New games = Lazy code? perhaps??

[Looney]

I guess you weren't around when Doom was released. In fact, i think very few cards today can play the game at the max settings.

 

[CTho9305]

FEAR and Oblivion do a hell of a lot more than Half Life 2. HL2 looks good, but FEAR and Oblivion (can) look amazing. I'm playing at 720x480 and I was very impressed with the graphics. The specular lighting is well done.

 

[YoshiSato]

I think it's a combination of several factors.
1) Hardware is changing faster than ever. Every 6 months something new comes out that blows away older hardware. back in the 20th century it took 4 years for the clock speed of the 8086 to double the first time. Also there was the mentality that you'd never every need more than 64k of memory, so programmers did their best to get the most out of every bit and clock cycle they could. Games were designed for the mainstream computer on the market and had features power machines could use.

Ttoday the though process is upgrade upgrade upgrade. If the technology doesn't exist now, it will be here tomorrow. Lets design software for nextweeks machines last month. Screw the mid-level users, lets design software that requires a top of the line machine, that why we can get "hardward" certificated and get our kickbacks for forcing people to upgrade to Quad-SLI and Qintuple-Core CUPs.

2) The advent of the internet has made "release it now fix it later" SOP. Back in the 90s if a game was released bugged to hell like all new games today that would have been the last game the company would have made. There was no mass distrubition system for patches. Games has to be as near as perfect as possible and compatible with a varity of systems. There was no plug and pray drivers or APIs like DirectX. Programer really needed to know how to code.

3) Marketing departmetns forcing the programmers to release alpha version software just to meet some pointless deadline and relaying on the fix it later approach of downloadable patches to fix any problems.

4) Lack of care on parts of the programmers and developers. I beleive the breed of desinger has changed with the new generation. Games are now about money, not the enjoyable hobby that you could profit from. I mean when you get down to it, your going to put all your effort into your hobbies. That's not ture for your "dead end job" where you have to put up with your @$$ hole boss(if you have one)

Just look at the quality of work from Modding groups(say the team that did The BF42 mod desert combat or the Day of Defeat team) and then look what happens after they get bought out by a large company you'll see how 3 and 4 fit in. Their quality of work went down the tubes.


I think the game industry is going to take a major dump soon(which is a good thing in the long wrong), hard core gamers will get tired of buggy software that should have never left the alpha stage and getting raped 50 bucks to beta test it while the developers fix it in the field. Also if more distrubition systems like Steam are born the "basement" developers will be able to design and distrubite their games on their time table and be able to put more effort into a game(Instead of bowing down to marketing that knows nothing about game development).

Also with such systems the lost art of ture game demo'ing will return. Distrubute the freeware beta versions while in production and then onec the game is finalized, sell it for a economical $19.99 - $29.99 instead of the rapage of $49.99 - $59.99 bucks for inferior work.

I remember paying 50 bucks for transport tycoon back in the 90s(and for a 4th grader that was a hell of a lot of money) that game never had any bugs. I just paid 50 bucks for Empire at war and the game is total crap. Major balacing issues and Net Code that is based off of out dated netowrking technology.

 

[Looney]

2) The advent of the internet has made "release it now fix it later" SOP. Back in the 90s if a game was released bugged to hell like all new games today that would have been the last game the company would have made. There was no mass distrubition system for patches. Games has to be as near as perfect as possible and compatible with a varity of systems. There was no plug and pray drivers or APIs like DirectX. Programer really needed to know how to code.

There's always been bugs, and always will be. Even back then. Nowadays though, you have games that contains hundreds of times more codes than games back when they were on floppies. And with the internet, it's easier for people to make the complaints, and easier for people to see all those complaints. And there are many more gamers today than there was 15 years ago. Bestheda could keep the content of Oblivion as it is right now, and do nothing but fix bugs for the next 2 years, and there will still be bugs.

Personally, i can put up with the few bugs i've encountered to enjoy the game now. Rather than wait years for it to be perfect, and paying double for the price of the game, to play a game with a few less bugs. Sure, there are companies out there that release stuff riddled with bugs, but Oblivion is damn good for a game of this scale and complexity.

Costs of games aren't going to get any less, not with all the GPU power that is available now... gamers are going to demand better graphics, which means more manpower to create that graphics. And nobody is going to want to wait years for the game to be perfected, only to be released at a time when it's far behind the technology of the times.

It's like saying console games have less bugs than PC games. Just because you don't see all the forums that console gamers are visiting, or all the patches for them because it's impossible till now to patch console games, that you think they're anymore stable or bug free than PC games. Console may be a bit better than the PC, simply because of hardware standardization, but the bugs are still there.

Games made 10+ years ago were so much simpler than games today. The coders back then weren't any better, it was simply that what they had to work with was much more simple. I mean, look at your comparison of Transport Tycoon and Empire at War. Transport Tycoon was probably made by a team of 10 people or less. Empire at war i bet had at least triple that amount of people working on it. But when you get to more complicated games like Master of Orion, there were definite bugs in that game.

You really are naieve if you think games are released in alpha stages... or you have no idea what the alpha stage is. And the deadlines aren't pointless... look at what happens when games are delayed, like in HL2 and Oblivion, people were upset at those delays. The deadlines are set so marketing knows when the game will be released, but also so the developers have a goal they can meet, with milestones they can set. Are games often released before they should be? Yeah, sometimes they are, but i don't think it's as prevalent as you think it is. Nobody wants to spend years tweaking the same game over and over, especially since it's fruitless, because new hardware will always come out.

And it took 10 years for the 8086 to double in clock speed? 😕

 

[YoshiSato]

Originally posted by: Looney


And it took 10 years for the 8086 to double in clock speed? 😕

I stand corrected it was 4 years. I cofused 2 differnet articles

As for games being more complexed today than 10 years ago. BS
Back then every game had to invent it's own engine and code everything from the ground up. Today many an game used Engines like HL, Soruce, Quake 3, UT, ect as the basis and then they just make their modifications.
When The dev team that did the Deset Combat mod got bought out to do BF2 all they were doing was making a mod for an already designed game engine(The company that bought them had already developed the engine so a lot of the ground work was done)


As for EAW using Outdated networking protocals, that's poor planning, even poorer programming. They used cookie cutter IPX protocals from Gahmespy and it doesn't work. TCP/IP would have been better much much better and no need for 3rd party crap software.

 

[YoshiSato]

Double post

 

[spunkz]

this is why i still play cs 1.6

 

[YoshiSato]

Originally posted by: spunkz
this is why i still play cs 1.6

Actually CS Soruce isn't that bad. However DoD Souce blows compared to DOD

My only grip is the fake weapon names.
Nighthawk and Dual .40s BAH

Why are the Barrettas even called a Dual .40? IT"S A FRACKING 9MM which is a .38

 

[skace]

FEAR, Doom3, and HL2 are all map based FPS games. Where as, Oblivion is an RPG that renders all the way to the horizon. FEAR probably should have ran better than it did, all things considered but Oblivion at least has an excuse. There are very few game developers out there that will even attempt what Bethesda attempted. Sure, there may be some bloated code in there considering the size and scope of the game, but they also managed to do the incredible when they brought that world to life. When graphics cards can run Oblivion at max detail we are going to see an incredible world.

 

[YoshiSato]

Originally posted by: skace
FEAR, Doom3, and HL2 are all map based FPS games. Where as, Oblivion is an RPG that renders all the way to the horizon. FEAR probably should have ran better than it did, all things considered but Oblivion at least has an excuse. There are very few game developers out there that will even attempt what Bethesda attempted. Sure, there may be some bloated code in there considering the size and scope of the game, but they also managed to do the incredible when they brought that world to life. When graphics cards can run Oblivion at max detail we are going to see an incredible world.

I think physics cards are where things are at next.
What I've been reading about the engines PPUs will allow, OMG.

Think In CS you can take the M249 and cut a hole through a wall and wall right in or when a nade explores ,chunks of concreate start flying and injure your target.

 

[Colonel C]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom
Oblivion was made to run on both PC and 360 so it's not as efficient as it could be.

Sad but true. I'm sick of console ports.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Was oblivion made for the PC and then ported to xbox 360 or vice versa?

Ask a xbox fanboy, they'll tell you it was built for the xbox360 and was optimized for it, etc, etc.

Ask a PC fanboy and they'll tell you the opposite.

From what I've read, it doesn't even seem possible it was built for the 360 from the ground up. The developers had been working on the game since 2002 I believe? And I read they got the xbox 360 development kits in march of 2005 or so. I don't see how the game could have been built from the ground up for 360 when:

a) The console in question didn't even exist during at least the first half of development.
b) They didn't have a development kit until they were moving into the home stretch.

Bethseda's official position is that it was always developed in tandem for both of them. I do think the console was a bigger focus this time around...judging by the completely lame ass interface that was thrust upon the PC users. Thats where the money is though. However, the fact that the lions share of the development must have happened on PCs hardly left the PC out in the cold.

I've heard its optimized for dual core, and that it uses all 3 cores on the xbox. I haven't seen anything on the PC that confirms that...in fact the few antecdotal tests I've seen seem to indicate that its as optimized for dual core processors as much as other titles that claim to be are. (Read as: Not much) I doubt its any different of a story on the xbox360.

My feeling is, it was designed on PCs first but they spent most of the final hours focusing on the xbox 360. They're tight lipped on this, so we'll never know if the delay back in november was because of one system or the other. But I think that once they got ahold of the development kits their tight schedule prevented them from squeezing enough juice out of the system quickly to get it released on time. But the xbox was more the unknown then the PC was IMO.

Still, I think the consoles influence in this case may have been a boon to PC users. They had to squeeze a lot of world into a lot less ram...which may explain how the dynamic loading seems to handle itself so much better on the PC then morrowinds ever did.

 

[HardWarrior]

Originally posted by: inveterate
Like i said b4, Gaming has never been a mid level machine's task, gaming is like War in the real world, the weapons of which are always the most modern and/or should be. The less techno savy the army the more it will loose. basically i'm saying "fook mid-level" Not that there isn't a range of gaming machines, just that it isn't as wide as your're making out to be. Plz take no offense.

You're wrong. If all games were keyed towards the current high-end, they wouldn't come with adjustable settings. Moreover games OEM's will always shoot for as broad a range of possible clients as possible. Your elaborate scenario aside, companies like Epic want to make money, not prove that they're products can bring low to mid-range machines to their collective knees.

 

[dguy6789]

New games are of a lazy code. Either that, or video card companies are the ones that are getting lazy. Either way, someone needs to pick up the pace.

To those who stated that mid range machines are not gaming machines: I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but less than 10% of all gaming pcs have a video card faster than a Radeon 9600.

Those who say 60fps with 4XAA and 8XAF is generally what playable is, are also terribly mistaken. 60fps with those settings is what one would call perfection, not bare playability. Bare playability would be 30 fps with no aa or af.

Before the uninformed once again cry foul, please understand a few things. 30FPS is perfectly playable in just about any game, saying otherwise is rather pointless and unintelligent. What people mistake in their observations is the fact that 30fps constant and 30fps average are two very different things. 30fps average means that half of the fps is lower than 30 and half is higher than 30.

Halo and Halo 2 both run at constant 30fps and are perfectly playable 100% of the time, so that is proof to the statement.

Also, the Xbox 360 version of Oblivion runs better than a high end pc. Only an ultra high end could even compare. An FX60 with a Geforce 7900GTX runs the game not as well as Xbox 360. While the PC will have a higher maximum fps than the 360, it would also have a much lower minimum fps. A maximum of 40fps and minimum of 30fps is far greater than a maximum of 100 and a minimum of 20fps in terms of playability. You really need SLI for the game to be at a solid fps in the really intense situations in areas of massive foliage.

 

[apoppin]

neither FEAR nor Oblivion are poorly nor lazily coded. 😉

it is the Future and you will need a more powerful gaming machine [period]

it's "progress"

i don't see many people complaining about Vista's requirements of 800MB system RAM. . . . of course, because it is well-coded.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: apoppin
neither FEAR nor Oblivion are poorly nor lazily coded. 😉

it is the Future and you will need a more powerful gaming machine [period]

it's "progress"

i don't see many people complaining about Vista's requirements of 800MB system RAM. . . . of course, because it is well-coded.

Microsoft is using intelligence this time. They have decided to list realistic system requirements rather than ones based of fantasy. Windows XP says it can run on a Pentium 233mhz with 64MB of ram. I am sure it can, but how well would it work? With Vista, if your machine meets the minimum requirements, it will run and run well.



As to your game statements, I both agree and disagree with you. A few years ago, top end games both looked good and ran well on everything mid range and up.(When 9700 Pro came out, Ti4600 could still run all games at max settings). When X800XT and 6800 Ultra came out, the 9800 Pro could still run all games at max settings.

Now that the X1900XTX and 7900GTX are out, the X850XTPE and 6800 Ultra cannont run all games at maximum settings with as much smoothness as would be expected. Some games even do not run well on the top tier cards, and require a multi card solution for perfect performance.


An argument against mine could be that graphics do not scale linearly with increased hardware. Some could say that increasing game graphics and hardware has diminishing returns properties. This could very much be possible.

Nevertheless, I want both games to look better and hardware to get faster, faster and for $399 for absolute top end and lower for all others.

 

[HardWarrior]

Originally posted by: apoppin
neither FEAR nor Oblivion are poorly nor lazily coded. 😉

I've never played Oblivion, so I have no opinion. FEAR is a different story though. For the amount of power that the game engine requires it does some very interesting things, but the visuals just don't justify the expenditure, IMO. I don't know if this condition is due to "poor/lazy" coding, but it does indicate that there are issues of one type of another.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Oblivion runs poorly on the 360 and supposedly it has been highly optimized including using all three processor cores.

Wow, this is the first time I've heard that Oblivion runs poorly on the 360. In fact, everything I've heard is the exact opposite. But, I haven't played it...

 

[fishbits]

imo gameing isn't a mid level thing, But FEAR/ Oblivion is bringing HIGHEST end to their knees, that is the problem i'm talking about.

That's funny, because a maxed Unreal brought systems to their knees when it was released way back when. You want to say that's because it must have been poorly coded? IMO, this was a plus: You got a great game on release, and you got to run it even better down the road when upgrade time rolled around. That's forward thinking and adding value, an engine that runs today and tomorrow.

As for gaming not being a mid-level thing, perhaps you can convince game developers to adopt this philosophy while you're teaching the classes to improve their ability to write code. That they want to put no flexibility into the design, and have to accurately predict what the top hardware will be at time of release years away. That they're still going to have jobs when they deliberately make products that won't run well on and sell to the 95% of the market that doesn't upgrade every three to six months. That their game will very quickly be outdated, because they weren't allowed to put in higher graphics options to take advantage of future GPU advances.

Your attempts at being a forum gaming/hardware snob aren't going to get you what you want, at least not here. Issuing a blanket condemnation of the work ethic and ability of game programmers is only making you look worse.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Ben Skywalker wrote a great thread on the bitching of games and graphics. He basically wrote a decent article on the diminishing returns of eye candy in some of these future games. Do a search, you should find his post.

 

[PingSpike]

It is a variety of factors coming together, and diminished returns is one of them. Take your first 3d graphics models...they were pretty low poly and relied on some half way decent textures to get the point across. They didn't look real, but they looked decent. Double the poly count, and the model looks a lot better. Much more realistic. But it requires a lot more horsepower. Double the polies again, double the horsepower.

Eventually you reach a point (this point is different for everyone, I'd say we reached it in the last couple years) where doubling the polies doesn't really make it look much better. It looks better, yes, but not twice as good. But it still doubles the workload.

Its not that simple or cut and dry of course, but you get the idea. The first 90% towards perfection is easy and rewarding...that last 10% is long, difficult and only yields small gains along the way.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Found the article... CLICK

 

[inveterate]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
New games are of a lazy code. Either that, or video card companies are the ones that are getting lazy. Either way, someone needs to pick up the pace.

To those who stated that mid range machines are not gaming machines: I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but less than 10% of all gaming pcs have a video card faster than a Radeon 9600.

Those who say 60fps with 4XAA and 8XAF is generally what playable is, are also terribly mistaken. 60fps with those settings is what one would call perfection, not bare playability. Bare playability would be 30 fps with no aa or af.

Before the uninformed once again cry foul, please understand a few things. 30FPS is perfectly playable in just about any game, saying otherwise is rather pointless and unintelligent. What people mistake in their observations is the fact that 30fps constant and 30fps average are two very different things. 30fps average means that half of the fps is lower than 30 and half is higher than 30.

Halo and Halo 2 both run at constant 30fps and are perfectly playable 100% of the time, so that is proof to the statement.

Also, the Xbox 360 version of Oblivion runs better than a high end pc. Only an ultra high end could even compare. An FX60 with a Geforce 7900GTX runs the game not as well as Xbox 360. While the PC will have a higher maximum fps than the 360, it would also have a much lower minimum fps. A maximum of 40fps and minimum of 30fps is far greater than a maximum of 100 and a minimum of 20fps in terms of playability. You really need SLI for the game to be at a solid fps in the really intense situations in areas of massive foliage.

OK,, HALO 1/2 NOT always playable, since i got halo pc when it came out,, I couldn't bare to look at HALO on da box, also halo 2 notice all the texture disappearing and massive slow downs...

What i've said about being playable also include AVERAGE fps to be 60+ ,, and 60 is not absolute perfect. since every frame is different. but the + makes all the difference. as long as it never hits below sixty it'll be the best.

 

[dguy6789]

I was not speaking of Halo PC. Halo on Xbox runs incredibly well with no slowdown except in exceedeingly rare circumstances(maybe once in 50 game play sessions). Coop has some slowdown, but of course, we were speaking of one player. Same with Halo 2, single player has near flawless gameplay. The "texture disappearing and reappearing" issue is one that has nothing to do with the system's capabilities. Bungie has made a statement about this problem. They stated that they could have eliminated the pop in, however, load times would be increased by a large amount. They have decided that the game was more enjoyable with some pop in and no load times rather than loading often.(You will notice that if you play Halo 2, it will have the initial load screen, then will never have another load screen through the entire campaign as you are playing)

 

[SpeedZealot369]

Ithink cod2 for pc was not written well at all