OT: RE: Has everyone gone south?

[Fairlight]

That -is- ridiculous.  I put a 128MB SiS-based Mad Dog into Beryl some four
years ago.  Putting only 64MB onboard is absurd these days, when the floor
for gaming starts at 128 in most cases, and 256+ is getting to be the norm.

Just as a FYI, the requirements for EVE were only 64MB.  It has better
graphics with less resources.  Go figure.

As for EQ...Hmmm.  Let me check the release notes here.  Hah...the release
notes in the directory are dated 1999.  

On their web site, the latest memory requirements for video memory that I
can find are with the Luclin expansion requiring 32MB.  Prior, it was 16MB.
The latest expansion doesn't even list a video RAM floor, but rather
chip-based card support:  ATI RADEON 7200 or higher, or NVidia GeForce 1 or
higher, with the recommended being RADEON 8500 and GeForce 3 or higher.

I can tell you right now (and you KNOW how beefed my system is) that my
RADEON 9600 128MB actually struggles depending on what's turned on,
graphics-wise with the current engine.  I don't dare use shadows, even with
a short shadow clip plane.  Turning the clipping plane down on the Plane of
Knowledge is sometimes a must unless you want oodles of lag--actually, you
can turn down just the actor clip plane but that has no shortcuts on the
keyboard, where the general clip plane does.

All of which does you and him no good if it won't run at all.  Has he
tried?  And if so, what happened?  

I can tell you the requirements for it to run decently are far higher than
those they have posted.

As for Sony's making the VAIO with that little vram...shame on them.
That's plain foolish in this day and age--or even 5 years ago, let alone
one year ago.

And as one last note--most of the games I've gotten since I had the new
system--have the same floor requirements card-wise.  That almost seems to
be a standard now.  In fact, I think both Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 both had
the same requirements, offhand.  I'd have to check but I'm pretty sure they
did.

The funny thing being that, had they coded it efficiently, EQ would have
the graphics requirements of a 1999 game, even now.  Whatever they're
doing, they're doing it wrong, I can tell you that.  The particle system
rocks, but the general actor and structure systems are far less efficient
than they could be.  Guildmate of mine is a video game designer.  Finishing
up school for it, and already has his studio set up.  I got him into EVE
last night and he took a look for 5min and said, "Why the **ck is EQ so
slow compared to this?!"  I kid you not.  That was also my first
impression.  Play the alternatives and you start to see massive bloat.  

Don't get me wrong--I love EQ.  It's been renamed EverQrack on my wife's
and my desktop icons.  However, it's 70% more bloated than it needs to be,
by estimation of some of us that know what we're talking about.  The
gameplay is good, and the particle system is really pretty damned good.
They did cool things with the UI like alpha fading.  But in so many ways,
from load time to graphics pigishness, it's bloatware in a big way.  I
daresay moreso than a current state-of-the-art FPS.

As has been the case forever--we can gripe about design and how it could be
better, and it almost never happens.  :)  Doesn't stop us griping, though.

mark->


You'll never BELIEVE what John Esak said here...:
> 
> I would give Sony some slack... but this video card  or otherboard insert
> has only 64k of memory and can not be changed.  I bought this thing brand
> new as the latest model at that level back in June of last year.... by that
> time, Sony had owned EQ for a very long time.  They should have known
> better. and the limitation on that video card in this day and age is
> ridiculous.

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