Today's games built just to sell video cards

[ToonSkull]

This has really been a sore spot with me for a few years. Why must we upgrade the video cards? The Nvidia or ATI logos always pop up in full view on most every game you play. Last year, I was ready to buy the game Spore from EA when I downloaded the demo, it popped up after the install that it required pixel shader 2.0

WHY?! If I don't desire the high level graphics why not set a lower graphic level option? Am I going to really care if my pixels are shaded. Some people wouldn't even notice. My dad explained that these graphics card companies are in league with the software manufacturers to force the high end gamer to upgrade the video at least every 2 years. I feel I should have the right to install the game on any system and the software should adjust to the system. Hell I should be able to play the game in wire frame mode if want.

Anyway after my brother upgraded his system I finally got my chance to demo Spore and got bored with Spore pretty quick. I recently tried another game demo Black and White 2 and couldn't run the demo, even on my brother's PC. He just did a complete rebuild last February. Not even 4 months and it is telling him his PC is not good enough.

Well that is my opinion, I believe if people want crappy analog TV then they should have the option to watch it. But now the FCC passed that HD thing here in the US and any TV (like mine) can only play PS2 games. No signals are broadcast in FM anymore. My grandpa said that is another conspiracy to force people to buy the newer more expensive HD TV sets. He has a box on his analog and said the volume level sucks.

What is your opinion?

[Huckleberry Pie]

They just cash in and try to lure greedy pieheads in order to sell more. I don't care even if I run GTA IV at a low resolution; I just needed some decent settings and not an expensive videocard.

[MrLlamaLlama]

My old radeon 9250 (bought for £11) Ran Black and White 2, and F.E.A.R, and San Andreas, And Toca Race Driver 3... Must have been a pretty crappy rebuild, man.

As for support for older hardware, yes it's a bit bad that we're forced to upgrade just to enjoy TV, or Gaming, or whatever, but ranting won't change it, neither will the whole abstinence / boycott thing. 3 Things are certain in life. Life itself, Death, and Having your ass scammed.

Play older games if you don't mind the visuals, there's still some great older games out there. If you wanna play newer games, shelling out your hard earned is just another inevitability.

[JAB HacksouL]

My old radeon 9250 (bought for £11) Ran Black and White 2, and F.E.A.R, and San Andreas, And Toca Race Driver 3... Must have been a pretty crappy rebuild, man.

Not really, just poor choice of adapter chipset. My PC is now running an Intel dual core at 2G, and I upgraded with this cheap 1G VIA Graphics card. I plan to replace it with an ATI or Radeon in the near future but it came as a "package deal" I purchased online. My system can kick ass but there are driver issues with certain games. This card wouldn't even be an issue if VIA kept on top of their driver downloads.

What my brother was getting at is the fact that, more people would purchase the software if they're not forced to upgrade their older machine.

JAB

[Urbanoutlaw]

I tend to agree w/ Toon', a lot of games these days just seem to concentrate on graphics. What's so hard about making

a game that would be comparable to Vice City in graphics demand & letting you go the their site to download higher end

when you register? Seriously, it's one of the reasons I hate Sierra/Vivendi after the job they did on "Scarface:TWIY", an

otherwise great game that made my computer grind when the graphic looked between VC & SA. The cause was some

particle effect that drained the video.

[WRX22B1998]

3 Things are certain in life. Life itself, Death, and Having your ass scammed.

dont forget taxes! lol.

yeahh what video card and cpu did you "upgrade" to ...

like llama said its inevitable that if you wanna play the new games you gotta upgrade your machine. when you see the ATi or nVidia logos in games, some games are optimised for that type of card (eg crysis is optimised for nVidia)

Edited June 26, 2009 by WRX22B1998

[JAB HacksouL]

yeahh what video card and cpu did you "upgrade" to ...

Did some one miss my post or ?

Also as I said, it is not about my upgrade, but how my brother and I feel about software games being programmed by blockheads.

Urbanoutlaw draws on a perfect example. If they post a demo online it should be backwards compatible. If you are not a programmer then you might think this would require more programming. But that assumption is false, you would just tell the Direct X to analyze the system and throttle back your program graphics where needed. I also believe that too many games are "eye candy" and no action.

I don't think Toonskull (aka my brother) is trying to change anything because if he was he would be writing letters elsewhere and not in a public forum.

Don't take this the wrong way MrLlamaLlama, but I find the statement you made a very cynical view about the little pleasures of life. I find my some of my brother's views a bit too altruistic, but he is a dreamer.

JAB

[WRX22B1998]

ohhhhhhhhhhhhh ok. i had no idea he is your brother that's why i was asking him that question. lol.

[JAB HacksouL]

That's ok dude, no harm no foul.

My brother is looking into this right now: http://www.tommti-systems.com/

It is german software called "3D Analyze" and it spoofs what kind of graphics card you are using through Direct X. I fooled with it a bit. I ran SA in wireframe mode it looks weird. But I don't think it will be a perfect fix, you still need a pretty good card to play games.

JAB

[Spaz The Great]

3 Things are certain in life. Life itself, Death, and Having your ass scammed.

dont forget taxes! lol.

That falls under "having your ass scammed".

[Pandora]

Well, they can't stick in the past... They build a new Game-Engine, and that just has it's requirements.

I'm not sure, but I think even old PC (like, from 2003) supported pixel shader 2.0, so really.. you can't blame those devs.

If anything, I think they're moving too slow. Like, trying to keep it compatible with old systems. It sucks for hardware-enthusiasts.

I understand your problem, but one must be reasonable. I'm sure you aren't making a fuss about new consoles and there being no (game) support for the old ones anymore. It's just normal.

Other then that.. Spore was designed to also run on very old systems. Games like GTA IV aren't though..

[maj212]

meh i usually stick to the old games neway

but if i decided on getting new games id get a ps3 or xbox360 its just so easyer pop the disc in and there you go

but one downsite

no modding bah

[ToonSkull]

Well, they can't stick in the past... They build a new Game-Engine, and that just has it's requirements.

I'm not sure, but I think even old PC (like, from 2003) supported pixel shader 2.0, so really.. you can't blame those devs.

If anything, I think they're moving too slow. Like, trying to keep it compatible with old systems. It sucks for hardware-enthusiasts.

I understand your problem, but one must be reasonable. I'm sure you aren't making a fuss about new consoles and there being no (game) support for the old ones anymore. It's just normal.

Other then that.. Spore was designed to also run on very old systems. Games like GTA IV aren't though..

Yes I do blame the developers. They bend to the dollars of Nvidia, ATI and Radeon etc.. They can make pixel shading an option but don't. A perfect example of this is "Battle Field Heroes" a free online, free to play game. But corporate influence shows that they are money driven and not working on how to make a better game or in the users best interests. After a loooong download, if your card in not pixel shader compliant the generic error message pops up there is something wrong. Researching the issue you are left on your own to find that you are missing the needed pixel shader and you should buy the Nvidia card hosted on the web page.

I don't expect people to stay in the stone age but this;

"I bought a Bates 3000 and 15 minutes ago they upgraded to the Bates 4000 and in six months the 9000 will hit the shelves." -- Reference to "Onion News" movie.

is for the birds.

@maj212; I do too. I play a lot of online web games and I can play my Guildwars without graphic hassles. But there may be a day where I plug into GW and find out I need the newest video card.

I am 15 and I am not hurting for money. I just don't like how the greedy corporations play people like fools.

[TM™]

Most Developers aren't exactly all that. They just build/make games. If you can't afford top end hardware to run games, fair enough. In this time of age, not everyone can, especially with the recession going on. You're just going to have to get use to the fact that technology is developing, and not everyone can keep up with it, in terms of money. Obviously if your computers old (Made/Bought before 2005 for instance) then you will definitely not be able to get the best out of the newer/current games.

So really, to sum it up, today's games aren't built to sell video cards. If you want to experience an awesomely graphical game like Crysis or FC2, you're going to need a really good graphics card, or really, just deal with it. Game developers want you to experience the best, right? So making a high end graphical game is what they're going to give you. If you can't run it, then you shouldn't really blame the game developers, that's just ridiculously dumb to do. It would just be your fault for not having a high end gaming system.

Just remember that as technology advances, so does graphics, and that equals lots of money being spent. And like I said before, at this time of age, not everyone can advance. Not whilst this recession gets worse. I know that the recession may not be the biggest problem with this, but sometimes developers make mistakes with their games, really, everybody makes mistakes. You can't just brag about it and it gets fixed, it takes alot of knowledge to fix/problem solve errors.

Other than that, everybody isn't greedy. Alot of people learn and make things from video games as well. It's not just about the money.

[Husky]

Well, they can't stick in the past... They build a new Game-Engine, and that just has it's requirements.

I'm not sure, but I think even old PC (like, from 2003) supported pixel shader 2.0, so really.. you can't blame those devs.

If anything, I think they're moving too slow. Like, trying to keep it compatible with old systems. It sucks for hardware-enthusiasts.

I understand your problem, but one must be reasonable. I'm sure you aren't making a fuss about new consoles and there being no (game) support for the old ones anymore. It's just normal.

Other then that.. Spore was designed to also run on very old systems. Games like GTA IV aren't though..

Yes I do blame the developers. They bend to the dollars of Nvidia, ATI and Radeon etc.. They can make pixel shading an option but don't. A perfect example of this is "Battle Field Heroes" a free online, free to play game. But corporate influence shows that they are money driven and not working on how to make a better game or in the users best interests. After a loooong download, if your card in not pixel shader compliant the generic error message pops up there is something wrong. Researching the issue you are left on your own to find that you are missing the needed pixel shader and you should buy the Nvidia card hosted on the web page.

I don't expect people to stay in the stone age but this;

"I bought a Bates 3000 and 15 minutes ago they upgraded to the Bates 4000 and in six months the 9000 will hit the shelves." -- Reference to "Onion News" movie.

is for the birds.

@maj212; I do too. I play a lot of online web games and I can play my Guildwars without graphic hassles. But there may be a day where I plug into GW and find out I need the newest video card.

I am 15 and I am not hurting for money. I just don't like how the greedy corporations play people like fools.

Don't you know that the Mac Book wheel is just a parody? That video is not real Toonskull. When I first saw it I thought it was real, but who would pay 5,000 for a PC that runs for 30mins and then recharge?

[Nate10]

Yeah, he knows Husky. Look at the beginning of his post when He mentions The Onion Movie. He knows..

[Pandora]

Dude... you do know what shaders are, right? Well, probably you don't.. Of course they aren't going to give an option for leaving everything unshaded. What next? Wireframe?

Money driven.. yeah right bro. Come on, they aren't going to spend tens of millions for nothing.

And tell me, what are the specs of your brothers setup? All hardware that wasn't EOL in february will be up to date. That of course doesn't mean a budget card will do much.. but they're all DX10 and shader model compliant.

Onboard won't cut it though.

[ToonSkull]

Dude... you do know what shaders are, right? Well, probably you don't.. Of course they aren't going to give an option for leaving everything unshaded. What next? Wireframe?

Yes, I know what pixel shading is and you can make a switch for it. Our Dad is a programmer that used to work for Blizzard but struck out his own and formed a firmware company. You obviously don't know and had you noticed my brother's posting I solved most of my pixel shader problems with 3D Analyze. Which tricks the program into thinking I have a pixel shader compliant card.

Yes I would play a game in wireframe if it has a good game play.

Money driven.. yeah right bro. Come on, they aren't going to spend tens of millions for nothing.

Games need to be more than eye candy. If I want eye candy I can see fireworks displays. They don't cost as much.

And tell me, what are the specs of your brothers setup? All hardware that wasn't EOL in february will be up to date. That of course doesn't mean a budget card will do much.. but they're all DX10 and shader model compliant.

Onboard won't cut it though.

My brother has posted this information above as well. ^^^

@Husky: Yep, just using it to illustrate my point.

[Pandora]

Well, I can't find the post in which he posted his setup.

Anyway, yes, a bit of hacking will get your game to just dump all that shading, but what then? That's going to be ugly as fuck. The experience will be gone.

Seriously this gameplay business is overrated. What makes HL2 so good? Certainly the idea of being part of the world. Seeing the citadel totally fuck up in Ep1 and start of Ep2 does add to the experience. You know how the sphere above the citadel are actually just two polygons? It's the shaders that make it look awesome.

It's not to sell graphic cards, it's for the experience.

And I do like digital eye candy. In fact, graphics give me a boner. I love it.