Progression?
                       by James Judge

The first question I want to ask all the readers of this article
is whether you are happy with your PC and the commercial games
that you have on your system?

Do you feel that the games are progressing as quickly as the
hardware we run them on? Do you feel that they are evolving FASTER
than that of the hardware?  Or do you think that they aren't
really going anywhere in the long term?

Basically, what I am trying to say is this:

Do you feel that the games we are buying today warrant 8 megs of
RAM, a CD-ROM, stereo sound, untold megabytes of hard disk space
and all of the other specs that we, the lowly user, must fill to
make the latest game run on the hunk of plastic and metal that
inhabits our home?

To me we are going through a period of games that in no way
reach what should be happening with today's technology. Yes, the
programmers are using everything that is available to them, but is
that what we want.

Take Origin, for example. Whenever someone mentions one of their
newer games I (and I should imagine quite a few other people)
think whether it will run on my machine without being so slow and
unwieldy that you could run a marathon between each frame update.
Take their latest brain-child, Bioforge. From the things that I
have seen and heard this is a game that is adding a lot of
cosmetics to the Alone In The Dark scenario but, when you take
everything away, you are left with something that is remarkably
similar.

BUT, Alone In The Dark can work on a 386. What does Bioforge need?
The last I heard was a 486DX4! No matter how different the games
are, they still use the same principle but one needs a computer
that will set you back about œ600 and the other needs a behemoth

of a machine that will cost you well over œ1500!  There is
something wrong there methinks.

Let's take a pair of games that I know personally, Arena and
Ravenloft. Arena (using the same graphics engine as Terminator
Rampage) needs a pretty good machine to run - the glossies say at
least a 486DX33 - but I've been able to get it running quite fast
on my 486SX. The game offers nothing of real difference over many
games of the same genre when it comes down to it, but it still
needs a high spec machine.

Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession, on the other hand, only needs a
386 to run comfortably and, in my view, it is far superior to
Arena offering far better graphics (using a non-standard VGA
display (320*400)), more in depth gameplay and everything runs
just lovely - when I tone everything down it runs as smooth as a
flight sim with no jerkiness at all.

Now, they are both new games distributed by the same company (US
Gold) but one is far better than the other, but needs far less
hardware to run properly (and if you have bought the Ravenloft
CD...), why is this? Obviously the programming in Ravenloft is
more detailed in every respect and yet it is the better performer
with more spells, characters, monsters etc.

If it is just a matter of programming which decides whether a game
runs on a 386 or 486 surely there is a sense of apathy from
certain programming teams when they can't refine their engines so
that it can work on a lower spec machine. I know that the SSI team
have been at it for years, but Ravenloft is their first real
attempt at a first person UU2 style game and, as it is, it is
brilliant. The Bethesda team, on the other hand, have already used
the exact same engine on another game (and received a lot of
criticism for it) but still they haven't been able to streamline
it so that most Toms, Dicks and Harrys can play it, instead of
just the Joe Bloggs.

But the contrasts of the two games don't end there.  Apart from
being able to include loads and loads of extra graphics,
soundfiles etc. into new games using the powerful hardware
available to them, surely the game's designers have got just that
little bit of extra leeway to include more detailed subquests,
more (or harder) puzzles (whether they be spatial or other) and
just make the game that more enjoyable (I didn't say easier, I
just said enjoyable) to play.

But no, what the designers seem to be doing is taking this extra
freedom they have got and converting it into more of the same -
more dungeons, larger dungeons, a few more monsters here, another
useless artifact there, a town here that is completely empty, a
section just for the mapping bods and so on and so forth.  They
don't seem to have grasped the idea that big isn't beautiful.

As the cliche goes: 'it isn't the size, it's what you do with it
that counts' and many designers seem to have forgotten that,
producing big, empty games that are so sprawling and have no
ultimate objective that the player often feels swamped at the size
of the task ahead of him and that, surely, is not what a good
designer wants out of his game.

So, what we are left with (thanks to these gargantuan machines)
are games that are large, sprawling, empty but they look and sound
good. That's what we, the discerning gamesplayers, want, isn't it?
A feast of sonic and visual treats that will have us ooohing and
aaaahing as we (ultimately) just select choice (A) (B) or (C) to
see what we will do next in this interactive age in which we live.

I THINK NOT!!

For me (and many other people) I'd like to see more use made of
the less capable machines (ie the 386, let's not get ridiculous
here!), pushing THEM to THEIR limits, instead of trying to push
the latest processor from Intel to IT'S limits. And let's see the
processors pushed to their limits by good quality graphics and
sound (but not OTT visuals etc) but mainly by intriguing
storylines, better missions/quests/aims/goals, more detailed
control over what is going on in the world and, in the long run,
just a far more enjoyable game.


The way games are going at the moment there will be some good and
some bad, but most will be mediocre until the designers and
programmers can get their acts together and find out how to
utilise the tools that are available to them (and us!) and not
look to what they will be able to do with tomorrow's piece of
hardware. Let's just hope that that happens soon...













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