most efficiently coded game

[ElFenix]

unreal engine (the one used in UT) did not scale well with hardware, iirc. quake3 did so very well.

 

[Sylvanas]

Source Engine

 

[desolate]

I'd also have to go with the Unreal engine

 

[Molondo]

Long load times in BF2 must be due to terrible programming.

 

[spittledip]

Originally posted by: Molondo
Long load times in BF2 must be due to terrible programming.

The BF games are all pretty buggy, but the long load times I thought were mainly due to the huge maps.

 

[spittledip]

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: spittledip

Originally posted by: Modelworks
A lot of the old coin-op arcade games.
Most were written in assembly language, byte for byte. Consider a game like Pacman is only 15KB. It had to fit onto two 8KB eproms.

That isn't exactly a fair comparison considering the complexity of the games nowadays. Obviously older games be the most efficient due to the simplicity of the programs.

Simplicity ?
I take it you don't do assembly programming. Those games are extremely complex. It is much easier to code when you have gigabytes of memory, virtual memory, sdk, high level languages, etc. Try cramming graphics, sound, ai into a very tiny space with only a text interface to work with.

Game programming is quite a bit easier on the programmer now than it was.

[/quote]

lol you actually had to type out the binary in parts? I stand corrected

In terms of complexity of the logic needed in modern games- not the tediousness of typing out every last detail- is it possible that there is more room to make mistakes due to the complexity? I can see that one might make mistakes due to the tediousness of assembly but maybe not mistakes in terms of the complexity. I really don't know, so this is why i am asking.

edit: hahaha, you have to tell it every last thing, huh? It doesn't recognize letters- you have to input the binary for each letter and then refer to it again? haha, that is something else.

 

[bullbert]

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: sandorski
Ya, Assembly is a bitch. The main reason I dropped out of College! :laugh:

yeah, it can be
I was lucky/unlucky enough to grow up at the time when the only real choice was assembly or some half ass basic language that couldn't really run worth a damn on the hardware .

HOL (High Order Languages) all the way, man! Binary got to be really a pain. Then I started using the HOL called 'Hexadecimal' and loved it. A few months after processors started to sample, the assembler and linker were 'maybe' debugged well enough to use, then we started using the HOL called 'Assembly'! Yee Haa! HOLs rule! Who needed 'PL/I' or even 'C' (much less 'C++' or the new really abstact HOLs of the 21st century)? Not us. We were lucky to have 4Kbyte, unlike M$WinVista32 which can use 4Gbyte (well almost, more like 3.2G)

edit: I can still remember using a HexEditor (beta) to correct the linker's output file, in the late 1980s. That was back-in-the-day when cheapo workstations used 8086 with M$DOS (aka CPM) limiting the RAM to 64Kbyte.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: spittledip


lol you actually had to type out the binary in parts? I stand corrected

In terms of complexity of the logic needed in modern games- not the tediousness of typing out every last detail- is it possible that there is more room to make mistakes due to the complexity? I can see that one might make mistakes due to the tediousness of assembly but maybe not mistakes in terms of the complexity. I really don't know, so this is why i am asking.

edit: hahaha, you have to tell it every last thing, huh? It doesn't recognize letters- you have to input the binary for each letter and then refer to it again? haha, that is something else.

Yep, assembly is just a step about binary. It can be hard to use, but it is also extremely powerful . If you are interested in learning more about the language and what it can do download the emulator here:
http://www.geocities.com/emu8086/

It has some tutorials that are animated showing real world applications and helps understand how it all works.

 

[slugg]

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: spittledip


lol you actually had to type out the binary in parts? I stand corrected

In terms of complexity of the logic needed in modern games- not the tediousness of typing out every last detail- is it possible that there is more room to make mistakes due to the complexity? I can see that one might make mistakes due to the tediousness of assembly but maybe not mistakes in terms of the complexity. I really don't know, so this is why i am asking.

edit: hahaha, you have to tell it every last thing, huh? It doesn't recognize letters- you have to input the binary for each letter and then refer to it again? haha, that is something else.

Yep, assembly is just a step about binary. It can be hard to use, but it is also extremely powerful . If you are interested in learning more about the language and what it can do download the emulator here:
http://www.geocities.com/emu8086/

It has some tutorials that are animated showing real world applications and helps understand how it all works.

^^ Agreed. And to further add to this, assembly is basically just the textual representation of machine language (binary). You can actually take any CPU operation and translate it into machine language. This is exactly what an ASM compiler does. It's just a bunch of text that's parsed into binary opcodes. For this reason, in terms of "speed" between ASM and binary, there really is no difference, unless your compiler is an optimizing compiler (which then it can get complicated).

Now, aside from all of that... I will now offer my 2 cents.

Source engine? Hell no. Have any of you actually used the SDK? Simply put, it's a pain in the ass. The newer engine versions (Episode 1 and Orange Box) don't run as well as they should, either. My personal opinion is that when the Source engine was released, it was already outdated.

So in my opinion, the #1 engine of all time is Unreal Engine 2.5/2.X. It runs perfectly on Mac, Linux, Windows, Playstation 2, Xbox, Gamecube, and Wii. Not only that, but any game developed on the Unreal Engine can be ported to another platform by literally just changing some settings. All of the game logic runs in a virtual machine, so the game developer doesn't have to worry about various things, such as memory management and stability (the engine takes care of this). The game logic is completely written in UnrealScript, a java-like, fully object oriented language. This keeps everything organized and uniform, as well as multi-platform.

Unreal Engine 3 is pretty good and is what I'm currently developing on (shameless plug: Unreal Demolition 2), but Unreal Engine 2.5/2.X takes the cake.

In my opinion.

 

[Cheesetogo]

Source

 

[Oyeve]

Half-life. The first one never gave me any issues.

 

[CP5670]

Another vote for the Unreal engines, at least the first two. Those have always had excellent graphics while maintaining good performance and very flexible modding capabilities.

I'm not sure about UE3 though. UT3's technical aspects are excellent and it both looks and runs great, but other games built on that engine aren't quite at the same level. Mass Effect looks like a 2004 game in many places and still runs much more poorly than UT3, while Bioshock runs well but its graphics are highly inconsistent. Maybe only Epic knows how to use this engine properly.

unreal engine (the one used in UT) did not scale well with hardware, iirc. quake3 did so very well.

There is a modified OpenGL driver that allows it to work much better on modern hardware. I think Unreal and UT have aged a lot better than many other games of their time. One particular effect, detail texturing, was introduced in Unreal and it lent a huge improvement to the graphics, but it was rarely seen again in any game until just one or two years ago, when it started to become more common.

 

[imported_Uwe]

Originally posted by: wanderer27
Anyone here ever play StarFlight?

Man, that game was incredible for being as small as it was - how'd they pack all that in there?

Yep, played in college a couple of decades ago. I was amazed at how they got 800 unique planets on 2 5.25 disks. Very good game for back in the day. The Spemin shall rule the universe one day!

 

[johnleeRIP]

Well I once heard of a 64kb 3D shooter game with sound, AI, battles, and several maps and all together it was just under 64KB
It could fit on a floppy disk 14 times over and it had the graphics quality of the ID Tech 4 engines.

Imagine 64kb! That's much much smaller than even the ORIGINAL DOOM, and the graphics are 1000000X better...

That's what I mean by efficiency.


P.S.

Plus there is an entire x86 based Operating System (I think called menutos or something) that is about 700kb and it runs on any PC based computer from 8086 to Extreme Quad Core and it was programmed 100% in pure assembly. The operating system lets you surf the internets and play Quake like games and write on word editors and such, etc.... And it even has its own version of the Microsoft Vista Flip3D thing....

Imagine 700kb of pure efficiency and perfection compared to the 12GB of DRM/WGA/UAC/etc ridden bloatware that is Vista. Both do the same thing, expect one does it infinitely better at a virtually infinitesimal file size for a modern OS


Third Edit:


So just imagine, with the two listed above, you can fit BOTH a modern day Operating System *AND* a modern day 3D FPS within the confines of a
single prehistoric Floppy Disk..

And sony wants you to believe bluray is the only way.

I bet Flight Simulator XI will be 100GB/200GB install size that will fit only on dual/quad/octo layer bluray disk. Seeing how they upped the graphics 4X since FS9, FS11 should easily be as large as 100GB since FSX is already 15GB without any aftermarket addons.

 

[idiotekniQues]

world in conflict is very well done. lag is neglidible. you can alt-tab with abandon. it is very clan friendly for adding friends, doing things in-game, etc.

 

[StevenNevets]

Devil May Cry 4

The controls are sketchy on the PC version but has anyone noticed the frame rate is incredibly high for such a good looking game?

 

[cirrhosis]

EVE Online!

lololololololololololololol

 

[videogames101]

Originally posted by: cirrhosis
EVE Online!

lololololololololololololol

uh, the graphics engine is incredibly efficient...


(shhhhhh! about the UI )