🚀 go-pugleaf

lew...@cs.ualberta.ca (Michael Lewchuk) writes:
>gme...@lindblat.cc.monash.edu.au (GM Enierga) writes:
>>	But MOST people who buy these CD's assume that the game IS "playable"
>>off the CD - in other words, they expect the CD-speed action of the game (if
>>that particular bit makes sense) to equal that of the HD.  In case you have not

>CDs are WAY slower than hard drives.  There will be a more noticeable wait
>during loading.  Whether this load time is "reasonable" depends on the user and
>the programmer: how fast the programmer wants the game to run, compared to how
>much variety he wants to put into the game, and how much delay the user is
>willing to tolerate.  A game may be "playable" off a CD without necessarily
>running as smoothly as you want it to.

	I see your point... I am not a "speed" freak (no offence intended) so
I do not need a wish for a p90 just to run games.  But you have to understand
MY point here, which I feel you just begun to grasp: that when something is
said to be "playable" then it should mean you can play it on the recomended
machine without having to wait 2 minutes for your laser blast to reach the
ship you are firing at.  I played WC and WC2 on a 286, and with the WC2
especially, I was surprised how playable the game was for something that
"intence" if you know what I mean.  The point is, even with the delays, the
game WAS playable; I could tolerate it.  But then again that was just me,
because everyone including Origin of the time said you needed 386 min...
I do NOT want to buy a game which misleads me on the box saying what we are
discussing here... I do not want to cause problems trying to return it... and
if i would want to install the game on the HD to play it, I would get the
floppy version.
	Is it too much to expect realistic expectations when that is what the
box is promising?


>I agree there should be a move towards software which can be run well from CD,
>but don't expect hard-drive-like performance from your CD until you see at
>least 10x speed CD-ROMs.

	There should actually be a move toward CD-writables... imagine all the
floppies one could save by using all that unused space behind the games that
ship on CD-ROMs today.  The technology is here, so why not use it?  I do not
have a CD-ROM (that being one reason; the other being nothing out there makes
it worth buying one - for the moment) but I would buy a CD-writable in a sec
if software companies supported it.


>>noticed, a lot of people (including a perhaps-would-be-myself) buy CD-ROMs
>>because they do NOT want to install 50Mb on their HD's to play something,

>True, however there is a trade-off: space or time.  If you're unwilling to
>sacrifice the space, you have to sacrifice time.  However many games are nowhere
>near 50Mb.  The most common ones I've seen are under or close to 10Mb.  Only
>Origin's monstrosities take up 50Mb.

	I do not mind sacrificing "time": WC I & II were both run with that
option, and out of curiosity one day I ran the "space" option (ie save time)...
no diffs were noticed at all, and this was on a 286/12.
	Star Trek Judgement rites takes 42 Mb with the graphic and sound add-
on; Dark legions takes 35; System Shock, 22.


>>	My point is that if you read on the label "you can play it off the CD"
>>then that is what you believe.  When you go home and it turns out that the
>>gameplay is THAT bad from a CD that you have to install to a HD, then that
>>clearly spells false advertising.  This is not limited to Origin, either.

>Maybe they need a label "You can play it *well* off of CD".

	But isn't _THAT_ "insinuated" when it says "you can PLAY..." (not just
look at it like TV) "...off a CD"?


>I can't think of
>any game off the top of my head that plays just as fast on CD as it does on
>my hard drive.

	WC2 is the only one that comes to mind - and perhaps Strike Commander;
I am awaiting results of the latter from another post.


>>>It is *NOT* unbearable.  It *IS* noticeable but the access time is fast enough
>>>so that most of the time it's *really* slow is for a cinematic shot.

>>	So what's the point of having it in the 1st place then?  You would not
>>buy a Porsche if the engine performance was lower than your REALISTIC
>>expectations - or would you?

>Um, CDs are NOT porsches.  They are WAY SLOWER (4x?) than hard drives and the
>main reason to buy them, as you said, is that they contain more information 
>than is readily storable on a medium sized (200-300Mb) hard drive along with 
>other information.

	You missed my point like 747 flying through space.  I meant to say that
it is useless having a cinematic shot present when it runs well below par...
making one feel like they are watching it in slow motion.  I was not criticising
the CD, but the programmers' shortsightedness at putting something in there
that runs like the person described above.


>What I'm saying here is that your expectations are NOT realistic.  Playing
>from a slower medium results in a slower game at least some of the time,
>unless the entire game is loaded into RAM when the game itself loads.

	Do you really expect me to dump all that digitized cinematic things on
a HD when sometimes the CD does not let you do that?  Tell me this: how would
you feel if the demo ver. of WC3's cinematic shots (ie the digitized bits with
the actors in them) ran slow off your CD in the FINAL version, which is... 3?
cd's?  Do you have the space to put them in your HD? (This is hypothetical only
- since WC3 final ver. is not out I am not making any judgements).
	THAT is what I meant in the 1st place.


>>>>So far they are putting double speed drives as recommended for WC3.  So, if 
>>>>you believe that, you won't need a triple speed drive YET.
>>	I have a bad feeling that the end of the 2x spin drives will begin
>>with WC3.

>Perhaps but I still think they'll stick around.  Remember, the most common
>package out there is the 2xspin/16-bit-sound combo so don't count them dead
>for at least another year, maybe more.

	So?  The most popular machines an x amount of months ago was a 386.
Look what happened there.


>I am glad though that the CD industry is moving forward.  I hope that within
>2-3 years we see the end of floppies as a distribution medium, and within
>2-3 years we also see, say, affordable 6x or 8x drives and perhaps affordable
>4x floptical drives and "flopticies" instead of today's $20 optical floppies.

	That last bit with the flopticies is the most sensible out of your
options.  If 4x cdroms cost $1000+ now, imagine how much 6x or 8x will cost in
that time frame - or even 5 years from now.


>>>Besides which, isn't quad-speed out (still at insane prices, but ...)?
>>>By the time CDs get to quad or higher, at affordable prices, they will
>>>be fast enough to compete relatively well with hard drives, especially if
>>>a data buffer like SMARTDRV for CD-ROMs comes out.
>>	Yeah right - and send most HD manufacturers into bankruptsy? ;-)

>Unlikely.  Hard drives are still faster than CD-ROMs and will be until
>around 8-10x speed comes out.  In any case, hard drives offer reasonably
>fast access to LARGE quantities of data (when's the last time you saw a
>3Gb CD-ROM?),

	About just over a year ago, what would you have said about a 500Mb HD
being about 1.5x the price of a 180Mb HD, which is the case now.  Things change.


> and offer "permanent" access to this information.  If you
>don't have a hard drive, what are you gonna load your OS from every time
>you want to copy or format?

	Amigas did that, and infact most non-ibm computers.  Need I say more?
Besides, it was meant to be a bit of a joke as well. :-)

						- Falcon