🚀 go-pugleaf

gme...@lindblat.cc.monash.edu.au (GM Enierga) writes:

>lew...@cs.ualberta.ca (Michael Lewchuk) writes:

>	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

Let me put this as simply as possible:
1.  You do not have a CD-ROM drive, thus, how can you evaluate CD performance?
2.  Your comments about CD-ROM performance are NOT correct.
3.  Your comments about processor speed are not correct.
4.  If you want slow, try loading an old Apple/TRS-80 program off of tape
    drive at 100 baud.

Anyways:
I have 486/33 with a generic 1Mb SVGA graphics card, 2xCD, and 8Mb RAM.
All of the games I have run on it have run well, without really noticeable
frame pauses, except for TIE Fighter, which gets noticeably choppy around
battles 5-6 unless you turn down resolution, and Origin games which tend to
pause for up to 5 seconds when you enter a new combat zone, to initialize
opponents (I think they need to find some smoother way of doing this).
Which I may have complaints about the games themselves, I have no complaints
about the processor speed or the CD access time all that much.  The only
game I've seen that is truly pathetic in terms of CD is "outpost", which
has to re-load its entire graphics set from CD for its animation.  This
means constant CD access (however it is almost fast enough to keep up at
a reasonable pace).  We are talking a few seconds delay here.  Longer delays
are always for scenario reload (eg. Rebel Assault, moving from 1 scenario
to another) or for long animation sequences, and are usually under 20 seconds.
There is no "waiting 20 seconds for a laser hit" because of CPU *or* CD, unless
you're playing a 486 product on a 286.

Btw, as for your previous message:  I don't think Origin will phase out 486
based products for a long time.  Why?  The next computer after the 486 is
not the Pentium but the DX2, then the DX4.  So Origin has to clean out 3
separate (but identical) CPUs before it can start on a Pentium market, and I
think the price of the Pentium will keep it out of the average guy's house
for a while yet (1-2 years).

>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.

I would get the CD version.  It's far faster to install (4-8 times the speed)
and much more reliable (no sector errors, bad data, etc.).

>	Is it too much to expect realistic expectations when that is what the
>box is promising?

The box is NOT promising what you think it's promising.  I think that is why
you're complaining.  "Playable" means just that.  Not "perfectly playable".
Btw, since you said you don't have a CD-ROM, how is it you are evaluating
all these games which are on CD?

Oh, btw, I don't think 1xCD drives are available in North America anymore.

>	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.

Writable CDs are available.  They cost, as it was said, $20 each.  The
difference is that write-once CDs are stamped ONCE, so they don't have to have
a very high-quality surface.  Writable CDs do have to have a high-quality
surface.  Plus, Read/Write CDs are rather more expensive than CD-ROMs.  The
move is not towards CD-writables, but towards cheaper and faster CD technology
in general.  However I don't think flopticals will be all that popular until 
the drive and disks are cheap enough that someone won't scream each time 
he/she goes out to buy one.

>>>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.

I have none of these games (ST:JR,DL,SS).

>>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"?

Here's a question: what delays have YOU experienced with CD products, and
how long on average were the worst ones, and with which products?

>>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.

WC2 is mostly loaded into RAM.  However I believe even it has to do extensive
loading and it probably uses 1-2Mb of hard drive space as a read/write buffer.
In other words, it doesn't entirely play just from CD.  A few games I've seen
do this: use CD for source code and data, use hard drive for a buffer, to speed
up game play.

>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

GRR... you are missing MY point: these things DO NOT RUN AT A CRAWL.  The
screen goes blank for 5-10 seconds, maybe 20 for a biggie, then the entire
cinematic shot rolls at appropriate speeds.  The noticeable gap is not DURING
the action but BEFORE it.   I've seen only one game which tries to do
continuous animation with continuous CD access: outpost, and that game was
only half done and with so many bugs it wasn't worth buying.  That, and Rebel
Assault, but RA only had heavy CD access between "scenes".  All in all the CD
animation was pretty darn smooth (as I said, on my system, 486DX/33, 2xCD)

>>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

Look, what I'm saying is:
1.  CDs are great for huge storage of animation sequences.
2.  They are NOT slow (at least not the ones I've noticed) if the programming
    is in any way practical: a slight delay (1-2s) sometimes and a larger delay
    (5-20s) during loading of animation sequences is natural for CDs.

>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?

I've never seen any animations run slowly.  Take 10 seconds to load, yes.
Run slowly, no.

>	THAT is what I meant in the 1st place.

What I'm saying is that what you meant in the first place is not what happens
with a CD game.  The delays are between segments of the game, not during the
game itself, if the programmer has any brains whatsoever.  I've never seen
an animation sequence "crawl".  Not in Rebel Assault, not in Stellar 7, not
even in that idiotic game Outpost.  Maybe that's because the games are
programmed for 2xCD so the disk is fast enough to cope.  Maybe it isn't.  I
really don't know.

>>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.

Yer kidding.  Over here, the 386 has been off the market for about 6-10 months.
In other words, you COULD NOT BUY a 386 at any non-second-hand dealers.  The
minimum system on sale at stores now is the 486SX.

>>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.

Maybe 4-6 hundred.  The REAL problem is the $20 cost of one floptical disk,
compared to the $1 to $2 cost of a CD-ROM.

>>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.

I would have told them "Wait awhile and buy from the middle to top end".  If
you go to around 3/4 the highest grade, this is often the most affordable
in terms of the power you get (at least here).  Low-end systems (386s,
nowadays 486DX1s) are almost as expensive as medium-end systems like the
DX2s and DX4.  The software store I deal with has stopped selling drives
under 210Mb with its computer systems.  Only really high-end devices REALLY
cost you money.  I prersonally like the 500Mb and 1Gb hard drives nowadays
as being the "best buy", if you have the $ (which reminds me, I wonder when
the local software store will stop selling the 210Mb drives.  Should be
sometime pretty soon).

I believe the 600Mb format of CDs has not changed in the few years it's been
on the market.  They are getting faster and cheaper, but not bigger.  Hard
drives are (look at the 3 and 4 GB SCSI-2s).  I don't know if flopticies have
gotten cheaper than they were previously.  Anyways, compare the prices of hard
drives and writable CDs.  Specifically 8 speed writable CDs (probably higher
since I probably don't have anywhere near a top-of-the-line hard drive) and
their equivalent, the 710Mb SCSI-2 hard drive.  Assume flopticies go down
to $10 each by that time.  The hard drive will still be the speed and size
leader for awhile.  Remember, every phone company in existence was supposed
to have brought fiber-optic lines to everyone's doorstep by now.

>> 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. :-)

Heh.  Anyways, I believe computers will need to load the OS into either RAM
or some sort of high speed memory.   Currently, hard drives provide this
high-speed external memory.  Maybe in the future Intel will integrate a
very high speed RAM buffer into its systems, perhaps MSDOS-on-a-chip.  :)

As for CD-ROMs and floptical drives, I don't know if floptical technology
will come down in price fast enough for us not to see a 2-CD system: one
read/write CD, one CD-ROM.

>						- Falcon

					Michael Lewchuk
					lew...@cs.UAlberta.CA