Optimization versus Innovation?

[heavyfeul]

As a gamer aged 32 years I have seen the industry grow into the juggernaut it is today. I am consistently impressed with the quality of gameplay and graphics that some of the top-rated titles of today showcase. However, why don't we see more titles with "optimized" graphics instead of "innovative" graphics? This a particular problem for PC gamers. I recently picked up Call of Duty 2 for the PC. As I expected, I am unable to run the game at an acceptable framerate in DirectX9, unless I ratchet down some of the graphic options. To get a high framerate on max settings, I must run the game in DirectX7. Consoles face the same problems. Anyone who has played Half-Life 2 on the OXB and seen their FPS drop dramatically during graphically intensive scenes, like I have, knows what I am talking about. I'm sure Oblivion owners on the 360 are experiencing similiar problems, plus substantial load times.

Publishers and developers are constantly pushing the hardware to its limits, so that they can incorporate the latest and greatest innovations to come down the pipe. But how many of us can really afford to plunk down a huge wad of cash for the lastest graphics card, processor, and high speed RAM modules every six-months?

The only real place you will see "optimized" games is at the end of a console's life span. There have been a few titles to come out for the previous generation consoles since the next-gen fever began that really take adavantage of the power these little gaming computers have and the results are stunning. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (OXB) and Resident Evil 4 (GC) come to mind. While they may not seem so gorgeous compared to the next-gen tiles a couple of years away, they are certainly on par with current next-gen titles on the 360. Of course, they may not be able to touch the graphical prowess of the latest PC titles with all the eye candy turned on, but how many have the system to afford that graphical luxury?

My point is, when will optimization be a marketable component as oppossed to touting the numerous innovations the game brings to the market?

I would much rather play an optimized game that looks absolutely stunning on my budget gaming rig, then an innovative one whose graphical potential is immpossible to acheive on most systems, unless you like pretty slide shows and game crashes. Ramping down the eye candy just leaves you with a game with mediocre graphics and the desire to get a second mortgage, so you can see what all the hub-bub is about.

With Multithreaded apps, DirectX 10, and the next gen consoles wars around the corner, will I have to wait 5-7 years to see more "optimized" games?

 

[Goofonian]

With Multithreaded apps, DirectX 10, and the next gen consoles wars around the corner, will I have to wait 5-7 years to see more "optimized" games?

The simple answer is yes. multiple processer setups and dual core processors are much more difficult to efficiently program for so it will take longer for developers to get the hang of it. They are more powerful though, so we should see some amazing stuff on the PS3 by the end of its lifespan.
I don't know a lot about things like DX10 and XNA but hopefully they will include functionality to help developers take advantage of multithreading without making the coding too much more complex.

I definately have to agree with what your saying about optimization. I'm waiting for a company like microsoft to take another step beyond mandating at least 720p and 16:9 on the X360 and start saying that a game MUST consistently hold 60fps. F-Zero on the N64 comes to mind, as it was far from a pretty game but it was blazingly fast and the gameplay benefited in spades.

High end PC's are a bit silly too. I've been looking into the cost of buying a new gaming rig, something that will last at least a year or two. So far I haven't been able to get the cost below AUS$8000 without sacrificing some of the features that I would want to help future-proof it.

 

[TomBeraha]

High end PC's are a bit silly too. I've been looking into the cost of buying a new gaming rig, something that will last at least a year or two. So far I haven't been able to get the cost below AUS$8000 without sacrificing some of the features that I would want to help future-proof it.

Yipe!

Don't need to spend quite that much to future proof a system! I recently helped a friend purchase a gaming rig for US$1500, has features that should keep it current for quite some time to come, and the ease of a video upgrade if the need arises (DX10 vid cards that can run the next games with all their options.) The DX10 cards arent out yet. so even with that put it at a maximum of US$2000, which should be about AUS$2,603. Which features were you looking for that you can't live without?

 

[TomBeraha]

Sorry to double-post - As to the original question, Do games like those that blizzard generally produces that run extremely well on older systems based on their time of release count?

I ran Warcraft III on my Voodoo 3 3000 P3 450 box when it came out. No, not everything could be turned up, but it certainly looked prettier than any other rts that ran on it. I would argue that some heavy optimization took place in it's production.

- Tom (kreation)

 

[John Funk]

As anyone in my World of Warcraft guild can tell you, my laptop, though not exactly old, is far from a gaming rig. However, with some fairly consistent slowdown at points (mainly due to overheating, which requires me to have a heatsink pad and a fan blowing directly on it) the WoW graphics work pretty well on it... so I'd be inclined to agree with you, Tom.

 

[Ian Dorsch]

My old gaming rig (Athlon XP+ 2600, Radeon 9800 Pro) ran CoD2 well with DX9 effects at 800x600. It wasn't a consistent 60 FPS, but it was certainly playable and enjoyable. Based on that experience, I would guess that you'd need a pretty archaic system for CoD2 to run as poorly as you describe.

Good engines (i.e. Unreal, Source) scale well to older hardware, but with a constantly changing, almost infinitely variable platform like the PC, it is just not possible to optimize like it is with a fixed platform like a game console. An optimization for an Nvidia card will be sluggish on an ATI card, or vice versa. Anyone who's tried to play a typical Xbox port on a PC with an ATI GPU can certainly attest to that. Besides, with the ubiquitous sponsorship deals with GPU manufacturers, devs have every motivation to design a game that looks great on really high end hardware and just okay on lower end stuff. Who's going to buy those $600 video cards if everything looks spectacular on $200 hardware?

 

[heavyfeul]

My old gaming rig (Athlon XP+ 2600, Radeon 9800 Pro) ran CoD2 well with DX9 effects at 800x600. It wasn't a consistent 60 FPS, but it was certainly playable and enjoyable. Based on that experience, I would guess that you'd need a pretty archaic system for CoD2 to run as poorly as you describe.

Good engines (i.e. Unreal, Source) scale well to older hardware, but with a constantly changing, almost infinitely variable platform like the PC, it is just not possible to optimize like it is with a fixed platform like a game console.

By "poorly" I mean simply mid-range graphics in a game that has been designed for high-end graphics. It still looks good, but my system cannot run it in DX9 at a consistently high framerate. It is playable (20-40 FPS in DX9), but definitely a bit choppy. My system is far from archaic, and was built only a couple of months ago and it gets a around 6000 in 3DMark05 (free version), which is on par with my specs (CPU and GPU Mem Inter a bit of a bottleneck). It is definitely a budget system though (AMD 64 s939, 1GB of XMS RAM, nVidia 7600GT) and can be bought today for under $800. But even people with better specs than my system have reported problems running COD2 in DX9.

I'm not talking about playability, I'm am talking about getting a stellar high-end experience on a budget to midrange system. Which is certainly not out of bounds of the reality of technology and talent of today.

Also, I couldn't agree more that it is a lot easier to optimize a game for a static hardware config, as with consoles, but it would not be difficult for developers to create optimized games for the median config. of most gamers. The problem is it is not a marketable idea at present. In fact it would probably be cheaper for them, because they would not have to upgrade their hardware. and in turn their product, throughout the dev. process as much. Just creating a slower cycle of upgrade in the dev. process would help a great deal, both to the cost of development and to the consumer.

For instance, how much money and time was wasted creating PhysX (Ghost Recon), when most people don't have cards with the technology, and if they do they will have a difficult time finding someone else who does. Furthermore, with multiple core CPUs and dual GPU configs. coming out all the time, developers will just offload physics processing to one of the other CPUs or GPUs.

But look how it has been used to market the graphics cards and enabled games. A waste of time and money in my opinion. The more realistic physics it produces is great and it is definitely a feature all gamers want, but it seems only designed to sell stuff. a little sticker or graphic you can put on the box for the consumer to go, "wow!"

 

[Ian Dorsch]

I'm not talking about playability, I'm am talking about getting a stellar high-end experience on a budget to midrange system.

Well, that's your problem then.

Unfortunately, you get what you pay for, and it's always been that way with PC gaming. I hear that CoD2 looks pretty sexy on the X360, and that'll set you back a lot less than $800.

 

[Goofonian]

High end PC's are a bit silly too. I've been looking into the cost of buying a new gaming rig, something that will last at least a year or two. So far I haven't been able to get the cost below AUS$8000 without sacrificing some of the features that I would want to help future-proof it.

Yipe!

Don't need to spend quite that much to future proof a system! I recently helped a friend purchase a gaming rig for US$1500, has features that should keep it current for quite some time to come, and the ease of a video upgrade if the need arises (DX10 vid cards that can run the next games with all their options.) The DX10 cards arent out yet. so even with that put it at a maximum of US$2000, which should be about AUS$2,603. Which features were you looking for that you can't live without?

I will admit that my idea of futureproofing is a bit higher than others, I personally think that the fastest CPU available with at least 2GB of ram, 500GB of hdd and a high end GPU (X1900 or otherwise) is at the least necessary. I'm also accounting for a monitor ( 23" HD widescreen = around AUS$2500) so the 8000 that I mentioned above is pretty much the bottom line. If I bought the equivalent mac, as I would like to, I'd be looking closer to 10 grand. The other point to note here is that electronics are more expensive in aus, so the current exchange rate is not really a good price comparison. Considering I tend to buy a new computer every 5 or 6 years, and I usually buy laptops (hence my inclusion of a monitor cost) I don't think my perspective on futureproofing is really all that far away from what most would consider reasonable. And while I could get it cheaper if I leveraged my "business account", it wouldn't be so much of a discount to really influence the point I'm trying to make.

This is pretty much the reason why I have become a console gamer in the last 4 - 5 years. The only games that really MUST be played on PC are RTS's and all the blizzard ones work on my older mac (1.5 year old powerbook) which is enough to keep me happy. Now that I'm out of uni and am earning an income I've been thinking about getting back into PC gaming, but the consoles are still looking so much more enticing. I'd rather spend a couple grand on a wii, a 360 and a PS3 with a pile of games than a single new PC, to be quite frank.

 

[heavyfeul]

I recently read the following article about the state of the PC gaming industry:

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060911/wen_01.shtml

I think it hits on some of the issues I have been trying to get across. Particularly David Cole's comments on the upgrade cycle of PC gaming.



I think I can restate my initial point more clearly:

The best reason to game on a PC is the cutting edge graphics and physics. But most people can't afford the hardware to actually do that.

Windows Vista w/ Live and the Xbox 360 Controller compatibility with Windows, will help make the PC more attractive for console users, but why would they spend $1000 dollars, when they can get a simpler overall experience on a $400 machine, with the same graphical quality?

 

[Ian Dorsch]

Windows Vista w/ Live and the Xbox 360 Controller compatibility with Windows, will help make the PC more attractive for console users, but why would they spend $1000 dollars, when they can get a simpler overall experience on a $400 machine, with the same graphical quality?

I guess because a PC will do other things besides play games?

 

[heavyfeul]

I guess because a PC will do other things besides play games?

Very true. But most people already have a basic PC or laptop to take care of their everyday needs. The question is why spend the money on a gaming rig, which will cost double the price of a console that can provide the same level of quality, in a much simpler environment?

The business model in consoles is more succesful b/c hardware costs are taken by the manufacturers. In PC gaming, the consumer bears all of the cost to develop, implement, and market all the new hardware. I personally like the process of building and maintaining my gaming rig. It's a hobby. But, most people can get the same gameplay enjoyment from a console for cheaper.

 

[zenoaugustus]

Yep.

 

[zenoaugustus]

Yep.

Dude. Really? A two year old thread to say "Yep?"

Yep. I prefer innovation, so I guess you could say I was was making a point.