's standards. I also enjoy a good blast at Uneal Tournament 2004. Mind you, that game is pretty... but as for gameplay? I've pretty much seen it all before... so in a way I was a bit unimpressed by it. With internet gaming, buying that game really FEELS as if you've just joined a club of elite game players.... who all play this well-known video game. During the early Pentium years, there was NO WAY I could afford to shell out on a PC. I remember hearing about people who did and felt ripped off when their old 486 began to be obsolete. During those days, I was stuck with my trusty Commodore 64 (even until the mid 90's), which seemed to have a never-ending pile of fun games - and was also competant at producing printed essays for school and beyond. Didn't cost as much, but it was still fun in its own way.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
That does away with the last excuse to keep Windows around since some people say 'there aren't enough games on Linux'. Soon there won't be enough games on Windows either. Good riddance.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
i was just playing battlefield vietnam, and when a map would load, everyone in first would get to the tanks/planes/helis/apc etc.
this would end up and leaving nothing for the rest of the people who load the map slower because of older hardware.. thus feeding to the notion that (newer) games do cater to the elite..
I wasn't sure at the time, but after asking I learned that GF1 means `GeForce 1', the original GeForce card. None of those specifications are particularly hairy (by today's standards.) Or did things just change that much between last July and now?
Consoles are taking over gaming in a massive way. This is what let me finally switch to OS X, the complete lack of titles coming out on the PC (I can think of three this year that I might buy, two of which are coming out on consoles anyway, versus about 15-20 console games that I want). A couple of consoles will set you back the cost of a high end graphics card and open up a world of games that put gameplay on the same level of graphics (Quake 3 anyone? Didn't think so!).
Jeez, where do they find these guys to write these "insightful" computer articles these days? Wal-Mart? Computer gaming has always been a really expensive endeavor. I upgraded my computer every two years and it was really freakin' expensive to do so. Now, what cost me $3,000 every two years, now costs $1,500. But now, computer power is actually getting upstripped by the 3d cards. The new Nvidia chip has 222 million transitors! Prices have not changed much in the 3d accelerator department over the past 8 years. If you wanted the baddest 3DFX card it cost your almost $400, if not more. Now a card that is ifinintely more powerful costs just about the same. Gamers are gamers. I own all of the game systems and have a pretty powerful pc. If you build it (the games) they will come :)
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
Simple answer... no.
The pace of technological development and the advance of the minimum specifications has slowed to a fraction of what it was a few years ago. I used to figure on a 2 year cycle between buying a new PC and said PC becoming obsolete and unable to run the latest games. My current PC, a 2.0ghz P4, with 512 megs RDRAM and a GF4 Ti4200 is now 26 months and feels a long way from being obsolte. UT2004 runs like a dream in full-detail and even Farcry runs acceptably (for the most part) in full detail and 1024x768.
The great irony is that it's ID, who arguably do the most to drive specs forwards, who also seem to have done the most to hold them back over the last few years. The lazy, unthinking use of the Quake III engine by game developers, even for realism-based games where, to be frank, the engine just doesn't feel right, has basically held minimum specs pretty much static. The result of this is the current situation, where, by the mid-point of a console cycle, the PC has yet to demonstrate its technical superiority and is, as a result, losing ground to the consoles on pretty much every front.
Two years ago (ish) I bough a brand spankin' new athlon XP 1800, 512MB of RAM and a GeForce3 Ti200 video card. It ran every game like a dream, said system still runs the latest and greatest, and the GF3 only shows it's age with the games that really push things around (Far Cry, KoTOR, UT2k4, and the like, easily changed using lower detail levels).
I basically swapped hardware with a friend of mine a year ago when I was building a fileserver and needed a cord to run that, it was more economical to buy new, fast hardware than cheaper, slightly slower stuff. So i swapped his T'bird 1.3 with a Gforce2 (basically next to useless for anything but a HL or Q3 powered game) and got myself an XP2500, gig of RAM and GeForce4.
Said GeForce4 has been in service... 1.5 years now and is starting to show it's age with far cry and the like. The system upgrade was a bonus in my view, as the same performance can be achieved in both systems if the same card is used.
I will argue, however in today's world of software bloat, a gig of RAM is required for any serious gaming (performance is vastly improved, you can run a 2.0 Ghz/GeforceFX game box with 512M and something slower with 1GB will smoke it).
This machine has a gig, runs all games like a champ (mostly load time performance increases).
These days a GFX card is more important than the underlying system, as long as the system has 512MB or more, and 1.5G CPU and a decent video card, you can run almost everything, granted not in 'Holy Shit!' mode (to borrow a term from UT2k3 where if you pump all details to max the announcer goes 'Holy Shit') but they still run.
Everything out today will run on something going back to a GeForce2 or 3. These new cards are nothing more than the 2nd generation GeForce 3's, the uber powered GFX cards that run the latest and greatest. Considering a console is ~$300 + memory cards, controllers and games (~$40, ~$60, ~$70) versus a PC, which can be used for anything for ~$800.
To put it simply, a $1000-$1200 investment in a new box every two years ain't half bad ($50/mo), and ehen it's all over you have a half way decent box to reuse as a box for a non-gamer, file server, HTPC, etc, more or less for free. I've made up a file server, and a desktop linux test box out of old gaming boxes, past their prime for gaming, but they'll run forever as workhorses, so i wouldn't call them obsolite (hell, the linux desktopper can play anything HL or Q3 powered with it's radeon 7000).
Within 2-3 years, the new cards will be standard and the HL2 engine and its breatheren will take the place of the Q3 and HL1 engine as the dominant force behind gaming's latest. With these new engines, come a quantum leap that won't be seen again for another three years, so i'll just sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
First things first, if these two are the FIRST titles to need DirectX-9 Support, then why is a friend of mines machine, equiped with GeForce4 MX, unable to run Prince Of Persia 3D, among some other games? Why does, in its "readme" file state specifically that "the game has problem with this card because it doesn`t fully support DirectX 9"??? The problem rears its ugly head for the first time because it IS the first time in the whole PCs lifeline that a game might-not-work on your hardware and you won`t know it. The afformentioned guy didn`t have a way to know if the game supports his hardware, heck, he DID have a "recent card", didn`t he? And, for most newbies, it is waaaay harder to know what is the graphics card they own than "if they have a CD" (so as to play Myst, like someone mentioned before). Some years ago you knew that, to hear sound you need a soundcard. To play MYST you needed a CD-Rom. To play Overseer you needed a DVD-Rom... and so on. And, at all times, the processor wasn`t so important - yeah, it was, but not so much as it is today. Now, look at games like Farcry... Deus-Ex 2... Their minimum specs are a joke, but yes, you can turn down the graphics detail wich brings us to another point that was, again, mentioned before... The graphics. Nowadays, games are more about the "whoa!" factor, their best part, the reason you`ll choose a game from another being the graphics quality. Now, I got Farcry and tried to Run it on a Duron 1.3GHz with a Radeon 9600. I had to turn down the resolution. I had to turn down the details. I had to make it look WORSE than Thief, wich I`m playing right now, to be able to play it at a normal framerate. The underlying technology, with lush jungles and awesome lighting was there allright, but with pixels the size of my thumb, and on an Eizo 21'' it was quite appalling. Maybe, just maybe, someone, somewhere has to reconsider the way he makes games... And, the fourth and last part I want to make, is regarding Half-Life. Someone mentioned that "it didn`t have graphics", compared to other titles that were released then. Well, it actually HAD graphics, it didn`t have what is called "graphics technology". Half-Lifes graphics were the most realistic ever designed until then, and that`s not because of the textures, the lighting or anything, but because the level designers tried to recreate realistic offices, buildings, a world that could actually exist. It was the first time we weren`t moving in hell or some spaceships corridors but in a realistic building (and some other places), in the MESA complex. That`s the best part about the first Half-Life, and not the scripting, the AI, the graphics tech or something else. Just think of it: yeah, the AI was excellent, but if it WASN`T there, wouldn`t you again play the darn game? Was there anything even remotely similar to it for you to try? Nope... So yes, it did have "graphics" as far as I`m concerned, graphics that made me believe I was moving in the shoes of Freeman. Lelease Thamthon, the thirial athathin...
From the blurb:
"With the impending release of Valve's Half-Life 2 and id's Doom 3, we're looking at the first required hardware upgrade in gaming history..."
Uhhhh, no. While I'll buy that this does qualify as a de facto necessary hardware upgrade, the original Doom caused anyone interested to move from whatever they had -- likely a 486 -- to a Pentium chip. That's a whole new machine in case you're a young 'un.
Wolfenstein caused anyone without a clock doubler to quickly find out what the hell they were.
And I'm just warming up. First? Jeepers...
My
Limekiller
With the impending release of Valve's Half-Life 2 and id's Doom 3
I wouldn't hold my breath--it's probably less "impending" than the author thinks.
My PS2 has dozens of great titles (including the greatest of all time - GT) and I never have to crack the case of my PS2 to get it to run any of them. I opted out of that race a couple of years ago - too expensive/frustrating/time consuming.
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
About twelve weeks ago I purchased a new graphics card for my computer system. My system is almost exclusively built for gaming and includes a superb 5.1 surround system. I purchased a Radeon 9200 AGP video card which is the low end of the new cards. I was running a 32 meg Viper V770D which is a great card but didn't support the TNL (Texture and Lighting) one of the "newer" effects that hardware gives you. I had a couple of games that required this and I couldn't run so I purchased the new card with 128meg of ram expecting some pretty good performance increases.
To tell the truth other than getting the TNL support the Radeon 9200 was completely unimpressive. The Viper ran just as good with 32 meg of ram and was three years old. Anyways I downloaded the demo of "Far Cry" which, low and behold, happens to be the "first game of a series of new ones being released to take advantage of the new hardware" these games include the upcoming releases Half Life-2 and Doom-3 (yes they are coming out and very soon). Anyways this unknown german developer releases this Far Cry game so I download the demo and "I CAN'T RUN IT"..... ok fine something is wrong with the demo (lots of demos are trash and can't be ran by many systems).
I don't think much of it till about two weeks ago when I decide I want an even better video card and I put out some "serious cash" for a Radeon 9800 PRO 128meg 8xAGP card. Well I got the performance boost I suspected from a new video card and then some. This card has it's own fan on it and also requires not only power from the AGP slot but has to be connected directly to the power supply (preferably a 300watt one which fortunately is what I have).
Well after the new upgrade I decide to try Far Cry again and boy did it run! This game is the most impressive FPS graphically that I have ever seen! I can't even begin to describe how incredible this new technology is but suffice to say it's worth every bit of the 250 bucks it'll cost you for a good video card.
I have heard a lot of people on /. State that they can get into platform gaming a lot cheaper
than PC gaming. Let me fill you in on
something peeps, go check out game reviews like the one at www.gamespot.com for Star Wars Knights of
the Old Republic and others that are available on PC and platform systems
both. You will notice that not only do
the PC versions normally have extra content but also that they typically always
get the "HIGHEST MARKS" of any of the versions available.
You may pay a little more but if a truly great game comes out and the PC version has a little extra content and also the best graphics, sound and controls of all the versions then to me "it's worth every penny".
Jay Dale "If you're not living on the edge then you're taking up too much space!"
"If you stay contented with your existing machinery, their profits drop and the CEOs get fired" This guy obviously doesn't know what he is talking about. Once the profits drop, they fire all the engineers, outsource to india, and the CEO gets a $500k year bonus.
-Dipster
Warning, grumpy old man sounding stuff ahead!
I felt very depressed when I saw the results of that survey.
I was very disappointed to see what a huge majority had CPU's under 2.0 Ghz. My last *three* CPU's have all be over 2.0 Ghz! A CPU I bought over a year ago [new, for 60 UKP at the time] was over 2.0 Ghz! These are really tight people we are talking about IMO (I know 'causual' gamers don't want to upgrade so often, that's why there are consoles).
I have a P4 3.2 Ghz, Radeon 9800 Pro 256 MB, 2 GB DDR400 and 160 GB SATA RAID0 (dual 80 GB disks with 8 MB cache each). I have this largely for PlanetSide, which yes does use 256 MB texture memory and needs > 1 GB RAM to load the entire game without swapping and fully benifits from SATA + RAID given how many textures it needs to load, and it simply can't get enough CPU power (partly due to the quality - or otherwise- of the engine), but this is also greatly benificial in other games - SWG loved the avalible RAM so it could cache worlds without having to swap and FarCry is far better for the FSAA and high quality texture rendering too.
Some people argue (incredibly, as far as I'm concerned) 'FarCry plays okay on my 2500+ and Geforce 4 with 256 MB RAM' to which I would reply no, it doesn't it looks horrible playing it a 800x600 with low quality texture rending no FSAA and a jerky motion, and that it you should be playing *all* games with 4xFSAA in this day and age, and ideally at resolutions of 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 with resonable anisotropic filtering. It's not as if the difference is barely perceptible, it's HUGE, it's just that some people arn't willing to shell out new money and and try and cut it on 3 or 4 year old kit, which is not good enough and simply never has been for the latest games.
While developing content and graphic rich worlds is increasingly time consuming, if users at least hand decent and reasonably up to date systems (not +2 years out of date) developers would be a lot more free to experiment with relatively easy to impliment but high quality T&L bump mapping and particle effects, but I get the feeling the slow speed of upgrades (largely though the lack of any compelling new games such as Doom 3 or HL 2) is holding up progress in the overall level of detail and eyecandy developers can build in. I thought Unreal 2 did a superb job though, running at 1900x1200, at full detail, without batting an eyelid, so hats of to Epic for a spectacular engine.
Going OT from this particular thread (but staying with the main topic...). I actually avoided the PS2 completely as a console.
I have [had - gave away now, after the diappointing Mario Sunshine and a lack of subsequent unique titles] a GameCube (which I got largely for Rouge Squadron and the aforementioned Mario Sunshine) and still have an XBox, my last console before that was a Dreamcast. I simply thought the PS2 was piss poor when it was released and the much older Dreamcast was arguably superior. It was certainly a lot easier to develop for than the much more complex PS2, which lead to better games and shorter development cyles. Because of how disappointed I was when I saw the very mediocre hardware the PS2 had, I avoided it in disgust.
I think the only reason the PS2 has been so sucessful has been of the back of the orional PlayStation. The XBox is the best designed console ever IMO (Hard Disk, DVD, Ethernet, easy to develop for, and even something as simple as excellent Joypads, just like the Dreamcast, ignoring what some say about them for longer play sessions they are superb, even if 'small children' don't like them), and this is made all the more impressive as it's Microsoft's first console. Being Microsofts attempt to leverage dominance in the home, I had planned to avoid it, but it was just too perfect, it's just too bad it doesn't have the same level of developer support, I haven't bought a game for it in over a year, KOTOR being the only thing that struck me, and I'd rather play that on the PC being the type of game it was (and I was willing to wait a little while).
When I first bought Dark Age of Camelot, it ran fine on my laptop, but it sat back and laughed at my voodoo3-clad desktop PC. I tried playing it, but at a rate of one frame every second or so in some of the more built up areas, it must have been pretty entertaining for other players watching me staggering into walls, and taking several attempts to open a door and walk through it.
SWG is even more severe. It refuses to run at all on any machine whose graphics card does not support hardware transform and lighting. This ruled my laptop out completely. New pc buyers beware, as I believe that the integrated Intel graphics chipsets sold in many a new budget pc will be found lacking...
You're a serious graphics fan!?
I'm probably a grumpier and older man than you, but I play at high resolution for about 30 minutes in any given game -- just when I've bought it.
Then I see how I can change the configuration so the good graphics isn't in the way of my main purpose of gaming -- murdering my friends!
I almost never play oneplayer games anymore. Being an asocial nerd, that is my favored social interaction. :-)
For instance, I think BZFlag is wonderful -- but you shouldn't download it, since you'd mutter about "pong" clone... :-)
(The problem with BZFlag is the amount of cheating that seems to be going on.)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
"If everybody turns to an Xbox or a PlayStation for entertainment, who's going to need new PC equipment?"
People who want to play Half-Life 2 and Doom 3.
Wanted. Heavily blinkered simian for creation of near fictional articles about PC gaming and the hardware market. Unbiased experience of PC gaming history is absolutely not required. The ability to dress ill-founded assumptions as fact would be an advantage. The successful candidate will be expected to select paradigm examples from a list of near release games, research all that has been written about these games by the developers and publishers, and finally disregard anything and everything they may have learned. (End "Im sick of reading cruddily researched articles" rant)
Both of these games from both of these studios aren't meant just to be a game. Their basically graphic demoes for their engines. They have to have high requirements because they will be at the vanguard of the next generation of games. Just like Quake 3 was pretty but sorta bland, but it becamse the heart of dozens of fun games. Half life was cool bit it powered dozens more games. They aim high so when those who licence their engine come out with games, the sweet spot for the hardware market has caught up. I doubt D3 of HL2 will offer anything to justify the cost of hardware but when "Counter strike 3" and "No One Lives Forever 4" and "deus EX: we found a new director and script writer" show up, they will justify the expenditure.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
What? Is your post just "I'm so rich and into PCs"? A CPU under 2 ghz will run all modern games without any trouble with a good gfx card. So why are users that don't need to upgrade and aren't "tight"? Perhaps just pragmatic?
Yes, but if you were one of the people who bought the PS1, then when the PS2 came out and started eating up the gamespace you would need to upgrade.
Also, if you look at the visual difference between a PS2 and a PS1... noticably better.
Newer video cards are about the same for me, depending. Many of the new FPS games are beautiful to play, with tree and scenery looking very realistic.
Personally, as both a gamer and somebody who appreciates the increasing visual depth of games/entertainment, I look forward to new games pushing the edges of what the current technology can do.
Remember, older and mid-level for PC's is a fast sliding slope, worse even than cars, etc.
Your "mid-level" PC is actually defined by the high-range... it's safer to say "average PC" as many people are behind the "mid-level" as far as the capabilities of the tech itself.
Yeah, uh-huh. Small children and small adults, like, for example... many women.
My boyfriend has some fancy controllers for his PS2, and I used to wonder why my hands would feel strained after playing with one of them for a couple of hours. After all, I was just fine using a Dualshock. Then one day I realised that his big-ass controllers were just too big for my smaller hands. (I'm 5'5", he's 6'4"; you can imagine the hand size difference.) It was fine if I just used the sticks and the face buttons, but to use the L and R buttons I had to keep my fingers tensed and curled awkwardly, whereas on the smaller stock controller I could wrap my fingers around the back properly.
Thus, getting rid of things like the gigantic, awkward controller that the Xbox first shipped with isn't just catering to the small children you apparently don't want intruding on your grown-up game world, but rather opening up the system to anyone who isn't a hulking North American teenaged+ male*.
*Now, whether that's something the U.S. game industry wants to do is a question for another time. :-)
You're a serious graphics fan!?
:)
I admit fully to being a Mac OS X using eyecandy addicted shallow SOB (though I'm obsessive about the game play too), I'm not a framerate or stats junkie, I play with vertical sync on (I'm not fussed about framerate, if it's over 70 FPS I can't see it, and if it's above 50 I won't mind, if it's below 30 I will likely get annoyed through the game away in disgust *glares at SWG*).
I don't actually mind playing with simplified (e.g. 2D graphics) at all, but I feel personally hoodwinked whey I buy a big industry game with bad 3D texture maps that don't line up or - for example - 'naff' engines like Halo PC that don't support FSAA (resulting in horrible jagged edges ew!). The engine in SWG, while looking great in still screen shots, is what put me off playing - even though it's an RPG - because it's so sub par in practice, compared to a professional commercial FPS engine (in SWG on full detail, the terrain deformed distractingly in front of me whenever I moved, player buildings visibly clipped in and out of view, all players, vehicles, NPC's and furniture was 'noclip'able).
Lineage's 2's use of the Unreal Engine was nice, but game mechanics aside, it's just not quite smooth enough for me to feel comfortable playing it for long periods of time, the jerkyness would just get on my nerves, reguardless of the game play (I'm slightly ashmed to admit).
I'm probably a grumpier and older man than you,
Probably, I am not really that old, and not what I would call *overly* gumpy, just sometimes, and mostly about things I am obsessive about.
(I think I am getting older and grumpier however, I'm fairly positive about the former at least.)
A CPU under 2 ghz will run all modern games without any trouble with a good gfx card.
I disagree and cite, PlanetSide, and even the less demanding BF:Vietnam, Halo or FarCry as evidence. Even at 800x600 with the detail cranked down these games will not run what I would consider 'well' on a 32-bit Intel or AMD CPU under 2.0 Ghz (having tried them on a 1.8 Ghz AMD with 1 GB DDR and a Radeon 9700 Pro 128 and a P3 2.4 Ghz with 2 GB DDR and Radeon 9800 Pro 256 - previous systems I have had).
If you have less than than an AMD 2500+ or less than a P4 2.0 Ghz PlanetSide will laugh at you and spit down your neck as it tries to draw 200+ people and vehicles on screen at once. Your FPS will die horribly (that's a LOT of client side physics and high quality pologon models to shift about). Even if you have an AMD 3200+ XP or P4 3.2 Ghz it will merely 'get on with it grudingly'.
If you try and play it with less than 256 Video Memory you can forget about using the full high res textures.
If you try and play it with less than 1.2 GB RAM it will swap (at annoying intervals).
Admittedly it's the single the most demanding FPS game in the world, but it's a year old.
So why are users that don't need to upgrade and aren't "tight"? Perhaps just pragmatic?
You say 'pragmatic', I say crap frame rate and they are being tightwads. I have watched people play games like PlanetSide as if it were a slideshow and gawped in amazement, when for the cost of a meal for two they could have some reasonably up-to-date (relased in the last 2 years) graphics card. I have found that people simply have no idea how games can and should look, they have low expectations (but are wowed when they see them running with 4xFSAA at 1600x1200 and almost all immediately feel the urge to upgrade once they have seen what they are missing out on).
The amount we are talking for reasonable equipment is peanuts. If a user doesn't consider at least 40 UKP throwaway money to spend on a CPU once every 12 months they should stick firmly away from PC gaming as they really can't aford it. PC gaming is an expensive business and always has been. I avoided PC gaming for several years (left it 1999 for a Dreamcast due the expense I couldn't afford, and only got back into it in 2003, as I know I'm seriously able to afford the equipment required). It's simply an expensive business, and people should just be aware of that, rather than pretending that there system runs fine, even though they haven't upgraded it in 4 years (or more typically 2, but it wasn't even near top of the line then).
Caution: More grumpy gamer rantings!
Yeah, uh-huh. Small children and small adults, like, for example... many women.
I disagree completely, and think it was just consumers meeting with a design they were less familer with and so pronuncing instant rejection. People (IMO) were trying to hold it like it was a PS One or PS 2 controller, or a SNES or Genisis controller of old, and when they try to position their hands that way, they fail because it's not that sort of controller at all.
I genuninely have small hands too, but I know what a delight the design is having had a Dreamcast, who's controller was equally great - it's controller was what the X-Box's was modeled on. When I saw the X-Box controller I was very impressed because the true uncompomising quality and attention to the finer points of gaming, from the controller it was clear to me they really understood what makes a great gaming console, and hadn't compromised to preconceived western ideas about 'what a controller should look like'.
The joypads of both consoles were designed by gaming experts, with the specific purpose at being supreme for playing games. It's all in the way you hold it. Both the Dreamcast and X-Box are desgined to be far superior for long term usage. The trick is not to try and 'control' the controler, as you do with a smaller PS2 controller, but to 'operate it', and (now I start to sound crazy) become one with it, it's zen feeling to be at one with the more powful origional (and deliberate) design.
Trying to aggressively dominate it like a Dual Shock will only result in not being able to reach the buttons. Being kind to the controller and not being aggressive (something many find hard to do with an appliance) is they key to the zen that is the the X-Box (and Dreamcast) controllers. Most people just go on hearsay and immediately by the S controller without trying the origional, that is a shame, and I firmly believe it is their loss. This wasn't helped buy stores who's sales staff *told* people it had a bad controller, so they could sell them an S Type, the rotten weasles.
I made sure to relate all this to the sales clerk when he tried to foist two S Type controllers on me when I bought my X-Box ('Are you sure you want the larger one sir?'). The heathens!
The person that capitulated to the demands of the unwashed masses and foisted the lothesum and unhappy compromise that is the S controller should be tarred and feathered, the big spineless coward. I just knooow it was some slick jock in a suit too (the kind who's never played a video game in his life).
Not that I'm crazy or anything.
I may start a home for all these rejected, unwanted and unloved controllers. They will be recognised for their true greatness one day, you'll see! You'll all see! They will be rare collectors items and I will be rich, rich I tell you!
"With the impending release of Valve's Half-Life 2 and id's Doom 3...
Impending release? Please, hopefully these games will get released this year. Unless both their source codes are stolen.
Personally I think its about how often you have to upgrade. I did a major upgrade just over two years ago, since then I have fairly recently upgraded m/board, CPU, and now gfx. So I went two years between major upgrades and I think that that worked out fine for me. I think it's a shame that PC gaming requires such fast paced upgrades of systems but I realise the benefits that come from it. But maybe I'll post again and agree with you entirely once Ive seen the new gfx ;)
I would be happy to see the wussies go ;)
I'm a software engineer, so I tend to want pretty beefy parts in my machine, especially on the processor and RAM side. However, I played for a long time (a couple years) with a GForce2 card, with the res dropped as low as I could go and the details all but shut off. I have about a half-dozen PCs that are all in one state of upgrade or another, but my main gaming box is a pretty cheap Celeron 2.7, with 512 MB and an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro. It does everything I need, but I always thirst for the next best thing, and I inevitably end up building a new box every year or so. I'm due for a new one next spring, fwiw. I freely admit to having a hardware addiction, but I'm taking it one day at time.
I don't play consoles because I don't like the controllers, I don't think the graphics are all that great, you can't upgrade them and I don't like most of the the titles. Things like Super Mario XXVII or Street-fighter-game-of-the-week just don't float my boat. Almost all console games just lack the complexity to get me interested. Where I've seen PC ports of console games, they just don't hold a candle to games written for the PC. Halo feels that way to me, but I'm sure that others might disagree. To flip that around, if you tried to port PC-native RTS titles like Rise of Nations, Empire Earth, or Age of Empires to a console, they'd stink. The PC is the premier platform for a rich, fast, complex, attractive gaming experience... and yeah, you have to pay for that, but you can nurse old hardware along for quite awhile.
I think the main beef I have with PC games lately isn't about the hardware that I inevitably buy, but the really stangnant quality of the stories and the less-than-immersive quality of the gameplay. I am almost completely tired of the fantasy RPG, not because I haven't had fun with them in the past, but because they're pretty much all the same, these days -- the character classes are all the same, the races are all the same, the gameplay follows this same old kill-stuff-gain-skill-get-treasure-get-items-solve -puzzle-kill-boss-monster-do-it-again line. Neverwinter Nights, for example, looks great with fine hardware, but I just can't stand playing it, no matter how good it looks.
Oddly enough, titles like Call of Duty, which has got this great, detailed, immersive world to play in, gives me tons of replay value. I play a sesh at work on my lunch hour, where my machine is a pokey Celeron 2.0 with a $75 GeForceMX440 card, and it looks and plays just fine.
Anyhow, to sum up, as someone who likes hardware, likes the PC as a gaming platform, and as someone who just can't stand consoles, I take the hardware upgrade question as just another part of owning PCs. I think Carmack said awhile back that we're reaching the point where there will be fewer and fewer new graphics engines being created, and since new hardware specs are often updated when a new engine comes out, I'd expect a $300 graphics card you buy today to have a much longer useful lifespan than a similarly-priced card would have had five years ago. My Two Cents
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R