Hay guys, I got a rant and have been wondering if anyone's thought the same? Anyway I figure this post should go in Tech as its not really about the games, per se.
I've come to the conclusion that there's a definite decline in the quality of game development these days. I first noticed this when I tried playing Oblivion on my comp. Now, I know what my computer is capable of. It plays Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 (both are games with beautiful graphics) without any slowdown whatsoever.
Yet for some reason, Oblivion slows to a barely noticeable crawl unless played at Very Low graphics setting. I had a similar experience with F.E.A.R. Unlike Oblivion, I can get the graphics up at least somewhat tolerable. Hey, I liked Goldeneye on N64 as much as the next guy, but I think its ridiculous that modern games should look just like it in terms of graphics.
As I said, I know what my comp is capable of, and I can only conclude that it isn't the hardware that is the problem, it is the software that is inefficient. If iD and Valve can make games that run beautifully on my system specs, why can't Monolith or Bethesda? Maybe they're too concerned with rushing out games as soon as they're theoretically "playable" to even bother with tweaking the program to get it to make more efficient use of the hardware?
Anyone else noticed this?
Is your computer a Dell?
true high dynamic range rendering
turning on a dime
Sloppy programming. That's all it is. When I first switched over to the PC in 1995 (from the Amiga) I decided then the PC was full of sloppy bastards. "Okay, we need this game shipped guys." "But it's not optimized yet..." "Fuck that, we'll just up the system requirements."
With the moving target that is PC hardware, the amount of suits involved in game development, it's always going to be ship first, and if the game's actually finished and optimized, well that's just a bonus.
The "we can patch it" mentality is destroying PC gaming. With so many people on the internet, they know they can ship fundamentally broken games and fix them later. You can't return the game to the store for a refund because you may have copied it, despite the fact it may be the copy PROTECTION that means you can't run it...
That's the other issue I hate with PC gaming. You can't return a game if it's crap because you may have copied it (whereas you buy a pair of shoes that fall apart, you have the right to demand your money back)... But then there's copy protection on the disk. They have it both ways. "The copy protection on this disk doesn't like my system and I can't run it." "well you can't return it, because you may have copied it."
I find it sad how folk have casually accepted being raped of their consumer rights by the software (not to mention recording and movie) industry.
Or maybe newer techs like HDR, PS/VS3.0, etc. Are slowing you down. One might as well ask why Doom3 doesn't run as well as Quake 3 on a given computer. The answer will invariably be all of the additional work your graphics card has to do. Requesting CPU, RAM, and GPU models to prove that you have an expectation of higher performance.
>>8
What is there to laugh about? >>7 speaks the truth. In today's cutting edge games, there are numerous techniques that provide cinematic quality interactive rendering. When all these rendering techniques are combined, the resulting program places a fair amount of strain onto the hardware.
>>1's conclusion of sloppy programming is incorrect. If programmers removed the techniques that make games look so shiny, games would run a lot faster. If programmers added today's rendering techniques to Half-Life 1 and redid the assets to take advantage of it, I would have no doubt that Half-Life would chug as much as Oblivion or F.E.A.R.