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STEAM - announcements, updates and WIN
- Thread starter Tony Rocky Horror
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Wait....you mean a company whose entire history has been devoted to high-end graphics benchmarks, and most recent release a year and a half ago was already DX10-only, released a game that also happened to be DX10 only because it's far cheaper to develop this way?
nawww.......can't be!
nawww.......can't be!
Danne-Danger
Member
Well to be fair I bought it for half the price of a meal at McDonalds. I'm likely to find at least something to enjoy about it at that point.Phife Dawg said:Bought it for a tenner when there were still people around playing it and in hindsight I regret it. Bland, uninspired, generic etc. Campaign was really bad too.
edit:
Oh bought it already and happy too - not everyone is equal I guess.
If they were dx9 only they would not be able to do the texture/filter effects that they can in dx10 and as a small company it was obviously prohibitely expensive to do a dx9 and dx10 version.Javaman said:
Most games don't run on dx5 but people don't complain;you get with the times
brain_stew
Member
Javaman said:
No, they're simply not wasting resources gimping and hacking up their game for people stuck years in the past. If you're on XP chances are you haven't got a GPU that'll run the game anyway, and if you do, you're stupid for not upgrading by now, so I fail to see the issue. Vista is 3 years old now and has been a very solid OS for at least 2 of those years and W7 was offered at insanely cheap prices, there's very few good reasons to still be on XP these days. Its such a horrible and archaic OS anyway, no idea what you gain by dragging your heals.
If you can't afford one OS upgrade in ~9 years then you're not part of Futuremark's target market, that's for sure.
Automatisch
Member
Really digging Frontlines despite the boring demo turning me off whenever it came out last year. If it didn't run so choppy I would play it more, but there's only so much of it I can take at a time. Anyone else have it running not so great?
Automatisch
Member
Phenom II 550sk3tch said:
4GB RAM
GTX 275
Win7 64
I think it's a common problem from what I saw on the Steam forums, but it also seems that different drivers can fix it, and sometimes the problems just go away. Gonna try the newest nv betas and see if that does anything.
brain_stew
Member
PTCoakley said:
Its an UE3 game right? Capping it at 30fps might be an idea.
Automatisch
Member
Hrrmm other UE3 games run fine on my rig at 1920x1200 High etc, so I'm not sure why this game is the exception. I might go tweak some settings if I have to because the game is really neat and worth picking up.brain_stew said:
Servbot #42
Unconfirmed Member
fanboi said:Well, you are my friend!
If I buy from onlinekeystore and add it to STEAM? Will that also go against the policy?
Okay... Anyway if you want to buy Steam Cdkey from a site like g2play (which is the only store that i know that offers cdkeys for sale) you could do that. I don't think it's against Steam policy to do that however there have been cases of people getting their games obtained trough g2play removed from their accounts, for example people that bought Modern warfare 2 trough g2play got the game removed from their Steam accounts.
brain_stew said:
I hadn't upgraded yet because XP does everything I need it to do. I tried the win7 RC but it broke Source games causing them to run sub 10fps. It might have been patched by now, bu t it's not a hassle I want to go through on the chance that it might work. These of course are all personal reasons, but I still think it's a dumb precedent to make and a bad idea to lock out potential customers. Hell, even Crysis would probably run albeit poorly on my system. When was the last time that a game required a new OS in order to run? The early DOS/Windows 3.x days?
YuriLowell
Member
Javaman said:
Halo2/Shadowrun
gregor7777
Banned
YuriLowell said:
Such a shame about that one too. Shadowrun is a great game that got completely ignored by PC gamers because of the whole Vista debacle.
that, and the whole RPG nonsense.
YuriLowell
Member
gregor7777 said:
This!
I loved shadowrun and didn't have stupid nostalgia goggles. It needed more maps and players but it was a fuckton of fun.
DodgyGeezerFella
Member
YuriLowell said:
And Stormrise (DX10 only).
Also, i liked Shadowrun quite a bit, sure it was short on content, but they had a point that, maps needed to be designed around all those powers, which probably isnt an easy feat. Was great fun teleporting through a wall and samarai swording sum1 :lol#
Wierd autoaim on the PC version was annoying though (it would strangely "track" players i was aiming at).
Dynoro said:
Games that use dx5 would run on all versions of Windows. Barring other compatibility bugs of course.
I find it hard to believe that the savings from not supporting DX9 is greater then the lost revenue from blocking XP users. As a nitch game, they're going to need all the help they can get. I suppose it's more an issue with MS not supporting DX10 in XP, but still, not something I would like to see other games do even once I make the jump to Win7.
gregor7777
Banned
Ogs said:
Yeah, outside of obviously needing more content that was my biggest gripe. The PC version had a helping of autoaim from the consoles.
The content would have come if the game had been a success, but MS bascially fucked FASA. So we'll have to forever live with what we got. I love it though. I don't play as much as I used to, but I still fire it up from time to time.
It's perhaps the most original FPS this gen gameplay wise.
Automatisch
Member
Really? CS is horrible?drizzle said:
It's worked fine for some people, but I would warn against that too. :/ The only people I -know- have cracked down on it are the Modern Warfare 2 people. They apparently started deleting the game from people's lists without a refund or anything, if they had purchased their keys online or activated them in the wrong region or whatever. As far as I know, having a friend gift you a game from another region is safe, but I don't even know if that's 100% safe, especially if you pay for it somehow.fanboi said:Well, you are my friend!
If I buy from onlinekeystore and add it to STEAM? Will that also go against the policy?
Java, that Source game issue is weird.
Maybe some day they'll fix drivers or something and things will work for you.Servbot #42
Unconfirmed Member
Btw Steams now tracks your lifetime gameplay time for games. I have played 318 hrs of Team fortress 2, wow! that is a lot of hours.
brain_stew
Member
Javaman said:
Well personally, I think its a fucking outstanding precedent to make, the sooner DX9 is ditched the better.
Javaman said:
Just about as silly as bitching that a game from fucking Futuremark doesn't support a 9 year old OS, tbh. Your system couldn't run Shattered Horizon so why do you even care one jot? See, that your system can't run the game is precisely why this is a none issue, anyone with the high end hardware to support the game won't be averse to upgrading their OS once every 9 years, so the vast majority of the target audience is on Vista/7 anyway. Why should they invest significant resources in order to gimp their game and port it to an outdated API?
ClovingWestbrook
Banned
Thee is no way for Valve to know if it was a true gift ir if you paid your friend to send the game. The MW2 issue was Activision related and wasn't a region issue as much as the key store online was shady.Blizzard said:It's worked fine for some people, but I would warn against that too. :/ The only people I -know- have cracked down on it are the Modern Warfare 2 people. They apparently started deleting the game from people's lists without a refund or anything, if they had purchased their keys online or activated them in the wrong region or whatever. As far as I know, having a friend gift you a game from another region is safe, but I don't even know if that's 100% safe, especially if you pay for it somehow.
Java, that Source game issue is weird.
I understand that DX10/DX11 may well be technically better than DX9. But in your haste for progress, I think there are two key points you might miss as a company.brain_stew said:
1. If you're not making a game with the latest 3D features, there are a lot of people out there who DO have older systems and older graphics cards. It's pragmatic to support them, I suppose, instead of trying to force the adoption of a new OS, even though that will probably happen anyway.
2. Is DX10 really that much better than DX9? I thought I had heard some suggestions that DX11 is REALLY the new cool awesome amazing fantastic etc. DirectX, and DX10 was just a fancy rushed version that didn't really provide much. If you're suggesting that people should force ditching DX9 for DX11 then I really disagree, since I have a 4850 (a decent card, purchased what, less than a year ago?)...and that doesn't support DX11. The only cards that DO support DX11 were released in the last six months or so, if I'm not mistaken? I may have gotten the timing wrong, but the point is that to suggest the gaming industry should move as a unified whole to force people to purchase hardware created in the last 6 months that's even apparently hard to find on Newegg...that's a silly suggestion, and not very practical yet.
*edit* Steam is claiming:
L4D2: 210 hours (ouch)
L4D2 demo (surely I spent at least 1 hour?): 0 hours
Braid: 12 hours
HL2: 0 hours (I must have played it offline)
Mirror's Edge: 81 hours (hahaha running the editor)
SFIV: 17 hours (that can't be right...did I really try that long?!)
TF2: 292 hours <3 <3 <3
UT3: 8 hours
Adding up the individual class times for TF2 gives me like 250 hours instead though. 40 hours of sitting in spectator mode? I dunno. :lol
brain_stew
Member
Blizzard said:
Yeah well that's just completely untrue. DX10 is probably the biggest change to the API since its inception. It was crucial for it to break away from all the horrible legacy code that was holding it back, a lot like Vista in fact. Think of the transition from DX10 to DX11 as the same as the one from Vista to W7. All the major ground work was done in Vista and DX10 whilst W7 and DX11 just polishes it all up, offers a few nice features and improves performance across the board for both DX11 and DX10 hardware. Moving from DX10 to DX11 is a one day job for a few programmers, moving from DX10 to DX9 is serious investment and likely means cutting back features.
Your DX10.1 card does support DX11, it'll just miss a few of the high end features, but any DX11 title will run smoothly on it and you will likely see performance benefits from the switch, its a completely different situation.
Interesting. Maybe I got the wrong impression from just reading some random forum posts then. I haven't messed with actual DirectX coding in quite some time (I'm doing SDL/OpenGL stuff now). Did Windows XP totally not support DX10/DX10.1?brain_stew said:
The new STALKER benchmark doesn't even show DX11 as an option, and people in that thread were saying only the ATI 5xxx series support DX11. Was that also a lie, and if so, why not the option?
DeaconKnowledge
Member
One one side, i'm super enticed by Shattered Horizon's setting and gameplay variables. On the other, outside of the premise and the tremendous graphics, the game appears to be pretty shallow. Not sure if I want to spend a 20 to make sure.
brain_stew
Member
Blizzard said:
No XP support for DX10 at all, and for good reason, its built on the completely new driver model introduced with Vista and breaks all legacy support. It was a long overdue complete overhaul of the API, and most developer impressions I have read have been very positive, the problem lies in the fact that most "DX10" games are just ports of "DX9" code, to see the real benefits a game needs to target DX10/11 from the start and the only way to do that is to cut off DX9 support, which is why I see this as a very positive move and one I'm fully behind.
Blizzard said:The new STALKER benchmark doesn't even show DX11 as an option, and people in that thread were saying only the ATI 5xxx series support DX11. Was that also a lie, and if so, why not the option?
It'll still be running the same "DX11" executable no matter what option you choose, instead it'll choose enable a certain subset of features depending on the hardware level you have. That STALKER benchmark has DX10.1 hardware support and it gets that "automatically" through supporting DX11, so you get the nice perf. benefits of the improvements DX10.1 brought because they shifted support to DX11.
Archie said:
Yeah, the data doesn't go back very far, a bunch of my titles show zero hours when I know I've logged serious time in them and I only started using Steam some 18 months ago.
brain_stew said:
I love how the two of you are saying that I'm bitching about their decision. For that to be true, I would have to have a vested interest in it or the game. Frankly I've got no interest in buying this game. I just think the company is making a very poor business decision. Maybe it'll sell like gangbusters and prove me wrong. Who knows? In the meantime I'll just happily continue to buy fun games that are compatible with my setup.
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