Be Excellent To Each Other

Discuss boring shit about the superiority keyboard-and-mouse control schemes and framerates and resolution and anti-alias schemes in here, where it can be easily ignored by all right-thinking folk.

If mods could move appropriate posts that are inadvertently posted in the main thread to this one instead, I think that'd be shiny.

So you've created a TEDIUM splinter thread as a pre-emptive strike in case any tedium should occur in your precious main thread? It's not enough that you've already sub-titled the other one 'NO TEDIUM PLEASE'?

Whatever floats your boat, man.

I find the most refined controller for a game is a Gentleman's Gentleman, in the form of a Jeeves who will respond to my polite commands to move said unit there, duck behind the wall and shoot that bearded Mohammadean chap lurking behind the rhododendron bush or build another new golf course beside the Sim Mayor's Mansion.

This leaves my hands free to sip G&T's.

You'd love Madden games. Hit "START" and sit back for the entire four quarters and you might win or lose. Touching the controls has no discenerable effect on the result of any play.

I use a gamepad on my PC these days as a matter of choice. I know crazy, huh.

Or you could just put (or leave) AE on your foe list, instead of starting this thread as a petty dig at him.

Perhaps people other than AE want to talk about it. After all, every time he brings it up, other people seem eager to engage with him about it.

Or maybe you need to grow a sense of humour. That could also be the case.

One man's sense of humour is another man's tedium.

Also, one man's "humour" is another's "needlessly inflammatory bullshit".

I don't see how it can be seen as humorous in any context, DocG isn't stupid so we're forced to conclude that it's a deliberately inflammatory act.

I said here that I'd knock off all the PC vs console stuff - viewtopic.php?p=723673#p723673 - and I have done so, so for Doc to not only subtitle his main thread AND create a spiteful splinter thread as well suggests he's wanting more trouble.

You're the one that thought all this shit was serious enough to make it worth leaving the forum.

I've a tech question.

If, say, I buy Battlefield 3 on this steam box thing, will I get the hyper maxed out version. Will I get the 64 player thingymajik on it? And how's that gonna work, aye, with, like, servers and stuff?

It's all conjuncture at this stage, but I'd say no, probably not. It would be much more like a console (and much more like the OnLive console in the way games are set up, if you've tried that).

I'd say possibly yes, depending on what question your asking The reason the xbox version of BF3 being gimped is due to the limitation of the box and xbox live.
I'd be very surprised if there were different versions of the game for this and for normal PCs on steam. Sure, different levels of detail, but not to the level of difference in the console versions.

So for BF3 say, less detail than fully hyper maxed out PC version possibilities, but full 64 player whatnots.

Assuming it's, basically, just a PC running games, whether you get the maxed version of the game is asking the same question as PC gamers need to ask right now: what's the spec of your machine vs the requirements of the game.

The day the Steambox comes out you'd expect a pretty modern spec so most games released at that time, and for a certain time into the future, should be playable at or near the highest settings. As the hardware in the Steam box ages though and the game developers continue to build games that take advantage of cutting edge PC tech the Steambox (assuming it's fixed hardware like a console) will fall behind the curve.

I'm saying that relative to the wider PC market obviously; it's possible that developers will do a specific 'version' of the game for the Steambox so, just like current consoles, there'd only be a single standardised version of the game (which would then not be as shiny as you could get with a high specced normal PC running the Windows version of the game).

It's also possible that they box is made modular to an extent so you could upgrade selected parts or whatever (I can think of pros and cons to that approach) but as Grimm says no one really knows right now.

Battlefield 3 is on Origin, it's not available through Steam, and that's basically the case for all EA's stuff now.

That's a thought actually; the Steambox is almost certainly only going to play stuff that's available through Steam so unless publishers with their own download service (is EA the only one?) think they're missing out on a big enough install base with the Steambox you're cut off from anything that publisher puts out. Hmmm.

It's basically only EA and Ubisoft who have their own store, I think.

Ubisoft distribute their stuff through Steam as well, Far Cry 3 is on Steam for £29.99.

It's a bit cumbersome because you launch FC3 from Steam, which actually just launches uPlay, from where you can launch FC3

If EA and Steam were prepared to play nice enough to come to a similar arrangement, there's no practical reason you couldn't launch Origin from within Steam.

BF3 maybe...
BF7, not so sure...

The problem with consoles is they are a fixed point in time, technologically. Ok, the single spec means significantly tighter integration of the components, and no multi user OS means you can 'have at it' with the hardware with very little interference. So, when a console is released, it is at that point comparable in performance to a high end PC.
If it's Sony, then weird hardware may put it ahead in some respects even, tho usually it's too wierd for anyone to really start to push it until late in the generation (which does give some differentiation between early & late games & let's consoles keep up with PCs for a bit longer) Its a tools & knowledge issue really, by the end of the generation you will have better compilers, more optimised techniques for shaders & effects, etc. & By being a fixed & known hardware, consoles have a much easier time of optimising so you know you will get a solid fps.

However, by the end of a generation (where we are now), consoles start to look decidedly long in the tooth. What are limitations now wrt the PC, 5 years ago were considered a good spec for a PC game to use. PCs will ALWAYS suffer from the wide spread of hardware, and it really is a money issue as to how high the graphics can be pushed.

In 6 years time (3 Moores law iterations ~ x8 power, call it an order of magnitude so x10 - this is the force behind the 6-7 year console life btw.), then you will see specific ports to this - and they probably won't be on par with the PC. Largely because by then this thing will still have 2-4GB of graphics memory while a top spec PC game will be looking for 16GB-32GB (and running a 3D monitor display in 2560x1280 or something daft)
But then SteamBox2 will be coming out

Tl:dr:

Note that this is purely on technical performance (shiny GFX) Other aspects such as genre preference, controllers, sociability, are subject to personal taste & existence of real friends.

This generally holds true, but I think the upcoming generation of consoles may be the first where this isn't the case.

DICE in particular have basically said that if you want to know what games will look like on the next generation of consoles, play BF3 on a high-end PC now.

It'll be interesting to see what happens, but I've got a vibe that the XBox720 might not be the quantum leap forward some folks are expecting.

Not that kind.

Well, not this time, anyway.

Well yes, that's kind of what I'm saying.
Consoles cost £400. To get the same performance you need to spend double that, if not more. So a price per shiny pixel index shows that consoles produce more shiny for your money than PCs when they launch.

People tend to spend around the same amount for tech (curiously inflation independant, so you actually spend less, but tech prices have always been considered wierd) so the average Joe will get more from a console than he is prepared to pay for a PC. In 5 years, his PC will match or outperform his console. Then they release a new console that is built with tech to match the top tier PCs now. And the circle of console life is complete once more...

Could I suggest that these threads be merged? If people play nice, there's no need to have two.

Also, chip manufacturers cannot pull magic console chips out of there arses on demand. They are heavily dependant on the normal graphics card architectural development. A console graphics chip will be the next gen from the currently released gen, usually scaled back to be cheaper, but still using the newest pipelines - all in all comparable with current-gen card performance. The silicon designs for many blocks will be the same in the console as the next range of graphics cards that appears from whatever company.
The only outrider in the race is Sony. They have previously designed there own graphics hardware, which has been interesting, but they are now doing the same as everyone else and buying in from the big guys. I think this trend will continue tho, which is a shame as for it's day the PS2 was way ahead of PCs. Just a shame it was such a bugger to get it to actually do it!

The Amiga was best.

If you said 'Pundy, if all your games, from now until eternity, looked like Far Cry 3 or Borderlands 2 on the 360, would you be happy?' I'd say 'fuck me, I'm not graphics whore like AE, I'd take GTA Vice City on the PS2.'

I'm not convinced that wanting games to look better than they did in 2002 makes you a graphics whore. Are you also happy with CRT TVs and a desktop resolution of 800*600?

I may make Pundy's forum text-only.

Considering that I recently replayed Dungeon Keeper 2 from start to finish, a thirteen year old game that ran on a PC of this spec:



The idea of me being a 'graphics whore' is rather amusing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Keeper_2

The fatal flaw in this super ignore is you can't ignore moderators and one of them happens to be a giant knob.

I appear to be missing something?

Seems harsh.

To whom do you refer?

Craster, obv.

What did Craster do?

Seems likely that Nemmie believes DocG to be a mod.

Do his mod powers linger on?

I may have trumped.

What *Would* Craster Do?

Anal, apparently.

Ahhhh yes, I just tried to add DocG as a foe and it wouldn't let me because he's an administrator and/or moderator.

(Not that I would actually add him as a foe. Never have used an ignore option on the internet, never will.)

ZOMG!!! SEKRIT FORUM POLICE!

Well, that fucker took some tracking down. It would only effect a tiny number of people, but you should be able to get your foe on now.

I promise not to trump again.

Yes please! Green screen effect too! Or actually, can you make it look like Ceefax?

You do know that 'better graphics' is rapidly approaching a 'be careful what you wish for' thing, right? With the dual threat of the uncanny valley and the 'photo-realistic graphics' back of the box checkmark.

And I honestly don't care about graphics, I'll go 'ooh' for the first five minutes, then entirely cease to notice for the rest of the game. I've only just discovered what screen tearing is, and am amazed it bothers people.