🚀 go-pugleaf

ttammi wrote in message <35d4726d...@news.netlife.fi>...
>" Steve Young" <su2...@eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
>>If technology stopped today, within a few years games would be 4-5 better
than they >>are now. Why? Because
>>technology doesn't gets stretched nowadays because sloppy programmers know
>>they have more and more power to use, whereas before they would have had
to
>>get around the limitations of the machines.
>
>Ok, so you say PC programmers are sloppy.


Yes, because they have so much power and memory they have no need to be
otherwise.

>Since you are such an expert in game programming, tell me,
>if they were indeed stretching the limits of, say, my
>P233MMX/64MB/Voodoo1 machine, how much faster would a game like
>Quake 2, Unreal, F1RS or Longbow 2 run on them without any loss of
>detail? 1% faster? 10% faster? 50% faster? 1000% faster?


I'm no expert, but only an idiot can't see that it takes time to get the
best out of any machine. Why you think games released on new technology
should be stretching their machines when even on simple 8bit machines like
the Spectrum and C64 it took 3-4 years to achieve this, I don't know. The
point I'm making is that games are hardly stretched at all nowadays, mainly
because the technology is increasing so fast, and programmers don't need to.
If machines hadn't evolved at all in the last few years, and the most
powerful machine was say a Pentium 90, do you honestly think that games like
Quake2 and Unreal wouldn't have existed. Come on be real. Of course they
would have. Programmers would have actually had to find ways to improve on
their previous programming like their predecesors had to in the past.

Someone wrote to me and pointed out that the follow up to Lords of Midnight,
Doomarks Revenge was 50% bigger and had better graphics etc, which was
because Mike Singleton knew the capabilities of the machine he was writing
on was the same, but he was able to make up for this by better programming
techniques that he had gained. He didn't turn round to Beyond and say oh
dear I will have to wait until the machines doubles in memory and has
improved graphics. No, he just got on with it.

>After you have answered that, next question: what part of e.g. the
>Quake 2 or Unreal code would you improve to gain that extra speed by
>"stretching the limits", and in what way?

If we had you around running the software industry in the beginning, no
gaming advances would have ever occurred. You would have kept saying to your
programmers and the public at large that it couldn't be done. We must wait
for tomorrows technology to arrive.

>Since you say I should only mention game that were released last week,
>how come you are allowed to talk about games which were released over
>one whole decade (the eighties)? Where's the logic in that?

I was arguing that there were many none arcade games made in the past and
that games are not stretched as much these days. You say the opposite. So
what does it matter to you if I include games from the whole decade, if you
are only talking about present games.

>Tell me, which great classic games were released in October of 1984?
>Since you are restricting that I should talk about games released only
>last month or so, you are allowed to talk about October/84 games only.
>Ok?


What's Oct84 got to do with anything. Is this something to do with when
Lords of Midnight was released or something. I could tell you all the games
that were released around that month if you want, but what's that got to do
with anything I don't know. Most are a load of old rubbish, like most are
from any month released, including dare I say it today. How many games
released this month will be seen in good light in a couple of years time,
let alone a decade. I can see it now in the next century people saying"What
a  great game that Quake2 was. What marvolous programming skill." I think
not.

>>>As for today, I can think of such titles like Grand Prix Legends,
>>>Longbow 2, I-War, Close Combat 2 etc. The realism in these games would
>>>care most people away (no simple arcade action), yet these games were
>>>(or are about to) released after all.
>>
>>Oh yes, the real time strategy nonsense that most of these games claim to
>>be. Most are as realistic as Pacman.
>
>They are much more realistic than anything available for your precious
>Sinclair Spectrum.

They may well be, but it is hardly a fair comparision is it. Comparing a
8bit 48k tape machine with a machine with around 64mb, 6gb hard drive,
massive graphical capabilities, and a CD rom which contains another 800mb of
memory. My Spectrum died many years ago, though I have an emulator and play
some of the software still, in between playing some of todays stuff. It may
not be precious, but it did add a lot to the gaming world. You're the sad
one not me, in that you only see the present as adding anything to games and
forget that without the past there wouldn't be any industry.

>>If you're going to have real time, then
>>have real time, but don't insult our intelligence with this simulated
stuff
>>like Close Combat and the idiotic Age of Empires, where you play through
>>thousands of years in about an hour. Very real.
>
>Did I mention Age of Empires somewhere? Goes to show you have never
>played Close Combat 2, if you really think it is played through
>"thousands of years". Also it seems you haven't fully grasped the idea
>of strategy war games. The idea is not that everything runs in
>realtime _all the time_.


No you didn't, but I wasn't talking about Close Combat2 covering 1,000s of
years but Age of Empires. I was using this example to show the nonsense
talked about real time when stretched to its most ridiculous. It may not
mean that, but that is what is implied by misleading advertising.
Arcade/strategy doesn't have the same ring to it, does it.

>You may go back to play your Jet Set Willy, a prime example of those
>"great" old games. To each his own.


Not really. Played Jet Set Willy years ago, but that was around 12 years
ago. It is one of the most famous bugridden games around, but it did lead to
many other better games released in its wake. I personally much prefer games
like Championship Manager97/98 and Civ2, but then these are similar in a way
to games of old which didn't rely on fancy graphics and technology to make a
good addictive game.

Steve