AMD Tightens Bonds With Game Developers

J. Dzhugashvili writes "Nvidia 'The Way It's Meant To Be Played' splash screens are all over major PC games. AMD's developer relations program used to be a much lower-profile affair, but that's changed recently. New and upcoming games like Sleeping Dogs, Dishonored, Medal of Honor Warfighter, Far Cry 3, BioShock Infinite, and the Tomb Raider reboot are all part of AMD's Gaming Evolved program. As it turns out, that's because AMD's new executive team is more keen on gaming than their predecessors, and they've poured more money into the initiative. The result: closer relationships between AMD and game developers/publishers, better support for Radeon-specific features in new titles, and juicy game bundle offers."

Comments

I just don't want to know

[Chrisq]

AMD Tightens Bonds With Game Developers

Keep your kinky S&M stuff to yourself please.

Re:I just don't want to know

[Baloroth]

AMD's graphics drivers look like a pile of shit compared to nVIDIA because Nvidia pays game devs to make their bugs and workarounds look like features

FTFY

Splash screen are evil

[ciderbrew]

The Splash screens are annoying and overly loud. Just select game .. play game. No other steps required. All menus to accessible from within the game. Stop holding up my SSD with other crap.

Re:Splash screen are evil

[blackicye]

Anything that makes Catalyst less bad is probably good. Can't have Nvidia dominating the market alone.

Re:Splash screen are evil

[Ash Vince]

The Splash screens are annoying and overly loud. Just select game .. play game. No other steps required. All menus to accessible from within the game. Stop holding up my SSD with other crap.

The problem is that the people actually develop games nowadays are often not the people who own the licence to the franchise.

So you have a small development house who want their company logo to feature prominently in the game so they make a name for themselves. Thats one splash screen added to the startup sequence.

Then you have nvidia or ati who need to provide a sample of their upcomming cards or drivers to the development house. They want to charge a fortune for this since these pre-production jobs are damn expensive to produce. If you are producing a game for a well known franchise though that is guaranteed to sell a few copies even if it is utter shit (people are sheeple after all) then you can ask for a discount on your development samples or get them free if you are willing to jump into bed with one of them exclusively, that's another slash screen that cant be skipped (allowing a user to skip it would probably be breach of contract)

Then you have the huge company that bought the franchise. They definitely get to slap a splash screen on the front since they effectively "own" the product.

Then, there is you. You get no choice in the matter as you are only the consumer. You might be annoyed by the extra few seconds you have to wait while these splash screens all show but unless you are annoyed enough to not purchase the game in the first place or boycott all their titles in future then your opinion is worthless.

Thus endeth today's lesson from the course Capitalism 101.

Re:Splash screen are evil

[Joce640k]

Quite often you can just look for the movie files in the game folder and delete them.

I hate splash screens

[sapphire wyvern]

I was very pleased to find that in both Borderlands 2 and XCOM Enemy Unknown, the super-annoying splash screens can all be disabled with a little light editing of .ini files in your user profile.

I hate those things, especially when the game developer doesn't let you skip them. (Borderlands 1, I'm looking at you. Ugh.)

But once I've seen them once, I don't need to ever see them again... so commenting out the StartupMovies lines in the .ini files is a lovely feature.

Re:I hate splash screens

[A Friendly Troll]

I was very pleased to find that in both Borderlands 2 and XCOM Enemy Unknown, the super-annoying splash screens can all be disabled with a little light editing of .ini files in your user profile.

I hate those things, especially when the game developer doesn't let you skip them. (Borderlands 1, I'm looking at you. Ugh.)

Hello,

I picked up Borderlands 1 recenly, and there are two ways to disable the startup movies. The first is to edit an ini file if you have the Steam version, and the second is to add the "-nomoviestartup" parameter to the executable shortcut.

Re:I hate splash screens

[A Friendly Troll]

It's best if you watched some playthroughs on YouTube. Or TotalBiscuit's WTF on the game. Looks fun, but XCOM it is most definitely not.

That said... Xenonauts is probably what both you and I are waiting for.

Re:I hate splash screens

[sapphire wyvern]

Well...

It's not exactly the same game as the original XCOM, in the same way that Civ IV and Civ V are significantly different games from Civ I and Civ II (Civ II isn't really very different from Civ I). But in my opinion, it is actually a better piece of game design, particularly in the tactical combat mode. I actually think it is the best all-round XCOM game yet.

The tactical combat mode is probably where most of the significant changes occur. I would say it now is somewhat more boardgamey than the original XCOM. I don't have a problem with that but I can see where some people would find it off-putting. Instead of time units, you get two actions per turn. You can use both to make a single long move from one position to another, or spend one action to move and then use the other action to do something else. The most common choices for "something else" are firing a weapon, using an item such as a grenade or medpack, going on overwatch, and re-loading. Doing anything other than moving will generally end your turn, even if you do it with your first action.

The inventory is very much "streamlined" over the original XCOM. Soldiers get a main weapon (largely determined by what type of soldier they are, combined with what research you've completed), a pistol, and one inventory slot for an item that grants passive bonuses or a limited-use special ability (eg throw grenade). All soldiers carry a "sufficient" (ie unlimited) number of reloads for their primary weapon, but reloading ends your turn, which denies you the opportunity to overwatch or attack - so ammo management is hugely important tactically. Ensuring that you don't exhaust your ammo for everyone in the team at once is much more important than in the original games.

If you've played a d20-based tabletop RPG sometime in the last 15 years, it's fairly similar in its general mechanics. Like a tabletop RPG, all these basic combat mechanics get elaborated on by a class-based advancement system for the soldiers. Instead of just getting bonus APs, stamina and accuracy, soldiers now get perks as they advance which modify the main tactical combat rules. For example, heavy weapons experts can easily get an ability that makes it so that firing their main weapon as the first action no longer ends the turn - so they can fire and then move, or fire twice, or fire and reload, or fire and overwatch. The close-in "Assault" class starts with an ability that allows them to move twice and then attack in the same turn.

Another limitation is that most soldiers can only attack enemies they can see themselves. (Snipers can optionally be given the ability to *either* move and fire, *or* attack enemies that other squad members can see but can't see themselves. This is a really hard choice to make.)

Cover is hugely, hugely important in the tactical play. It provides *large* penalties to the hit chance of attacks, but more importantly, attacks against someone who is *not* in cover are extremely likely to score a critical hit, which does a lot more damage. Since cover is relative to attacker & defender positioning, it's very important to cover your flanks and be aware of possible avenues for attack. This makes the move & attack abilities, or the later-game stealth abilities, very useful. It also enables some interesting tactics. For example, grenades don't do a terribly large amount of damage, and might seem very inefficient for actually killing enemies. But as well as being an area of effect attack, they also destroy cover. So if you can maneuver a soldier into grenade range of a bunch of aliens who are hiding behind good cover, you can destroy the cover with the grenade and then mow down the now-exposed aliens with your other soldiers. Unlike the original game, XCOM Enemy Unknown is actually very good at telling you what cover your soldiers will have if they move to various positions. But cover is positional and directional, so if an alien outflanks your soldiers' positions, the cover will be useless.

So the tactical combat is in many ways les

Re:100 lines of code vs 10

[RaceProUK]

DirectX is still more powerful

Because of the heavy Windows bias in gaming. If Linux gaming takes off, then NVidia, AMD and Intel will have to improve OpenGL support.

Oh great

[DrXym]

Does that mean that in addition to enduring stupid unskippable Nvidia clips playing when games start we can look forward to the same from AMD?

Re:The way NVidia does it

[citizenr]

Nvidia gives out bribe^^^^marketing budget for 'The Way It's Meant To Be Played' splash screen. They pay you money for adding that splash and tying your product to some retarded nvidia only library (usually physx).
There was a time Nvidia paid for removing features that worked better on AMD (Assassin's Creed DirectX 10.1). Nowadays they just force you to run their unoptimized DLL.

Almost forgot. Its even worse on Tablets. Nvidia has a big bribe^^^^marketing campaign that pays developers for locking their games into Tegra platform. They dont add extra features, there is a check in startup code you add to get your brib^^marketing budget. There are even patches that liberate games from this restriction.

Re:100 lines of code vs 10

[war4peace]

Isn't it, like... quite the other way around?

"If NVidia, AMD and Intel will improve OpenGL support, then Linux gaming takes off" - that's the correct statement.

Re:100 lines of code vs 10

[drinkypoo]

So you have a choice, either more power with DirectX or ease of use / versatility with OpenGL.

False dichotomy. You also have the option to use all of DirectX except Direct3D, and to use OpenGL for graphics. You can achieve the use of DirectX by using SDL, which will also use the corresponding libraries on Linux. Things get a little sketchy when you get to touch screens, though, which are not well-supported.

Re:Slashvertising

[rcoxdav]

I guess you have not been looking at any reviews for the 7000 series then. The 7000 series cards are not winning on performance/watt except on OpenCL now, but are better for the performance/cost in every level. Check out Toms Hardware Best Graphics Card for the Money for this month, and pretty much the past couple of years, and AMD comes out on top in almost every category. Also, there are generally no Radeon specific features such as PhysX, but that is because Nvidia owns PhysX. And, as far as absolute performance in all categories except the very top ($400 plus range), AMD quite often is higher than Nvidia. Compare the Radeon 7850 to the similarly priced and recently release 650 ti. Take off your green colored glasses and take a look at what the current video card situation is.

Re:Drivers?

[Ash Vince]

Wake me up when their linux drivers work as well as nvidia's please :)

Please leave slashdot immediately.

ATI have opened the specs on their card up so are clearly the better product. Nvidia are mean, secretive and nasty so you must therefore hate them, drawing any attention to them having actually produced a better working product (ie- including software bit) under Linux immediately forfeits your geek card and hence all slashdot posting rights. :-)

Re:100 lines of code vs 10

[lightknight]

Hmm. Last I checked, they were about the same in performance. Have things changed?

Re:Jesus Christ

[lightknight]

And even more interesting is how many of the big name acquisitions / mergers of the past five years have been complete miscalculations. Company A acquires / merges with Company B, issues some blurb about how it's synergistic, stock price rises a quarter (as in $0.25), wait two years, Company A is bankrupt / driven into the ground. It's only because it seems to be happening so often these days that I have noticed it.

I must be from the old school of thought, where acquiring / merging meant increasing the company's capacity / lowering long-term costs. Nowadays, you can't even be sure an IPO will not be the high-water mark of a business. A decade ago? Investors made out when the company went IPO. Today? Investors make out only if they sell before the IPO. Me thinks something is broken, and getting worse. I hear a distinct rattling / grinding noise that I am fairly certain shouldn't be there.

Re:Slashvertising

[Ironhandx]

The current video card situation is as it has always been with the exception of a few generations (4000-6000 series) where Ati just had nvidia completely on the ropes.

Nvidia wastes shitloads of money designing something that can win the crown for performance with a 40-60% yield from factories plus needs to get clocked down so far to get higher yields for cheaper cards that they lose on every other level, and ATI designs a solid platform that wins on every other level and still gets 90%+ yield for their top cards. Its what makes ATI profitable. ATI also tends to be first-to market with next-gen GPUs for the last few years and as such takes the crown for awhile for enthusiasts. Plus a lot of enthusiasts know that the next-amazing-thing from Nvidia will only claim the crown by 2-5% at most so they get the latest and greatest from ATI, overall they spend more time with the fastest system available.