299548

May 21st, 2000 09:10 PM

All I can tell you is that I have a p2 300 notebook with a rage pro lt 8mb mobile chip. This was a decent chip in its day, but it really isn't suitable for anything beyond Quake 1. It will run Sacrifice, badly and without fogging (doesn't look as nice without fogging). From what I can tell its mostly the fillrate that is killing this chip. Hopefully the IIc has better fillrate.

We will be going into QA soon. We will probably have more to say about other chipsets soon (hopefully, including the IIc).

-joby

[This message has been edited by poopsie (edited 05-21-2000).]

299549

May 22nd, 2000 08:38 PM

CPU: Celeron 333 (not overclocked)
RAM: 64MB
HD: 10GB and 4GB, much partitioning, using fat32 compressed drives for games typically
VIDEO: ATI Rage Pro 4MB (agp)
SOUND: SB64
OS: Win98
MONITOR: EV700 17" max res 1280x1024x24bpp/1024x768x32bpp
MOUSE: MS Intellimouse

ETC: DX7, runs great under D3D but barely gets off the ground with GL. Upgrades pending.

299550

May 23rd, 2000 12:02 PM

That´s mine
CPU: K6-3/400@475
RAM: 128MB
Video: Elsa Erazor 2@115/125Mhz and
Vodoo 3 2000 PCI@155Mhz
HDD: 10GB IBM + 20GB Maxtor
Sound: SB Live! Value
OS: Win2k and Win98SE (also SUSE Linux 6.3)
Monitor: CTX 19"
Mous: crappy noname mouse
Other: 8x DVD, JBL ESC 300 Sound System, 2MBit Internet connection, 10Mbit NIC, 3,5" Floppy


[This message has been edited by gestalt (edited 05-23-2000).]

299551

May 24th, 2000 04:53 PM

Well im trying to get into this forum thing so here it goes:

Pentium 3 800
128mb of sd pc 100 ram
geforce 256 32mb
DVD drive
cd-rw drive
Sound blaster live

Well there is is, Im upgrading to a geforce 2 now that I know sacrifice if optimized for one.


------------------
Chris Guess

299552

May 26th, 2000 12:23 AM

i have a rageiic 4mb agp vidio card, and for the guy who has that vidio card im sorry if your offended from what im about to say

The rageicc sucks ass or it could be the 4mb of ram but i have a feeling its the chipset. there was no opengl for it in quake2 it did have some sort of opengl for quake1 but i dont have q1 to try it on.

This is just my opinion wich is probably wrong but at least i think its right

299553

May 26th, 2000 05:37 AM

I think my next upgrade will be the Geforce2.I will prolly get that one before Sacrifice ships and then I might upgrade to a 1ghz processer or higher to really get the most out of it. Thanks guys and poopsie!!!

------------------
Chris Guess

299554

May 26th, 2000 02:12 PM

Well compared to almost everyone else on this board, my computer just sucks total nuts. Ok, well here goes.

CPU: Pentium II 266mhz
RAM: 64megs
HD: 4 gigs
VIDEO: (Old piece of crap OEM card)ATI Mach 64, 4meg ram
SOUND: Not sure.. some kinda standard Compaq card. like 32bit...possibly 16, whatever it is. It sucks
OS: Windows 98
MONITOR: Compaq 1525 15"
MOUSE: Standard 2 button Compaq mouse
WHATEVER: My computer is a piece of sh*t !
But that's one of the things I loved with the whole Messiah/Sacrifice engine as it was originally promised. Originally Dave Perry promised that almost any system could play these games due to the scalability of the engine. Originally you could do it through software only...but....I guess something just went wrong somewhere. And now I can't even play Messiah , when I first heard of the game I thought of my computer as pretty good, not top of the line, but decent enough. Now you have to have like at least a Pentium III and some sort of Voodoo card to run it. It sucks! No offense. I love Shiny and all...you have been my favorite game developer ever the Earthworm Jim days...but damn it. I hate that you have to have such a powerful computer to even attempt to play games. It's just not worth it! I don't have money growing out my ass like most of these people on this board do obviously, so I can't afford some Gigahtz Processor with a GeForce3 when this game comes out!
This is one reason I hope you seriously consider porting to Dreamcast. As I had stated in a previous post...the system is perfect for this game. It's got a built-in modem and a mouse coming out soon... I want this game so bad...but can't afford $1000 to upgrade my computer. This is all I've got.
Thanx for your time...

-ZePHyR
http://filenotfound.havengames.net

[This message has been edited by ZePHyR (edited 05-26-2000).]

299555

May 26th, 2000 03:31 PM

I understand your frustration. Believe me its VERY frustrating for us too. The PC market is segmented worse than my hardrive.

Today's developers have to do a lot more to make sure the games cover the enormous gap from lowest end to highest end machines that are actually in use for the given type of game.

For a brief period of time Windows made things easier because it was handling certain driver issues that game devs used to have to write into their own code. Now the expanded hardware possibilities have lead to a much greater chasm.

Unfortunately, even with the most scaleable engines out there, there is only so far you can go. Even if our engine could scale to 0 polys there's a lot of stuff to calculate outside of the renderer (AI, pathing, collision ...). There's not much that can be scaled in that part of the code without risking folks on low end machines playing an essentially different game.

The situation is made much worse by the fact that sooo many developers see fit to release amazing looking screenshots of games that will be at least 2 years away. These games are then presented as coming soon and rabid gamers everywhere hold everything that really is coming soon to those products for comparison. We (Shiny) have been guilty of the this too. Its not that devs do it on purpose, we just have a _very_ difficult job that is one part science one part art and all too hard to predict. We have to make experiences that are fun to play and dress them up so richly that they stand up to the highest expectations just to get noticed. Its a lot of fun, but really distressing too because we see how much it hurts the gamers. I think we'll be much closer to the mark with Sacrifice in terms of releasing soon after we've started the hype.

We are working on solutions, but I don't think the problem disappear unless the PC market changes dramatically. For instance: Software rendering had to go away so that we could develop just one set of graphics that took advantage of the subset of cards with texture filtering, alpha modes and on and on. What kinds of things will tomorrow's games have to ditch so that they can fully and efficiently take advantage of T&L, T-buffer and the next big thing? The more we try to use the new tricks the harder it is to use the old tricks too. The same textures that work with bump mapping don't necesarily work without it. Ugg, its just a nasty, nasty problem.

That's my rant for today, sorry.

-joby

299556

May 26th, 2000 06:12 PM

It's ok, actually. I was just blowing off a little steam myself. I totally understand the problems you have (well, mostly). I just wish there could be one unified standard myself. Like VCR's and such you know? There aren't 7 different types of VCR's and 7 different types of tapes. There's only one. And makes things so much easier that way. Sure, VCR's are old and are going to be soon outdated but with another new Standard platform not 5 or 6. If only people could design some kind of system like that with computers. I know this is just great in theory. People would probably get like a big monopoly going and all, but in a perfect world it sure would be great. Hopefully though, if all games learned from what Shiny has accomplished with your scalable engine someday everyone would have the opportunity to play the same game. Maybe by the time I'm out there workin' with ya (if I'm lucky) things will be a little closer to that dream. I know I can't be the only one with it. Thanx, and I really do appreciate all the hard work you do. As an artist myself I know how hard it is to create something impressive all the time. It takes so much frickin' creativity to come up with fresh and new stuff; like you all are doing there with this game. Good Luck!

-ZePHyR
http://filenotfound.havengames.net

299557

May 27th, 2000 04:18 PM

PII 450
64mb ram
6.4 gig HD
(asus) riva TNT 2
soundblaster awe 64 (and another crap card)
Windows 98
logitech mouse
32x cd rom