debate about Halo 2 and rendering and other stuff

Retr0gamer

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Surely there's a case to say that the framerate issues in most games, that early on in a consoles life, are more likely to be down to poorly optimised code rather than an inability of the hardware to meet demand?
Even though it was a first party game.

A good developer will try to get a balance between looks and a solid framerate so that gameplay is unaffected. It's failure on the developers part. For a team like Bungie that managed to get Halo to run so well and so late in the Xbox's life it's pretty much inexcusable. They should have cut back on the amount of pixel shaders that the game used because it was obvious that the console was having pretty bad. The game shipping with such terrible texture pop up in cutscenes ws really bad as well. Orta on the other hand used every trick in the Xbox's library but used them in moderation and looked and played far better as a result. Halo 2 on the other hand was just as technically advanced but was a really ugly looking game most of the time with technical issues.

It's come out that Halo 2 was a total disaster of game development and the final build was thrown together in 9 months, and it really shows in the gameplay. Perhaps they could have gotten the game to run better with more development time but the game you release I'm afraid is your legacy.

Ninja Gaiden would be another gorgeous Xbox game. It forgoes the use of advanced shaders and other effects to really pump out a huge amount of polygons and a high level of geometry, an effect that the even more gorgeous Metroid Prime used.

SirLemonhead

Retr0gamer wrote: »

A good developer will try to get a balance between looks and a solid framerate so that gameplay is unaffected. It's failure on the developers part. For a team like Bungie that managed to get Halo to run so well and so late in the Xbox's life it's pretty much inexcusable. They should have cut back on the amount of pixel shaders that the game used because it was obvious that the console was having pretty bad. The game shipping with such terrible texture pop up in cutscenes ws really bad as well. Orta on the other hand used every trick in the Xbox's library but used them in moderation and looked and played far better as a result. Halo 2 on the other hand was just as technically advanced but was a really ugly looking game most of the time with technical issues.

It's come out that Halo 2 was a total disaster of game development and the final build was thrown together in 9 months, and it really shows in the gameplay. Perhaps they could have gotten the game to run better with more development time but the game you release I'm afraid is your legacy.

Ninja Gaiden would be another gorgeous Xbox game. It forgoes the use of advanced shaders and other effects to really pump out a huge amount of polygons and a high level of geometry, an effect that the even more gorgeous Metroid Prime used.

How do you know anything about how many shaders they used?

Retr0gamer

Just look at the game. Halo 2 covers absolutely everything in Pixel Shaders. The fact that the game takes a few seconds to load the pixel shaders in and the pop up makes it very noticeable that every texture is covered with a bump mapped pixel shader on top of it.

Panzer Dragoon Orta is again a case of looking at it. The enivorments aren't covered with pixel shaders but the NPC and enemy models use them very subtley. Check out the model viewer in pandoras box to see it. It's a far more subtle and frankly better use of pixel shaders. There was a time that pixel shaders where plastered about in every game and it was like coloured lighting and lens flair in the 90's they were over used and made games look ugly despite being technically of a very high standard. It took Half-Life to show people that a more subtle use of lighting and coloured light makes far better looking games and funnily enough it was Half-Life 2 that thought developers to be more subtle with the use of pixel shaders.

NeoKubrick

SirLemonhead wrote: »

Just comes across like someone who's read a bunch of technical terms on Wikipedia or something and is just regurgitating it here. You don't seem to know how they actually work and are applied..

That's usually the case. If you're not a graphics programmer with an authority on the subject, you shouldn't pretend to be and shouldn't spam the forum with misinterpreted drivel on the pretense of being a graphics programmer. Just simply cite your source, instead.

SirLemonhead

NeoKubrick wrote: »

That's usually the case. If you're not a graphics programmer with an authority on the subject, you shouldn't pretend to be and shouldn't spam the forum with misinterpreted drivel on the pretense of being a graphics programmer. Just simply cite your source, instead.

I am, and have released a game on the xbox (sorta)

It's more the "stating something that's really just my opinion in a way to convey it as being" fact that I disagree with. The very idea of just *looking* at something and being able to discern what the cause of the performance issue is a bit mad

NeoKubrick

SirLemonhead wrote: »

I am, and have released a game on the xbox (sorta)

It's more the "stating something that's really just my opinion in a way to convey it as being" fact that I disagree with. The very idea of just *looking* at something and being able to discern what the cause of the performance issue is a bit mad

I was using "you" in a general sense, SirLemonHead. Out of interest, what game did you work on?

Retr0gamer

NeoKubrick wrote: »

That's usually the case. If you're not a graphics programmer with an authority on the subject, you shouldn't pretend to be and shouldn't spam the forum with misinterpreted drivel on the pretense of being a graphics programmer. Just simply cite your source, instead.

Never said or pretended to be a graphics programmer I just read up on this stuff because I'm interested in it. Also if like me you had a PC around the time running up to the release of Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 you knew what pixel shaders were due to the hype around the technology from these games and wanting to own a PC that could carry out these effects properly.

I'm not writing a disertation here I'm posting on a forum. Bungie hasn't commented on specifics on why performance was so bad and why there were technical issues with Halo 2. I'm making an informed assumption on what I know. The GPU in the Xbox wasn't the best for normal and specular maps which is why it's used in moderation in most games. Halo 2 had them plastered on everything. So you've got a texture with a specular map and a normal map, maybe just the one shader or a custom shader but a shader none the less, on top being loaded in for every texture. That's a hell of a lot of memory for the RAM to handle and it shows with the texture pop in in the cutscenes. When there's insufficient ram you get a lot of memory swapping which leads more processor overhead. It's not hard to extrapolate that the overuse of a very intensive process that the hardware wasn't built for is a cause, but not the only cause,of the poor performance. There's a reason the PS2 supported normal maps but were only used in a handful of games and only late in it's life, Path of Neo being the only game I can think of. It's a very processor intensive process.

Perhaps you'd like to apply occams razor and come up with a more plausible theory or just sit there sneering and adding nothing to the discussion.

SirLemonhead wrote: »

I am, and have released a game on the xbox (sorta)

It's more the "stating something that's really just my opinion in a way to convey it as being" fact that I disagree with. The very idea of just *looking* at something and being able to discern what the cause of the performance issue is a bit mad

I didn't say I just looked at the game and knew what caused the poor performance. Read the posts again. You asked how did I know about how many shaders they used. As I said it's very obvious. Just look at the game and you'll see that practically every texture has at least one shader map applied to it. It's very obvious and it's applied far more extensively than any other Xbox game I've seen.

Also having made an XNA game doesn't make you an expert either just because you know a few post processing shader effects. If you're willing to add some discussion and maybe teach me a thing or two then fine. One of the reasons I know a bit about shaders is because a few years ago someone corrected me about them one this board.

SirLemonhead

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Also having made an XNA game doesn't make you an expert either just because you know a few post processing shader effects.

I didn't...the original xbox (I never stated '360') doesn't have or use XNA

Retr0gamer

Ok sorry, as well out of curiosity what was it?

o1s1n

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Ok sorry, as well out of curiosity what was it?

Shaders of the Lost Ark?
The Shadening?
I can't believe it's not Shaders?
Shades, planes and automobiles?
Shado, shaders Evolved?

NeoKubrick

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Never said or pretended to be a graphics programmer I just read up on this stuff because I'm interested in it. Also if like me you had a PC around the time running up to the release of Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 you knew what pixel shaders were due to the hype around the technology from these games and wanting to own a PC that could carry out these effects properly.

I'm not writing a disertation here I'm posting on a forum. Bungie hasn't commented on specifics on why performance was so bad and why there were technical issues with Halo 2. I'm making an informed assumption on what I know. The GPU in the Xbox wasn't the best for normal and specular maps which is why it's used in moderation in most games. Halo 2 had them plastered on everything. So you've got a texture with a specular map and a normal map, maybe just the one shader or a custom shader but a shader none the less, on top being loaded in for every texture. That's a hell of a lot of memory for the RAM to handle and it shows with the texture pop in in the cutscenes. When there's insufficient ram you get a lot of memory swapping which leads more processor overhead. It's not hard to extrapolate that the overuse of a very intensive process that the hardware wasn't built for is a cause, but not the only cause,of the poor performance. There's a reason the PS2 supported normal maps but were only used in a handful of games and only late in it's life, Path of Neo being the only game I can think of. It's a very processor intensive process.

Perhaps you'd like to apply occams razor and come up with a more plausible theory or just sit there sneering and adding nothing to the discussion

If you don't want to pretend to be a graphics programmer, then don't pretend to speak as an authority on the subject. If you have read up on the subject, cite the source not post your layman interpretation of the source.

I'm not a graphics programmer and I wasn't employed as such by Bungie for the development of Halo 2; therefore, it would be quantum stupid for me or anyone with the same limitations to discuss Halo 2's graphical performance issues.

o1s1n

NeoKubrick wrote: »

If you don't want to pretend to be a graphics programmer, then don't pretend to speak as an authority on the subject. If you have read up on the subject, cite the source not post your layman interpretation of the source.

I'm not a graphics programmer and I wasn't employed as such by Bungie for the development of Halo 2; therefore, it would be quantum stupid for me or anyone with the same limitations to discuss Halo 2's graphical performance issues.

This is just because you like Halo 2 isn't it? :P

Retr0gamer

It's not going to stop me discussing and potulating about it even if makes me sound like Sheila from Joe Duffy. Anyway you don't need to hold a qualification in a subject to know something about it and I know far too many graduates and even postdoctorates that haven't a clue about their respective fields and still work in them.

There's no point citing sources when there's no one that specifically points out what the performance issues are. I still think it's very obvious what some of the performance issues are and what caused them and there's no harm in speculating. If you want to know where I got some of the information it's from digital foundry articles, articles and videos on sahders by Valve, ATI and Nvidia and also the article on eurogamer about Halo 2's development. Anyway you are one to talk when you cite in an article a PR presentation by bungie on how great they are which is probably worse than citing wikipedia in an article. Hardly independent or peer reviewed.

johnny_ultimate

There's only one way to solve this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei5l3r1dV4I

Retr0gamer

You're solving nothing. Do you not see the amount of texture applied pixel shaders on the CGI?

johnny_ultimate

Retr0gamer wrote: »

You're solving nothing. Do you not see the amount of texture applied pixel shaders on the CGI?

We can go more traditional if you like.

Pyongyang

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

We can go more traditional if you like.

Ah make it a LITTLE bit more up to date yeah?



FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! etc...

Retr0gamer

Again you're only stirring up ****. Look at the models. Look at the floor. They might be badly prerendered but they're covered in normal and specular maps!

NeoKubrick

o1s1n wrote: »

This is just because you like Halo 2 isn't it? :P

Gameplay is king, o1s1n.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

It's not going to stop me discussing and potulating about it even if makes me sound like Sheila from Joe Duffy. Anyway you don't need to hold a qualification in a subject to know something about it and I know far too many graduates and even postdoctorates that haven't a clue about their respective fields and still work in them.

There's no point citing sources when there's no one that specifically points out what the performance issues are. I still think it's very obvious what some of the performance issues are and what caused them and there's no harm in speculating. If you want to know where I got some of the information it's from digital foundry articles, articles and videos on sahders by Valve, ATI and Nvidia and also the article on eurogamer about Halo 2's development. Anyway you are one to talk when you cite in an article a PR presentation by bungie on how great they are which is probably worse than citing wikipedia in an article. Hardly independent or peer reviewed.

A graphics programmer is someone who is employed in the industry to practice graphics programming and coding. If he or she is not qualified to practice graphics programming, he or she won't be employed by the industry. So, a graphics programmer, by definition of practicing what he or she is preaching, is qualified to discuss graphical performance: whether he or she is discussing it intelligibly is separate as too is academic qualifications (which is pointing out the redundant obvious).

If there are no sources and you're not a graphics programmer with any experience of coding graphical solutions, then it is pointless participating in a technical discussion of graphical performance issues isn't it?

'The Illusion of Intelligence' was a lecture submitted and presented at the 2002 Game Developers Conference. An advisory committee reviews GDC papers and you can leaf through the criteria, here: http://www.gdconf.com/conference/callforpapers/. It is the same criteria applied to Valve's and anyone else's papers, too.


You're very bitter, Retr0: personal attacks on SirLemonHead's XNA experience in game development on the incompatible original Xbox and attacks on an article for citing a non-peer-reviewed lecture from a peer-reviewed conference.

Retr0gamer

I'm not bitter just defending myself from personal attacks from two sources that so far have contributed nothing to discussion. Also one of them doesn't seem toosure of himself what qualifications he has or has backed them up.

I'm not a graphics programmer with experience of coding graphical solutions but I think I've more than enough knowledge to come up with and defend the solution to Halo 2's technical issues. I actually think it's very obvious and doesn't require these qualifications, just a bit of knowledge. Pixel shading on textures is a very ram and processor intensive. Just think about the amount of calculations that have to be run for normal map real time lighting effects. The Xbox GPU is based on a low spec Geforce 3 which has very rudimentary support for pixel and vertex shaders and would be hopeless in a PC at running games that required a lot of these effects like Doom 3. So you are saying that my hypothesis that cutting down on pixel shader effects in Halo 2 wouldn't help Halo 2 run better. In fact just like Halo 1, Half-Life 2 or Panzer Dragoon Orta I think a less is more approach would be better, allowing higher res textures to be used and giving the game less of a 'everything smeared in vaseline look'. The low amount of video ram and only a few shader pipelines on the GPU coupled with the sheer amount of these effects is certainly putting a strain on the system. So cutting them down is my solution. Find some one to tell me it wouldn't work.

Of course there's probably more in Halo 2 causing problems. It could and probably is be bad programming but I'm not qualified to say that. There's probably other ways to fix the game as well but my approach to it I believe is valid.

As for GDC 2002, do you need reminding that recently developers complained about the lack of peer review at GDC and it had become a place for developers to shill their wares. It only recently got turned into what it was originally intended for and it was a few years after 2002. Anyway anyone who reads the presentation will know it's a load of bull. Increasing the difficulty makes gamers think the AI is smarter. I'd rather a paper on how to actually make the AI smarter and how not to select your test group from dumb asses.

Myrddin

I hate to say it guys, but I'm with Retr0 on this one (again). You don't need a piece of paper to prove you know something, if you've a genuine interest in something, you'll know about it. He may be technically wrong, I've no idea its all over my head, but he's not automatically wrong just because he doesn't have a cert or qualification in the field.

Retr0gamer

Here's something with pictures of what a normal and specular map is in case anyone is interested:

http://ciardhubh.de/node/18

Basically a grey scale or another colour scale texture with the scale of the colour denoting the height. You throw that over a texture and when you hit it with light in the game it will change the colour of the texture underneath and add specular highlights to give the illusion of depth to the texture increasing it's detail and making it seem 3D instead of flat. The calculations for lighting it are predefined so it's much less processor intensive than it should be.

So you've got a texture ovelaid with one or more of these shader textures and all the lighting calculations. So as any person with a small amount of computer knowledge will probably come to the conclusion that yes these are very resource intensive.

NeoKubrick

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I'm not bitter just defending myself from personal attacks from two sources that so far have contributed nothing to discussion. Also one of them doesn't seem toosure of himself what qualifications he has or has backed them up.

As for GDC 2002, do you need reminding that recently developers complained about the lack of peer review at GDC and it had become a place for developers to shill their wares. It only recently got turned into what it was originally intended for and it was a few years after 2002.

Do not justify your embarrassing personal attacks by falsely claiming I personally attacked you. That only exists within your own noggin'.

Don't weasel out of your utterly incorrect assumption that 'The Illusion of Intelligence' was a PR presentation and wasn't peer-reviewed. It was. You cannot question the definition or quality of 'peer-review' or the peer committee now after you based your pathetic personal attack upon it a post before. The Game Developer Conference is for the game industry: therefore, the only people shilling "their wares" are the software and hardware companies (ATI et cetera ), not the "game" companies, because for software companies, the customer is the game developer and for game companies, the customer is the gamer. Clearly, you don't know what the Game Developer Conference is or the dynamics of the game industry.

Anyway, you missed the fact that you contradicted yourself by holding 'peer-review' as irrefutable and synonymous of a standard but simultaneously refuting academic qualifications as not synonymous of a standard. Your comments on Butcher's and Griesmer's seminal work is too embarrassing to respond to.

EnterNow wrote:

I hate to say it guys, but I'm with Retr0 on this one (again). You don't need a piece of paper to prove you know something, if you've a genuine interest in something, you'll know about it. He may be technically wrong, I've no idea its all over my head, but he's not automatically wrong just because he doesn't have a cert or qualification in the field

Strawman argument: it's entirely irrelevant if he is right or wrong as it is if a monkey randomly scribbles and imitates 2 + 2 = 4 on a blackboard. The monkey may have made a correct calculation, but it's irrelevant if he does not understand the equation or the mathematics. By Retr0's own admission, he is not a graphics programmer, and therefore, he is either talking gibberish or he is interpretating technical expertise and applying it as if he were a technical expert without any code testing the application and comparing the algorithms, which is obviously stupid and creating a baseless argument.

"Code or it didn't happen". If Retr0 were a graphics programmer, then he would obviously understand the import of that statement.

Retr0gamer

NeoKubrick wrote: »

Do not justify your embarrassing personal attacks by falsely claiming I personally attacked you. That only exists within your own noggin'.

Don't weasel out of your utterly incorrect assumption that 'The Illusion of Intelligence' was a PR presentation and wasn't peer-reviewed. It was. You cannot question the definition or quality of 'peer-review' or the peer committee now after you based your pathetic personal attack upon it a post before. The Game Developer Conference is for the game industry: therefore, the only people shilling "their wares" are the software and hardware companies (ATI et cetera ), not the "game" companies, because for software companies, the customer is the game developer and for game companies, the customer is the gamer. Clearly, you don't know what the Game Developer Conference is or the dynamics of the game industry.

Anyway, you missed the fact that you contradicted yourself by holding 'peer-review' as irrefutable and synonymous of a standard but simultaneously refuting academic qualifications as not synonymous of a standard. Your comments on Butcher's and Griesmer's seminal work is too embarrassing to respond to.

Well I was wrong there. I assumed it wasn't peer reviewed because of how bad it was. Anyway GDC definitely shifted more towards actual game developer presentations now due to complaints that it was focusing more on big reveals. It's why platformer holders don't hold keynotes now if I remember correctly. It's hardly great peer review when you let a presentation through on game development that is just product reveals and demos. Also Butcher's and Griesmer's 'seminal work is a load of balls imo. My opinion and I'm sure a lot of other people that read it will agree.

NeoKubrick wrote: »

Strawman argument: it's entirely irrelevant if he is right or wrong as it is if a monkey randomly scribbles and imitates 2 + 2 = 4 on a blackboard. The monkey may have made a correct calculation, but it's irrelevant if he does not understand the equation or the mathematics. By Retr0's own admission, he is not a graphics programmer, and therefore, he is either talking gibberish or he is interpretating technical expertise and applying it as if he were a technical expert without any code testing the application and comparing the algorithms, which is obviously stupid and creating a baseless argument.

"Code or it didn't happen". If Retr0 were a graphics programmer, then he would obviously understand the import of that statement.

So what you can't teach yourself these things? You're putting too much weight on a piece of paper here. There's plenty of people that have doen great things and become experts in fields that they have thought themselves in. Anyway you seem to have less knowledge in this area than I do so what gives you the right to say I'm wrong? For all you know I could be right. And no I don't need to know how to code to know what a resource intensive process is. What's coding got to do with this? It's efficient use of assets that's got very little to do with code optimisation.

Retr0gamer

Also here's a lesson in academia. There's different levels of peer review and some peer reviewed papers will let any old **** through. There's impact factors of the papers to consider, the higher it is the harder it is to get a paper accepted since your work must be of a very high standard. It's why in what I'm doing you have to be very careful where you reference. Just because it's peer reviewed doesn't mean it's a load of old balls. It's also why China is pumping out tonnes of research papers at the moment, usually to badly peer reviewed journals. They're peer reviewed but of terrible quality but still published and there to make the republic look good.

landsleaving

Can we please cease and desist the 'cite your sources' bs... it's a bloody internet message board, not an academic debate. And I've been to academic debates, it's the same petty bickering about minor inconsequential details and nobody ever learns anything!

Just pit your wits against each other, mano e mano, in a battle to see who can sound the smartest and get the most thanks

hooradiation

This has been pretty amusing and all and It's certainly brightened up my day, but while retro may have come up with a solution that might have improved the framerate it would be a case of being right for all the wrong reasons.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I'm not a graphics programmer with experience of coding graphical solutions but I think I've more than enough knowledge to come up with and defend the solution to Halo 2's technical issues. I actually think it's very obvious and doesn't require these qualifications, just a bit of knowledge.

Lesson #1 - when it comes to graphics engines the obvious is rarely the answer.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Pixel shading on textures is a very ram and processor intensive.

Not really. For a start GPUs are often idle for a large portion of the time, which is where the processing for shaders is done, shaders rarely tax them at all unless the purposely written to cripple them.
Secondly, ram intensive? You don't suddenly need oodles more RAM when you apply a shader (beyond the few KB the shader itself would occupy) as it's done as the asset passes through the pipeline. The operations are carried out on the asset as it exists in memory, it doesn't really grow to take up more space or anything.

This is not to say one can apply shaders endlessly, as there is a cost in terms of reading and writing to the RAM, but they're not this massive drain on resources you make them out to be.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Just think about the amount of calculations that have to be run for normal map real time lighting effects.

The entire point behind normal maps is to reduce those calculations to the lowest possible. That's what a normal map is, it is a map of pre-calculated vertex normals so that cycles aren't wasted working that out on the fly.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

The Xbox GPU is based on a low spec Geforce 3 which has very rudimentary support for pixel and vertex shaders and would be hopeless in a PC at running games that required a lot of these effects like Doom 3.

Firstly, the card in the xbox was closer to a GeForce4 but regardless it would hopeless in a PC trying to run doom 3, this has very little to do with pixel shaders and more to do with the higher quality textures a PC title would ship with. Unlike shader these actually do take up more significantly more memory and swapping them around on one of those older cards with limited memory would have led to terrible performance.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

So you are saying that my hypothesis that cutting down on pixel shader effects in Halo 2 wouldn't help Halo 2 run better.

You are of course right - provided one defines better as "with a higher frame rate" but replacing all the models with a collection simple untextured geometric shapes would also make it run better. This does not mean, however, that the cause of halo 2's performance issues is down to the 3D models in use.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Of course there's probably more in Halo 2 causing problems. It could and probably is be bad programming but I'm not qualified to say that. There's probably other ways to fix the game as well but my approach to it I believe is valid.

Your way however isn't a fix at all and it does nothing to actually identify or solve the problem, it just cuts back on features until the symptoms are less obvious.

I doubt we'll ever get a definitive answer as to why the performance of Halo 2 was less the optimal in parts, unless anyone here manages to land a job at bungie. The best that can be done is some educated guesses and stabs in the dark but really it's nothing more than idle speculation.

And speculating on it is all well and good, however passing off said speculation as fact based on a shaky at best understanding of how these things work is just bad form.

Retr0gamer

hooradiation wrote: »

This is not to say one can apply shaders endlessly, as there is a cost in terms of reading and writing to the RAM, but they're not this massive drain on resources you make them out to be.

But isn't this the point I'm making, that they've gone too far applying shaders, increasing reading and writing to the ram and draining resources?

hooradiation wrote: »

The entire point behind normal maps is to reduce those calculations to the lowest possible. That's what a normal map is, it is a map of pre-calculated vertex normals so that cycles aren't wasted working that out on the fly.

Oh I know but it's not exactly a process with no resource overhead either.

I was just speculating. The game was rushed and there's bound to be other technical issues contributing as well. However some people just seem to think I'm stating fact and take a mickey fit over it. It's nice to have an intelligent conversation like this and don't mind being proven wrong.

SirLemonhead

I've been either busy today or been ill for the evening (stuck in front of the telly watching movies all night)

I didn't mean to come across the way I did, I apologise for that.

I'm a bit apprehensive of stating what I've done, as I'm not sure how "impressive" it comes across.

It's easy to find what I did if you throw my name into google, so i'll tell you. I took an old game, wrote a new rendering backend for it so good that the company who originally made the game stole my work and re-released it on Steam without crediting me. After emailing them, all I got was a vague "yeah thanks" and a promise of a copy of their new game. As that new game turned out to be Aliens Vs Predator 2010, i'm glad I declined

So yeah, AvP Classic 2010 on Steam brought to you by..me. I've got my proof it was me and I don't really feel like backing it up now, not especially nearly a year and a half later.

I ported it to the xbox also, as well as doing similar work for the game Forsaken (I wrote a basic d3d9 backend for that which got the guys started on writing an OpenGL version)

That's just the stuff I've released or has seen the light of day.

Retr0gamer

Oh yeah you mentioned that before. That was pretty nasty what rebellion did to you and pretty much unacceptible but you hear about it happening all the time with companies stealing modders work.

Myrddin

NeoKubrick wrote: »

Strawman argument: it's entirely irrelevant if he is right or wrong as it is if a monkey randomly scribbles and imitates 2 + 2 = 4 on a blackboard. The monkey may have made a correct calculation, but it's irrelevant if he does not understand the equation or the mathematics. By Retr0's own admission, he is not a graphics programmer, and therefore, he is either talking gibberish or he is interpretating technical expertise and applying it as if he were a technical expert without any code testing the application and comparing the algorithms, which is obviously stupid and creating a baseless argument.

At the risk of getting myself into trouble here, that is utter rubbish. In the real world, a piece of paper with a qualification on it does not indicate knowledge about a subject. It indicates you've passed exams, not that you truly understand the subject.

Given that I've no training or qualifications in electronics, would you go so far as to say I've no idea what I'm doing modifying conosles & am only baselessly applying other peoples knowledge? If so, how would you explain me changing certain mods to fit my needs etc?

Optimus Prime

You should see the ammount of clowns we get in work after doing 4 years of college thinking they know everything about computers. You can see them melt when they are asked to make a change to AD or send something out to pcs that might affect 7000 users. The fact is experience is worth a lot more than a piece of paper.

Steve X2

keithgeo wrote: »

You should see the ammount of clowns we get in work after doing 4 years of college thinking they know everything about computers. You can see them melt when they are asked to make a change to AD or send something out to pcs that might affect 7000 users. The fact is experience is worth a lot more than a piece of paper.

I feel your pain man. I'm in the same situation here.
We have guys starting here out of college who expect to come in and start as senior system admins or infrastructure architects. They get brought down to earth very quickly when they end of installing PC's or doing basic stuff.
Qualifications get you in the door, then you have to prove yourself.
To be honest these guys are lucky to get any job without any real world experience.

In the area that I work it's very important to have those bits of paper, but that's just to get a job in this current climate. Nothing can replace experience or just common sense when it comes to actually doing the work.

I'd rather have someone with a bit of common sense working with me than someone who thinks they know it all because they sat some exams.




.

Jack burton

Lots of people are like that when they have a degree in something though. They think they are the masters at it. Fella I was in college with went into a QS offices and within the first 2 days he was preaching some **** about centre line measurement to one of the senior QSs there, Who would have had about 20 years more experience than him. Needless to say he didnt last a week there.

I'd say its a lot worse with computers, **** anyone who reads custom pc thinks they are a computer wizard afterwards. And they think just because they bought a lot of standardised parts and put them into a case they are the man.

hooradiation

Retr0gamer wrote: »

But isn't this the point I'm making, that they've gone too far applying shaders, increasing reading and writing to the ram and draining resources?

Not really. While everything a game does "drain" resources they're obviously not all equal and while applying a shader uses more resources than not applying one it's not a guarantee that this is the problem

For example, the generally accepted strategy for improving graphical performance is to batch primitives together to draw them all at once - that is to say that polygons that would have the same transformations, lighting, render state and textures would all be lumped together and drawn in one call. This gives far better performance over just drawing the individually.
However, this requires the use of a system for sorting and if this is either poorly optimised or prone to odd behavior in edge cases then you'll suffer from bouts of poor framerate.

Now, I'm not saying that this is what happened in Halo 2, but I'm using it to illustrate that framerate issues can and often do have their cause in places you might not expect, which is why blaming it all on shaders is a bit pointless. In the case I described they certainly wouldn't help matters but laying the blame on their use (or "overuse") would be attacking the symptom not the cause.

But, as I've said this is all just idle speculation, for all i know the shaders were written by the work experience boy and went out of their way to fuck with everything.

NeoKubrick

Retr0gamer wrote: »

My opinion and I'm sure a lot of other people that read it will agree.

Correct, it is your opinion and if you took the time to construct an argument to support it, it would be rubbished. You keep resorting to bland and obscure "load of balls" comments to preclude creating a reasoned argument because there isn't one. You even have to qualify your "opinion" with the baseless prediction that other people would agree with your opinion, which is indicative of zilch. And you can keep a straight face while postulating about "intelligent conversation", eh?

Retr0gamer wrote: »

You're putting too much weight on a piece of paper here.

Yes, it is easier to debate with someone when you're fabricating text and falsely attributing it to them, Retr0. Could you quote where I claimed such? I scarcely understand your teaching an academic lesson when I had to point out to you that 'peer-review' isn't a silver bullet standard, which all, but the most indoctrinated of intellectuals, know.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

And no I don't need to know how to code to know what a resource intensive process is. What's coding got to do with this? It's efficient use of assets that's got very little to do with code optimisation.

Sums up this discussion.

EnterNow wrote: »

At the risk of getting myself into trouble here, that is utter rubbish. In the real world, a piece of paper with a qualification on it does not indicate knowledge about a subject. It indicates you've passed exams, not that you truly understand the subject.

Given that I've no training or qualifications in electronics, would you go so far as to say I've no idea what I'm doing modifying conosles & am only baselessly applying other peoples knowledge? If so, how would you explain me changing certain mods to fit my needs etc?

Here, read:

A graphics programmer is someone who is employed in the industry to practice graphics programming and coding. If he or she is not qualified to practice graphics programming, he or she won't be employed by the industry. So, a graphics programmer, by definition of practicing what he or she is preaching, is qualified to discuss graphical performance: whether he or she is discussing it intelligibly is separate as too is academic qualifications (which is pointing out the redundant obvious).

If there are no sources and you're not a graphics programmer with any experience of coding graphical solutions, then it is pointless participating in a technical discussion of graphical performance issues isn't it?

Retr0 brought up academic qualifications randomly and pointed out the redundant obvious to which no one argued with. Hence, the strawman argument reference to your previous post and now to his. To put it in a context that you may understand more, could anyone with absolutely zero experience with electronics talk in detail and intelligently about modding electronics and speculate about it? You're implying 'yes' by disagreeing with my previous post.

Retr0gamer

Doesn't change the fact that I'd still beat you at street fighter 2.

CiDeRmAn

Here's the various posts about this topic, lifted straight out of the "Post here when you have something new" thread.
Enjoy!

CiDeRmAn

Did I mention I like Firewarrior?
I wonder how many shady things they used there.

I prefer it to Gunstar Heroes as well, that game is pants, not nice girl pants either, big middle aged, grey pants, with a slight staining in the gusset... (actually, that could be a shader too!, yeahh, I get to join in!)

Retr0gamer

Craptastic :P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQVRKh0yMTY

AI looks... eventful

CiDeRmAn

I know!
It's great isn't it!
I don't care if it's crap, I love it anyway!

I wonder though, why there weren't more Warhammer FPS games.

Also Retr0, you are making me feel all oppressed, please stop, with your contrary opinions to mine, how could you????

o1s1n

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

I wonder though, why there weren't more Warhammer FPS games.

Space Hulk on the ps1 was another one wasn't it?

Warhammer FPS seems like a really odd design move to me. It's a turn based table top/art and craft war game. It would be like making a chess FPS.

Retr0gamer

Space Hulk on the PC was fantastic, absolutely loved that game. I don't think the Warhammer franchise is that big in america, I could be wrong. Might not be that bigan audience for it.

The Warhammer RTS games though have been mostly great. Theones by Relic are all really good... well in multiplayer. They're pretty mediocre in single player. One game nobosy really remembers but was excellent was Warhammer: Dark Omen on the PC. Great little RTS with a decent story, amazing graphics for it's time, had a fire emblem thing going on with units left alive being carried over to the next level and also staying true to the tabletop game with stuff like enemies breaking formation and retreating.

o1s1n

Either myself or my cousin had Warhammer: Dark Omen for the ps1 years and years ago. It was enjoyable, to my shame I was more focused on the table top game in those days.

Had to stop when I realized the figures pretty much cost their weight in gold.

Steve X2

I had/have Space Hulk on the 3DO and really enjoyed it.
When I load it up now though the frame rate is a bit shocking.
The atmosphere of the game was great for the time and those aliens used to freak me out, especially with the low frame rate, one second they're at the end of the hall and the next they're sucking the face off you.


.

Retr0gamer

Steve SI wrote: »

one second they're at the end of the hall and the next they're sucking the face off you.

Sounds like Coppers on a Monday night.

Steve X2

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Sounds like Coppers on a Monday night.

Sounds like Coppers on any night you mean


.

johnny_ultimate

There haven't been enough anti-Halo jibes on this thread. For example:

"They should have transferred all the resources they wasted on pixel shading and made a ****ing ending instead, am I right?"

"Halo 2 - struggles to make 30 FPS, struggles to make more than 30 seconds of gameplay variety"

"Arbiter = Bollocks"

Retr0gamer

The Arbiter was a good idea wasted. Also a lot of the technical issues that europeans see in the game is due to having to play the game in either PAL 50Hz with the horrors that entails or an absolutely appalling PAL60 port. Halo 1 was pretty bad in this respect as well. Strange for a game to have a decent 50hz port and a crappy 60Hz one.

Even worse than the arbiter was the Gravemind. Just awful stuff altogether. Plenty of other deus ex machina. Something is happening at the other end of the galaxy and the master chief needs to be there? **** it just teleport him there!

I thought it would fix the big problem of Halo 1 of not enough big open levels and far too many levels constructed of the same corridors repeating but nope, Halo 2 is probably more lazily designed than Halo 1. And then they go and fill the levels with the Flood from an early stage so what little fun there could be is sucked out of them. Instead of half a great game like Haloyou get a game filled with mediocrity with intermittently decent levels of which there are too few. And then they decided to but in a sequel to the Library as if that was a good idea. A shame as well because up until you took control of the arbiter it was fantastic!

Multiplayer was alright I suppose even if it felt like playing Quake 3 in levels filled with treacle. By that time as a PC gamer FPS games had moved on so much then and for the last 2 years it was all about the infinitely better Battlefield and the first Call of Duty. It also bothered me that the far better Rainbow Six 3 was ignored on xbox live.

Hope that's enough to satisfy you?

o1s1n

Lets play Charades. Can anyone guess the Halo game? Retro should know this one :pac:

johnny_ultimate

Halo Reacharound: Make Love, not War?