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epsil0n
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You decide.
-Epsil0n
-Epsil0n
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epsil0n
Guest
ElFuhrer said:
LOL.. how the hell did u post that so fast?! i didnt even finish writing the POLL yet!!!??
lol
-Epsil0n
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epsil0n
Guest
ElFuhrer said:
hehe... well.. i gotta disagree..
i wanted to start this cuz when i first heard about Valve using LOD and just generally making a game that was beneficial to them financially because theyd have a larger amount of consumers, i was very disapointed.. as i highly support id's method .. which is usually pushing the game as well as hardware standards up a notch. I watched Gabe say in some interview that theres becoming a wider range of variation of specs in today's market and i thought well even if this was true thered be no reason to make the game sub par in terms of system requirements or even adjusting the game to run on lower end systems other than to have more people be able to play your game. (mas dinero.)
to me it just makes sense to have a set and standard system in which if your system cant run it, thats the end of discussion. this method is what largely drives the video card/hardware industry, and has for a long time. i dont know about the rest of you, but i will personally be shutting off any LOD features or anything which limits what i get from the game, regardless of performance. (if need be, ill upgrade.)
well, thats my 2 cents at least.
-Epsil0n
Shinobi
Tank
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FIxed rate LOD's are useful and there is absolutely no reason not to have them. Why you ask? because people with high end systems can simply lock the highest quality LOD and never see any lower detail elements..
personally, even if I had a dream system, I'd still turn on LOD's for the framerate balance (if not the framerate boost), because a good LOD system is transparent anyways,, I mean why would I want to see a 5000 poly tree 2 KM away
personally, even if I had a dream system, I'd still turn on LOD's for the framerate balance (if not the framerate boost), because a good LOD system is transparent anyways,, I mean why would I want to see a 5000 poly tree 2 KM away
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epsil0n
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Wesisapie said:
precisely.
i havent seen a LOD system thats "transparent" yet.... show me one and maybe then ill rethink it. but so far every game out there its pretty much the same story: a ten foot radius around you is where all the nice green detailed shrubbery lays, but 100 ft in the distance its just plain texture....and god its noticeable. look at farcry.. great engine.. but jesus have u tried zooming in on the island? the trees/green POPS up and dissapears accordingly/painstakingly. a few games have gotten this down a lil better such as battlefield where the palm trees in the distance dont look that bad compared to the upclose version and the transition is pretty smooth. still not perfect tho. make the difference invisible and you got a deal. of course the issue of progressing hardware is still a problem when you have games that dont push any limit.
btw i have a Geforce 4 ti 4600 and while althought not a dx9 card i am totally gonna push the limits to what i can do in HL2 without hurting the visuals....i mean if immersion is what valve is trying to achieve so much (ala no mirrors or voice of gordan) then why would they ever settle for extremely low poly characters or bland textures etc for the lower end systems??? thats why god invented "System Requirements" .. so that the developers can say "anything below this mark isnt worth playing, and if it is playable it definately isnt what we had in mind for what the game was supposed to look like!"
want a good example of an LOD system gone horribly wrong? look at "enter the matrix" ::shudders:: ... since when do tire wheels look like SQUARES? ugh..
-Epsil0n
PvtRyan
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It's great creating a beautiful game, not so great when only people who spend $2000 annually on their pc can play it.
The high end market, which wants to play the game only makes up a few percent of the total market. The other people don't have 9800 Pro's, they don't even want to spend that money on it.
The people who are willing to upgrade for a game maybe makes up 2-5% of the total number of owners of the game. Creating a game solely for that 2-5% is not profitable for developers, and in case you didn't notice, developers -which are companies- want to make profit.
You don't make profit by making a game that only the elite can play.
The numbers of GF4MX owners (or even lower) are too big to ignore them, and you can say 'well they need to upgrade then, is good for the videocard market' but they won't, and if they do, they don't buy the state-of-the-art model, they'll buy a budget model again.
And btw, HL2 will push hardware sales too, it may not ask a lot from older systems to run on, but you will need a powerful pc to take the max details out of HL2.
Sort of a 'easy to learn, hard to master'.
The high end market, which wants to play the game only makes up a few percent of the total market. The other people don't have 9800 Pro's, they don't even want to spend that money on it.
The people who are willing to upgrade for a game maybe makes up 2-5% of the total number of owners of the game. Creating a game solely for that 2-5% is not profitable for developers, and in case you didn't notice, developers -which are companies- want to make profit.
You don't make profit by making a game that only the elite can play.
The numbers of GF4MX owners (or even lower) are too big to ignore them, and you can say 'well they need to upgrade then, is good for the videocard market' but they won't, and if they do, they don't buy the state-of-the-art model, they'll buy a budget model again.
And btw, HL2 will push hardware sales too, it may not ask a lot from older systems to run on, but you will need a powerful pc to take the max details out of HL2.
Sort of a 'easy to learn, hard to master'.
mrchimp
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I don't speend $2000 on my PC each year but I will be able to play HL2 with max settings.
Personally I think LOD systems are very important and games with large enviroments would be impossible without them, but there are two types of LOD systems. There's one type which gets rid of detail up close and far away when the FPS gets too low (e.g C&C generals) and there's the type based on distance from the camera which you couldn't do without.
I don't like the one thats based on FPS because it rarely works but if you can switch it on and off it doesn't matter.
Personally I think LOD systems are very important and games with large enviroments would be impossible without them, but there are two types of LOD systems. There's one type which gets rid of detail up close and far away when the FPS gets too low (e.g C&C generals) and there's the type based on distance from the camera which you couldn't do without.
I don't like the one thats based on FPS because it rarely works but if you can switch it on and off it doesn't matter.
I've heard games like Unreal tournement 2k4 suffer from lod problems that give advantage to players who use fewer settings. While you on your high end computer stare at the beauty of the foliage and miss the people coming up from behind it, those with lower setting don't see anything at all except you in their sights.
Styloid
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Offer both awesome visuals and broad system requirements... like HL2. I won't be upgrading for a while so I'll be playing it on medium (and it might even run on my old computer too) meanwhile there'll be people upgrading to get the 'full visual experience'.
Maybe it's a money thing for Valve but I think a lot of people would be pissed off if they couldn't enjoy everything else in a well designed game just because their computer can't handle the graphics (which is only a fraction of the overall experience).
Maybe it's a money thing for Valve but I think a lot of people would be pissed off if they couldn't enjoy everything else in a well designed game just because their computer can't handle the graphics (which is only a fraction of the overall experience).
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Fallout
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Why do people believe that upgrading costs tons of money? Anyone, even a person on a working budget could save enough money to upgrade their systems to play newer games given enough time (and considering how long Half-Life 2 is taking, that could be a mere $25-50 a month). I'd estimate under $500 could take even the lowest end system to one that should be able to run Half-Life 2 at higher settings.
As for the poll itself, I'm between points one and two. Having a larger marketshare is smart, and personally why I believe is one reason Half-Life 2 will sell MANY more copies than Doom 3 (the more important reason being that Half-Life 2 will play like a fun game, while Doom 3 will play like a boring tech demo). Of course, making the visuals top-notch and help advance and support the new hardware technology is always good. I think Half-Life 2 might have found a good balance. Runs on older systems, but to get the full effect it requires a solid system to run well.
As for the poll itself, I'm between points one and two. Having a larger marketshare is smart, and personally why I believe is one reason Half-Life 2 will sell MANY more copies than Doom 3 (the more important reason being that Half-Life 2 will play like a fun game, while Doom 3 will play like a boring tech demo). Of course, making the visuals top-notch and help advance and support the new hardware technology is always good. I think Half-Life 2 might have found a good balance. Runs on older systems, but to get the full effect it requires a solid system to run well.
