Hardware T & L (or "Dear Firaxis..."
- Thread starter fresca
- Start date
Sorry, but you're wrong. fresca's laptop played Pirates!, which is the same engine as Civ IV, so it can play Civ IV. fresca is falling prey to this dang ATI issue, not inadequate hardware. It'll work once they get a grip on the issue and fix it.Naveed said:
Half Life 2's engine is unusually scalable. Doom 3 won't run without T&L at all. Holding up HL2's engine like it is normal is deceptive. HL2 also looks really bad on things like nVidia TNT cards without T&L.
Well, the chipset seems to support T&L, so I wonder if that's "just" the problem that Civ4 seems to have with some ATI chipsets/cards? There was a patch announced for that problem, apparently, so all may not be lost? (I have an ATI x700pro and no problems, but that's a desktop card).
Karnak said:
I love it when people talk without checking the facts first. Pirates! and Civ IV both use NDL's Gamebryo 3D engine, and this engine gets updated, it is not a static piece of technology. The fact that Civ IV's requirements are higher than Pirates! suggests that it is an updated engine, but it is not scalable.
It may well be the problem due to the ATI issue, but still games like Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 can run even on Radeon 340M, which is an even older version.
Sorry, but the Author of the thread is really right.
EVERY good Game/Engine has the possibilty to work on even really old devices. So look back in time, there was Quake, Quake2, 3, ... and they supported like the newest Hardware u can get. But if u wanted, u could even play that **** on crappy old hardware. Ok, u could have to change resolution down to 320x240, but it worked!
So, that engine is not really top, if it cant handle old sucks. All it would had to do was just to let out featues and making that graphiks not making look as good, but working!
Second, ok, market says graphics is important for an game. But hoo? civ4 ? its an round based strategic game! Graphics not all, and for old pros the new graphics is just amusing but not more. The game concept works with just old 2D technology, and it would have been quite good if the game would have worked on some older Hardware too.
At least, Firaxis will feel it, because i think that outa there would be about 400% more civ4 player if they could play the game...
I think they just forgot that "old laptop" players, and similar...
No - myself i got no problem, i have an really good new pc and my civ4 runs totaly good. But I knew some ppl who cant afford the newest hardware, and they have also just about 2,5 years old machines, and cant run it...
thats just lacking...
At least, the new graphics engine seems to waste most resources. I think about 90% of the resources the game needs are because of the graphic engine. Thats really too much. At last, when there would be the possibility to switch featues off to make it better playable or playable at least, it would be ok, but thats not the fact...
EVERY good Game/Engine has the possibilty to work on even really old devices. So look back in time, there was Quake, Quake2, 3, ... and they supported like the newest Hardware u can get. But if u wanted, u could even play that **** on crappy old hardware. Ok, u could have to change resolution down to 320x240, but it worked!
So, that engine is not really top, if it cant handle old sucks. All it would had to do was just to let out featues and making that graphiks not making look as good, but working!
Second, ok, market says graphics is important for an game. But hoo? civ4 ? its an round based strategic game! Graphics not all, and for old pros the new graphics is just amusing but not more. The game concept works with just old 2D technology, and it would have been quite good if the game would have worked on some older Hardware too.
At least, Firaxis will feel it, because i think that outa there would be about 400% more civ4 player if they could play the game...
I think they just forgot that "old laptop" players, and similar...
No - myself i got no problem, i have an really good new pc and my civ4 runs totaly good. But I knew some ppl who cant afford the newest hardware, and they have also just about 2,5 years old machines, and cant run it...
thats just lacking...
At least, the new graphics engine seems to waste most resources. I think about 90% of the resources the game needs are because of the graphic engine. Thats really too much. At last, when there would be the possibility to switch featues off to make it better playable or playable at least, it would be ok, but thats not the fact...
I agree with the thread topic too. The graphics should be scalable, and T&L should not be a requirement.
There was another game I played a year or two back - Maybe Rise of Nations, but it may have been an "Age of ..." game - that wouldn't run on my video card in my system at the time. Turns out it was "turned off" in their video card data file (which was an INI), simply because they didn't want to support older video cards. I've also been told that a lot of titles force "T&L only" for the same reason - less cards/drivers/etc to test for and support. (Not that this was enough to keep Firaxis from failing in the QA dept anyways!
)
The funny thing is that there are some cards without hardware T&L that are actually faster on a modern CPU than some older T&L cards.
And another forum I was on recently had the popular "graphics versus gameplay" discussion - a very philosophical topic
Personally, I get just as much fun out of games like Hearts of Iron2 and Supreme Ruler 2010 as I do from my new Civ4, and they didn't need the latest 3D whiz-bang graphics to get me hooked. Of course, they didn't sell as many copies as Civ4 will, so there you go...
There was another game I played a year or two back - Maybe Rise of Nations, but it may have been an "Age of ..." game - that wouldn't run on my video card in my system at the time. Turns out it was "turned off" in their video card data file (which was an INI), simply because they didn't want to support older video cards. I've also been told that a lot of titles force "T&L only" for the same reason - less cards/drivers/etc to test for and support. (Not that this was enough to keep Firaxis from failing in the QA dept anyways!
)The funny thing is that there are some cards without hardware T&L that are actually faster on a modern CPU than some older T&L cards.
And another forum I was on recently had the popular "graphics versus gameplay" discussion - a very philosophical topic
Personally, I get just as much fun out of games like Hearts of Iron2 and Supreme Ruler 2010 as I do from my new Civ4, and they didn't need the latest 3D whiz-bang graphics to get me hooked. Of course, they didn't sell as many copies as Civ4 will, so there you go...