Why are game developers so lazy?

[BD2003]

I dont get it, we've got all this crazy hardware will all these insane capabilities, and none of them are utilized. Bump mapping, vertex and pixel shaders, TnL, stencil buffers, texture compression etc...

For example:

Can you think of one major title that uses bump mapping extensively? The only one that comes to mind right now is Giants, but with a single static light source, what was the point? Might as well have precalculated it. Evolva also comes to mind, but it sucked.

I just tried castle wolfenstein, and it doesnt look any better than quake 3 at all, which was released over 2 years ago. Hell, theres not even detail textures.

A bunch of games may support TnL, but where are the games that truely take advantage of it? I cant think of a single game that has a TnL mode that looks any better or runs noticibly faster than a non-TnL mode.

And compressed textures are incredible, but the only game I know that takes good advantage of them is Unreal Tournament. The 2nd CD of textures make a HUGE difference, and theres barely a speed hit at all. I dont know of a single card since the Geforce that doesnt support them, but yet, I cant think of any games that natively support it. All I see are games that have regular textures that can be compressed for a bandwidth boost, but still nothing major.

And I could go on and on. Cubic Environment mapping? Cant think of a single game. 3d textures? Video textures? Stencil buffers? Shadow buffers? AGP texturing? 64mb of textures? (Or even 32 for that matter) Shading rasterizer? Wheres the insane polygon counts we were promised when the original geforce 256 came out?

And its not just video. Whens the last time you heard good EAX effects in games? I cant think of a single game where its properly implemented, and the SB live is nearly 4 years old I believe.

So why are we buying all this hardware when developers are too lazy to implement any of it?

Pixel Shaders and Vertex Shaders are fairly new, so I wouldnt expect to see them anytime soon. But wheres the Dot3 bump mapped, detail textures, natively compressed textures, awesome 3d sound games? Its amazing that I cant think of a single game that looks appreciably better than quake 3, which was released 2 years ago. WTF? When are developers going to get off their ass and create a game worth looking at?

 

[zsouthboy]

Yes.... I agree with you totally

The reason is not that the developers are lazy, but they are trying to SELL games.

Currently most game developers are using the INTEGRATED 3d BS in the intel chipsets for their baseline. This allows them to sell many, many games, because so many people can run it.

Yes, they could put all those features and stuff in a game(and some of those wouldn't make a bit of difference on an integrated 3d, I mean that it wouldn't exclude that from working), but they could only sell it to the hardcore gamers who have the stuff to run it with, and sadly, hardcore gamers are a minority...

zs

 

[ilkhan_v4]

Perhaps it's the fact that most games take 12-18 months to complete, and a lot of that time is spent testing and debugging to make sure it works on existing hardware, let alone the newest stuff. By the time a title goes gold, it's frozen and can't be changed, except with patches later on. Besides, creating a modern game title is by no means a simple task. The math involved is quite complex, and there's more artwork and sound effects too. A lot of the time, it comes down to what management wants and and what the company can afford to spend time on. Don't call game developers lazy unless you're a game developer yourself. I think sometimes people get so caught up in the "instant-ness" of the computer world that they forget what a huge undertaking it is to create a well-written, fast, stable piece of software.

 

[zsouthboy]

BTW..... almost all that stuff you mentioned IS currently being taken advantage of.

It's called an XBOX....

zs

^wishes he has the dough for an xbox

 

[BD2003]

Yeah, but wouldnt they sell a ton more games if they implemented this stuff and allowed you to disable it, that way satisfying everyone? The low end gamers would buy it because they could still play it, and they harcore gamers would buy it because it takes advantage of their hardware.

It still seems like developers are just plain lazy. Take a look at 3dmark 2001, I know its just a benchmark, and theres no AI or game code to run, but the graphics are damn near incredible because they take full advantage of hardware. Ever seen the nature demo on a GF3? Its incredible, and I havent seen anything come even slightly close in a real game.



<< Perhaps it's the fact that most games take 12-18 months to complete, and a lot of that time is spent testing and debugging to make sure it works on existing hardware, let alone the newest stuff. >>



If I remember correctly, the geforce 256 came out 2 years ago. TnL should be a requirement by now. Texture compression and bump mapping came with the original savage 3d 3 or 4 years ago, and its barely changed since then, and yet its rarely used.

 

[zsouthboy]

<< Perhaps it's the fact that most games take 12-18 months to complete, and a lot of that time is spent testing and debugging to make sure it works on existing hardware, let alone the newest stuff. >>



Yeah, if they didn't do a lot of debugging, think how much more buggy the games would be when they came out.....</sarcasm>

Also, most of the time the game developers KNOW what features etc. are going to be available, but since they have no hardware to test on, no features for you.....


zs

 

[erikiksaz]

You have to remember that most people do not have our 1.7 bajillion hertz processors running alongside the lastest crop of Geforce gpus. It seems common to us, since hell, we spend a large portion of our time on these forums, computer hobbyiest forums. Plus, if the game developers wanted to maximize their profit, they sure as hell wouldn't cator towards the geforce 3 owners, since they only make a up a small fraction of the PC users out there. That is the reason why CONSOLE game developers don't appear to be as lazy. They create games for a platform with specifications that will never change. But the problem lies in the fact tha lazy isn't the right word to describe game developers. It's not laziness; the game developers are smart. What's the point of releasing a game with features that would lie in waste as most users cannot and do not have the $$ to opt for the latest and greatest video card/cpu/chipset?

 

[Wingznut]

erik is 100% correct.

Also, can you imagine if Joe Average (with his Compaq fully loaded with TNT2 M64 graphics) bought the latest Id game designed strictly for an enthusiast's PC and it barely ran, if at all? He wouldn't be pissed at Compaq, because after all, all the other programs/games work just fine.

As erik said, the developer can program a game that will work on 90%+ of the PC's out there... Or he can program the game to work on 2% of the PC's out. If you were that developer, which would you choose?

 

[BD2003]

Or like I said, he can program for all of them at the same time by making a properly scalable engine.

Right now, the average system I'd expect games to be made for is a p3 750 and a Geforce1/gf2 mx. But theres so many features made available even before the GF came out that have yet to be used properly, such as bump mapping or compressed textures.

 

[Maverick]

everyone's been pretty clear with why games don't utilize all the neat features yet.
However, many developers will release special patches to utilize the newest hardware (if they have time to work on them). There's a geforce3 version of giants that looks a *little* bit better and I know there's other goodies around the net.

Basically if you own a geforce3 and want to take full advantage of it, you'll have to do some digging since the out-of-the-box game won't be able to keep up with all the capabilities.

Or you could try programming your own games...

 

[Demonicon]

<< I just tried castle wolfenstein, and it doesnt look any better than quake 3 at all, which was released over 2 years ago. Hell, theres not even detail textures. >>




WTF? RtCW looks stunning, methinks you should get the game before judgment. Why would I even read the rest of your post after such a clueless statement?

 

[BD2003]

I do have the game. Sure, it has higher poly counts, and some nice fogging effects, but other than that, I fail to see whats so spectacular about the gfx. Its still the same old quake 3 engine. Even quake 2 licensees are smart enough to use detail textures.

Not to mention it doesnt even have a hint of 3d sound. The gun models are horrific. Counter-Strike has better models.

 

[Demonicon]

Ok, I respect that, you make valid points.

I whole heartedly agree about the lack of quality sound.

Unreal 2 should bring a great deal to the table as it is bieng optimized for the GeForce3.

Doom3, what little info has been released, looks stunning (i've heard rumors the characters are gonna be 200,000+polys)

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

<< Doom3, what little info has been released, looks stunning (i've heard rumors the characters are gonna be 200,000+polys) >>

that sounds a little high...about 20x what the biggest xbox game pushes right now (doa3 models are like 18-20k i think). 200k polysx30fps=6mil just for one char, daz sounds like a lot to me. 20k sounds more reasonable, but 200k would be frickin unreal

 

[KorgunM]

Not sure if this has been pointed out but games take a while to make, so lets say you start making a game today, you are gonna finish in 3 years or more (a good game that is) and every year there are new technologies coming out, if you kept waiting for the next big thing you would never release the game

you have to make some sacrifices and just release the game already

you can never win as a developer

if you take your time we ask why you aren't done

if you hurry we ask why you missed all the bugs or why this feature wasn't implimented or this technology isn't there

when it's done is the best policy ever

 

[Odoacer]

Backwards compatibility. Thats why the minimum requirements for most games have listed P2 250's for the past 3 or 4 years.

 

[Demonicon]

I know 200k sounds unrealistic, but have you seen the pictures and movies they have out? Unbelievable

I know by the time it comes out it will most likely not approach 200K polys, but a guy can dream can't he?

 

[Remnant2]

There are a ton of reasons why you don't see those things implemented, and it has nothing to do with laziness. In fact, if you saw how hard the average game programmer worked (12 hr+ days), it would sicken you.

The bottom line is twofold:

1) Most of the market doesn't have those capabilities. Average targeted machine is around a 500mhz processor with a TNT2 M64 video card (shit, they're STILL selling most machines with these in my area -- and I'm talking about P4 1.5ghz and better machines). With the exception of "cutting edge" engines like those produced by ID, no one can afford to target the latest and greatest simply because it removes 90%+ of the market.

Why do you think Deer Hunter is one of the most popular games ever?

2) You only have so much time to work on things before the publisher says "thats it -- package it all up and ship, we'll fix the bugs later". Most of a game dev teams' time is taken up with just getting the game itself working, not adding company Z's new eyecandy feature.

 

[Demonicon]

<< Why do you think Deer Hunter is one of the most popular games ever? >>




1)Rednecks have entered the computer age.
2)Hunting season is short.
3)Most get a kick out of actually shooting something for a change.

Ask Jeff Foxworthy for more.

 

[BD2003]

Of course I had considered the option that the publishers just dont want to pay for all that. I would think they would want to widen their market as much as possible, but its always easy to shoot for the lowest common denominator.

Its too bad its holding up progress.

 

[jshrieve]

I believe Ghost Recon uses vertex shading (see the Character Smoothing) option to smooth the joints of the character models.
It doesn't use EAX HD, but it's EAX support is pretty decent.