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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

No Support For Older 3d-cards, Why?


Guest Werner Hoehrer

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Guest Werner Hoehrer
What reason is there to not support older 3d-grafic cards (opengl-compatible cards)?

I think this game is supposed to remake/renew/whatever the original game with 3d-supprot and so forth.
So what functions do you use for this game so you *need* a geforce2 or better?

And the argument to buy a new card because they are not that expensive is not an argument for me.
I have seen 1'st grade open source 3d-games which runs on even slower hardware (think voodoo1 and tnt1). (i.e every game using the crystal-engine, vegastrike,...)
Even if these cards are obsolete when the game is finished, many people don't have one of the newer ones, so i think they don't buy a new one just for testing xenocide (though maybe with the first beat :D)

Though, no offense, the game looks great so far, and i'm only a bit upset that i can't test the alpha. :rolleyes:

Werner
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Guest mikker
Simple: buy a new card.

There is a reason for not to be able to do that. Xenocide will have an incradible ammount of new grafics, esspecially in the battlefield. This is going to be a 3D game, and if older cards should be able to hold them, then most of the grafics need to be cut off.

And that would ruin the eksperince, looking on a totaly black screen with a little panel on the right.


If i'm wrong, tell me.

(BTW canot log on. stupid computer <_< )
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The simple explaination as to why we don't support older cards is that they can't use the commands we program with, and they aren't capable of the graphics we're using.

PS: a supported GeForce2 card costs $28 online and you have at least 2 annual holidays (perhaps birthdays) where you could probably convince someone to give you one if you are that against buying a new card. Edited by Maverick
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Guest Guest
[quote]Simple: buy a new card.[/quote]
Simple is the wrong description: if i buy a new card i need a new motherboard (too creapy AGP port with newer card = pain)[/quote]


[quote]There is a reason for not to be able to do that. Xenocide will have an incradible ammount of new grafics, esspecially in the battlefield. This is going to be a 3D game, and if older cards should be able to hold them, then most of the grafics need to be cut off.[/quote]
What exactly do you mean when you say "new grafics":
polygons, textures/effects/....

Especially for a turn based game (loading-)time is of no essence here.
(don't know if realtime is planed, though -> i am no fan of realtime)

I have played many games much to high suited for my pc (not very fast, but at least playing).

Werner

PS: for comparision: i am running UNREAL2 on my TNT2 card and a 650MHz-CPU and it is quite playable.
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Guest Werner Hoehrer
[quote]The simple explaination as to why we don't support older cards is that they can't use the commands we program with, and they aren't capable of the graphics we're using.[/quote]
Is this the ominous Cg-stuff, i thought this is back compatible with OpenGl?
What exactly is thge stuf that don't run on older cards?
vertex shaders/GPU-commands/.....

[quote]PS: a supported GeForce2 card costs $28 online and you have at least 2 annual holidays (perhaps birthdays) where you could probably convince someone to give you one if you are that against buying a new card.[/quote]
I think i'm a bit too old for getting this kind of birthday presents :wink:
Also i'm not very happy to update my pc (never change a running system :rolleyes:)
It q´would also require other updates, see my post above.
But as i can see i will not come around this

Werner

PS: is there some news on the linux port?
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[quote name='Werner Hoehrer' date='Jun 2 2003, 08:23 PM'][quote]The simple explaination as to why we don't support older cards is that they can't use the commands we program with, and they aren't capable of the graphics we're using.[/quote]
Is this the ominous Cg-stuff, i thought this is back compatible with OpenGl?
What exactly is thge stuf that don't run on older cards?
vertex shaders/GPU-commands/.....

[quote]PS: a supported GeForce2 card costs $28 online and you have at least 2 annual holidays (perhaps birthdays) where you could probably convince someone to give you one if you are that against buying a new card.[/quote]
I think i'm a bit too old for getting this kind of birthday presents :wink:
Also i'm not very happy to update my pc (never change a running system :rolleyes:)
It q´would also require other updates, see my post above.
But as i can see i will not come around this

Werner

PS: is there some news on the linux port? [/quote]
We want the game to appeal to the widest audience, yes. But there is a cutoff point where it would be too much work to include obsolete hardware. Gforce 2's have been around for quite a while now and are considered old by most people's standards so we decided that to be able to use all the features we want to include that would be our lowest spec.

Like Mav said GF2's aren't expensive and you do have two years to be able to afford to upgrade incuding a new motherboard :)

You could build a whole system for £200 with the minimum spec if you know where to look for cheap bits so you could build a whole new system in the two years before we release just for playing our game :D
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For specifics on the cards we use and why we'll have to wait for RK to respond. As for the Linux port, this is no longer a V1 feature because we don't have enough people working for Linux systems; If anyone is interested in Linux ports, please mention it but realize that as our team stands now we do not have the resources to port to Linux. We need people who have experience developing in a Linux environment in order to be able to achieve this; with that said, if you are interested in a Linux port (or Mac) and you think you can help, you will have our FULL support in doing so.

Back to the card, in RK's engine he's been using commands that are Dx 8.1 compliant but require a certain amount of sophistication from the hardware chipsets, older chipsets like the TNT2 can't process these commands (if you try and run the game you should get an error generated in the log file, the chipset doesn't understand the command).

While we intend to make our game appeal and be playable to the largest audience possible we cannot make it playable for everyone; If your hardware does not meet the minimum specifications for our game, I apologize in advance because we do not intend to produce a version designed to run on systems below this.

-Mav

The base required video card can run on an AGP 2x slot, so unless your system has a record of poor performance with that chipset or you have something against the company it should work in your machine. Please note that I am not a computer hardware professional, my advice is given to try an help you, not as a professional.
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Well plain simple, adding multiple support for older cards would make our job more dificult as it is right now... making games is not as easy as it seams, ask anyone here... expecially those with a professional track backing them up. Unreal 2 may work, but it wont add per pixel lighting, complex bump mapping, gloss mapping, serious lighting effects and I can continue listing to boredom. Forgot, I dont think Unreal 2 have all that, just try to run UT3.

That means cutting all the nice stuff for something in 2 years will be considered museum parts (no offense here, just the plain truth), where I live HW is extremely expensive but I have to live with that and invest a lot of money to have a video card suitable for development and practice to become a professional game developer sometime.

About Cg, it is completly compatible with both DirectX and OpenGL, but it is not compatible with video cards that do not have vertex programs and fragment programs capabilities (ie that permit you to program directly into the Graphic Core, you cant simulate that even with a 8 Ghz CPU. GPU are extremely parallel special purpose chips). If anyone wants more hardware insight, just ask I will do the best to give you a clue on the topic.

I almost forgot, GF2 as advanced as it sounds do not have fragment program capability so doing complex bump mapping, gloss mapping and all that stuff has to be replicated in a different way to make it work. So there are already 2 different programs (one for GF2 and another one for Radeon 8500+ and GF3+)..

Greetings
Red Knight Edited by red knight
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Guest Werner Hoehrer
After reading all this i think it is the best way for me to stay with the original :wink: .
No offense, keep up the great work on xenocide.

Werner
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[quote name='Werner Hoehrer' date='Jun 3 2003, 06:58 PM']After reading all this i think it is the best way for me to stay with the original :wink: .[/quote]
Or you can play UFO2000 with your current hardware. In addition it has a native linux version.
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Guest Guest
[quote]Or you can play UFO2000 with your current hardware. In addition it has a native linux version.[/quote]
Already had a look at it, it's quite cool ;-)

Werner
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