Games Got me a new 2Gb 7870 winging my way...

[Scouse]

My old ATI 4850, whilst having been a total trooper, utterly stable and bug-free, is now (well) on it's way out.

The fan sounds like a diesel engine and on very regular occasions my telly goes black for a second or so - which is a mild annoyance during films but sometimes catastropic during games.

So I'll be fitting the new one this afternoon then opening my games one by one and sticking everything in 1080p and wanging the graphics settings to as high as they'll go...


...and there is my problem. My old 4850 pretty much runs everything I've got in 1920x1080 on high settings anyway. And that's on an old AMD Phenom II X3 BE that I've not even unlocked the 4th core on.

The graphics card is going to have half the memory that my PC has (a few years back 4Gb was a very decent amount).

What the fuck has happened to PC graphics? How have they stagnated so much? Xbox and PS3 surely aren't that big a market that developers can afford to simply bypass the hardcore gaming market?

The hardcore gaming market is exactly what this forum was born out of. In the late 90's there were certainly enough of us for development studios to get filthy fucking rich off the back of a single hit. Games were better then too - because they appealed to people with skill rather than the button-mashing retard majority. But now everything's cross-platform gayness.

But we haven't died! We're still here! Have the filthy-riches of the late-90's become not-filthy-rich-enough? Come on!!!


So. I've got this £180 gfx card turning up in a couple of hours. It's being delivered to my old house - which I now rent out to a mate, apparently between 12:30 and 1:30 today. It's less than a mile away - a 5 minute job on my mountain bike on this gorgeous sunny day. But I'm not sure I can be arsed to go pick it up (though I probably will). I'm not excited.

Remember when a new graphics card was exciting?


Fuck

 

[old.user4556]

I remember those days well.

ZOMG TNT2 ULTRA!!!

Maybe the tech has plateaued for now?

 

[old.Tohtori]

I upgraded my graphics card recently and it still was exciting, especially when i didn't overkill and set everything to ultra, but enjoyed the graphic level i was used to in a much better FPS. Usual mistake is to up the graphics too much and then think that you've not actually gained much. Keep things as similar as possible, then up the ante bit by bit(har).

On the RAM issue, it's basically there just to up the resolution, not that much to do with performance.

You're right about PC gaming being overlooked, but it's coming back luckily. There was just a console-enforced lul in PC gaming.

I've said this before about games being better in the olden days; we had less of them. Now-a-days it's hard to find the gem in the piles of turd flung at us, but there's still an equal amount, if not more, good entertainment in there.

 

[Raven]

Consoles have stagnated graphics development. A developer will make their games for all 3 platforms to maximise sales. Some allow a little leeway on view distance, texture detail, AA etc but that's about it.

When the next generation of consoles hits they will already be out of date power wise but again, games will be made for their standard.

As for too many shit games, true there are. I don't have any trouble finding decent games though, even indi games.

 

[old.Tohtori]

True what Raven said, also many gamedevs forget in their porting frenzy that one platform relies more on GPU and one more on CPU. It would be fine if they made it for a console to run smooth, then offered PC players extensive graphics customization.

 

[Job]

I'm using a PC at the moment with a Ti4200 Geforce, I'd get on my bike.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

It's not just consoles that have limited the progression, it's a cost thing.

 

[Scouse]

It's not just consoles that have limited the progression, it's a cost thing.

Cost of what? It's always been expensive to develop new hardware - and people have always been prepared to pay that premium.

In game development terms I think the biggest progression hold-back is the fact that companies want to appeal to wide audiences as opposed to going for the hardcore that there always was. That market didn't go away - it just expanded massively and game companies saw $$$$$'s everywhere and ditched the small but dedicated fanbase that they already had.

Games have stagnated as a result - in terms of gameplay - in fact I'd argue that most of them have gone backwards to accomodate the wider, non-hardcore market (Tribes: Ascend, or, as I like to call it Tribes: Spray n Pray, is a perfect point, along with "levelling" your FPS characters).

Development time, and money, is wasted on this when games previously would have focused on a core, fun, gameplay and some kick-ass graphics - and we'd all pony up shitloads to stay on the train...

No?

 

[cHodAX]

It's not just consoles that have limited the progression, it's a cost thing.

To a degree yes, definately. I still feel far too much is spent promoting AAA titles though instead of investing in content, that extra money would turn good games into great games and we all know that great games sell no matter how little they are advertised.

 

[cHodAX]

Cost of what? It's always been expensive to develop new hardware - and people have always been prepared to pay that premium.

In game development terms I think the biggest progression hold-back is the fact that companies want to appeal to wide audiences as opposed to going for the hardcore that there always was. That market didn't go away - it just expanded massively and game companies saw $$$$$'s everywhere and ditched the small but dedicated fanbase that they already had.

Games have stagnated as a result - in terms of gameplay - in fact I'd argue that most of them have gone backwards to accomodate the wider, non-hardcore market (Tribes: Ascend, or, as I like to call it Tribes: Spray n Pray, is a perfect point, along with "levelling" your FPS characters).

Development time, and money, is wasted on this when games previously would have focused on a core, fun, gameplay and some kick-ass graphics...

No?

Content creation, more detailed enviroments, model animation etc are a huge time investment. Too many games have gone down the graphics route, blown the almost entire budget getting that right and ended up starving the story development and other creative departments.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

As in the bigger and better graphics are capable of getting, the more it costs to produce those results.

You need teams of designers and coders. The amount of work in creating graphical environments that look good is HUGE and quite frankly isn't understood by most people. There isn't huge amounts of money in the industry, very, very few developers can actually afford to push graphics to their limit.

 

[old.Tohtori]

It's a bit like people complaining about why a game is late and calling developers out on it, when in fact it's most likely publishers delaying it. Lot of stuff like that in games alone, bet ithe lack of knowledge is even worse in hardware.

Know the worst part? Game devs can't talk about why the game is late beccacuse that would kill the company.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Aye, it does amuse me the reactions we get.

"FM is too long and time consuming"
- We announce there'll be a "classic" mode to get the game feeling like so many people claim they want it to be like again
"Just sounds like FMH and that's shit, why are they stripping stuff out and dumbing it down?"
- Head hits table

 

[Scouse]

Content creation, more detailed enviroments, model animation etc are a huge time investment. Too many games have gone down the graphics route, blown the almost entire budget getting that right and ended up starving the story development and other creative departments.

Aye. I don't disagree with that.

I personally think it's a mistake to even start on that side until most of that side of the game is conceptualised pretty clearly...


Edit: So, what's actually happened is that graphics have developed to a point that it's no longer economically feasible to push them further.

It'll take one of the mahoosive budget companies to do it - but I'd argue that the economic gains to be had from doing it have always been there.

As the industry has matured, risk has come into it much more. In the same way that hollywood fail to greenlight risky and expensive new ventures, and churn out mid-level but less risky chod - the games industry is doing the same.

Shame.

Edit edit: First time that's happend but I've got an "agree" before I've submitted my edit - of course that means that I'll take it as read that you agree with *everything I say* before I say it cho

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Ultimately in order to push something properly you need teams of hundreds of people, little or no time limits/deadlines and a bottomless pool of cash.

There are probably fewer developers than I can count on one hand that have that freedom. It's why for example F12012 still isn't even the slightest patch on GT5 graphically, despite being two years younger.

 

[Ormorof]

i was amazed that i can run majority of games at a mid-setting graphics with a an old card as i have, i dont think ive ever owned a computer that can max graphics the latest games

that said i saw a comparison of Skyrim on the PS3 compared to a brand spanking new beast of a PC and the PC version looked much much better (the PS3 version looked like more like Morrowind, which was nice in 2003, but not all that singing and dancing these days)

 

[Aada]

The best thing about getting my new PC 2 months or so ago was going through some games i bought but could not run at max settings at the time

 

[Job]

I think it's because all the big money is to be made in games like Farmville.

 

[Scouse]

So then. What games actually do impress graphically?

 

[Wazzerphuk]

It depends entirely on what format they're run on.

For PS3 you have games like Gran Turismo, God of War 3 (the engine to which is so good they didn't use cutscenes, they just used the in-game engine).

PC, although I haven't seen them - games like Crysis and Skyrim have a wealth of graphical options and had a lot of work done on them specifically for PC...

 

[Scouse]

OK - games that impress graphically that have no place on fucking shitty consoles.

Crysis was November 2007 btw - you'd have hoped in the 5 intervening years we could do better than that

 

[Gwadien]

OK - games that impress graphically that have no place on fucking shitty consoles.

Crysis was November 2007 btw - you'd have hoped in the 5 intervening years we could do better than that

There's a Crysis 2 and a Crysis 3 inc, not sure if there's much graphical difference though.

I have Crysis super-duper edition in a metal tin, massive waste of money that was, haha.

 

[gunner440]

You don't need a super graphics card to run Angry Birds.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Yeah I was mainly referring to Crysis 2 and 3 - take a look at CryEngine 3 footage, and UnrealEngine 4 footage for the soon-to-be PC engines.

 

[caLLous]

Crysis 2 v1.9 made all sorts of quite lovely DX11 related improvements to the game, it really is something to behold if you can run it properly.

 

[Scouse]

It's depressing if that's it. I played crysis on low-detail settings a long time ago. It was pretty even at that level but it bored me to tears.

Do you remember Unreal when it first came out? I was so very pleased that it was full of colour and not set in a standard military setting and there'd not been so many FPS's that the genre was fresh.


I want to feel like that again. I want a game genre that's feels fresh and graphics that are both utilitarian and aesthetically pleasing at the same time. Like Katamari + Llamatron + Defender + Quake 3 all rolled into one



Edit: Does anyone else think Jeff Minter might actually have sex with his animals?

 

[ECA]

You know whats sad.... if xbox 720 is launching winter 2013, then it's going to have a current midrange pc gpu in it at best.

Still it makes PC upgrading cheaper and less necessary than it used to be.

 

[Litmus]

Consoles killed gfx/gaming innovation, I guess the very thing they was meant to prevent... And I cant seeing it changing.

 

[Aoami]

Skyrim proves Scouses point to some degree, but its also amazing what they acheived. A really beautiful looking game that could be run on some very basic hardware.

 

[Scouse]

Remember when all the designers were saying graphics would be photorealistic in ten years, in 1995?