*Sigh* Game programmers are not lazy. Anyone who could make that claim has obviously never actually tried to sit down and program a 3D game. I dare you to read through the DOOM source code, the Quake source code, the Descent source code, or any other publicly available source code out there and still call the programmers lazy.
 
The problem is your video card. Serious Sam has large textures (which many games, like Half-Life did not support!), and your TNT2 M64 is throttling the performance. M64s have only a 64-bit memory path (as opposed to most video cards' 256-bit bus, including the "standard" TNT2), which makes it choke on large textures. Games like Half-Life and V-Rally 2 run well because either they are built on technology designed to work on Voodoo 2s, which had a limit on texture size (like Half-Life) or they were ports from consoles like the PSX that had similar limitations on texture size (like V-Rally 2).
 
It is not fair to call programmers lazy for not supporting a 3D card based on 2-year-old technology that was targeted for people who don't people who don't do much 3D gaming. (Why do you think the M64 is so much cheaper than a standard TNT2?) Serious Sam is not a game targeted towards people who play 3D games occasionally -- it's targeted towards hard-code FPS players.

I program more than just games ..in industries where speed is everything ...i go from banks to hospitals where every ounce of speed is required. The same can be same for games.
 
From ASM to Java ..from VGA mem calls to high level libs like opengl.
 
The original post has a point and that is that programmers are indeed lazy. Some companies perhaps do spend the extra effort to churn out decent code but alot are relying on too much upper layer and they dont delve enough to the lower layer ..the layer closest to the hardware.
 
When people program using DirectX or Opengl they are sitting so far above the graphic card it is not funny. Take into consideration the PS1 and PS2 ..now I have yet to work on the PS2 but with the PS1 it came with its default libs. I challenge everybody whos done games for that console ..are any of you using it? NO i didn't think so ..redid your own to get every possible ounce of speed.
 
Never say that because its slow lets wait for Geforce 9. What sort of attitude is that? Before the advent of graphic accelerators we were doing ASM calls, writing our own peeks/pokes into graphic cards and getting every ounce of speed that we could. Games from that era could be seen from those that were written with C (average) and those who were written mostly in C with many vital calls in ASM (blindingly fast).
 
Tricks are there to speed up routines, polygon count CAN be reduced so that the load on the card is reduced. Does the texture really need to be that big? Why the f*#k should it draw all the polygons of a truck that is 10km away when the engine should just erase it?
 
I consider Black/White to be very well written ..from the lowly (m64) it zooms in and out very well and handles the polygon gracefully.
 
 
Why the heck should we have to invest in some dual athlon 2.4 ghz with a geforce 999 to play a game that is so sophisticated it might as well have been sold to the army for its simulations.

Almghty...Totally...
 
In referall to previous posts...Why not make a game to work on 2 year old technology?
As long as it LOOKS good, which can be easily achieved on 2 year old technology.
 
A basic example.
3D Mark2001.
In "game mode", at LOW detail setting, the game looks terrible. I mean really, really terrible. It looks like its 5 years old. BUT, if you look at the source code, you can see that the polygon count is far superior to anything seen before, etc etc.
Switch it to looking good, and it barely runs. On £1000 PC's, it struggles.
 
And yet we switch over to another game, not neccesarily Half-Life, but any;- Lets take Kingpin. You can play this game on a low-end machine, at high resolution, high texture detail, so it looks really good. It LOOKS really good. And it goes like a rocket.
 
So.
We have something that runs bad and looks even worse.
And we have something that runs fast and looks great.
 
Although the technology behind the games may be different, the output is what counts.
 
Remember, these are examples, it applies to many games.
 
------------------
In the year of our Lord 1314, patriots of Scotland,
starving and outnumbered, charged the fields at Bannockburn. They fought
like warrior poets. They fought like Scotsmen. And won their freedom.
 
[This message has been edited by DavidNewbould (edited 14 April 2001).]

Anyone remember when Wing Commander III came out? Or was it Prophecy? Not sure, but on the box and in ALL the ads for it - it said PENTIUM REQUIRED! That one single game KILLED the 486 chip. As game programers create more realistic enviornments in the games, you MUST have the horsepower to run it as it was meant to be played. And as I have been around for quite some time, I HAVE seen games go from tiny blips on a screen (PONG), to moving aliens (Space Invaders), to barrels and monkeys (Donkey Kong), to damn near photorealistic air combat (MS Flight sim) and ground action (Counterstrike). And you know what? I WILL keep upgrading to attain the more realism, cause I LOVE it! And would I want to have a programmer DUMB a game down for 2 year old hardware - NO! I WANT MORE REALISM! Sounds to me that you'd also be the type to try and race a VW up against a Ferrari and still claim FOUL! Get with the program, soldier!
 
And thin on this too folks, . . . . it is the GAME industry that pushes the limits on computer equipment, NOT the business industry! Sure, SQL or some number crunching programs need HP, but just how much faster can MS Word pop up on the screen??? But to combat aliens in a photo-like world, and then even be Online as well - that pushes the envelope to extremes. A long time ago they thought games were just for kids and laughed at it - computers were for work only. Ha ha ha on them! Even Bill Gates finaly realized that to make Win9X sell, it HAD to be a GAME platform as well - and he now has made all forms of WIN to BE gaming OS's. Look even at Win2K (why we are all here even) - they even saw they screwed up on this by not making it game friendly, and are rushing to fix that!
 
Well, on the good side - that VW does get better MPG than a Ferrari

David, Go buy a console. That system will fit you perfectly. Unless you can figure out a way to program a simple OS that runs on all X86 hardware and supports all X86 hardware. Then figure out a way to reagularly update the support because you sure aren't going to be able to keep the OS update nor is it going to be perfect upon release. Also your sure as heck not going to get the specs for all hardware so your going to have to get the Manufacturers to shift their priorities from the current OS that their market runs to your OS. Now your going to have to support compression formats and most likely a browser and such because the Internet and MM Online Gaming is the current fave of PC Gaming. So people will have to install this compression program (unless you want it to install seamlessly as soon as your OS connets to the net). Oh, wait they will still have to input their configuration settings to even connect to the net..... etc...etc....
 
Why did I mention making a new OS? Because the only way your going to squeeze every single ounce out of your computer is to program in assembly. Now you could probably make a game with an integrated OS but you wouldn't want each and every game coming with it's own OS (would increase game making time to an ungodly amount....refer to above paragraph).
 
 
I repeat. BUY YOURSELF A CONSOLE.

I have a
 
P2-350
128M
GeForce2mx cheap card
 
and Serious Sam is the fastest running game I have seen. The engine is beyond Excellent in my point of view if you compare it to everything else that has come out. I would say the developers have created a masterpiece and I would have to agree that your K6 is probably your problem because this game ROCKS! I must get a100fps, thats how smooth it is on my old crappy processor.

I think it's important to remember that historically, game development has always driven hardware development.
 
For some reason, like, um, MARKET DEMAND, computer gaming has always pressed the development of hardware faster and harder than that of any operating system or business application. It's been that way since day one, and I can't think of any reason for that to change.
 
 
 
------------------
"Being married to a programmer is like owning a cat. You talk to it but you're never really sure it hears you, much less comprehends what you say." -DeadCats, 1999
"Talking to DeadCats is like talking to a dead cat." -MrsDeadCats, 2001

I agree with that statement BUT
 
it should be rephrased to game developers introduce new technology to players. Not make you have to buy it in order to play it.
 
In this example take Sierra and their police quest/kings quest series. Everbody was doing the Roland / Adlib sound card support when they introduced support for a more costly card the Soundblaster.
 
Players didn't have to buy it but the sounds were better. The same thing for Halflife ..we didn't have to get a graphic accelerator but it looks better ..the game still played at the same speed.
 
The point is alot of game developers introduce support for new hardware in that it is nice to have to make it better but the game should run well without it.
 
The argument to go buy a console is warranted but given that the Xbox will run windows CE, have a nvidia card and an intel chip ..makes it ludicrious given thats what a PC is. So if a developer cant make it go quick on a normal PC what hope does he/she have?
 
A PC is like a console, you just need to learn the tricks ..and not many people take time to learn the tricks ..which is understandable given that there are alot of directx calls, win32 api calls plus the undocumented ones.
 
[ 19 April 2001: Message edited by: Almghty ]

Yes, halflife better support lower end machines and run really good, because its based on Quake and just heavily modified!
Of course its gonna run well! 1GHz wasnt a thought when Quake came out.
With todays games coming in at around 450MB a piece, there is only so much that can be supported if the company hopes to get it out in a reasonable time and not pull the Daikatana crap.
 
Look, nobody says you have to play the thing...geez.
 
You guys are mad because game programmers wont support every last bit of hardware. ;( Therefore, logically, they are lazy, because they wont spend six months programming for a 486.
 
DosFreak is right--go buy a console, as you obviously will have hardworking game programmers on that end of the spectrum. ;(

I have to agree with Brian Frank!!
 
Everyone keeps referring to Half-Life....I don't mind if everyone starts making comparisons, but at least keep it apples to apples. Instead what is happening is that people are complaining that a game engine equivilant to the Quake III engine doesn't run as fast as the Quake engine on the same machine. Well no kidding the Quake based game is going to run better.
 
There is no way that we can make a game that will work on the million different hardware configurations and multiple OSs that are being used. We would never get the game out.
 
Consoles are a whole entire different entity. There is a set specification to work for. You optimize everything to work on a set group of hardware and nothing else. Thats it. It gets so frustrating as a developer because we can't please everyone, and the ones that we don't please whine louder than the ones we do please.

Yeah, programming takes a long time. Im in this class where we're just doing a little QBasic. We're working on a program that takes 5 seconds to complete and weve worked on it for over four hours and its not yet done. Even with this stuff, I can see why they just cant whip out a game every day and sell it.

Well this is off topic,but wasn't half life driven by the QII engine? not that it realy matters

Fair enough. I will help to compare apples with apples because clearly there are either no programmers in here or people believe programming is so hard that they must have done a good job already and should be applauded.
 
In comparing new age games, we have Tomb RAider 3 (last revelation?) and Indiana Jones 3d which came out at the same time. Both same type of play with equivalent graphics. Yet when playing both on the same system Indiana Jones plays like a dog. If you then play Tomb Raider 4 (lost chronicles?) you will find that now plays like a dog, so what happened? As I said development teams come and go and talent comes and goes. Programmers are like doctors ..for every great doctor there are lots of average doctors.
 
Again we take something like Black & White with its outdoor arena and track it against Tribes 2. Same hardware and settings and you will find Tribes 2 is slower. Why? It cannot be the arena because the graphic engine only has to contend with what you see. So even if Tribes is some 20km x 20km map ..you are always limited in what you see on the screen. Both games are set outdoors, Black & White is probably more CPU intensive with its obviously more complex AI in the background.
 
I am not angry at anything, i can pretty much play any game on my system. I work in the industry so i'd like to see some classy work. To have people say to other people "geez tribes 2 ownz your system sucks upgrade" is just the blind following the blind like when microsoft gives you a new bloated OS and says "XP ownz, your dual amd 1.3ghz is too slow upgrade"

Almghty...you make some valid points...but come on!! Tribes 2 and Black & White!! Um...those are totally not the same. Tribes 2 deals with all of the players in the world, not just AI. Get into a game with 30+ players in tribes 2 and tell me that the two games are the same. I don't think so.
 
Then there is the Tomb Raider 3 vs. Indiana Jones 3D. Hmm...lets take a look. Tomb Raider 3 is a rehash of 1 and 2 with minor upgrades. Indiana Jones was a totally new engine. Just because both of these games are situated outdoors, doesn't mean anything. The gameplay is different, there many major differences between the two.
 
Black & White has some incredible graphics and so does Tribes 2. But in the same aspect both of these games took an average of 2+ years in development.
 
Regardless of what is better and what people consider shotty work by programers...you are all still missing one basic thing.
 
Games need to make money! 3rd Party resalers of hardware need to make money (ie. nVidia, ATI, Asus, etc.) If the games stayed the same and kept the same system requirements, we as gamers would get extremely bored. Once it has been done we want bigger, badder, and faster. But to say that you don't want to upgrade your hardware to get that is rediculous. I work in the industry as well, and yes I too would like to see some games that are totally optimized and run awesome right out of the box with absolutly ZERO patches. But by the time they would be released something bigger and better has come out and the game will be overlooked.
 
I think we could go on about this for the next century and we would still be having this conversation. I do think that the programmers deserve some praise for what they go through. Between totally revamping a 3D engine in the middle of the project and still make the deadline is pretty impressive. I would also have to agree that there are different levels of talent in development teams, but regardless there are tons of great games that we play everyday as well as the games that we look forward to playing in the future.
 
The worst part of this entire topic is that most of the time it doesn't matter how good the programmers really are. Deadlines will always be more powerful. Not every company can afford to spend 2+ years in development. You miss a deadline and you are out x amount of dollars. Then you find yourself unemployed and looking for another job.

Bottleneck, actually, I think that HL was built on a combo of Quake and Quake 2, and then they used their skinning thing so it looked really good. ;(

Back to the topic:
Hmm...put out the game w/o optimizations for every last piece of hardware or get my *** fired? Hmm...I guess the 486 optimizations will go along with the TNT and Voodoo2's...on second though the voodoo's will stay--too popular to dump...YET.
 
Also, this little programming Ive done shows me how easy it is to make a mistake. One character missing or improperly put in can screw up the program...and this is probably only a few k. Imagine the time to look through the entire 400+ megs a game usually contains even with multiple people, theres still room for human error.
 
If a game company keeps putting a game off until all is perfect, no one is gonna be impressed, because there will still be a problem along the line. Duh!
Look at Daikatana, 4 freakin' years after it was promised! Look at how many people think it sucks ***! Its the most despised game on earth!
Not saying it runs poorly, but it offers nothing new, except a headache.
 
You want to wait four years for the newest game to come out?
 
Like I said, your just pissed because the game programmers dont support everything all the way back to the stone age!
If you dont like the fact that games dont run on your system--get a console and quit *****in'!

I'm not moaning about my hardware not being up-to-date.
 
I'm saying, for the last time, that people who code games can find alterior ways to enhance a players experience of a game, and these ways are inherently faster than the techniques currently used.
<lets breath out>
 
There is [size:18]NO need to flame me for this, I'm not trying to insult your integrity, nor am I challenging you, I'm just making a point about the necessity of certain things in a game.
 
Ok.
Ok, I'm done.
Peace.

i think everyone has a good point. Yes game programmers can improve the poly counts on the engines some (someone mentioned the need not to draw the WHOLE truck 10 miles away) and yes it is a ***** to program (i dont program games but ive worked on Total Conversion mods for many in the coding end, but that is much different because i didnt do any API programming). So you see it is important to support older hardware but sometimes this older hardware just doesnt have the memory bandwith to support the high-res textures and the high poly counts. The problem really doesnt lie with the games much more the limits of the video cards the game is played on. This gets into the theory of overdrawing surfaces which is what you see when you get into complex engines such as Tribes 2, look at all the space on those external levels then think about how much the objects you dont see are drawn this will effect memory bandwith, and brings me into the Kyro II chipset. Im not going into detail but in theory and on paper this looks to be the best value gamers card because of the fact that its cheap and produces the same framerates as a GF2 GTS or Pro for a lot less money, and it does this by removing the surfaces you dont see saving the memory bandwith. So in the end you can only tweak a game engine so much but it all comes down to rendering and memory bandwith in the card.

Sorry, I tend to get overzealous sometimes.
I just dont think you really had a clue about game programming, and then went and made generalizations.
Definitely not trying to start a flame war here if at all possible.

if you want to start talking about games that have taken forever to come out i can name one right now. Duke Nukem Forever. This game went from being on the Quake 2 engine to being on the Unreal engine and has been in development for how long now sheesh ever since Quake 2 came out. Of course though sometimes people get too overinvolved with FPS and ping times too even enjoy the game. That is one of the reasons i don't play CS much anymore is because most of the people playing are so concerned about FPS and ping times that they have GF 2 GTS+ (plus as in gf2 ultra,ect) and have to have the low pings just so they can get the 20 kills a level or whatever and arent concerned about having a good time playing with their friends.
 
Also i know nobody means to insult anyone here so I dont take offense to what people say, i just remember that people like to defend their cause one way or another so their replies might come across as harsh (this isnt directed toward anyone so please dont take it that way) but just take what people say and listen to em and keep the topic going.