The company I work for has a tendency to use 'Engineering Associate' as the tail end of a title that might normally end in 'Engineer'. In most states it keeps them from having too many problems with making sure people have all of their licensing and whatever else they might have to do.
In the rare cases where they hire someone on because they have the licensing and schooling for the title, though, they certainly do use the title as long as what they want to pay them is within the pay requirements for the title.
Personally, I'd much rather pay more per channel if I could choose what channels I received. Of course, as you and others have described it, it's unlikely this will happen unless the networks bypass the cable industry and sell direct to the consumers. Even then, it's unlikely they'll offer anything on a channel-by-channel basis.
At least when I get 7 channels of HBO, once in a while one of those 6 other channels is worth watching. I have 20-something music channels I never watch, 10 or so local channels I never watch, and ~100 random cable channels I never watch. Then there are maybe 2 channels my cable provider doesn't carry that I would like to have, but probably wouldn't watch much (but still more than the 100 random channels I never watch).
Something else to think about: I lived in San Diego for most of my life, and for a while Cox carried MTV Latina on the extended cable (or whatever it's called, regular cable but more channels than basic cable). At some point they decided to remove it, and they released a statement saying that they polled their spanish-speaking customers and found that most would prefer some other channel to MTV Latina. Here's the bad part: I don't speak a bit of spanish, but watched MTV Latina much more than I did MTV US (and more than a lot of other channels), but since they decided to run a spanish soap opera channel or some crap instead, and only felt the need to ask their spanish-speaking customers what they wanted, I had one less channel to watch. Great fun. (Just a quick note regarding MTV in foreign markets, there are numerous music shows cancelled or never broadcast in the US that still have foreign-language equivalents that run in Latin America and Europe, and MTV Latina (not sure about Europe and other markets) also carried clips from shows in other markets. In other words, I liked MTV Latina because they played music I listen to, rather than the constant heavy rotation of pop. It also introduced me to spanish-language bands that I may never have heard of otherwise, in genres that I'm already fairly familiar with. They also played videos that were banned by MTV US for non-obvious reasons (ie Carcass, Morbid Angel, and Fear Factory videos)).
It's a sad state of gaming... few people I know would give GTA1 a serious chance when it game out. A few close friends I would play it all hours of the night. But no, you have to put it into 3D before many people will give it a chance. I guess that's a slightly off-topic rant, but it's true.
The biggest difference, imo, is the time limit. GTA1 only allowed you so much time to get through the missions, so unless you cheated or managed to extend your time a great deal through completing missions quickly, you had to continue in a very mission-based, somewhat linear fashion. Once you remove that limit, the game feels much more open simply because you have time on your hands to explore and get a better feel for the city in which you're playing this game. The next mission doesn't really matter because you can walk around, grab a car, do almost whatever you want to without worrying about that time limit running out.
I really don't think there are many examples of truly open experiences in games. This makes the exclusivity pretty much nill. On the other hand, what people really want seems to be more of the mixture anyway; freedom to do what you want, but a story that moves the game along. Even though writing the story can be a very small part of the process (compared to getting all of the artwork together, implementing the story in the engine, and creating the engine itself), it can also be very central to a game's success. GTA3/VC worked well because it was open-ended, but I don't think many would've cared as much for it if it didn't give you something to do to progress the story.
People start up a new game and want to know what they should be doing. Exploration may come a little further into the game, as they become bored with a particular task or as they learn the controls and see what else there is around them. However, if there isn't a story or an explanation, the first thing they'll say is 'now what?', and some may be turned off by not having a defined goal that they can accomplish easily at the start to get them familiar with the mechanics.
All of this being said, I appreciate linear games for different reasons from the more open-ended games. A well-told story and/or a challenging game can make up for the loss of freedom in the game. I also see a large difference between say KOTOR and GTA3 in terms of the open-ended experience. KOTOR usually feels like it's on rails when I play through it, even though I can do things differently that will change the story. GTA3, on the other hand, tends to feel wide open in terms of gameplay, but the story tends to feel constrained at certain points (ie eventually you do have to complete this racing mission to move on, even though there are other missions you can complete right now). The gameplay in one feels more scripted even though I have a lot of options, while GTA3 just loops through it's reality until you get around to completing the missions. Then again, maybe that's just because of the way I play the two games: I tend to get bored with the missions in GTA and start amusing myself by interacting with the world, whereas in KOTOR I tend to work harder at completing the missions at hand, and only spend a lot of time wandering around when it's central to completing one of those missions (on a side-note, I have noticed that a couple of missions have endings that aren't handled very well by the game, ie people act like they're still waiting for you to find people you've already found, even though they took part in the final portion of the mission).
Games that are more open in their story can be more rewarding for people that play through a game multiple times. On the other hand, a more linear game can add richness to the story that currently isn't found in many open-ended games. Also, there's something to be said for seeing the conclusion of a story well-told (though even many of the open-ended games have endings).
For infinite replayability I tend more towards multiplayer games anyway, because players are less predictable and there's almost always somewhere to improve your skills. At the same time, this usually provides little story, and sometimes that's all I want when I sit down to play a game. Even a game that is little more than an interactive movie can at least allow me to suspend disbelief and allow me to occasionally feel like I am pushing the story forward, which a normal movie rarely (if ever) can do.
(come to think of it, I read rumors somewhere that FF7 is being redone in fact for the PS2).
hmm... from what I read, there's a possibility of a sequel (like FFX-2) to FF7 for PS2 or a later console, but redoing FF7 for the PS2 when it's still widely available as a PS1 game doesn't seem to make much sense.
Assuming that a game is developed (or at least ported) with the controller in mind:
x b A y
A is obviously larger, being the most important button, the one you're going to use the most, and where your thumb naturally rests. b acts like a cancel button or usually does a 'destructive' action. x and y are only used occasionally, but are still nearby and easy to get to. The buttons aren't really meant to be used in combination, but can be (though the best combinations will always be A with another button or a trigger with any button).
Given z's placement, it's rarely used for anything important, it almost seems like an after-thought.
I'm also still not sure why they got rid of the 'select' button.
The D-pad isn't meant to be used to control movement, but rather to navigate menus. It works very well as a 4-directional controller, but not for much else. Could be bigger (at least on the Wavebird, I have never used any other controller on my GC, and only used someone else's GC for about an hour before I decided to buy one myself).
As for the Z button's placement being counter-intuitive, I'm not sure about that. The triggers are in a very intuitive spot, and the Z button, the after-thought that it seems to be, is simply right above the R trigger. It's fairly easy to get to, but does require repositioning of the right index finger (hence it's use is usually more like the use of the Select button on the older Nintendo controllers when in-game, though it's pretty much not used in menus).
Actually, now that I think about it a bit more, the D-pad often takes the place of the select button in menus, giving you a bit more control while still performing the same function.
In any case, the GC controller bothered me for a little while, but after playing a few games I found that the layout works much better in terms of knowing where things are without checking the controller or hitting the wrong button. I would say that the Wavebird could use a slightly better outward angle on the grips, but most of the time I don't notice a problem (unlike, say, the DC controller which gave me all kinds of problems, though the 3rd party controller I bought for the DC has a sticky trigger).
The PSX controller is the only one I still use a D-pad on, and that's just because the analog stick is less responsive (than the others) and in a really bad position.
The biggest problems with the GC controller seem to be with multi-console games that don't really seem to have taken the controller into account. This is one of the reasons why I buy most of my multi-console games for the XBox, I've got plenty of good titles for the GC without having to deal with people not thinking their ports through, whereas I've got 2 titles on the XBox that I really consider great titles that I can't get somewhere else.
Or you could just buy a USB converter for the PS1/2 control pads...
Now that's something I might like to build just for fun, but hacking the end off a controller's cable just doesn't do it for me unless the controller is for a system I no longer have.
I might be wrong, but most of these people seem to be involved in PC game development. Fighting games have almost no market on the PC, and any influence they might have outside their own genre generally shows up in other console or arcade games before having influence in PC games.
That being said, the whole Virtua series of games using the same engine could be pointed to as a fighting game having influence outside it's own genre (especially with Shenmue), and I think in the future we may see fighting games having more (though subtle) influence.
FPS: Doom II, Hexen: The graphics and handling put these ahead of Wolfenstein, but their perspective (no up/down) makes them easier to control than newer games. Again, the choice of someone who doesn't play games enough to go pro.
Just a note: Hexen had the look up/down features, as did it's predecessor, Heretic. It just wasn't needed very often. Hexen is actually the game I spent most of my time on when Duke3D came out, and why I didn't really play Duke3D until after I had played through Quake's single player (and subsequently, my first network games were WarCraft2, Duke3D, Quake, Heretic, and Doom, all when I was in my first year of college and we were stringing cables between dorm rooms (and sometimes in and out of windows) to get better connections).
umm, since the Sims and a handful of other nearly current games made the list, I think it's simply because Homeworld hasn't really inspired any game developers.
The reason is fairly simple: the mechanics of Homeworld don't have a very universal application. Super Mario Bros. and Mario64 got numerous mentions because they were popular games that showed what could be done with their respective game types (2d-sidescrolling and 3d platformers). Warcraft 2 got mentions because it brought story and character to RTS games. Dune2/C&C got mention because it started RTS games.
Homeworld, while a great game with beautiful graphics and sound and a great control system, is pretty much in a genre all it's own, and there's not much for game designers/developers to learn from it. We can have 20 million RTS games in space, but first people have to find something compelling that Homeworld did not already do, or that wouldn't be better handled as a game like Wing Commander or Descent: Freespace (another game w/ awesome graphics, sound, and controls imo but in a genre that just wasn't a big deal for people any more).
RTS games are still mostly dominated by C&C and WarCraft (and StarCraft), not only because the stories to be told this way are mostly derivative of those 3 themes (fantasy, semi-realistic, sci-fi), but because there isn't much that these games got wrong. I loved Dark Reign and Total Annihilation, but StarCraft still does it better (oh, and Dark Reign on a P2-400 ran in super-hyper-speed mode, watch the AI annihilate you before you can move on a new computer) in many ways.
With Homeworld, what are you going to do? Give it a better story, maybe make a game based underwater or something? Tack a more conventional RTS game onto it and allow transition from space-based combat to land/air/sea battles...
Maybe if the next generation has come away with some ideas of what to do with Homeworld as an influence we'll see it pop up more on these types of lists, but for now the best we can hope for is that someone just praises it for what it is, and then buys the sequel;)
They'd probably get something out of The Sims or SimCity or something like that. Not ported PS1 games.
heh, SimCity2k was available for the PS1 iirc, but I'd quickly add that the game absolutely sucks ass without a mouse, and therefore will never do well on a cell phone without a significant rewrite of the interface.
and the final straw is that people don't no longer get the landline phone attached when they move to a new apartment, so for most single people the cellphone is also the _only_ phone.
I did this myself, because the cost to add another phone to my gf's cell plan was less than the cost of having a landline installed in the apartment. Unfortunately, my phone broke a couple months ago, the cell provider gave us some crap about the insurance, and eventually we had to send it back to Sony for repair. It's been 2 weeks since I sent the phone off, and I haven't been able to use it in 2 months. It's actually pretty nice when I don't want to make a call (which is most of the time).
but this is really useless since there's few dozen "i dont want a cellphone wee wee" trolls and similar responses everytime there's a slashdot story that mentions cellphones at all, and i'm starting to just get the feeling that usa is in the spot in cellular adaption that finland was 7 years ago(things like no free calls to local numbers on landlines did imho greatly push the adaption forward too). the first game phones were big hits too(i know i liked my benefon io, which was a great phone and had tetris too)
The plan I'm on seems to be one of the best ones in the US: unlimited local and long distance while in-area. Sure, the roaming minutes aren't great (something like 300), but the local coverage area is big enough that I have to drive about an hour (in one direction, on the interstate) before I'm roaming. In fact, I think I can get to the nearest large amusement park (Busch Gardens) without roaming. If my phone had Tetris on it, my gf would've taken it and never given it back, but that's another story (and the games on the phone aren't bad, for quick time killers).
i think the logic for having gaming capabilities goes bit like this -> adding them doesn't make the phone any less phone -> market wants phones in that price segment(verified) -> we're going to add enough power and features to allow somewhat decent games anyways, so why not add games to the mix big time.
I don't think the market for phones in that price segment is very big in the US, but I could be completely wrong. I also don't think holding it sideways against your head to talk without a headset helps, nor adding a games feature that requires a juggling act to change games. That, and adding that the games feature is pushed as 3D, while the rendering is software, and that the article mentions people complaining about headaches and eye strain. My phone didn't cost me anything (and, on the other hand, it's not supported very well in terms of being able to download ring tones, games, etc, because it's an old model), and I don't plan on paying for a phone any time soon. That being said, I wouldn't take an N-Gage for free unless every preview and review of the thing has been completely off-base.
I`m under the impression that many played the bards tale series on their Amigas. And that many, especially the graphics oriented types switched to Apple after Commodore bit the dust(many stayed on the Amiga of course).
The first in the series was released on the Apple II first, then ported to MS-DOS, Apple IIgs, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, and Amiga.
I'm pretty sure I have all 3 Bard's Tale games somewhere at home for Dos/Windows, but I could be wrong (I certainly didn't have the original releases, but I picked up a lot of old RPGs over the last few years).
They could have released UT as a mission pack to Unreal with a little work, but why do that when people will pay for it like it's another game?
With a little work you can get Unreal to work in UT. The amount of content and additions in UT make it a bit much for a mission pack, though (iirc you can get the Unreal mission pack to work in UT as well).
I think the cycle of releasing a new version every 12-18 months in the series will, in the long run, also hurt the game a bit. When UT2003 came out, there were still people working on UT mods. Now, UT2004 is coming out, and if there is anyone working on UT2003 mods, they'll most likely wait for 2004 to come out to test it against that engine, and maybe add some things. The people that were waiting for the mod either buy 2004 for it and hope it comes out before UT2005, or leave the game looking for something else.
This type of upgrade cycle works for sports games because the market for those games doesn't rely heavily on mods. FPS games, on the other hand, live or die by their mods when it comes to online play, and online-only games only moreso.
I was simply trying to point out that limitations often spark innovation. My examples are, of course, quite poor, mostly because I write these posts very quickly;)
As for your idea of a fully-mapped interface to each half of the body for a martial arts style game, I believe this idea was began with Tekken, when each button represented each part of the body. Additionally, previous games, such as Die By The Sword, had different control schemes that still played out better on gamepads than on the keyboard + mouse (in this particular case, it was one of the first games to make movement and swordplay completely independant, and controlled best with a dual-analog type control system imo).
Sometimes the keyboard and mouse are more limiting than people believe, other times it just gives people room to be sloppy, and constraints could make them come up with something much simpler (to the user) that is innovative.
That being said, I don't believe that Spector's going to be completely innovative on any sequel he ever makes anyway, though he may have sparks of minor enhancements to the basic ideas here and there, whether he designs the games for a console or a PC.
Seriously, the way I run all games is with 6x FSAA and at least 2x Anisotropic filtering (quality), max texture resolution, max shaddow details, etc. If the game supports that, TruForm too.
I _am_ an ex-3dfx fanboy, and for me image quality is important. And since I do have the money to burn for that addiction, sure, I'll cheerfully buy a $400 to $500 card if that's what it takes to get my fix of great looking graphics.
FSAA and image quality being important seem to counter each other a lot of times, but to each his own;)
Personally, image quality is very important to me as well, but I've avoided FSAA in favour of increased resolution whenever possible and I still want to average 100+ fps in most games with the settings maxed out (so I choose a resolution accordingly as long as I can play at 1024x768 or higher).
The whole point of increasing average framerates, as someone else already said, is to increase the minimum framerate. Especially when you get to multiplayer games, where the amount of action on screen is mostly unpredictable, the minimum framerate determines how the game feels and looks. You never want your framerate to drop to half of what you're averaging while you play (which is usually lower than the average you see in benchmarks anyway). If my card can pull 300 fps at 1600x1200@32bpp with all of the settings maxed out (and FSAA off), then I will be happy with my fps capped at double my refresh rate (or 150% of my refresh rate), knowing that it's highly unlikely that my framerate will drop below my refresh rate.
If I were to cap my framerate at my refresh rate (say for example that my refresh rate were 100Hz, which just happens to be what the video card in this pos desktop I'm working on at the moment is at 1280x1024), and there was a slowdown, then all of a sudden my screen is displaying the same frame multiple times, and it becomes most noticable if my framerate drops to 50 fps because the card is only capable of averaging 100 fps under benchmarking conditions rather than real-world multiplayer spamfests. At least if I cap it to 200 fps and the card actually renders those frames most of the time, when it falls to 100 fps it's still likely to get most of the frames out before the screen needs to display them, and everything looks fine.
I usually put in 40 hours, but it's due to heavy weekend gaming. I can easily put in over half that time on some weekends if I've gotten a particularly good game that lasts more than 30 hours at some time during that week. Add in playing GBA games at the laundrymat or in the car when someone else is driving on long trips, and the hours rack up pretty quickly.
Of course, on slow weeks it can easily drop to 14-20 hours, too.
I can see the difference at about 10FPS increases from about 60FPS to 120 or so, but nothing higher than that. In my own case, it probably has something to do with the way I can see 60hz refresh rate flicker like mad on predominately white screens.
It might have a little to do with it, but frankly I usually can't tell what the framerate is on a given game most of the time. I can quite easily tell whether or not a screen is having flicker problems, depending on the lighting (a 60Hz refresh rate on a CRT can be perfectly acceptable in the dark, but turn on a light bulb and it's hell). Generally I can't use a computer for more than an hour if the refresh rate is below 75Hz, but it does change based on the lighting. I generally cap a game at 60 fps and play at a resolution where I know the card can probably pump out an average of 100-120 fps on that particular game.
Conversely, my seriously screwed up ears make it impossible for me to tell MP3 rates at 128kbit or higher apart.
heh, I can tell the difference on most of the music that I listen to, but there is a lot of music out there for which I can't tell the difference (less complex music for the most part). That being said, I haven't gone out of my way to re-rip my 128k MP3s even though all of my newer ones are 256, because it just doesn't matter for the way I usually listen to music (as background noise).
The fact is *you* can't see the difference. It's the same thing with audiophiles/musicians and complaints about mp3 compression. The people that are attuned to/care about it will almost always be able to tell the difference.
I always tell people who actually care about the difference to use something else. I can hear the difference quite readily, especially on complex pieces of music, but the vast majority of the time I don't care, and if I did I'd pull out the CD and listen to it instead (and then there's the whole issue of the way CDs sound vs. Vinyl, which I tend to think is a preference issue; although it's quite obvious they sound different, it's usually hard to say that there is loss going to CD).
Ever hear people talk about movies and how "the human eye can only see 24 fps"? You've probably played games. 24 fps is acceptable, but not really smooth. (They've got it backwards anyway. 24 fps is the speed where the average person sees the images as motion.)
Actually, neither is right. 24 fps is just more acceptable than what they had before, and is accompanied by displaying each image 2 or 3 times to reduce flickering (because 24 fps is not acceptable, but most people can't discern that the same image was just displayed to them 2 times in 1/24th of a second without anything between). If you displayed films at 200 fps and inserted random images into every 1000th frame people would still notice.
Of course, if your average fps is above your monitor's refresh rate, you're not going to see the whole frame, but everything below that is potentially noticable.
This isn't quite right, either, it's just like the films being displayed with each frame being displayed 2 or 3 times. If your framerate is 30 fps and your refresh rate is 60 Hz (rather low, but ok for some), it will be perfectly fine and not noticed by the majority of people as long as it's constant. If your framerate is 24 and your refresh rate is 72Hz then it will be exactly like watching a movie on a projector that displays the frames 3 times per second as long as your framerate is constant and your card can manage to render the frame on time every time (and you have v-synch enabled, which prevents a frame from being put onto the screen when the screen is half way through a refresh).
Just because most people can't detect some miniscule difference doesn't mean it can't be done. Some people are skilled/crazy/stupid enough to need that extra edge.
Some people are freaks, but that doesn't mean that 100 fps isn't necessary for everyone. The difference is in how it's used. A benchmark disables v-synch (to eliminate the monitor from the benchmark) and tries to find the average framerates for a card. Ideally, you want the lowest possible framerate for a game in the most complex scene to be equal to the framerate you want to see, and then you can cap the game's maximum framerate at the rate you want, and never see a problem in the game (because it won't drop by 1/4th or 1/2, something which never happens in movies and TV shows that are properly filmed and edited). The higher the average framerates get, the better the chance is that the lowest framerate you'll ever see in the game will be tolerable.
Still, because people are used to movies and television, 30 fps is generally considered the minimum playable framerate for a game, and many developers take this into consideration when developing their games (in terms of limiting the number of features or determining the minimum system requirements and the optional features that will be disabled to meet those minimums). If we were still watching movies filmed at the same rate as the early silent films, the minimum framerate might be considered much lower, like 12. People's expectations and what they are used to mean a lot more in many cases than any physical limitations of the human body and mind.
Most of the video cards developed in the last 3-6 years will do the majority of frame rendering on the board. In fact, if your framerate is higher and the textures on the screen change rapidly (and are very high resolution), you'll use more CPU/RAM/bus resources than if your framerate is lower, because the card only uses those resources for retrieving the textures and low-level information about the frame, and then processes the geometry and lighting on it's own. This also assumes that the video card itself has enough RAM on it to handle the textures and frame manipulation. As long as the card is rendering the frame and doesn't need the AGP memory sharing features, it will not be blocking the CPU and bus from doing the rest of their functions.
The fact that the card takes so many of the calculations off of the CPU's load is why AI can get smarter now, and physics more accurate, especially since CPUs have gotten to speeds well beyond the requirements of the cards (anyone remember when you wouldn't see a framerate improvement with a new graphics card until you upgraded your CPU?) and the basic I/O tasks of the games.
Mouse lag in itself isn't normally caused by CPU problems, either, but rather by the card trying to spit out the frames it's been told to render by the game logic when your framerate drops drastically due to a complex scene appearing in a significantly less complex area. Mouse smoothing and bad code can also cause this type of problem, as well as I/O blocking and disk access. The big thing in this whole area is whether or not the card is taking so long during frame renders that the CPU has buffered I/O operations that are important for rendering the next scene. In some cases, a game will continue sending the frame information to the card as if every action the user took in that time frame had actually occurred. In other cases it will simply throw it out. Another big issue is how many scenes the card itself is buffering. It's fairly common to render the scene off-screen in a buffer while the previous scene is rendered to the display, and then simply swap the scenes and write to the buffer, but some games go the extra distance and add 1 or 2 additional buffers in this process, and mouse lag can become very apparent when framerates drop significantly in those games.
Of course you want the highest average framerate you can get for the quality level you're comfortable with, but at the same time, even if your average framerate is 200, if it cuts in half (100) you're going to have some problems for a short while as it'll appear to be very slow (even though it's at 100 fps) until you adjust to it, the framerate evens out, or it returns to normal.
I'm really curious on how they managed to survive in this truly ferocious business.. it'd make a really interesting book I think.
I take it you mean ATI. Basically they (one way or another) dominated the OEM business while everyone else (yes, everyone) was busy trying to take the 3d market. When the 3d market managed to kill off most of the graphics card manufacturers, ATI decided to start getting serious on 3D cards, especially when 3dfx died off and nVidia turned their eyes on the OEM space.
The only thing left is the details, and the pre-3D market, plus how they managed to take the majority of the OEM space (before nVidia got into it) with Intel also breathing down their necks in that area.
Also, Valve were quick to dismiss the new nVidia drivers over 'application-specific optimisations' issues. Let me ask you - what is the difference between Valve producing code that is optimised for a specific line of video card (not saying this is on purpose) or a video card manufacturer producing code that is optimised for the game? Its essentially the same thing. nVidia are doing what they can to provide their customers with value for money and leading performance, and to me that is far more commendable than a company who's support for Linux and Linux users is pitiful at best.
I think the last portion of the article said it best: We'll wait until we can finish independant testing on this.
The main point is that previous 'application specific optimizations' to 'fix' the problems with this particular feature lead to decreased rendering quality rather than improving the code. Similarly, when ATI's cards (quite some time ago) had problems with Quake 3 at full detail, they added code to the drivers to knock the colour level back down to 16bpp from 32bpp, sacrificing the quality settings the user specified for performance on benchmarks.
If it renders the game the way it's supposed to be rendered and somehow does it faster, than that's fine. If it plays games with the settings internally to produce an image that is inferior to what it produced before the changes just for the sake of framerates, then they can stuff their drivers and their card.
I've owned 6 nVidia cards, 2 of which were side-by-side in my case with a pair of 3dfx cards. If they can't make a good upgrade for my GeForce 4 Ti card and I'm not satisfied with the current performance on HL2 and Doom 3, it's very likely that I will buy an ATI card, despite ATI's horrid past support for their cards and various technical issues on past cards. nVidia's FX line has been sucking wind on DX9 benchmarks from the start, so hopefully they've been spending all of this time doing something on the hardware side while their driver developers screw around with benchmarks.
nVidia's drivers, despite being slightly-closed-source are _wonderful_, and I'll surely buy an nVidia card again. (Actually I won't because bzFlag already runs at 200fps, so I don't see how you could do better than that:)
heh, and to think the GeForce 4 MX cards are just castrated GeForce 3 cards...
If you're planning on playing Quake 3, you might want to look into getting a new card around the same time, though as long as you're not planning on playing any Windows games you should be fine for a while longer;)
The numbers are on benchmarks designed to stick the game's detail level at a certain point (in this case, the highest level of detail from what I can gather).
They have repeatedly said that the game will scale the level of detail according to your system's ability to render the game, in order to keep the framerate at a certain point (I'm not sure how they implement this, sounds like a variable that you should be able to set, but they repeatedly say 60 fps).
Doesn't sound like they're doing OpenGL this time. They were, after all, the ones to put Direct3D in Half-Life in the first place, something very rarely done with a Quake-engine game.
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The company I work for has a tendency to use 'Engineering Associate' as the tail end of a title that might normally end in 'Engineer'. In most states it keeps them from having too many problems with making sure people have all of their licensing and whatever else they might have to do.
In the rare cases where they hire someone on because they have the licensing and schooling for the title, though, they certainly do use the title as long as what they want to pay them is within the pay requirements for the title.
Personally, I'd much rather pay more per channel if I could choose what channels I received. Of course, as you and others have described it, it's unlikely this will happen unless the networks bypass the cable industry and sell direct to the consumers. Even then, it's unlikely they'll offer anything on a channel-by-channel basis.
At least when I get 7 channels of HBO, once in a while one of those 6 other channels is worth watching. I have 20-something music channels I never watch, 10 or so local channels I never watch, and ~100 random cable channels I never watch. Then there are maybe 2 channels my cable provider doesn't carry that I would like to have, but probably wouldn't watch much (but still more than the 100 random channels I never watch).
Something else to think about: I lived in San Diego for most of my life, and for a while Cox carried MTV Latina on the extended cable (or whatever it's called, regular cable but more channels than basic cable). At some point they decided to remove it, and they released a statement saying that they polled their spanish-speaking customers and found that most would prefer some other channel to MTV Latina. Here's the bad part: I don't speak a bit of spanish, but watched MTV Latina much more than I did MTV US (and more than a lot of other channels), but since they decided to run a spanish soap opera channel or some crap instead, and only felt the need to ask their spanish-speaking customers what they wanted, I had one less channel to watch. Great fun. (Just a quick note regarding MTV in foreign markets, there are numerous music shows cancelled or never broadcast in the US that still have foreign-language equivalents that run in Latin America and Europe, and MTV Latina (not sure about Europe and other markets) also carried clips from shows in other markets. In other words, I liked MTV Latina because they played music I listen to, rather than the constant heavy rotation of pop. It also introduced me to spanish-language bands that I may never have heard of otherwise, in genres that I'm already fairly familiar with. They also played videos that were banned by MTV US for non-obvious reasons (ie Carcass, Morbid Angel, and Fear Factory videos)).
It's a sad state of gaming... few people I know would give GTA1 a serious chance when it game out. A few close friends I would play it all hours of the night. But no, you have to put it into 3D before many people will give it a chance. I guess that's a slightly off-topic rant, but it's true.
The biggest difference, imo, is the time limit. GTA1 only allowed you so much time to get through the missions, so unless you cheated or managed to extend your time a great deal through completing missions quickly, you had to continue in a very mission-based, somewhat linear fashion. Once you remove that limit, the game feels much more open simply because you have time on your hands to explore and get a better feel for the city in which you're playing this game. The next mission doesn't really matter because you can walk around, grab a car, do almost whatever you want to without worrying about that time limit running out.
I really don't think there are many examples of truly open experiences in games. This makes the exclusivity pretty much nill. On the other hand, what people really want seems to be more of the mixture anyway; freedom to do what you want, but a story that moves the game along. Even though writing the story can be a very small part of the process (compared to getting all of the artwork together, implementing the story in the engine, and creating the engine itself), it can also be very central to a game's success. GTA3/VC worked well because it was open-ended, but I don't think many would've cared as much for it if it didn't give you something to do to progress the story.
People start up a new game and want to know what they should be doing. Exploration may come a little further into the game, as they become bored with a particular task or as they learn the controls and see what else there is around them. However, if there isn't a story or an explanation, the first thing they'll say is 'now what?', and some may be turned off by not having a defined goal that they can accomplish easily at the start to get them familiar with the mechanics.
All of this being said, I appreciate linear games for different reasons from the more open-ended games. A well-told story and/or a challenging game can make up for the loss of freedom in the game. I also see a large difference between say KOTOR and GTA3 in terms of the open-ended experience. KOTOR usually feels like it's on rails when I play through it, even though I can do things differently that will change the story. GTA3, on the other hand, tends to feel wide open in terms of gameplay, but the story tends to feel constrained at certain points (ie eventually you do have to complete this racing mission to move on, even though there are other missions you can complete right now). The gameplay in one feels more scripted even though I have a lot of options, while GTA3 just loops through it's reality until you get around to completing the missions. Then again, maybe that's just because of the way I play the two games: I tend to get bored with the missions in GTA and start amusing myself by interacting with the world, whereas in KOTOR I tend to work harder at completing the missions at hand, and only spend a lot of time wandering around when it's central to completing one of those missions (on a side-note, I have noticed that a couple of missions have endings that aren't handled very well by the game, ie people act like they're still waiting for you to find people you've already found, even though they took part in the final portion of the mission).
Games that are more open in their story can be more rewarding for people that play through a game multiple times. On the other hand, a more linear game can add richness to the story that currently isn't found in many open-ended games. Also, there's something to be said for seeing the conclusion of a story well-told (though even many of the open-ended games have endings).
For infinite replayability I tend more towards multiplayer games anyway, because players are less predictable and there's almost always somewhere to improve your skills. At the same time, this usually provides little story, and sometimes that's all I want when I sit down to play a game. Even a game that is little more than an interactive movie can at least allow me to suspend disbelief and allow me to occasionally feel like I am pushing the story forward, which a normal movie rarely (if ever) can do.
(come to think of it, I read rumors somewhere that FF7 is being redone in fact for the PS2).
hmm... from what I read, there's a possibility of a sequel (like FFX-2) to FF7 for PS2 or a later console, but redoing FF7 for the PS2 when it's still widely available as a PS1 game doesn't seem to make much sense.
I'd much rather see FF3 finally come to the US.
Assuming that a game is developed (or at least ported) with the controller in mind:
x
b A y
A is obviously larger, being the most important button, the one you're going to use the most, and where your thumb naturally rests. b acts like a cancel button or usually does a 'destructive' action. x and y are only used occasionally, but are still nearby and easy to get to. The buttons aren't really meant to be used in combination, but can be (though the best combinations will always be A with another button or a trigger with any button).
Given z's placement, it's rarely used for anything important, it almost seems like an after-thought.
I'm also still not sure why they got rid of the 'select' button.
The D-pad isn't meant to be used to control movement, but rather to navigate menus. It works very well as a 4-directional controller, but not for much else. Could be bigger (at least on the Wavebird, I have never used any other controller on my GC, and only used someone else's GC for about an hour before I decided to buy one myself).
As for the Z button's placement being counter-intuitive, I'm not sure about that. The triggers are in a very intuitive spot, and the Z button, the after-thought that it seems to be, is simply right above the R trigger. It's fairly easy to get to, but does require repositioning of the right index finger (hence it's use is usually more like the use of the Select button on the older Nintendo controllers when in-game, though it's pretty much not used in menus).
Actually, now that I think about it a bit more, the D-pad often takes the place of the select button in menus, giving you a bit more control while still performing the same function.
In any case, the GC controller bothered me for a little while, but after playing a few games I found that the layout works much better in terms of knowing where things are without checking the controller or hitting the wrong button. I would say that the Wavebird could use a slightly better outward angle on the grips, but most of the time I don't notice a problem (unlike, say, the DC controller which gave me all kinds of problems, though the 3rd party controller I bought for the DC has a sticky trigger).
The PSX controller is the only one I still use a D-pad on, and that's just because the analog stick is less responsive (than the others) and in a really bad position.
The biggest problems with the GC controller seem to be with multi-console games that don't really seem to have taken the controller into account. This is one of the reasons why I buy most of my multi-console games for the XBox, I've got plenty of good titles for the GC without having to deal with people not thinking their ports through, whereas I've got 2 titles on the XBox that I really consider great titles that I can't get somewhere else.
Or you could just buy a USB converter for the PS1/2 control pads...
Now that's something I might like to build just for fun, but hacking the end off a controller's cable just doesn't do it for me unless the controller is for a system I no longer have.
I might be wrong, but most of these people seem to be involved in PC game development. Fighting games have almost no market on the PC, and any influence they might have outside their own genre generally shows up in other console or arcade games before having influence in PC games.
That being said, the whole Virtua series of games using the same engine could be pointed to as a fighting game having influence outside it's own genre (especially with Shenmue), and I think in the future we may see fighting games having more (though subtle) influence.
FPS: Doom II, Hexen: The graphics and handling put these ahead of Wolfenstein, but their perspective (no up/down) makes them easier to control than newer games. Again, the choice of someone who doesn't play games enough to go pro.
Just a note: Hexen had the look up/down features, as did it's predecessor, Heretic. It just wasn't needed very often. Hexen is actually the game I spent most of my time on when Duke3D came out, and why I didn't really play Duke3D until after I had played through Quake's single player (and subsequently, my first network games were WarCraft2, Duke3D, Quake, Heretic, and Doom, all when I was in my first year of college and we were stringing cables between dorm rooms (and sometimes in and out of windows) to get better connections).
umm, since the Sims and a handful of other nearly current games made the list, I think it's simply because Homeworld hasn't really inspired any game developers.
;)
The reason is fairly simple: the mechanics of Homeworld don't have a very universal application. Super Mario Bros. and Mario64 got numerous mentions because they were popular games that showed what could be done with their respective game types (2d-sidescrolling and 3d platformers). Warcraft 2 got mentions because it brought story and character to RTS games. Dune2/C&C got mention because it started RTS games.
Homeworld, while a great game with beautiful graphics and sound and a great control system, is pretty much in a genre all it's own, and there's not much for game designers/developers to learn from it. We can have 20 million RTS games in space, but first people have to find something compelling that Homeworld did not already do, or that wouldn't be better handled as a game like Wing Commander or Descent: Freespace (another game w/ awesome graphics, sound, and controls imo but in a genre that just wasn't a big deal for people any more).
RTS games are still mostly dominated by C&C and WarCraft (and StarCraft), not only because the stories to be told this way are mostly derivative of those 3 themes (fantasy, semi-realistic, sci-fi), but because there isn't much that these games got wrong. I loved Dark Reign and Total Annihilation, but StarCraft still does it better (oh, and Dark Reign on a P2-400 ran in super-hyper-speed mode, watch the AI annihilate you before you can move on a new computer) in many ways.
With Homeworld, what are you going to do? Give it a better story, maybe make a game based underwater or something? Tack a more conventional RTS game onto it and allow transition from space-based combat to land/air/sea battles...
Maybe if the next generation has come away with some ideas of what to do with Homeworld as an influence we'll see it pop up more on these types of lists, but for now the best we can hope for is that someone just praises it for what it is, and then buys the sequel
They'd probably get something out of The Sims or SimCity or something like that. Not ported PS1 games.
heh, SimCity2k was available for the PS1 iirc, but I'd quickly add that the game absolutely sucks ass without a mouse, and therefore will never do well on a cell phone without a significant rewrite of the interface.
and the final straw is that people don't no longer get the landline phone attached when they move to a new apartment, so for most single people the cellphone is also the _only_ phone.
I did this myself, because the cost to add another phone to my gf's cell plan was less than the cost of having a landline installed in the apartment. Unfortunately, my phone broke a couple months ago, the cell provider gave us some crap about the insurance, and eventually we had to send it back to Sony for repair. It's been 2 weeks since I sent the phone off, and I haven't been able to use it in 2 months. It's actually pretty nice when I don't want to make a call (which is most of the time).
but this is really useless since there's few dozen "i dont want a cellphone wee wee" trolls and similar responses everytime there's a slashdot story that mentions cellphones at all, and i'm starting to just get the feeling that usa is in the spot in cellular adaption that finland was 7 years ago(things like no free calls to local numbers on landlines did imho greatly push the adaption forward too). the first game phones were big hits too(i know i liked my benefon io, which was a great phone and had tetris too)
The plan I'm on seems to be one of the best ones in the US: unlimited local and long distance while in-area. Sure, the roaming minutes aren't great (something like 300), but the local coverage area is big enough that I have to drive about an hour (in one direction, on the interstate) before I'm roaming. In fact, I think I can get to the nearest large amusement park (Busch Gardens) without roaming. If my phone had Tetris on it, my gf would've taken it and never given it back, but that's another story (and the games on the phone aren't bad, for quick time killers).
i think the logic for having gaming capabilities goes bit like this -> adding them doesn't make the phone any less phone -> market wants phones in that price segment(verified) -> we're going to add enough power and features to allow somewhat decent games anyways, so why not add games to the mix big time.
I don't think the market for phones in that price segment is very big in the US, but I could be completely wrong. I also don't think holding it sideways against your head to talk without a headset helps, nor adding a games feature that requires a juggling act to change games. That, and adding that the games feature is pushed as 3D, while the rendering is software, and that the article mentions people complaining about headaches and eye strain. My phone didn't cost me anything (and, on the other hand, it's not supported very well in terms of being able to download ring tones, games, etc, because it's an old model), and I don't plan on paying for a phone any time soon. That being said, I wouldn't take an N-Gage for free unless every preview and review of the thing has been completely off-base.
I`m under the impression that many played the bards tale series on their Amigas. And that many, especially the graphics oriented types switched to Apple after Commodore bit the dust(many stayed on the Amiga of course).
The first in the series was released on the Apple II first, then ported to MS-DOS, Apple IIgs, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, and Amiga.
I'm pretty sure I have all 3 Bard's Tale games somewhere at home for Dos/Windows, but I could be wrong (I certainly didn't have the original releases, but I picked up a lot of old RPGs over the last few years).
They could have released UT as a mission pack to Unreal with a little work, but why do that when people will pay for it like it's another game?
With a little work you can get Unreal to work in UT. The amount of content and additions in UT make it a bit much for a mission pack, though (iirc you can get the Unreal mission pack to work in UT as well).
I think the cycle of releasing a new version every 12-18 months in the series will, in the long run, also hurt the game a bit. When UT2003 came out, there were still people working on UT mods. Now, UT2004 is coming out, and if there is anyone working on UT2003 mods, they'll most likely wait for 2004 to come out to test it against that engine, and maybe add some things. The people that were waiting for the mod either buy 2004 for it and hope it comes out before UT2005, or leave the game looking for something else.
This type of upgrade cycle works for sports games because the market for those games doesn't rely heavily on mods. FPS games, on the other hand, live or die by their mods when it comes to online play, and online-only games only moreso.
I was simply trying to point out that limitations often spark innovation. My examples are, of course, quite poor, mostly because I write these posts very quickly ;)
As for your idea of a fully-mapped interface to each half of the body for a martial arts style game, I believe this idea was began with Tekken, when each button represented each part of the body. Additionally, previous games, such as Die By The Sword, had different control schemes that still played out better on gamepads than on the keyboard + mouse (in this particular case, it was one of the first games to make movement and swordplay completely independant, and controlled best with a dual-analog type control system imo).
Sometimes the keyboard and mouse are more limiting than people believe, other times it just gives people room to be sloppy, and constraints could make them come up with something much simpler (to the user) that is innovative.
That being said, I don't believe that Spector's going to be completely innovative on any sequel he ever makes anyway, though he may have sparks of minor enhancements to the basic ideas here and there, whether he designs the games for a console or a PC.
Seriously, the way I run all games is with 6x FSAA and at least 2x Anisotropic filtering (quality), max texture resolution, max shaddow details, etc. If the game supports that, TruForm too.
;)
I _am_ an ex-3dfx fanboy, and for me image quality is important. And since I do have the money to burn for that addiction, sure, I'll cheerfully buy a $400 to $500 card if that's what it takes to get my fix of great looking graphics.
FSAA and image quality being important seem to counter each other a lot of times, but to each his own
Personally, image quality is very important to me as well, but I've avoided FSAA in favour of increased resolution whenever possible and I still want to average 100+ fps in most games with the settings maxed out (so I choose a resolution accordingly as long as I can play at 1024x768 or higher).
The whole point of increasing average framerates, as someone else already said, is to increase the minimum framerate. Especially when you get to multiplayer games, where the amount of action on screen is mostly unpredictable, the minimum framerate determines how the game feels and looks. You never want your framerate to drop to half of what you're averaging while you play (which is usually lower than the average you see in benchmarks anyway). If my card can pull 300 fps at 1600x1200@32bpp with all of the settings maxed out (and FSAA off), then I will be happy with my fps capped at double my refresh rate (or 150% of my refresh rate), knowing that it's highly unlikely that my framerate will drop below my refresh rate.
If I were to cap my framerate at my refresh rate (say for example that my refresh rate were 100Hz, which just happens to be what the video card in this pos desktop I'm working on at the moment is at 1280x1024), and there was a slowdown, then all of a sudden my screen is displaying the same frame multiple times, and it becomes most noticable if my framerate drops to 50 fps because the card is only capable of averaging 100 fps under benchmarking conditions rather than real-world multiplayer spamfests. At least if I cap it to 200 fps and the card actually renders those frames most of the time, when it falls to 100 fps it's still likely to get most of the frames out before the screen needs to display them, and everything looks fine.
I usually put in 40 hours, but it's due to heavy weekend gaming. I can easily put in over half that time on some weekends if I've gotten a particularly good game that lasts more than 30 hours at some time during that week. Add in playing GBA games at the laundrymat or in the car when someone else is driving on long trips, and the hours rack up pretty quickly.
Of course, on slow weeks it can easily drop to 14-20 hours, too.
I can see the difference at about 10FPS increases from about 60FPS to 120 or so, but nothing higher than that. In my own case, it probably has something to do with the way I can see 60hz refresh rate flicker like mad on predominately white screens.
It might have a little to do with it, but frankly I usually can't tell what the framerate is on a given game most of the time. I can quite easily tell whether or not a screen is having flicker problems, depending on the lighting (a 60Hz refresh rate on a CRT can be perfectly acceptable in the dark, but turn on a light bulb and it's hell). Generally I can't use a computer for more than an hour if the refresh rate is below 75Hz, but it does change based on the lighting. I generally cap a game at 60 fps and play at a resolution where I know the card can probably pump out an average of 100-120 fps on that particular game.
Conversely, my seriously screwed up ears make it impossible for me to tell MP3 rates at 128kbit or higher apart.
heh, I can tell the difference on most of the music that I listen to, but there is a lot of music out there for which I can't tell the difference (less complex music for the most part). That being said, I haven't gone out of my way to re-rip my 128k MP3s even though all of my newer ones are 256, because it just doesn't matter for the way I usually listen to music (as background noise).
The fact is *you* can't see the difference. It's the same thing with audiophiles/musicians and complaints about mp3 compression. The people that are attuned to/care about it will almost always be able to tell the difference.
I always tell people who actually care about the difference to use something else. I can hear the difference quite readily, especially on complex pieces of music, but the vast majority of the time I don't care, and if I did I'd pull out the CD and listen to it instead (and then there's the whole issue of the way CDs sound vs. Vinyl, which I tend to think is a preference issue; although it's quite obvious they sound different, it's usually hard to say that there is loss going to CD).
Ever hear people talk about movies and how "the human eye can only see 24 fps"? You've probably played games. 24 fps is acceptable, but not really smooth. (They've got it backwards anyway. 24 fps is the speed where the average person sees the images as motion.)
Actually, neither is right. 24 fps is just more acceptable than what they had before, and is accompanied by displaying each image 2 or 3 times to reduce flickering (because 24 fps is not acceptable, but most people can't discern that the same image was just displayed to them 2 times in 1/24th of a second without anything between). If you displayed films at 200 fps and inserted random images into every 1000th frame people would still notice.
Of course, if your average fps is above your monitor's refresh rate, you're not going to see the whole frame, but everything below that is potentially noticable.
This isn't quite right, either, it's just like the films being displayed with each frame being displayed 2 or 3 times. If your framerate is 30 fps and your refresh rate is 60 Hz (rather low, but ok for some), it will be perfectly fine and not noticed by the majority of people as long as it's constant. If your framerate is 24 and your refresh rate is 72Hz then it will be exactly like watching a movie on a projector that displays the frames 3 times per second as long as your framerate is constant and your card can manage to render the frame on time every time (and you have v-synch enabled, which prevents a frame from being put onto the screen when the screen is half way through a refresh).
Just because most people can't detect some miniscule difference doesn't mean it can't be done. Some people are skilled/crazy/stupid enough to need that extra edge.
Some people are freaks, but that doesn't mean that 100 fps isn't necessary for everyone. The difference is in how it's used. A benchmark disables v-synch (to eliminate the monitor from the benchmark) and tries to find the average framerates for a card. Ideally, you want the lowest possible framerate for a game in the most complex scene to be equal to the framerate you want to see, and then you can cap the game's maximum framerate at the rate you want, and never see a problem in the game (because it won't drop by 1/4th or 1/2, something which never happens in movies and TV shows that are properly filmed and edited). The higher the average framerates get, the better the chance is that the lowest framerate you'll ever see in the game will be tolerable.
Still, because people are used to movies and television, 30 fps is generally considered the minimum playable framerate for a game, and many developers take this into consideration when developing their games (in terms of limiting the number of features or determining the minimum system requirements and the optional features that will be disabled to meet those minimums). If we were still watching movies filmed at the same rate as the early silent films, the minimum framerate might be considered much lower, like 12. People's expectations and what they are used to mean a lot more in many cases than any physical limitations of the human body and mind.
Most of the video cards developed in the last 3-6 years will do the majority of frame rendering on the board. In fact, if your framerate is higher and the textures on the screen change rapidly (and are very high resolution), you'll use more CPU/RAM/bus resources than if your framerate is lower, because the card only uses those resources for retrieving the textures and low-level information about the frame, and then processes the geometry and lighting on it's own. This also assumes that the video card itself has enough RAM on it to handle the textures and frame manipulation. As long as the card is rendering the frame and doesn't need the AGP memory sharing features, it will not be blocking the CPU and bus from doing the rest of their functions.
The fact that the card takes so many of the calculations off of the CPU's load is why AI can get smarter now, and physics more accurate, especially since CPUs have gotten to speeds well beyond the requirements of the cards (anyone remember when you wouldn't see a framerate improvement with a new graphics card until you upgraded your CPU?) and the basic I/O tasks of the games.
Mouse lag in itself isn't normally caused by CPU problems, either, but rather by the card trying to spit out the frames it's been told to render by the game logic when your framerate drops drastically due to a complex scene appearing in a significantly less complex area. Mouse smoothing and bad code can also cause this type of problem, as well as I/O blocking and disk access. The big thing in this whole area is whether or not the card is taking so long during frame renders that the CPU has buffered I/O operations that are important for rendering the next scene. In some cases, a game will continue sending the frame information to the card as if every action the user took in that time frame had actually occurred. In other cases it will simply throw it out. Another big issue is how many scenes the card itself is buffering. It's fairly common to render the scene off-screen in a buffer while the previous scene is rendered to the display, and then simply swap the scenes and write to the buffer, but some games go the extra distance and add 1 or 2 additional buffers in this process, and mouse lag can become very apparent when framerates drop significantly in those games.
Of course you want the highest average framerate you can get for the quality level you're comfortable with, but at the same time, even if your average framerate is 200, if it cuts in half (100) you're going to have some problems for a short while as it'll appear to be very slow (even though it's at 100 fps) until you adjust to it, the framerate evens out, or it returns to normal.
I'm really curious on how they managed to survive in this truly ferocious business.. it'd make a really interesting book I think.
I take it you mean ATI. Basically they (one way or another) dominated the OEM business while everyone else (yes, everyone) was busy trying to take the 3d market. When the 3d market managed to kill off most of the graphics card manufacturers, ATI decided to start getting serious on 3D cards, especially when 3dfx died off and nVidia turned their eyes on the OEM space.
The only thing left is the details, and the pre-3D market, plus how they managed to take the majority of the OEM space (before nVidia got into it) with Intel also breathing down their necks in that area.
Also, Valve were quick to dismiss the new nVidia drivers over 'application-specific optimisations' issues. Let me ask you - what is the difference between Valve producing code that is optimised for a specific line of video card (not saying this is on purpose) or a video card manufacturer producing code that is optimised for the game? Its essentially the same thing. nVidia are doing what they can to provide their customers with value for money and leading performance, and to me that is far more commendable than a company who's support for Linux and Linux users is pitiful at best.
I think the last portion of the article said it best:
We'll wait until we can finish independant testing on this.
The main point is that previous 'application specific optimizations' to 'fix' the problems with this particular feature lead to decreased rendering quality rather than improving the code. Similarly, when ATI's cards (quite some time ago) had problems with Quake 3 at full detail, they added code to the drivers to knock the colour level back down to 16bpp from 32bpp, sacrificing the quality settings the user specified for performance on benchmarks.
If it renders the game the way it's supposed to be rendered and somehow does it faster, than that's fine. If it plays games with the settings internally to produce an image that is inferior to what it produced before the changes just for the sake of framerates, then they can stuff their drivers and their card.
I've owned 6 nVidia cards, 2 of which were side-by-side in my case with a pair of 3dfx cards. If they can't make a good upgrade for my GeForce 4 Ti card and I'm not satisfied with the current performance on HL2 and Doom 3, it's very likely that I will buy an ATI card, despite ATI's horrid past support for their cards and various technical issues on past cards. nVidia's FX line has been sucking wind on DX9 benchmarks from the start, so hopefully they've been spending all of this time doing something on the hardware side while their driver developers screw around with benchmarks.
nVidia's drivers, despite being slightly-closed-source are _wonderful_, and I'll surely buy an nVidia card again. (Actually I won't because bzFlag already runs at 200fps, so I don't see how you could do better than that :)
;)
heh, and to think the GeForce 4 MX cards are just castrated GeForce 3 cards...
If you're planning on playing Quake 3, you might want to look into getting a new card around the same time, though as long as you're not planning on playing any Windows games you should be fine for a while longer
The numbers are on benchmarks designed to stick the game's detail level at a certain point (in this case, the highest level of detail from what I can gather).
They have repeatedly said that the game will scale the level of detail according to your system's ability to render the game, in order to keep the framerate at a certain point (I'm not sure how they implement this, sounds like a variable that you should be able to set, but they repeatedly say 60 fps).
Doesn't sound like they're doing OpenGL this time. They were, after all, the ones to put Direct3D in Half-Life in the first place, something very rarely done with a Quake-engine game.