Lazy Game Programmers.
This is a discussion about Lazy Game Programmers. in the Windows Games category; May i start my rant in regards to Serious Sam: I installed it, and it ran really badly on my rig. (Which gets 50-60fps in CS) I turned all the texture detail, resolution etc down, and it still ran badly.
May i start my rant in regards to Serious Sam:
I installed it, and it ran really badly on my rig. (Which gets 50-60fps in CS)
I turned all the texture detail, resolution etc down, and it still ran badly.
Now people may say "oh this game rocks, it runs great on my Athlon 1.2Ghz"
I see it as shite programming.
A game, that runs poorly even what ALL the settings are set low, which makes it look no better than a 5 year old game, compared to a game that looks great and runs great - for example Half-Life.
"Oh no, no no no, the half life game engine doesnt support as many polygons, and is no where near as advanced"
SO????
can you SEE A DIFFERENCE ?!??!
can you fΓΌck.
The only difference you see is speed.
So the ppl who are bringing out really slow *but new* game engines should stop and think about getting it RIGHT, not getting it done.
Classic example:
V-Rally2 - Installed it, played it, ran at 80fps constantly, looked great, very realistic, great.
Colin McRae rally 2 - Installed it, played it, ran at 15fps, looked piss, nothing felt right, car didnt handle right, shite.
Why is this??
Because the ppl who made CMR2 knew that they could make this game as slow as they liked because it would run OK on ninja spec PC's.
Lazy attitude.
== End Rant ==
Basic System Specs:
AMD K6-III 450
Asus P5A-B 100Mhz
192Mib PC100 RAM
nVidia Riva TNT2 M64 32Mb
Ensoniq PCI Audio Sound Card
48X CD-ROM
Windows 98 SE / Whistler Beta2
------------------
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 11 April 2001).]
I installed it, and it ran really badly on my rig. (Which gets 50-60fps in CS)
I turned all the texture detail, resolution etc down, and it still ran badly.
Now people may say "oh this game rocks, it runs great on my Athlon 1.2Ghz"
I see it as shite programming.
A game, that runs poorly even what ALL the settings are set low, which makes it look no better than a 5 year old game, compared to a game that looks great and runs great - for example Half-Life.
"Oh no, no no no, the half life game engine doesnt support as many polygons, and is no where near as advanced"
SO????
can you SEE A DIFFERENCE ?!??!
can you fΓΌck.
The only difference you see is speed.
So the ppl who are bringing out really slow *but new* game engines should stop and think about getting it RIGHT, not getting it done.
Classic example:
V-Rally2 - Installed it, played it, ran at 80fps constantly, looked great, very realistic, great.
Colin McRae rally 2 - Installed it, played it, ran at 15fps, looked piss, nothing felt right, car didnt handle right, shite.
Why is this??
Because the ppl who made CMR2 knew that they could make this game as slow as they liked because it would run OK on ninja spec PC's.
Lazy attitude.
== End Rant ==
Basic System Specs:
AMD K6-III 450
Asus P5A-B 100Mhz
192Mib PC100 RAM
nVidia Riva TNT2 M64 32Mb
Ensoniq PCI Audio Sound Card
48X CD-ROM
Windows 98 SE / Whistler Beta2
------------------
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 11 April 2001).]
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THC - I think you have a valid point to a degree when you say that some people just want to get the best of their system in playing games rather than enjoy the experience of playing the game. But these people would probably be better off running 3DMark or something similar rather than actually playing games.
At the end of the day people are going to want more for their money. More bad guys on screen, more high resolution textures, more intelligent AI and so-on.
These things come at a price though, and that price is a hardware upgrade for the consumer.
The game companies aren't stupid (reagrdless of what you might think of them) and they don't intentionaly release a game that is targetted at the hardcore gamers with top end systems. Doing so will limit the income that that title will generate.
However, the ability of Serious Sam (the game this thread started about) to draw massive environments and fill them with dozens of bad guys naturally requires a fair amount of computing power. Both in terms of CPU and graphics.
If the engine was cut back and the distances and number of bad guys on screen at once was limited, there would be little to distinguish this game from the many FPS games released to date. That would be a financial disaster for the publisher. Croteam spent 5 years developing this game (and the engine behind it) so it's only fair you do it justice by running it on a compentent PC.
Otherwise, go and get a console. Then your copy of game X will run at the same speed as your friends copy of the game and all these problems go away.
At the end of the day people are going to want more for their money. More bad guys on screen, more high resolution textures, more intelligent AI and so-on.
These things come at a price though, and that price is a hardware upgrade for the consumer.
The game companies aren't stupid (reagrdless of what you might think of them) and they don't intentionaly release a game that is targetted at the hardcore gamers with top end systems. Doing so will limit the income that that title will generate.
However, the ability of Serious Sam (the game this thread started about) to draw massive environments and fill them with dozens of bad guys naturally requires a fair amount of computing power. Both in terms of CPU and graphics.
If the engine was cut back and the distances and number of bad guys on screen at once was limited, there would be little to distinguish this game from the many FPS games released to date. That would be a financial disaster for the publisher. Croteam spent 5 years developing this game (and the engine behind it) so it's only fair you do it justice by running it on a compentent PC.
Otherwise, go and get a console. Then your copy of game X will run at the same speed as your friends copy of the game and all these problems go away.
Oh, yeah Duke Forever. I dont remember them promising a date, but of course I could be wrong on that one.
Remeber Duke3D? That was awesome!
I still have a voodoo 3 3000, and that runs UT and HL just fine on the old test sytem. It certainly is nowhere near as fast as my GF2MX card(insanely overclocked), but it does the job with those two games. Im pretty sure that it wouldnt be as good for Serious Sam. I havent played too many games, but SS was the first jaw dropper since Duke3D.
I havent had so much fun with a game.
So far, since I first upgraded from a Cyrix 300 to a Pentium II 400, I havent had a problem running games.
Games are the biggest pushers on technology, not the OS, although we may think that. XP needs at least a 300MHz cpu and 64 (or is it 128)MB of ram to run. Many games, besides Serious Sam have requiered that to run. If all games except 1 can run fine, I wouldnt be too worried. I'll star worriying when the requirements for games start doubling evey month.
Remeber Duke3D? That was awesome!
I still have a voodoo 3 3000, and that runs UT and HL just fine on the old test sytem. It certainly is nowhere near as fast as my GF2MX card(insanely overclocked), but it does the job with those two games. Im pretty sure that it wouldnt be as good for Serious Sam. I havent played too many games, but SS was the first jaw dropper since Duke3D.
I havent had so much fun with a game.
So far, since I first upgraded from a Cyrix 300 to a Pentium II 400, I havent had a problem running games.
Games are the biggest pushers on technology, not the OS, although we may think that. XP needs at least a 300MHz cpu and 64 (or is it 128)MB of ram to run. Many games, besides Serious Sam have requiered that to run. If all games except 1 can run fine, I wouldnt be too worried. I'll star worriying when the requirements for games start doubling evey month.
yeah they posted a date for DNF 'When its done' is what they are saying and havent changed it yet.
That should give em some leeway.
yeah that way they dont have to miss a deadline because there isnt one LOL
Good thinkin on their part, hehe. LOL
Its been a very interesting thread and I hope it continues a little more on peoples feelings towards game programmers and what they do.
Essentially most are harking about the closed development cycle of a console versus the neverending number of configurations for a PC. Which explains the smoothness of many console games that can never be duplicated 100% on a PC. In console land everything is the same whereas a PC not all the mobos are born equal, not all memory is the same, not all VGA cards handle T&L.
But you guys have to admit, there are games out there which you play from similar genres that you sit back and think
"damn why does this game play like a dog"
I'm not talking always about the graphics, i'm talking about controls, movement, physics ..overall feel.
For a game like that which only gets better when you shove in your geforce 9 and athlon 9 ghz..thats when you should be thinking "they must have hired idiots to program it" not "damn so this is how the game was meant to be played".
Optimization isn't just sitting back and letting some software do it all. Its painstaking to go through the code, profile certain sections and even then still miss obvious speedups.
Take for a example a program with these two lines scattered everywhere.
for(counter = 0; counter < 3;counter++)
cout << " Hello" << endl;
Overall it would be quicker to just roll out the loop than have it all neat. In the end it could probably speedup your entire app/game by a factor of 2.
Did the developers of Quake123 need to use the BSP algorithm for their game? No they could have used something else but that algorithm is speedy which is why alot of people still use it.
Essentially most are harking about the closed development cycle of a console versus the neverending number of configurations for a PC. Which explains the smoothness of many console games that can never be duplicated 100% on a PC. In console land everything is the same whereas a PC not all the mobos are born equal, not all memory is the same, not all VGA cards handle T&L.
But you guys have to admit, there are games out there which you play from similar genres that you sit back and think
"damn why does this game play like a dog"
I'm not talking always about the graphics, i'm talking about controls, movement, physics ..overall feel.
For a game like that which only gets better when you shove in your geforce 9 and athlon 9 ghz..thats when you should be thinking "they must have hired idiots to program it" not "damn so this is how the game was meant to be played".
Optimization isn't just sitting back and letting some software do it all. Its painstaking to go through the code, profile certain sections and even then still miss obvious speedups.
Take for a example a program with these two lines scattered everywhere.
for(counter = 0; counter < 3;counter++)
cout << " Hello" << endl;
Overall it would be quicker to just roll out the loop than have it all neat. In the end it could probably speedup your entire app/game by a factor of 2.
Did the developers of Quake123 need to use the BSP algorithm for their game? No they could have used something else but that algorithm is speedy which is why alot of people still use it.
Of course if its gonna be supporting this technology or having the game late or getting paid less, that other technology is just not gonna get the support. No hard feelings, but money is a major factor, along with keeping a job.
It is a good thing to have games that can actually utilize the 1GHz+cpus and the GF2Ultras. Yes, that does suck for people with older cards like a voodoo 2, but then again, if money is the drive, somethings will get dropped, wether the end user likes it or not.
Life is not fair--therefore it can, and will suck sometimes.
Unfortunately, 600MHz is considered lowend right now, but that is a perfectly acceptable speed as long as your video card is decent. The cheaper hardware is not necessarily bad, but in the past the cheap stuff just didnt hold up without overclocking, and even then, that didnt mean that it would be as good as the real thing. The K6 cpus were sort of a competitor to the Pentium II, and it did not perform nearly as well at the P2, and cost nearly the same. We all know what happened there.
Nvidia seems to target their chips at a wide range of consumers, and you have the whole slew of TNT and GeForce lines(including the 2s of both series). Unfortunately, the TNT is no match for the GeForce 2 MX, and the MX is no comparison to the GeForce 3. IMO the MX is a very capable card for the money, and if you stick it with a decent cpu, even the Celeron, you can have a sweet gaming rig that should run dandy.
End of lecture....
It is a good thing to have games that can actually utilize the 1GHz+cpus and the GF2Ultras. Yes, that does suck for people with older cards like a voodoo 2, but then again, if money is the drive, somethings will get dropped, wether the end user likes it or not.
Life is not fair--therefore it can, and will suck sometimes.
Unfortunately, 600MHz is considered lowend right now, but that is a perfectly acceptable speed as long as your video card is decent. The cheaper hardware is not necessarily bad, but in the past the cheap stuff just didnt hold up without overclocking, and even then, that didnt mean that it would be as good as the real thing. The K6 cpus were sort of a competitor to the Pentium II, and it did not perform nearly as well at the P2, and cost nearly the same. We all know what happened there.
Nvidia seems to target their chips at a wide range of consumers, and you have the whole slew of TNT and GeForce lines(including the 2s of both series). Unfortunately, the TNT is no match for the GeForce 2 MX, and the MX is no comparison to the GeForce 3. IMO the MX is a very capable card for the money, and if you stick it with a decent cpu, even the Celeron, you can have a sweet gaming rig that should run dandy.
End of lecture....
Oh yeah, remember Serious Sam is a totally new gaming engine, so there are likely a few kinks to work out yet, that may be hope for older technology, but again I think the programmers are more worried about getting paid than supporting every last bit of hardware, so older technology gets left in the dust.
