I enjoyed UT2004 for LAN parties working coop on some of the maps against bots. I liked the maps where you had to capture the individual points before you could destroy the enemy's reactor. I can't remember the name for that type of map.
PC Gaming = World of Suck
- Thread starter Mercutio
- Start date
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Onslaught
ddrueding
Fixture
Onslaught was great. I really enjoyed that.
ddrueding
Fixture
Quick game review: HAWX
A flight simulator where the throttle is a button (on/off). Massive fail.
The more games are designed for consoles the more they suck. Their UI and menu systems particularly.
Dirt2 was a pretty game, but while playing it straight through I was waiting for the UI and menu animations longer than I was driving.
A flight simulator where the throttle is a button (on/off). Massive fail.
The more games are designed for consoles the more they suck. Their UI and menu systems particularly.
Dirt2 was a pretty game, but while playing it straight through I was waiting for the UI and menu animations longer than I was driving.
Pradeep
Storage? I am Storage!
This kind of idiocy is usually reserved for "Games for Windows" games that are dependent on an email address/registration.
ddrueding
Fixture
After playing the Supreme Commander series of RTSs, all the rest suck. Not being able to zoom out as far as you like is a major limitation. Not to mention running two active and independent screens.
Portal came up with some really neat updates a short while back and they are targeted to treasure hunters or easter egg hunters however you want to put that. New achievements, picture files encoded in sound clips, BBS, all sorts of weird stuff. Looks like some neat stuff before portal 2 comes out.
ddrueding
Fixture
I am looking forward to Portal 2. Portal kept me stuck for amazing amounts of time before I learned to think in the ways it required.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I'm thinking I need to build a retro-gaming machine. Something with Windows 98 and a 4:3 monitor. I can play a lot of games I like in DOSBox or something similar, but a lot of late-90s titles have just enough 3D that they won't run in a VM and either hate NT-based Windows or have restrictions on screen resolution.
ddrueding
Fixture
The new Command and Conquer is truly awful. I've never seen such bad graphics @ 1920x1080. Gameplay sucks as well. Its as if they thought that coding for base creation was too hard, so the don't let you anymore.
Battlefield: Bad Company is good so far, played for about 4 hours.
Battlefield: Bad Company is good so far, played for about 4 hours.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
City of Heroes just did a major revamp to its graphics engine, to support more world detail. My ATI 5870 went from being able to deliver 60fps@1920x1200 100% of the time to only displaying 12 - 25fps.
And now I want a faster graphics card.
And now I want a faster graphics card.
ddrueding
Fixture
Hold out for the 5970 4GB; the larger framebuffer helps @ 1920x1080 and higher.
Pradeep
Storage? I am Storage!
Another 5870 in Crossfire?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
CoX is historically not a game that scales well to the multi-GPU setup. I don't know if I want to buy another $500 video card, either.
Of course, I could always turn off the effects, but given the system I'm using I can't believe I have to turn down anything for a six year old game.
Of course, I could always turn off the effects, but given the system I'm using I can't believe I have to turn down anything for a six year old game.
ddrueding
Fixture
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is a decent game with pretty graphics that my machine could just barely manage @ 1920x1080 maxed out.
Game play was short, though, about 8 hours.
Game play was short, though, about 8 hours.
Portal is now free and apparently works on macs
http://store.steampowered.com/freeportal/
Portal has seen some neat changes lately.
http://store.steampowered.com/freeportal/
Portal has seen some neat changes lately.
ddrueding
Fixture
Alpha Protocol has been fun so far. It is very buggy and won't work with my Eyefinity at all, but the plot is pleasant and the interactions actually affect the plot in meaningful ways.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I just found a torrent of the various LucasArts SCUMM-engine games. Apparently they've been modified to support more modern graphics settings so for example Loom can be played with a full VGA palette now.
I'm looking forward to playing Grim Fandango.
Absolutely every modern PC game that isn't an MMO seems to be something I don't want to play, either because I don't like the genre or because of the copy protection bullshit.
I'm looking forward to playing Grim Fandango.
Absolutely every modern PC game that isn't an MMO seems to be something I don't want to play, either because I don't like the genre or because of the copy protection bullshit.
ddrueding
Fixture
I caved on steam. They are evil, and I am at risk of losing access to my games at their whim, but darn it, playing without media or going to the store is too convenient to pass up.
I've been taking the risk for a couple years now. They could go belly up tomorrow, and I understand that risk. Much like you just mentioned, the convenience of no media and an easy backup procedure make it really appealing. The other aspect not mentioned is easy access to coordinate gaming with friends. I really like the feature to join a friend already in a game or sending an invite to a game you want to play. Also having the built-in voice chat is nice and convenient. The other thing is that most of the games I've bought have been at a 30%-70% reduced price from the normal store cost.
ddrueding
Fixture
I'm not really worried about them going out of business; they are successful and I believe their business model is "the future". I just worry about them changing the terms at some point to something I won't be able to stomach.
The #1 feature I like is that I can have the game at work and at home without having to deal with cracks or moving media. The automatic patching is quite nice as well.
The #1 feature I like is that I can have the game at work and at home without having to deal with cracks or moving media. The automatic patching is quite nice as well.
I agree, they could change the terms and cause lots of gamers some huge problems. I suspect if they do, there will be a large fallout and business will suffer. Now that they've invested in the Apple platform, they seem to confirm they are doing well otherwise I don't know why they would have spent that much time developing for them and making games compatible.
I also like the cloud synchronization of games. I only play a few that go between systems (desktop/laptop), but having all the saved game data sync is really nice. I also get very good download rates when downloading new games. I was getting a little over 3 MB/s just recently when I bought battlefield bad company 2.
I also like the cloud synchronization of games. I only play a few that go between systems (desktop/laptop), but having all the saved game data sync is really nice. I also get very good download rates when downloading new games. I was getting a little over 3 MB/s just recently when I bought battlefield bad company 2.
ddrueding
Fixture
Which games have the save data sync? I haven't experienced that yet.
Of all the games I have, these are the ones that support Steam Cloud. If you look in the lower right corner of each game, they will list if your game supports the cloud feature.
Sol
Storage is cool
I've got a couple of games on Steam when they have their insane specials, and I got the black box with my last video card, which came on Steam (The games obviously, not the card).
Generally though I find that I can either, get the games cheaper by ordering on line, (and generally get them within a day) or get them much faster by going to a shop (I have 5 or 6 stores that sell games within about 1 1/2 blocks) and for much the same price.
In theory games cost about 50 pound on release day here. In practice I've never had to pay much over 30 and quite often a lot less (Sometimes as low as 15 in release week) so Steams usual discount doesn't quite cut it. (Unless you're one of those people who doesn't pay any attention and is happy to get used games from Game at 5 quid under the RRP which is still 15 quid more than most places online are selling it new)
Generally though I find that I can either, get the games cheaper by ordering on line, (and generally get them within a day) or get them much faster by going to a shop (I have 5 or 6 stores that sell games within about 1 1/2 blocks) and for much the same price.
In theory games cost about 50 pound on release day here. In practice I've never had to pay much over 30 and quite often a lot less (Sometimes as low as 15 in release week) so Steams usual discount doesn't quite cut it. (Unless you're one of those people who doesn't pay any attention and is happy to get used games from Game at 5 quid under the RRP which is still 15 quid more than most places online are selling it new)
Steam is having a big sale from now until July 4th. There are some good deals on even some older games. I've wanted to play the Ghostbusters game and it's hard to resist at $4.00 or the Serious Sam HD double pack for $7.50.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Ghostbusters has a couple funny moments, but Bill Murray REALLY phoned it in. Also, it has a bad case of console-portitis.
I'm still impatiently tapping my foot and waiting for Mechwarrior 5.
I'm still impatiently tapping my foot and waiting for Mechwarrior 5.
ddrueding
Fixture
What is the latest news there?
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
I love how Steam disabled the 64-bit versions of HL2 games on my computer without notice. That was awesome.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
There hasn't been any. Very aggravating since it's a legal issue holding up the game rather than any technical or development problems.
Why does Half Life 2 need a 64 bit native executable?
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
I thought it was interesting when it came out; I think I played the demo.
According to Wiki, GF did not use the SCUMM engine but used the GrimE engine instead. Bummer.
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
It ran smoother than the 32-bit version. A lot of people said that the 64-bit loaded levels faster, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Personally, I prefer to run 64-bit native when there's no apparent penalty.
Whether it really was better or not is neither here nor there. The issue is how they decided to drop it.
timwhit
Hairy Aussie
You may not think that a 64-bit application will perform any better than a 32-bit, but you are wrong.
x86_64 has twice as many general purpose registers as x86, this alone should give a nice performance boost to most applications. An application compiled for x86_64 will have to swap far fewer variables from the stack to registers than a comparable x86 compiled application.
There are numerous other architectural improvements as well.
x86_64 has twice as many general purpose registers as x86, this alone should give a nice performance boost to most applications. An application compiled for x86_64 will have to swap far fewer variables from the stack to registers than a comparable x86 compiled application.
There are numerous other architectural improvements as well.
The flip side is that your variables can double in size if you're not careful, and your code base will be significantly larger no matter what you do thereby effectively halving the amount of cache compared to 32-bit and slowing down memory accesses as your code base is much larger, so you have to read and write more data.
On a 3 or 4 Meg L2 Core 2 or later, it's not so bad. On a Celeron or Pentium E (early 1MB L2 version)--:errr::errr:
Chewy509
Wotty wot wot.
IIRC, I read somewhere that comparing the result of using gcc to build 32bit x86 code vs 64bit x86 code, the 64bit code was in general 10%-15% larger than the 32bit code. This was mainly to do with the larger pointer sizes for absolute pointers (most 64bit x86 code still uses 32bit addressing, referenced from the current RIP register), and some variables being cast as 64bit instead of 32bit. (A lot of legacy code is built for 32bit systems, so only use 'int' instead of 'long' variables - gcc still treats 'int' as 32bit variables).
However the code executed 10% quicker in 64bit mode, mainly due to the additional 8 GPRs and some believe that the 64bit SYSV ABI also had a hand in it as well - since the 64bit SYSV ABI passes procedure call arguments within the GPRs instead of on the stack as in the case of the 32bit SYSV ABI - you didn't need to hit the stack (aka memory) to pass variables between function calls - thus using cache and adding memory access latency, and on multi-CPU/multi-core systems additional latency due to cache snooping.
The x86 did well due in its migration from a 32bit to 64bit CPU, mainly due to it's variable instruction length and how AMD implemented the 64bit environment, as opposed to most 64bit RISC architectures especially where there are 32bit and 64bit versions of the same RISC architecture, eg PowerPC and SPARC. In those cases, moving to 64bit only gave a larger address space and larger registers, but it took away half of you cache due to their fixed length instruction encoding. (which doubled the size of each instruction from 32bits to 64bits, irrespective of the actual instruction).
GPR - General Purpose Register, eg RAX, RBX, etc. As opposed to specialised registers like CR0, etc.
ABI - Application Binary Interface - the method at which variables are passed between procedures, and how return codes are passed.
SYSV ABI - The ABI used by most x64 *nix systems, eg Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD, etc.
It depends on the compiler you use. And the care with which the compile options are chosen, which depends on the knowledge level of the person(s) doing the build. Yep, the latest builds of gcc, VC++ and Intel's compiler give very good results out of the box. But there are a lot of places still using VC++ 2005 with lots of legacy code...