🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3cq2gt$o...@netnews.upenn.edu>, ka...@pobox.upenn.edu (Animesh Karna) writes:
>Origin is constantly referred to as a company that likes to "push the 
>limits": they write games designed to take advantage of faster 
>processors, etc.  Whenever anyone complains about a game being slow, the 
>response seems to be <shake the head> "Well, we try to push the envelope".
>
>My feeling . . .  Sometimes Origin needs to spot the difference between 
>taking advantage of faster processors and needing faster processors.
>
Can you say Wing Commander 3?

A 486 DX2/50? They are nuts! What is this processor needed for?
For the super dazzling spaceflight simulator? Nope. Its needed to
play to movies! (And before we see any flames to this post, this
isn't intended to be a gripe about high end games.....)

I am a die hard WC fan, and as such I went out an bought it, even though
I only have a 386/40 (ugh!), a machine which they say this program will
not work on. Now, accepting that I have a relatively slow machine, here
is the results of playing WC3 on an 'unsupported' machine:

1) The movie playback is pretty bad. The screen will freeze every few seconds
if there is alot going on in the picture. The reason? The processor (I assume)
is needed to uncompress all the picture and sound data. My question to Origin,
This multimedia player looks like it was developed in house. Is it? If not,
why didn't they use one of the standard multi-media kits out there that
would actually work on a 386/40?

2) Disk access takes forever. This is because its doing ALOT of it.  When you
fly a mission, from the time you sit down in the cockpit to the time when
you get your clearance on my machine is THREE MINUTES!!!!!

3) Space combat is actually fairly playable. If you set the detail on low
and turn off some of the gizzies, you can actually play it. When you have more
than one captial ship on the screen, the frame rate drops to a crawl, but
if you accept that you're running it on a 386/40, its dealable.


My point: Origin wants to push the limits. I'll accept that a 386/40 does not
fit into their plan. (I REALLY am not intending to start another flame war
here....). It just seems to me that if you are making a flight simulator that
pushes the limits, it would push the limits in the simulator part. When I 
originally bought it, knowing full well my system probably couldn't handle it,
I thought  "Well, that probably means the space combat will be slow and jerky,
but I'll still be able to see the movies...."

Anyways, the impression I got was that Origin orignally intended this
game to run on a 486/33 (which is only slightly faster for games than my
little machine if it has no VLB). The end result was something that almost works
on a 486/33, but doesn't. Thats not pushing the limits, thats copping out.