It's the software developers holding the pc industry back.

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kmanuel

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
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93
When are game developers going to get off their lazy behinds and start designing games that use the special features the pc has to offer.

We have Dual processors, Hyperthreading, Sli, Multimonitor, 3dc (ati), etc, etc.. But yet we get no support for these things. All we tend to get is cookie cutter games (they'll just use an engine created by someone else).

Wouldn't you love to have a game that alow you to use 2 or more monitors? How about taking advantage of that hyperthreading thing on your p4 or the second processor on my duallie?

Pc gaming have so much more to offer than consols but due to lazy, cheap, greedy developers, we probably never get to use these cool features.
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I would have to imagine only the hardest of hard core have dual monitors and then a little lower for the super beefy system.

I can bet a stat for the usual houshold PC is a mid range system. Therefore they are going to make games that can play on the largest amount of computers available.

Just a wild guess.
 
Well, I think most developer enjoy making a profit, so making games that only run on hardware only 10% of the gaming population has isnt going to make them any money. Not too many people can afford to buy all that stuff just to play games.

Also, cut down on the pictures, I dont think tyan and anandtech want you using up thier bandwidth.
 
Seriously now...if developers/publishers are unwilling to go from CD to DVD at this point, do you really think they're going to start employing dual monitors or processors for their games?
 
Mostly, the other posters are right. There is however one thing I would REALLY like to see, which is being able to unload the AI in something like UT2004 or BF1942 off to the second cpu in an SMP box. It should be pretty easy to break out into it's own process, and would allow you to throw some CPU at a hosted server. Definitely something that wouldn't be abandoning the market sweet spot.
 
The more features you include the harder it is to debug them across multiple hardware configurations; this could be why a lot of features are left out. And SMP support for games is pretty common now a days... and if I remember correctly HT just acts a second processor so the developer would only need to write SMP specific code. I believe the games are also oblivious to SLI so thats more of an nVidia issue, and 3Dc is an ATi specific feature right? If I was working on a game I wouldn't include a feature that singled out specific users, I would want to be able to reach every user of my game (with latest hardware of course).
 
with dual cores coming soon, they will have to start thinking about smp-aware programming...or they wont be as competive. When dell starts selling most of their machines w/dual cores, then we will see games that utilize it.
 
It's the Console that is killing PC Games. Most of the Gaming companies like Vivendi , UBI,etc.. are concentrating on Cosole versions of games first. The PC is becoming more and more of an afterthought to the console. Games that made it big on the PC first, will eventually have their sequals made for the Console first and then made for the PC. Which in turn will eventually lead to all games (maybe not all but a majority) being Console first and PC the afterthought. Example: The Tom Clancy series is being ruined for me by UBI becasue of them concentrating on Console releases first and PC's second. Ghost recon is a good example of a good game that held on for quite a while due to Modding ability and such. But now it's an afterthought for the PC.

In the beginning the ports from PC to console were usually a horrid POS. Eventually, (IMO) it will be the PC versions of games that will be of the Horrid category. If not already.

Thanks god for companies like Valve, Id, and Epic. They atleast concentrate on us PC Gamers first.
 
Don't expect these features anytime soon. Because games are developed with cross-platform compatibility in mind, they're usually developed for the lowest denominator (that being the PS2 right now.) The next generation will see development teams expanded radically just to put out an equivalent amount of content. That leaves little time to add in features that only 1 or 2 percent of the PC gaming market uses.

The next big things in gaming are high definition, better sound quality and support, and believable environments.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if we never see that much multimonitor support. Unless you have an odd number of monitors, multimonitor support is pretty much pointless in most games. Otherwise, the middle of your view will be where the middle monitors meet... and that just wouldn't work so well.

We will see more SMP in the future as dual core becomes a reality, but not until then. Dual processor machines are very much the minority when it comes to gaming systems, so I doubt companies will pay much attention to them. However, the kind of performance benefit we'll see from SMP support is questionable. Q3 has SMP support and it doesn't really boost the performance that much.
 
Multithreading bugs are some of the hardest to debug. Add that onto already complex game design and high development costs and you can see why virtually no games make heavy use of multithreading.
 
IF you build it, they would come. If delevoper start designing games that make real use of a second processor, I will go dually. I think games like Q3 did not properly implement SMP. Dual screens can be useful for strategy games, flight sims, etc.

Question.. If within the next year or two developers started making really good games that take advantage of dual processors and multiple monitors, how many of you would upgrade?
 
kmanuel said:
IF you build it, they would come. If delevoper start designing games that make real use of a second processor, I will go dually. I think games like Q3 did not properly implement SMP. Dual screens can be useful for strategy games, flight sims, etc.

Question.. If within the next year or two developers started making really good games that take advantage of dual processors and multiple monitors, how many of you would upgrade?
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not me. I upgraded to a 6800 specifically for doom 3, and talk about a let down. im glad i have the 6800, its an awesome card...but the days of me purchasing hardware for some overhyped game are long gone.
 
obs said:
Multithreading bugs are some of the hardest to debug. Add that onto already complex game design and high development costs and you can see why virtually no games make heavy use of multithreading.
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That's understandable, but breaking out the AI even into a sepearate process entirely that just loops back on the network port or uses interprocess communication would be pretty modular.
 
kmanuel said:
Question.. If within the next year or two developers started making really good games that take advantage of dual processors and multiple monitors, how many of you would upgrade?
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As much as I love pc games, having to purchase expensive upgrades just so you can play a game decently is one of the trends I most despise about the PC gaming industry, so I personally wouldnt shell out the big bucks to play those games.
 
Mindriot said:
It's the Console that is killing PC Games. Most of the Gaming companies like Vivendi , UBI,etc.. are concentrating on Cosole versions of games first. The PC is becoming more and more of an afterthought to the console. Games that made it big on the PC first, will eventually have their sequals made for the Console first and then made for the PC. Which in turn will eventually lead to all games (maybe not all but a majority) being Console first and PC the afterthought. Example: The Tom Clancy series is being ruined for me by UBI becasue of them concentrating on Console releases first and PC's second. Ghost recon is a good example of a good game that held on for quite a while due to Modding ability and such. But now it's an afterthought for the PC.

In the beginning the ports from PC to console were usually a horrid POS. Eventually, (IMO) it will be the PC versions of games that will be of the Horrid category. If not already.

Thanks god for companies like Valve, Id, and Epic. They atleast concentrate on us PC Gamers first.
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I agree. Consoles are cash cows as are their games. There are less support features that need to be addressed with console games as well. It's an unfortunate fact.

PCs have far more potential than consoles but due to their simplicity consoles will continue to get greater support.

Not to mention the war between the console manufacturers as well...I'm sure lots of developers and publicists are getting very good kickbacks for some games to be released on certain consoles only. There is a huge marketing adgenda aimed squarely at teenage and early twenties audiences based on the amount of potential money they spend. Do you think a majority of them are PC savvy? No...it's far easier for them to get consoles than to deal with PCs and their issues.

Thus...consoles and their games will eventually rule the market based on cash flow. :(
 
It takes year to develop these things. You are just now seeing D3D9 being used and it has been out for two years. It you want to see efficiency, consoles are your best bet.
 
I think software developers are holding the PC industry back. Just look at how long dual monitor support has been out .... and what ... one or two games support this ?

Really now .... How 1337 would it be to be playing WOW with your backback / map / skills on the second monitor, with the regular interface on the primary monitor.

Or CS:S with the second monitor being a chat room, so all the idiots can type OMFG NO AVP FAG NOOB WTBBQ, and it doesn't show up on your screen.
 
bonkrowave said:
I think software developers are holding the PC industry back. Just look at how long dual monitor support has been out .... and what ... one or two games support this ?

Really now .... How 1337 would it be to be playing WOW with your backback / map / skills on the second monitor, with the regular interface on the primary monitor.

Or CS:S with the second monitor being a chat room, so all the idiots can type OMFG NO AVP FAG NOOB WTBBQ, and it doesn't show up on your screen.
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Theres a significant FPS hit when the second monitor is enabled, could be another reason why developers ignore that option.
 
inotocracy said:
Theres a significant FPS hit when the second monitor is enabled, could be another reason why developers ignore that option.
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I think that depends on if you are spanning across both monitors using one resolution .... or using two resolutions so the card has to draw two seperate frames instead of 1.

Im not sure if ATI cards even support resolution spanning yet ....
 
bonkrowave said:
I think that depends on if you are spanning across both monitors using one resolution .... or using two resolutions so the card has to draw two seperate frames instead of 1.

Im not sure if ATI cards even support resolution spanning yet ....
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not very well. one modern game (X2 - the threat)
allows monitor spanning and running different stuff on a seperate monitor. It works for nvidia, but not for ATI. Why? According to the game devs ATI's implementation of multi monitors does not follow standards as well as nvidias.

interestingly enough, using the second monitor either mirroring the main display or displaying other data doesn't hurt FPS much. I wonder if its a GPU issue or just a function of how the game is programmed.
 
Steel Chicken said:
interestingly enough, using the second monitor either mirroring the main display or displaying other data doesn't hurt FPS much. I wonder if its a GPU issue or just a function of how the game is programmed.
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That is interesting.... Im thinking that the signal is just split and sent through both connectors on the back of the card, which is why there is no performance hit. So the GPU is not doing more work ... just spliting the output to two sources.
 
I don't really mind anymore because I only gravitated to a few PC games of the FPS variety anyway.

I would rather have expensive hardware (which can also be used for other tasks) and a few niche games which kick major butt, than a slew of crap games played on a toy that hooks up to a tv. :p
 
Well I feel that there could be a huge improvement in gameplay, story, and game content.
The current focus is great graphics over great gameplay. This current mindset is partly our fault because this is where we focus or money & interest most if the time

An FPS released 2 year ago is just the same old run & gun template. But the graphics & hardware compared to 2 years ago is a huge diff.The industry is stuck in this endless loop of who has the best LOOKING project vs. the most interesting characters or story in a game.

Again this is partly our fault because where we spend our dollars is tracked. We spend most of our time and money upgrading and tweaking vs.emailing devs about better gameplay.

Only money or the lack of will get there attention imho. :( As long as we continue to buy this stuff by the tons well they will be happy to take our money.
 
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