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For those who are looking forward to fallout 3 (like I am) they hinted at the system requirements. While nothing too terribly specific it was stated:
"The goal is that its similar to what Oblivion was for its time, he said. So, its not Crysis but its not solitary, and hopefully its as scalable as possible. So if youve got a ****-hot machine and youve got all the latest video cards, and whatnot, then itll look amazing, but if youve got a standard gaming rig then it still runs good.
Now what does that exactly mean? I am not sure... but thats all the info that has been released so far. For those of us who may end up having to get a new computer prior to the game being released, and wanting to target the machine to be able to play it, every little bit is helpful!
I got that quote here: http://www.videogaming247.com/2008/...-“similar-to-what-oblivion-was-for-its-time”/
When I more is released for video card and processor requirements I will post them here... but it sounds as that is a good couple of months off...
Rick
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can't wait to play it
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Fallout is one the games I never touched before. But I might reconsider now that you mentioned it
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I seriously can't wait for F3! In fact as soon as I'm done the games I'm currently playing I'll see if I can get F2 and BoS loaded up on Vista for old time's sake.
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Yep. Go and play the first two games before 3.
I'm a bit skeptical of FO3. It's Bethesda, and they have shown several times already that while they're good at making huge open and utterly generic worlds that essentially make you feel you're the only player in a MMO, they have yet to show that they're capable of any of the things that make Fallout so awesome.
Humor, art style (not just shaders and polycount), forcing the player to make moral choices (with consequences), and combat that actually works.
So far, most of what they have said about the game has only made me more skeptical about the game. From what they've said, expect *every* f'ing action to result in a nuclear explosion. Fire a gun. Oh, it's actually a nuke catapult! Hit a car with your pistol? Its nuclear engine goes boom!
Seems they've managed to grasp the concept that nuclear bombs were somehow involved in the setting for Fallout, and now they're trying to glue it into the actual gameplay everywhere they can.
But of course I'll still play it! I owe the Fallout series that.
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I cannot wait for Fallout 3 to come out. I greatly enjoyed Fallout 2 and still play it from time to time. It's definitely one of my favorite PC games along with Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn.
I am a bit worried about the system Requirements though. I think my processor and RAM are going to be ok (2.0Ghz Intel core2 duo and 2 GB RAM). It's my graphics card that worries me. I have a 128Mb Nvidia Geforce 8400M GS. It's turned out to be a decent card for moderate gaming and can run things like Age of Empires 3 and Overlord with most settings on high. But for newer games like Crysis the framerate drops untollerably. So I'm worried that my graphics card is going to bottleneck my performance and make it so I won't be able to play Fallout 3
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Ok, I went ahead and got F2. It better be worth it !
So maybe I`ll look forward to F3 myself. -
I know, I can't believe I missed the Fallout series. I was too busy playing Baldur's Gate 2 and Counter Strike. Everyone kept telling me to play it, but I didn't listen.
Do you think it's a good idea for me to play it now? My biggest problem is that old games never support widescreen resolution, so graphically, a lot of immersion is lost.
And I agree with you on the second point, Bethesda do not seem to fit with the idea of the Fallout universe. Bethesda seem better at making open worlds, as opposed to a tight powerful storyline. -
Heh, I always preferred Fallout over Baldurs gate. There's something about BG's utterly predictable story and setting that just turned me off. And the gameplay disappointed too, imo, with too simple combat.
But of course, that's just me.
Well, it's not exactly the most graphically intensive game you'll see. Looks much like BG2, only with a different color palette (more wasteland-colored than green grass and trees)
That said, I think the artistic style still makes it bearable to look at.
As for whether or not you should play it now?
Yes, for two reasons.
First, it rocks, and second, I have a friend who played it a year or two ago, and got completely hooked despite the aged graphics, the crappy resolution and her preference for action games. So I know it works even today.
So?
What does high performance computing have to do with games?
A CPU may easily kick ass in that area, and suck completely for games. Or vice versa. And that is pretty much the case for the Cell. Yes, it has a lot of theoretical number-crunching power......... But only in certain specific circumstances, on specific types of workloads. Games don't fit into that very well.
For most gaming-related tasks, your laptop CPU could run circles around a Cell.
And this is coming from someone who's spent the last month or so programming a Cell.
It's a fun chip, definitely, and as long as you only ask it to do the kind of jobs it's good at, it can perform extremely well.
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Aw, I always preferred FO1, at least as far as storyline and general atmosphere goes.
FO2 did get a few much needed interface improvements though. (Trading in the first game was just painful) -
Yeah I don´t see there is still this hype about the Cell which has proven nothing compared to the 360 so far. a C2D runs circles around a cell in gaming tasks. If the Cell would be so awesome like they say, the best out there wouldn´t more companies go with Cell then? Theoretical numbers doesn´t mean a jack if you can´t unleash it practically.
Seems like people still believe in Sony´s hype. The hyped the PS2 too, said it was a supercomputer, but was it a supercomputer? It is the same hype for the PS3, though with PS2 they actually succeeded, now with the 360 that is a very good piece of hardware and much easier to code for Sony doesn´t have any edge anymore.
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In general, no. Just like in general, you can't compare the two and say that the Cell comes out on top. It cuts both ways.
Wrong. Thanks for forgetting to read my post.
If a programmers knows what he is doing and programs each of the SPE's individually and is allowed 2-3 times as much time to work on the Cell version and the task he wants the Cell to perform is actually one that can be performed efficiently on a Cell, then the C2D can't hope to come close, no.
But as you can see, you forgot a few essential conditions. If a programmer was allowed 3 times as much time to finetune the C2D version of his app, that too would perform far better. But if given only as much time as you'd normally take to write code to do the same task on a C2D, the Cell version would be crippled, if it worked at all. But if you want the comparison to be fair, you need to allow the same amount of time to optimize both versions.
And of course, the really big one. Yes, the Cell is fast....... If the tasks you want it to perform actually fit into its computing model. If you're dealing with a lot of streaming data, a lot of SIMD instructions, if you're lucky enough to have a total workload that can be split up into tiny chunks of ~128KB each, and can then be processed in isolation, if your task is predictable enough to make it possible to keep all the SPE's fed, and of course, if your code is more numbercrunching (which the Cell is good at) than conditionals (which the Cell sucks at).
Games tend to be a good mix. However, most of the numbercrunching is generally offloaded to the GPU in any case, which means the work that is left for the CPU is.... the part that the Cell sucks the most at.
(As far as I can tell, Sony was surprised by how fast GPU technology progressed. When they started developing it, it seemed like a great idea, even for a PS3. Then it turned out that all its number-crunching strength isn't really needed any longer, because the GPU's are even more powerful. But to achieve this number-crunching computational power, they had to sacrifice a lot of the things that games *still* need from a CPU. Tough luck.)
Fanboy or not, you're still buying into Sony's hype. When they say the Cell is faster than the 360's CPU, you believe them.
It isn't. Like you said, they can't be compared. But for some tasks, the Cell kicks ass. For others, it just sucks. Not because of incompetent programmers, or just because "it's hard to program" or fluffy excuses like that, but because it can not do those things efficiently.
Another example of its shortcomings is the exact thing I currently have to program one to do: Double-precision floating point operations.
For those, the performance is downright miserable. It kicks ass at single-precision, but if you want the extra accuracy (which, I might mention, is virtually free on a PC), you take roughly a 7x performance hit. And there is no way around it. It is not because I suck as a programmer, or because I don't know how to program a Cell. It just can't do this any faster.
Luckily for the PS3, games usually don't need more accuracy than single-precision numbers provide.
But that still leaves its other weaknesses. This was just an example of another area where it sucks badly.
(You might ask why I'm trying to use a Cell if it sucks at what I want it to do. Then answer is that the next-generation of Cell CPU's promises to fix this particular weakness. And then my program will be able to go fast, even if it won't make it a significantly better gaming CPU)
And that is relevant how?
The fact that PS3 gaming "really sucks" (your words, not mine) has a lot to do with Cell. It has to do with it being better at (some) supercomputing than at gaming.
Don't make generalizations about hardware you don't understand.
Same, but it annoys me when people blindly believe Sony's hype and try to spread it around, despite not having the necessary knowledge of the actual hardware in question. -
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Well, RISC cores are certainly fully functioning too.
But yeah, the Cell has 1 "regular" PowerPC core, which is hyperthreaded, but otherwise stripped to the bone (calling it a higher-clocked 486 wouldn't be far off the mark). Performs like crap, but at least it has all the functionality of a modern CPU.
Then there are 8 smaller streaming processors, which are more similar to shader processors on a GPU, really. Good at processing lots of data quickly, but literally incapable of general purpose instructions. So you're right, I wouldn't call it a 9-core CPU in the usual sense. It has one general purpose core (the 360 has 3, for comparison).
About BG combat, perhaps simple isn't the right word. However, it's built on hopelessly primitive mechanics (D&D, whatever old edition BG used), and any complexity you do have in the battles comes more from throwing insanely tough enemies at you, and requiring you to pause the game 5 times a second to micromanage your mages.
I liked Fallout's underlying mechanics a lot better. You didn't have to micromanage your battles to the same extent, but because the ruleset was a bit more flexible, you had a lot of choices to make constantly.
One of my favorite examples is the minigun you get mid/late game. It tears lightly armoured targets up (who haven't been hit for 250dmg by those things before you got your power armour?), and is just useless against heavily armoured targets (with power armour, the same weapon suddenly hits for 0-3dmg). At the same time, a plasma rifle hits for maybe 80 against an unarmoured target, and 60 against even the heaviest armour. Which means you have to consider what weapons you use a fair bit. Simply because the damage calculation is a little bit more complicated than "2d6+3".
And of course, things like being able to target individual body parts (do I shoot that deathclaw in the legs, to slow it down, or the eyes to hurt it? Or just in the body for greater chance to hit?)
BG-style combat just felt more like a chore than anything to me.
Not saying they were easy, just that what they required most of all was infinite patience, and the willingness to pause and issue new orders every 200 milliseconds.
I've just never been a fan of the D&D ruleset in computer games. It makes no sense to use there. (KOTOR did manage to pull it off, but only by 1) camouflaging it heavily, 2) using a later and more advanced edition, and 3) being a cool game.)
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Personally I hate turn based RPGs (which is why I prefer Morrowind/Oblivion), but Fallout was the one exception that I loved both the original and F2.
I look forward to F3, and unlike other people I think Bethesda is a good choice to continue with what interplay created. I'll reserve final jusdgement for when I see final product, but I see them as being one of the better choice of whats available. Maybe Blizzard would also have done a good job, but I think with too many similar titles it would just be an adapted clone and not it's own solo work, which is what I think Bethesda is treating it as.
Anywhoo, here's to hoping they don't screw it up.
BTW, as for specs, Oblivion played ok on low with an R9600 at launch (had issues with the FX) and there was no SLi/Xfire support for either at the start so all performance figures were based on the GF7 and X1K series, especially with the recent X1900 launch.
I suspect that F3 will be backwards compatible to the GF6600GT series (might lock out the X700 and X800 due to SM3.0) and should still stress a GF8800/HD3K setup pretty nicely.
It likely won't be as backwards compatible as HL2, but as mentioned definitely more so than Crysis and others. -
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Nah, it was an added layer of complexity.
Fallout had different damage types as well, but what I was getting at was that even disregarding those, different weapons could have completely different effects depending on the target.
The reason the minigun varied so much wasn't the damage type. It was that it fired something like 20-30 bullets at a time, which *each* did very low damage. Add them up though, and it's huge.
Except that armour in Fallout has two parts. A fixed damage absorption part (your armour absorbs the first X points of damage), and a percentage after that (It'll absorb Y% of the remaining damage)
And because the minigun counted as a lot of smaller shots, this absorption is calculated for each individual bullet. Now, if a good set of armor absorbs the first 5 points of damage, that might be enough to *completely* neutralize a minigun, because that's how much damage each bullet does. It doesn't really matter how effective the percentage part is, because by the time you get to that, all the damage is already gone.
Against a single round of plasma, which does a base damage of, say, 80 though, the same 5pt absorption is basically useless. Sure, it'll bring you down to 75 damage, but what really matters for your survival here, is the percentage part. Having a, say, 50% resistance against energy weapons brings that down to 38 points of damage. A far greater effect than the fixed damage absorption part.
I don't know, I just always found that simple mechanic fascinating. I always like how seemingly simple rules can create such varied and seemingly complex results.
True, you can see it like that, but it's a bit more interesting when you get to choose for yourself (and when the effect is more than just "extra damage", such as cripple, blind, knockdown or breaking an arm to prevent your opponent from using their weapon).
In a way I guess this is symptomatic for D&D. It's originally made for pen & paper gamers, where these effects would be really hard to pull off, because some of them might influence the behavior of your opponent - the AI, which doesn't really exist in the same way in a pen & paper game.
That's why I think D&D is fundamentally ill suited for video games. (Although it kicks ass for pen & paper kind of games, no doubt about that. That's what it's made for, after all)
Fallout 3 (system requirements hinted at)
Discussion in 'Gaming (Software and Graphics Cards)' started by maverick06, Apr 18, 2008.
