Hear me out for a few minutes guys.
Programmers now days are great...right? No... they really are not. Because programmers are making programs/games on extremely powerful machines (if you think about it) and have zero concept of "limits". A game for example, Titan Fall on PC is 50GB's. Why... for the love of all that is good, is this game 50GB's? Why? Because the programmers that made it suck. There are so many games that take up WAY too much space and take WAY too much power to run...
BUT
But this is NOT the programmers fault... They were not trained correctly. Hence my topic point.
Limitations Make you a Better Dev.
What is a limitation? It's something that limits you, like a gallon container can... only hold a gallon. Makes sense right? Well, let's move on the programming. Most programmers now days are making games/programs in what I like to refer to as "Creative Sandbox Mode". They don't really have limitations. They can almost do anything! But this is a problem... let's see an example to illustrate the reason why.
We will use the game "Kerbal Space Program" as our example for this topic. (Fantastic Game BTW) For those who have not seen/heard about it. It is a game where you build space rockets in, for the most part, a very well simulated Solar System. You start from a planet similar to earth. The only difference is the size of everything is scaled down. But just keep in your mind, "You build rockets to go to space".
Now, moving on...
When this game came out at first as early access. It was basically a sandbox, while you had no "God mode", you had access to all the rocket ship parts and they had zero costs. You could build anything, and people made all kinds of nonsense, went to the Mun (Game's name for the planet's moon) and beyond to other planets.
Sounds great right? It was... but then something changed a few years later.
Career and Science Sandbox were added. What is this? Well it's a mode with progression in mind, Career has you earning money through space missions and contracts, and Science Sandbox requires no money... but requires "science" points to acquire new parts.
You start out now...with very limited parts, and the things you are asked to do in the missions seem "impossible" at first.
"You mean I have to get to orbit with ONLY these parts? WHAT? THERE IS NO WAY!..."
Except...it was possible. Suddenly people, while under a great limitation, began to progress. They learned new and better ways and deigns to make more efficient rockets. You advance, and learn and become better. You progress, slowly unlocking more parts...but always being under this limitation wall, it forces you to grow and learn even more.
Now...end game. You've unlocked all the parts. You build the "best rocket" you can muster. Compare it to your "best rocket" while you played in Free Sandbox mode... It's a 1000x better. It can go much further on less fuel, it's less heavy, and it has far more research and science ability that ever before. Smaller rockets can now go beyond the moon and back, where as before, huge ones barely made it into orbit...
What does this mean? Now...with your super efficient skills, you can go EVEN further than ever before, you're able to truly maximize the potential of the parts given to you.
You've become efficient . You've become a better player.
But the KEY here for relation to my topic is... "truly maximized potential"
Now, let's get back to programming. Now that we have an understanding of what my point is. Back in the day, game developers had extreme limits. Hyper tiny storage sizes, extremely low amounts of ram and processing power. You couldn't just do whatever you wanted. The PC wouldn't even run.
Look at games like Super Mario Bros, a classic simple game... But, fast forward to later in the NES's lifespan, look at Megaman. The difference in total quality, and game play, it's a night and day difference. You go from a super basic, jump on enemies, beat the same boss over and over, running through basic one color levels... to a game that has a "level select" and unique and difference bosses, and... TONS of different enemies. You see levels with lots of animations and color! Holy crap! This is amazing! AND WHAT!? YOU GET WEAPONS THAT DO DIFFERENT THINGS!? *mind explodes*
See what happen? NES programmers got better over time, they learned to maximize what the NES could do despite its limits. Games that at the start of its' life that would have been thought impossible... were suddenly happening.
So let's fast forward to today... what do we have? For the most part... our computers today have near limitless abilities. Most computers have over a 1000GB's of storage, over 4GB's of ram (if not over 8GB), and processors that can do millions, if not nearly billions of calculations per second... Vs computers with 32KB's of Ram, 1 MB of storage, and a 10 mhz processor.
So we should be seeing games with extremely outrageous levels of ability and graphics right...? No... we don't. Well, we have a few. And I think the reason is older devs who were used to coding efficiently. They suddenly become god like. But new programmers? They don't understand limitations like older ones do... so they code poorly without knowing it. This is why you have games like Dark Souls 2, which on PC runs at 60fps at 1440p without the SLIGHTEST hint of issues. (Seriously, it's the smoothest PC game I've ever seen). But then games like Arkham Knight, just barely run at all. (if it even starts...) Also... the version of the Dark Souls 2 that contains all the DLC and improvements to the game (SotFs), weighs in at 23 GB's. Whoa... that's so much! ... Well, it's an extremely huge game, most playthroughs will last you at least 50 to 70 hours. There is so much to see in the game, and it's intense. And...then you have Titan Fall. A multiplayer game with a few maps, no singleplayer (at least when I played it), and it's 50GB's? What? Why? Even GTA 5 is 55GB's (ish) and it's an absolutely MASSIVE map, with detail unlike any seen before. And they crammed it into 50GB's? Wow. While Rockstar and From Software have had a few bad ones *cough* GTA IV and Dark Souls 1 on PC *cough*. They still proved in the end, they knew how to properly make a PC game.
Also, for an example of "getting a ton" from very little processing power. Look at the gameboy advance. It had a 16.78 MHz processor... yet look at the outrageous abilities it had. Look at the games, compare them to mobile "games" (Mobile games are trash). Could you honestly recreate The Legend of Zelda: A link to the past run with just 16mhz of power? If someone didn't tell you it was possible, you'd most likely say, "You cannot do that...". But you can, they did. This is highly efficient coding.
Another example is Roller Coaster Tycoon 1 and 2. If you've not played this game series, I advise you ALL to look it up. This game, released in 1999, was coded by one man. And in 1999 (where the average CPU was Pentium 3) this game let's you build Parks, like with roller coasters and rides. This game could have THOUSANDS of guests (People in your park, 1000 to 4000+) , all with different likes and needs (ride types, needs like food or the restroom), with dozens, if not 50 to 100+ rides going on at the same time... and it ran perfectly fine. In fact, when I played it, I never remember it ever slowing down or crashing, not once. Could you build an entire game with 100s of rides and 1000s+ of guests each with their own unique needs, and plus all the other things going on, on a Pentium 3? With ZERO lag and near instant startup?
This is just one of my issues with devs/programmers today. It's not just about games, or graphics in games mind you. It's about programs, applications, media, just everything. Devs today, learn in a near unlimited environment. They don't learn tricks, they don't learn workarounds, they don't learn how to truly maximize what they have because nothing forces them too.
Now, as a big note... I don't want to sit here and sound like I'm saying any devs are dumb, or don't work hard. I don't mean that at all, because it truly isn't their fault. Schools and such today don't teach with limitations, in computer science and in everything else (that's another topic).
They don't force you to make a massive game that fits in a CD (700MB) that runs well, they don't teach you how to truly optimize, they don't teach you how to overcome limitations because they don't challenge you with limitations.
Limitations, force you to get better. I ask that all new and aspiring devs now days, to try to limit yourself... because in the end... you'll become a far better programmer than you thought possible! You created an android app that runs fine on a snapdragon 810? Alright, how about you make that same app run just as well on a phone with a dual core processor and half a GB of ram from 2010. Start with limitations, you'll think... "This is not possible" , but image to yourself that it is the only way... you soon start finding tricks and learn how to overcome the limitations and create an app that works fantastically with very minimal power and resources. Then, with your new found efficiency skills, you'll see a whole new world of possibilities on more powerful chipsets. Just like in the space game, when you are forced to do more with less, you soon found yourself able to go much further than before when you did have more.
Limitation Forced Growth increases your efficiency. This can allow you to make night and day more powerful applications that run with far less power.
Discuss.
Related
I was playing Raging Thunder 2 last night and it made me want to ask this question or raise this issue to anyone that could have an effect on or shed light on. The graphics on raging thunder 2 as well as a few other games on the nexus are as good if not better than that on the psp. So why then are there only a few decent games with good graphics, and also why not a full psp well working emulator. It seems like the gaming community is growing yet nothing all that great is being produced(no offense, just a statement based on visual display opinion). Just want to get some feedback from people that can give it to me. Thanks.
First of all, let me kill your hopes of the psp emulator (sorry!). Emulators require in excess of 10x the processing power, which is a long ways off. Android is still working on getting all gameboy games to run without skipping frames (last I saw).
As far as the well-developed games go...you have to put a lot of effort into making a game with good graphics. You also need a market for the game to sell. There are a lot of psp games because you can sell them for $40 and get a large amount of people to buy them. Good luck selling pretty much anything for $40 on android. For most people, their phone is not a gaming platform.
That said, I must agree with you on the disappointment on available games. I can understand having poor graphics, but I feel that there should be more games with greater depth and gameplay available.
This is all of course just my opinion. I am sure there is more going on than I said.
Let me start by saying I love Android. I love Google. Not only is Android an extremely powerful OS with a wonderful interface but I love the whole open ethos behind it, led by Google, the good guys.
But I just can't for the life of my understand why GPU support is not being introduced, or at least acknowledged that it's missing and it's coming.
I'm running Froyo, and whilst it may well be 500 gazillion times faster crunching numbers and performing data intensive tasks and whatever, it doesn't feel it as I use the phone next to an iphone 3gs.
Manipulating every single screen, every single swipe, window, everything including menus and web browsing just doesn't feel as good as on the iphone. Even if it is is technically faster, what good is it when the thing just doesn't feel as good? It might as well be slower, because how something feels has the bigger impact on people's perceptions.
I understand it's not as easy to accomplish as apple did it being as they only have one phone etc, but surely there's got to be some way?
Why is this issue not bigger within the Android community? Everybody knows the iphone is more fluid to use no matter how much we might want to deny it to ourselves.
It's easy to be smoother when you can't do more than one thing at a time.
Apple moves basically a wallpaper with icons, which is just a picture.
Android moves widgets and live wallpaper. Tons of CPU used for that. Turn off your live wallpaper, disable widgets - get the same scrolling as iPhone.
GPU is there and has nothing to do with it.
Search would have helped avoiding useless complaints in capital letters with tons of "?"s.
If the visuals are so important to you - get an iPhone. System limitations - there's only so much that can be done between battery life, multitasking and graphics. iPhone uses graphics at the expense of multitasking, Android does otherwise.
shrub said:
Let me start by saying I love Android. I love Google. Not only is Android an extremely powerful OS with a wonderful interface but I love the whole open ethos behind it, led by Google, the good guys.
But I just can't for the life of my understand why GPU support is not being introduced, or at least acknowledged that it's missing and it's coming.
I'm running Froyo, and whilst it may well be 500 gazillion times faster crunching numbers and performing data intensive tasks and whatever, it doesn't feel it as I use the phone next to an iphone 3gs.
Manipulating every single screen, every single swipe, window, everything including menus and web browsing just doesn't feel as good as on the iphone. Even if it is is technically faster, what good is it when the thing just doesn't feel as good? It might as well be slower, because how something feels has the bigger impact on people's perceptions.
I understand it's not as easy to accomplish as apple did it being as they only have one phone etc, but surely there's got to be some way?
Why is this issue not bigger within the Android community? Everybody knows the iphone is more fluid to use no matter how much we might want to deny it to ourselves.
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I am the most unbiased person I've ever met and I will honestly tell you that the response on my phone is as fast and smooth as I have ever seen on any phone. I don't think it can get better. I do not like the grid popping in the Nexus Launcher though. I wish it would just scroll like the old versions.
You don't have a real question in all honesty. Your question is, why is it not like the iPhone and why is it not "smooth" to you personally. That's just the way one person feels. I like the way the N1 feels across the entire OS. They're two different OS's and Phones so they're never going to be the same. I think you really just prefer one over the other in your own opinion. Neither of them can be called better outside of an opinion so nothing will change.
I will sacrifice fluidity any day for functionality.
Also, do you have any idea of what Android has come from, in the sense of versioning? I am certain that this is almost identical the iPhone OS/Hardware Saga from version 1 and up.
I have a question. Why is there so much comparison to iphone. I think android Smashes them but why post topic after topic about that... where's that one mod. He should delete this.
temperbad said:
I have a question. Why is there so much comparison to iphone. I think android Smashes them but why post topic after topic about that... where's that one mod. He should delete this.
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There is always a comparison of the top two of anything. Android and iPhone are very similar and they're they top devices so they're going to get compared. 99.999% of the comparisons are biased in some way but the fact is that neither of them are factually better than the other. They both have amazing features that the other doesn't and the word "better" and your decision come down to your personal preferences. I don't like iTunes, I think widgets are a MUST for me and I enjoy modding my phone without going through hell to do it or getting the cops called on me so I chose Android. Also I have been behind everything Google has done for many years and I will continue to love the company but biased attitudes are something I try to avoid. Not only do you not learn anything but you look foolish acting that way [I'm not talking about you personally I'm speaking in general].
Wow, I'm surprised to see that I'm one of the only people who completely agree with the original poster.
This isn't limited to the launcher. As the OP stated, literally every on screen motion is smoother on the iPhone.
This isn't because of the lack of multitasking on the iPhone because iOS 4 looks just as smooth.
It is either a consequence of the threading used in gui programs and/or better use of the GPU for animations and scrolling. It seems to me on my Nexus that in most cases scrolling and animations are slower when the CPU is processing something where as on an iPhone the scrolling seems smooth regardless of the processes involved.
One of my complaints along these lines is scrolling in the Android web browser isn't nearly as nice as even the slower iPhone 3G, much less an iPhone 3GS.
dalingrin said:
Wow, I'm surprised to see that I'm one of the only people who completely agree with the original poster.
This isn't limited to the launcher. As the OP stated, literally every on screen motion is smoother on the iPhone.
This isn't because of the lack of multitasking on the iPhone because iOS 4 looks just as smooth.
It is either a consequence of the threading used in gui programs and/or better use of the GPU for animations and scrolling. It seems to me on my Nexus that in most cases scrolling and animations are slower when the CPU is processing something where as on an iPhone the scrolling seems smooth regardless of the processes involved.
One of my complaints along these lines is scrolling in the Android web browser isn't nearly as nice as even the slower iPhone 3G, much less an iPhone 3GS.
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Agreed, Ill take Android's greater capabilities over Iphone's fluidity any day but both would be sweet.
DMaverick50 said:
Agreed, Ill take Android's greater capabilities over Iphone's fluidity any day but both would be sweet.
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Without a doubt. I'm just not convinced the two are mutually exclusive.
Paul22000 said:
It's easy to be smoother when you can't do more than one thing at a time.
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Once I saw this post I knew I didn't have to look at the rest of the thread since this answered it all
I disable screen animations. I have no need for worthless eye-candy. Just give me whatever I tapped on as fast as possible.
Love it.
mortzz said:
I disable screen animations. I have no need for worthless eye-candy. Just give me whatever I tapped on as fast as possible.
Love it.
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I either turn the animations off or turn their speed up. IMO scrolling is more of an issue than animations.
Example:
Goto www.androidcentral.com or www.anandtech.com on a Nexus One and with the page zoomed all the way out try scrolling. At the top of the page my frame rate is <15.
Now do the same on a wee iPhone(even first gen) and see how smooth the scrolling is.
Is it end of the world? No, of course not. I am very satisfied with my phone compared to my previous iPhone 3GS and 3G. That said, considering my main use of my phone(beyond being a phone) is web browsing, I would still love to have the scrolling of my "crap" iPhone.
Its a genuine complaint.
The lack of smooth visuals is getting silly. I think Google bringing in the guy from Palm/Danger is an ackowledgment of this.
Its not cpu , its not ram, its not multitasking. Its Apple that has some if not the best UI guys in the business in terms of visuals. Id say WebOS guys were the tops but they were mostly old Apple guys so go figure.
Apple spends a ton of time and offort making sure everything looks fluid across the entire experience. Android does not. Its simply not something theyve taken seriously until 2.1. They are the best engineers in the world..not GUI designers. The fact the Gallery still has 16 bit depth is a tell tale sign they arent emphasizing visuals.
Anyways the GPU is underused. UI , Games , Codecs theres a alot of room for improvement. Androids UI is "better"...but lets not kid ourselves..the animations and fluidity are heavily in Apples corner. Loks are important; otherwise go date a fat hairy girl.
I thought I was quite picky but I don't notice any problems with my nexus
Maybe I haven't spent that much time playing with iPhones but when I have seen people using them they press something and have to wait for it to load, they get a grey checker pattern when they scroll too fast in the browser. Sometimes their swipes didn't register either.
xManMythLegend said:
Its a genuine complaint.
The lack of smooth visuals is getting silly. I think Google bringing in the guy from Palm/Danger is an ackowledgment of this.
Its not cpu , its not ram, its not multitasking. Its Apple that has some if not the best UI guys in the business in terms of visuals. Id say WebOS guys were the tops but they were mostly old Apple guys so go figure.
Apple spends a ton of time and offort making sure everything looks fluid across the entire experience. Android does not. Its simply not something theyve taken seriously until 2.1. They are the best engineers in the world..not GUI designers. The fact the Gallery still has 16 bit depth is a tell tale sign they arent emphasizing visuals.
Anyways the GPU is underused. UI , Games , Codecs theres a alot of room for improvement. Androids UI is "better"...but lets not kid ourselves..the animations and fluidity are heavily in Apples corner. Loks are important; otherwise go date a fat hairy girl.
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I agree with this wholeheartedly. Android really just isn't the most aesthetically pleasing user interface around, I've never owned an iPhone - and don't plan to, but Apple simply knows their stuff when it comes graphic design..
There's been some info on this issue on the android-platform groups and the skia rendering engine group (Skia acutally has an experimental OpenGL rendering branch).
From what I understand, hardware acceleration can't be implemented in older devices (ex: G1) because they only support one OpenGL instance at a time, meaning the launcher could be in conflit with apps. It also seems as if the stuttering we feel is actually caused by Android's garbage colletor because it blocks the UI thread when it kicks in and not because the phone's cpu cant keep up with scrolling. If you watched some of the Google I/O 2010 videos, they said they know of the issues with the garbage collector and they are working on it.
My guess is that hardware acceleration will come sooner or later (specially with the Tegra 2 chips and tablet format ) but if you want to make things move a bit you can always go to code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914 and star the issue (consider it a vote ).
New here btw, hello all
dalingrin said:
I either turn the animations off or turn their speed up. IMO scrolling is more of an issue than animations.
Example:
Goto www.androidcentral.com or www.anandtech.com on a Nexus One and with the page zoomed all the way out try scrolling. At the top of the page my frame rate is <15.
Now do the same on a wee iPhone(even first gen) and see how smooth the scrolling is.
Is it end of the world? No, of course not. I am very satisfied with my phone compared to my previous iPhone 3GS and 3G. That said, considering my main use of my phone(beyond being a phone) is web browsing, I would still love to have the scrolling of my "crap" iPhone.
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I just tested anandtech.com on my N1 using Dolphin HD and have Froyo installed. The page was pretty much butter smooth except the top which had a flash banner ad and a flash "news reel". Of course the iPhone is going to be smoother at the top of that page since it doesn't show any flash elements. Not to say I don't want smoother scrolling when there are flash elements, but I'd rather have them showing with a little choppy frame rate than not at all.
RE: GPU Support
It's a common misconception that Android is slow changing windows and stuff- just go to Spare Parts and turn the window animations off.
my nexus next to the iphone, the nexus is just as smooth and fast to my eyes. the nexus is actually buttery smooth. using launcher pro. maybe that is what makes the difference i bet.
I've got mw and mw2 for pc and love the playability. I haven't noticed any bugs in them. I really want to get the pc version of black ops but am very worried since it's such a fast port. Any help is greatly appreciated.
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none other than that fact that it refuses to start on single core computers (probably got good money from intel and amd)
and dont even start with that "who has single core anyway ?"
same game engine as mw2 and mw2 ran on max detail on a 2000mhz amd , also both games look like puke in todays standards
they shall burn in hell for this
Zombie mod is still pretty buggy because it uses the crappy match making system from MW2 but the muliplayer seems to use cod4's server browser. Overall there are some bugs in it. I paid full price and wish i hadn't it's not worth it. it's not even worth paying the standard PC game price of £30. Wait till it hits half price before you buy it by then all the problems with performance, crashing, poor match making etc should be fixed.
P.S i have owned all of the COD games at one point or another. I'm a massive gamer and have been since my teens. It's just a shame activision like money, stock prices and screwing people becuase if they had left IW to do their thing MW2 and BO would have been way more enjoyable.
p.p.s on second thought you'd be better off getting MOH and then waiting for crysis 2
Oooooooooooh man I love the Crysis series, although I expected more out of Warhead. Have you played any of the Splinter Cells? I haven't played the recent one.
I noticed Infinity Ward didn't do black ops. Why did they get dropped?
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souljaboy said:
none other than that fact that it refuses to start on single core computers (probably got good money from intel and amd)
and dont even start with that "who has single core anyway ?"
same game engine as mw2 and mw2 ran on max detail on a 2000mhz amd , also both games look like puke in todays standards
they shall burn in hell for this
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wrong wrONG WRONG.
MW2 and BO are two diff studios producing the games, therefor CANNOT be based off of the same engine (Treyarch VS IW). If you are trying to game on a single core computer, GTFO the gaming community and go back under that rock you have been hiding under for the last 5 years. Both games look great pent up against todays current standards for online FPS games. MAX detail && MAX AA/AF @ 1920x1080 and the game looks great.
befor you go flaming a game because you cant afford a computer good enough to play it.. might wanna do some research, or actually play the game. KTHXBAI
ArabianRATA said:
I've got mw and mw2 for pc and love the playability. I haven't noticed any bugs in them. I really want to get the pc version of black ops but am very worried since it's such a fast port. Any help is greatly appreciated.
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There are still alot of bugs in the game. One of the few ive noticed is random client crashes/freezes... This happens on both my system and my roommates system. Both of our computers are mid/high end gaming machines and are pretty closely spec'd with a few brand differences. Another is some server side issues with random crashes/server reboots. Ive owned a BO server for almost 2 months now and its a knows issue that Treyarch/Gameservers.com are trying to work out(this happens on both gameservers.com servers and official treyarch servers).
Another bug. Say you purchase the Aug + 4 attachments. $2000(for aug) $7000(for attachments). When you prestige, the game will charge you $9000 for the aug and make you purchase the attachments all over again. IDK if this is a wide spread problem, but thats how it is for me... of course i dont mine, i play alot of wager matches or clan matches and have over $100k credits.
ArabianRATA said:
Oooooooooooh man I love the Crysis series, although I expected more out of Warhead. Have you played any of the Splinter Cells? I haven't played the recent one.
I noticed Infinity Ward didn't do black ops. Why did they get dropped?
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Infinity Ward didnt make BO because they were promised alot as a studio for MW2 but Activision didnt follow through with the promises. IW refused to make BO. Rumor has it that they are working on a title all on their own thats supposed to give the CoD series a run for its money.
Hope this information helps.
jeallen0 said:
Infinity Ward didnt make BO because they were promised alot as a studio for MW2 but Activision didnt follow through with the promises. IW refused to make BO. Rumor has it that they are working on a title all on their own thats supposed to give the CoD series a run for its money.
Hope this information helps.
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Well my information is pretty much that except for a couple of differences. My understanding is that the 2 founders of infinity ward now have a new studio that works with EA and that half of the original IW staff quit or were fired when activision fired West and Zampella. IW didn't refuse to work with treyarch, they can't because IW is owned by activision and has been for a while. The refusal came from the founders who still own the rights to the COD brand and a few of the underlying technologies. Unfortunately this doesn't include the engines. BO does use the MW2 engine for the single player. Infact the MW2 engine is almost identical to the engine used in COD4 with the only major difference being in the multiplayer anti cheat change to VAC and the matchmaking.
In BO's multiplayer this is evident if you compare the server browser to the the one included in COD4. It has pretty much the same look and feel and the big give away is the bug that prevents you clicking on a listed entry until about 10 seconds after a refresh start. That bug is present in COD4.
Games from different developers can use the same engine. For example, the MOH single player uses the Unreal engine iirc (the multiplayer was made by Dice and so frostbite and that's also why the multiplayer looks a lot better than the campaign) and i've lost count of the amount of games that used the various quake engines. It's all a matter of licencing
M3PH said:
Games from different developers can use the same engine. For example, the MOH single player uses the Unreal engine iirc (the multiplayer was made by Dice and so frostbite and that's also why the multiplayer looks a lot better than the campaign) and i've lost count of the amount of games that used the various quake engines. It's all a matter of licencing
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This is true for the most part. BO is using a deviation of the engine used in WaW. its pretty obvious in gameplay. if you look at the code for the COD4 and MW2 engine, they are basically the same thing(with a few tweaks in gameplay and physics), but the engine running WaW and BO are pretty different(but similar to eachother in code style).
jeallen0 said:
This is true for the most part. BO is using a deviation of the engine used in WaW. its pretty obvious in gameplay. if you look at the code for the COD4 and MW2 engine, they are basically the same thing(with a few tweaks in gameplay and physics), but the engine running WaW and BO are pretty different(but similar to each other in code style).
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The engine in WaW is as little as makes no difference identical to the COD4 engine. There has been very little evolution on it. Please bear in mind that between cod2 and cod4 (cod3 was another treyarch game and didn't feature on the PC) there was something like a 4 year gap. That gap was because IW were building the COD4 engine from the ground up. The only reason we have had a cod game every year since is that Activision (who own both treyarch and IW) are more focused on making money and not innovation. Hence no really engine improvements.
Hell, i just read an article that suggests that the real reason west and zampella were fired wasn't over bonus' but over the proposal from activision to charge a monthly subscription for the MP. It also says that Activision have brought in a third studio to help develop future releases. This only means one thing. More releases per year = more money.
Personally, after playing all (except cod3 coz I'm a PC gamer) of the cod games and then seeing the lacklustre attempt that is black ops I'm done with cod. It's been turned from a ground breaking and enthralling first person shooter into a way of conning uneducated teenagers out of their parents money.
It's too bad.. I really enjoyed WaW and COD MW2
Now I'm getting Black Ops and your all saying it's junk. At least I got it used for $35.00 bones.
And I've moved to console as it seems a lil' bit slower paced then the PC Based version.
Infinity Ward didnt make BO because they were promised alot as a studio for MW2 but Activision didnt follow through with the promises. IW refused to make BO. Rumor has it that they are working on a title all on their own thats supposed to give the CoD series a run for its money.
Hope this information helps.
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Thanks to all, very informative! I hate to hear all the negativity surrounding black ops. I'm a console gamer to an extent but I enjoy pc gaming alot more. I guess I will wait till it drops in price before
I jump on it.
I never played multiplayer on the pc versions, I will have to check it out.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App
avgjoegeek said:
It's too bad.. I really enjoyed WaW and COD MW2
Now I'm getting Black Ops and your all saying it's junk. At least I got it used for $35.00 bones.
And I've moved to console as it seems a lil' bit slower paced then the PC Based version.
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lol, its not ALL junk, imho i like the subtle improvements over MW2... RCXD is fun, and the wager matches are EPIC. SAS and SHP are my fav wager types. console is a bit slower paced but thats because its been dumbed down for controller use rather than a mouse and keyboard. imho its just not the same on console.
jeallen0 said:
befor you go flaming a game because you cant afford a computer good enough to play it.. might wanna do some research, or actually play the game. KTHXBAI
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noob my comp would prolly **** on urs , game requrements are one thing and making code to force users to buy new stuff even if the game would run without is called fraud and ripoff , glad i pirated this pos game
souljaboy said:
noob my comp would prolly **** on urs , game requrements are one thing and making code to force users to buy new stuff even if the game would run without is called fraud and ripoff , glad i pirated this pos game
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ohh i scurred, whats your specs mr big****?
You do realize that if they coded it to run on a single core pos machine that the game would look like ****, right?
yea sure , a 1.6ghz hyperthreaded atom is much faster than a 3.4ghz single isnt it , too bad cod will load up on the atom and not the other one that could play it ... but why am i wasting my words ...
Children, children, children! can we please stop the bickering and trolling and get back on topic?
The reason there is a core number restriction isn't because they are trying to rip you off its because the game engine needs the processing power. The MW engine doesn't rely entirely on the graphics card to run the math calculations required to draw the physics objects. If it did everyone would need sli or crossfire setups with 3 or 4 cards. So the restriction is actually doing us a favour because dual core cpu's are cheaper than 4 gtx580's hell a dual core cpu is cheaper than just one gtx580.
End of the day writing code to stop you playing a game when your pc doesn't meet the minimum specs is a good thing. It's telling you to actually spend some money and get a new pc coz the one you have is about to become a grandad
souljaboy said:
yea sure , a 1.6ghz hyperthreaded atom is much faster than a 3.4ghz single isnt it , too bad cod will load up on the atom and not the other one that could play it ... but why am i wasting my words ...
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Is that a question or a joke?
If it's a question then errr no not really. if anything the single core would out perform the atom.
If it was a joke then your not funny
M3PH said:
Is that a question or a joke?
If it's a question then errr no not really. if anything the single core would out perform the atom.
If it was a joke then your not funny
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if u know what ht is , it causes the os to see 2 different cores , hence , games that are hardcoded to run on 2 cores will run , on the single core , they wont .
my point is , its a silly limitation and is only to make money for cpu vendors
M3PH said:
End of the day writing code to stop you playing a game when your pc doesn't meet the minimum specs is a good thing. It's telling you to actually spend some money and get a new pc coz the one you have is about to become a grandad
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End of the day writing code to tell you dont get coverage in health insurance when your body doesn't meet the minimum health conditions is a good thing. It's telling you to die or get a new life coz the one you have is about to become a corpse
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do you see urself in Saw now ? telling the old guy what he should do ? is it still a good thing ?
i dont need anyone telling me when i should , if it would require a sse4 (and utilized it) its fine , if it require dx11 gpu (and utilized it) , its fine , but pulling the carpet from single cores when it has the same engine as "world at war" which will max out on a single , gimme a break
souljaboy said:
do you see urself in Saw now ? telling the old guy what he should do ? is it still a good thing ?
i dont need anyone telling me when i should , if it would require a sse4 (and utilized it) its fine , if it require dx11 gpu (and utilized it) , its fine , but pulling the carpet from single cores when it has the same engine as "world at war" which will max out on a single , gimme a break
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obviously trying to discuss something with you is like trying to discuss something with a pre-teen just getting her rag... you will never get the point or the big picture. end of discussion.
BACK ON TOPIC.
as i said earlier, a few random client freezes, a few random server crashes, and a bug with prestiege and purchasing weapons after... but then again, what game has been perfect on launch? treyarch is working on it, and quite diligently i might add, so i give them props there.
MW2 < BO < COD4 IMHO.
Hi guys,
In case you don't already know this superb racing game with unmatched graphics and gameplay you really must check it out.
http://youtu.be/TOfG1zJbKbQ
The game features licensed cars and 15 player multyplayer mode.
Please help drawing the developer's attention to port this game in android market and leave your thoughts here: getsatisfaction.com/firemint/topics/will_real_racing_2_get_in_the_android_store
Sorry but i think this ain't gonna happen. This is a real console quality game, they spent a lot of money to develop it and optimize it to make it work perfectly for the a5 soc: porting it to Android will lead to insane costs in order to make it suitable for a hundred different pieces of hardware.
Nowadays Apple's app store sells 85% of all the mobile apps in the world, a serious game developer with working brain cells will never spend millions just in order to get to that additional 15% of the market that we represent. Also i'm pretty sure that even the most powerful hardware we have now on this platform would be unable to run this game properly: the gpu in the a5 soc is twice as powerful as the mali-400 in the GS2...
vnvman said:
Apple's app store sells 85% of all the mobile apps in the world
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just wow, wasn't aware of this fact
vnvman said:
the gpu in the a5 soc is twice as powerful as the mali-400 in the GS2...
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i'm just stunned, in every video comparasson of 4s and sgs2 the iphone gets bashed... come to think of it nobody mentioned in any comparassion (and i watch a lot) about the gpu/chipset diferrences... i guess it's never gonna be a fair "trail" between them and everybody is more or less a "fanboy" of either two..
L.E. after your post did some research and found this http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111026235448AArPNUy , it explains everything.
Thanks and ppl might as well leave this topic to "die"...
Well actually when i say that the gpu of the iPhone is faster i mean it really is faster, even on paper: it's not a matter of software. I read it here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4686/samsung-galaxy-s-2-international-review-the-best-redefined/17
When i got this phone i knew that the iPhone4s (or even the iPhone4) would have been better for games, but all in all despite the fact that mobile games can be fun at times mobile gaming in general kinda sucks in my opinion: sure you can have the best graphics in the world and whatnot, but the only games you can really play on a small touchscreen panel without going nuts are puzzle games (which look great on the huge Samoled+ of this phone), and those ones run on pretty much every piece of junk. At the end of the day those are the games you play the most when you're on the go, while instead those haeavy 3d games are mostly useless because of their complexity (not to mention the amount of battery they drain), so you end up playing them when you are at home on the coach. This sounds pointless to me because if i'm at home i'd rather like to play Battlefield 3 on my gaming rig: now this makes sense, don't you think?
Real Racing 2 was released yesterday...just saying...
What the.. EA? The original maker is Firemint?
Either way, here's the link. Only compatible with my Desire HD, and not the Galaxy Note? What the...
https://market.android.com/details?...yLDEsImNvbS5lYS5nYW1lLnJlYWxyYWNpbmcyX3JvdyJd
Article:
http://phandroid.com/2011/12/22/rea...the-android-market-leaves-part-1-in-the-dust/
LordManhattan said:
Only compatible with my Desire HD, and not the Galaxy Note? What the...
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You could test this version for your Note: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ea.game.realracing2_na (not sure if it's compatible though).
Thanks, but it's a no go Just have to wait i guess.
Hi Forum, I hope this is the right forum to pose this question and to discuss the topic
ok the question:
Am I the only one who is bugged by the fact that, to close most applications in WP (wheter it is active or in background), we have to tap the "Back" button as many times as the number of pages? here are some pics so you can understand my point xD
http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/9092/31238975.png
http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/5176/30856883.png
http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/4329/28248076.png
As you can see from the last 2 pics, in this case, the user has to click backwards at least 2 times in order to close the application.
Wouldn't it be better to have a small icon in order to close the application completly?
Something like:
http://img803.imageshack.us/img803/2318/50922462.png
So! What are your opinions?
Is there something like this already?
Do you think that a mod or something could help out with this "problem"?
Do you think WP8 has a feature/solution for this?
Or is it just something personal xD ?
There is no other way but there is also no need.
The background applications do not consume CPU like they do on android, and if memory is needed, the OS simply closes them down.
mcosmin222 said:
There is no other way but there is also no need.
The background applications do not consume CPU like they do on android, and if memory is needed, the OS simply closes them down.
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Well many, do still think that closing apps directly is better...
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/6/3464142/wp8-fixes-multi-tasking
Taurenking said:
Well many, do still think that closing apps directly is better...
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/6/3464142/wp8-fixes-multi-tasking
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So it would seem and though they are thinking about the whole thing wrong this mind set cant be ignored even if it is wrong. A lot of people come from the Android ios world of background tasks killing battery life and performance.
Maybe if they have a close app in the tiles screen to address these concerns. Even if you know something is not needed if the customer thinks (even wrongly) that it is then you are going to look like your product is not as good even though you know as an expert that it is. I get this all the time in my job and that's why I use the mother test, I send an idea to my mother and if she gets it then I know its good if not I rework it.
Idk about IOS but in android it is a mistake to close down applications in most cases.
In fact, many people don't know that pressing the close button does not actually close the app, but move it to cached processes. You then have to kill it again in there to finish the job.
Anyway, many apps are persistent in android. Killing them will only make the system want to restore them again, thus eating more CPU than they would have if they were running.
On the other hand, they do represent a resource hug when not closed.
SO on this aspect, android does have a big problem with its multitasking and this is the main reason why android is such a resource hog, and requires quad core CPUs and loads of RAM to get the job done right. And google isn't doing much about this, in fact they continue with the resource waist, which will inevitably put a cap on how much android can do.
As for Windows Phone, it is fairly easy to restore the application to its stage before closing it down. People just don't know about that (and neither most of the developers).
Android phone and WP7 phone have almost same battery life, however, android has true multitasking but not in WP7, which means WP7 actually comsume more power. From my point of view, if I want to close an app, I don't want to see it appear in the backgroud. This give the chance to run it unexpectedly if I accidently tap it in multitask screen
The battery life is a non-issue with multitasking.
It doesn't matter how many apps are running, the CPU uses the same amount of power.
On the other hand, android is much slower than windows phone, which is because the android multitasking is a resource hog that is not really needed.
Remember we are on phones after all, not super computer.
If there is not much to do CPUs clock down or go to sleep completely for some time therefore reducing power consumption. On Multi-Cores in low utilization cores are sometimes completely powered down. So if only one program is running and it's not a game needing the CPUs full power it's highly likely that the CPU will use much less power.
If instead I have several Apps running in the background then I have a higher CPU utilization that doesn't really help me with what I'm currently doing (with the foreground app). That is why background Apps are frozen on iOS and WP unless they do something specifically allowed (so nothing happens in the background that's not really necessary).
mcosmin222 said:
On the other hand, android is much slower than windows phone, which is because the android multitasking is a resource hog that is not really needed.
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One could argue your point. I'll agree that WP7 runs great with low spec phones, but the new Android devices are simply faster. Compared to my mom's SGIII, my Arrive is painfully slow at loading apps and websites. Also, the SGIII lasts considerably longer than my Arrive, which shows that poor battery life on android devices are a thing of the past*.
Dont get me wrong, I want the WP platform to succeed(I think its a great OS), but it still has a long way to go; and limiting the max spec of WP8 to barely beyond current generation tech really sets the bar low.
*yes, I'm aware of the SGIII's battery size. Still, I can easily get two days out of it, vs my Arrive lasting 1-1.5 days
StevieBallz said:
If there is not much to do CPUs clock down or go to sleep completely for some time therefore reducing power consumption. On Multi-Cores in low utilization cores are sometimes completely powered down. So if only one program is running and it's not a game needing the CPUs full power it's highly likely that the CPU will use much less power.
If instead I have several Apps running in the background then I have a higher CPU utilization that doesn't really help me with what I'm currently doing (with the foreground app). That is why background Apps are frozen on iOS and WP unless they do something specifically allowed (so nothing happens in the background that's not really necessary).
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The core clock is a non-issue on android.
You will never be able to stop all applications, some of them (most of them) return minutes latter, because the OS is programmed to restore them. Many poorly programed applications behave like system applications and they keep running all the time.Standards are pretty low in Android. Which is why things like app closers, scheduled task managers and other stuff like that exist.
One could argue your point. I'll agree that WP7 runs great with low spec phones, but the new Android devices are simply faster. Compared to my mom's SGIII, my Arrive is painfully slow at loading apps and websites. Also, the SGIII lasts considerably longer than my Arrive, which shows that poor battery life on android devices are a thing of the past*.
Dont get me wrong, I want the WP platform to succeed(I think its a great OS), but it still has a long way to go; and limiting the max spec of WP8 to barely beyond current generation tech really sets the bar low.
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Compare the specs of the new android phones. Compare their prices as well.
SGIII literally has 4 times the processing power of the highest end WP7.5 devices currently on the market, and performance is comparable between the two. WP is an awesome platform. Android is not even close.
mcosmin222 said:
Compare the specs of the new android phones. Compare their prices as well.
SGIII literally has 4 times the processing power of the highest end WP7.5 devices currently on the market, and performance is comparable between the two. WP is an awesome platform. Android is not even close.
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The US spec SGIII uses the Krait processor, not the quad core. While it would be comparing apples to oranges, in a sense, I still stand by my case: with the proper hardware, the Android platform can be just as effective.
My stance stems from the arguement that WP7 is a better OS because it runs very well on basic hardware. This claim drove me nuts because M$ was so bent on proving that point, that flagship devices ran on half the hardware Android phones of that generation were currently utilizing.
Comparatively, it's the difference between running XP and Vista on legacy hardware vs current hardware.. People were knocking Vista because it was a resource hog and ran like crap on most computers; on the other hand, it runs better than XP machines when kitted out with newer hardware. One OS runs very well on less specs, but plateus very quickly, where the other platform requires more resources, but scales better when properly complemented.
In essence, WP7 is XP
I hope you arent portraying me as an Android fanboy, because I'm not; I'm just being brutally honest here. I really want to see WP8 succeed where WP7 fell flat, but seeing MS fitting compatibility specs of WP8 devices with fairly short outlook leaves me feeling uneasy.
BTW: I've been using Microsoft PDA's and smartphones since 2004, and have used both android and iOS devices for about six months out of those eight years. Juust so you know where I come from =)
Actually the OS does quite often not have that much influence on actual application performance. The big criticism of Android has always been that it tended to perform crappy (force closes, stutters) even on high end hardware. Some of that has to do with process priorization, some with missing hardware acceleration, etc. Google is working on that with every new release.
Especially in games one noticed that the devices lacked in real power on the hardware side. Another problematic decission was the use of the panorama controls. Those are side-scrolling controls with very often vertical endless scrollers inside them. This is actually rather complex to render and I would guess is responsible for most of the badly performing apps around. This is further complicated by the fact that non-developers rarely can grasp intuitively the actual computational cost associated with certain visuals (hence the often cited: WPs minimalist design is easier to compute then Android/iOSs more complex UI elements).
Microsoft was aiming at the possibility to produce cheaper devices. There were citations that the average WP7.5 device only cost $200 to produce. That strategy obviously didn't work out so well. Maybe due to the fact that the devices still were sold at flagship prices.
StevieBallz said:
Especially in games one noticed that the devices lacked in real power on the hardware side. Another problematic decission was the use of the panorama controls. Those are side-scrolling controls with very often vertical endless scrollers inside them. This is actually rather complex to render and I would guess is responsible for most of the badly performing apps around. This is further complicated by the fact that non-developers rarely can grasp intuitively the actual computational cost associated with certain visuals (hence the often cited: WPs minimalist design is easier to compute then Android/iOSs more complex UI elements).
Microsoft was aiming at the possibility to produce cheaper devices. There were citations that the average WP7.5 device only cost $200 to produce. That strategy obviously didn't work out so well. Maybe due to the fact that the devices still were sold at flagship prices.
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That'sbut back to the topic: the fact is that wheter it consumes cpu or not, the average user would like it to be easier to "kill" an application without pressing the "GoBack" button multiple times. That's the main argument. Leave all the CPU, and Core Processor argument behind , cuz WP os deals beautifully with this...