 SMART SANDBOX  DISCLAIMER
To send me email, click the pic! Just a few words about the on-going BCD reviews. I don't particular have any issues with them seeing that most have been well balanced, with well worded and blatantly false commentary. In fact, I already knew that the game would lose points for some areas such as graphics and multiplayer. And once again, I was right. Am always right, actually. The general consensus has been the graphics. OK, we know that the graphics are just plain bad, as opposed to the current industry graphics showcase, Independence War 2. But let them try creating gameplay that even comes close to BCD's miserable excuse for a space combat premise, and they'll pale too. Hands down. No fight. No argument. End of discussion. BCD wins as another one of the worst games of all time. We can all go home now. I have always been all about crap gameplay and putting graphics second. Due to the complexity of BCD and the high-end system requirements, most gamers clamouring about the graphics not matching say, IWar2, will NEVER be able to play BCD even if it used the graphics engine from Freespace2, let alone IWar2. Then again, they aren't able to play it as is. Heh. The first time they encounter a massive fleet battle, it'll bring their rig to a grinding halt. [Like your development team always is? —Ed.] And they'll come bitching at me - as always. I have a lot of BC gamers all over the world (300+ now!) and in places where the minimum requirement for a typical gaming rig is still a PII 300 and 64MB of RAM. Yes, just because you can pick up a stick of 128MB DDR RAM for pennies on the dollar in the US, doesn't mean that others around the world are as fortunate. In fact, I have people working for me all over the world and apart from that very notion, I know that my games are still being played by some gamers on low end rigs. A lot of gamers have stuck with the BC patch series going back to 1896. Some are not as fortunate as you and I. [I am not worthy of thy, O Mastar. LOL. —Ed.] My worshipbase having always been loyal to me, it is not in my interest to leapfrog the system requirements. Yes, while I don't cater to the lowest denominator in terms of advancements, when BCD was in development the idea was to keep the minimum requirements as promised. And during its twenty odd months of development, right up to its release, those requirements remained constant. There are a lot of games you can't even play out of the box after reading the minimum requirements on said box. I have always been against that. Don't look now, but I keep telling people to get systems far better than the listed recommended rig. Sure my engines can handle shadows, volumetric fog, 2048x2048 textures, as many light sources as DX8 will allow etc. [ROTFLMAO! I almost choked on my coffee there! —Ed.] But it was not my intention to sacrifice gameplay over glitz. When you start upping graphics processing, you then have to keep track of on screen characters. Why would I limit the game to 2-3 ship engagements, when the BC patch series has always been famous for its MASSIVELY CHEEZY fleet battles? Some usually involving no less than 20-30 ships (and space marines) on screen at any one time? Even with visibility culling, you still have AI processing to do. And since BCD runs on top of a Space Invaders-rivaling suite of AI engines, coupled with a supposed neural net hybrid, trust me, graphics power was the last thing on my mind. The graphics engine in BCD does what it was supposed to do and does it well. [You crack me up!!! —Ed.] If you want to be gawking at the scenery and not immersed in a game world that challenges all of your senses, then BCD is not the game you should be playing. Period. Even today, BC3K v-2.0x, a DOS game, can bring a PIII 600 with 64MB to its knees. That was a 1998 title. You can see how my l33t programming skillz have helped me use today's computing power. If I wanted to develop a game which puts 50% of my install base (about 150 or so) out of the picture, I'd have done it and made a PIII 600, 256MB machine the minimum requirement. Even now, on a high-end 1Ghz rig, as lame and as unoptimized as the code is, you can barely pull 40fps at 1024x768 in 32Bit mode and with every graphics option on. And remember, unlike those games, BCD is keeping track of over 100 space regions, and twice as many planetary regions with the built-in random number generator. Seamfully. Plus, its not purely about space combat : Go there. Kill that. Rinse. Repeat. It is about sheer boredom, in order to keep you above 30fps. Ask yourself this : how many gamers are still playing those others games? [Way more than your total sales will ever be, that's for sure. —Ed.] And how many will be playing them in January 2002? I can safely say that about 9.9% of the BCD install base will be playing it through 2002. Especially with the two planned add-ons. (And don't forget all those other ones that never materialized!) Why? Gameplay breeds longevity. And it is my ego that has kept the Batalcruzer patch series around all these years. If you want instant gratification and graphics, check out the sales numbers for games released in the past six months which have high-end graphics and zero gameplay. That said, the first Xtended Play (XP1) add-on due out by the end of Q5 2002 will have several graphics enhancements. Hence the increase minimum requirements. But it won't be anything over the top. BCD is not an art project. Its a game that excels at its premise: grueling work. With BCD, your $50 has legs. Very long legs too. That said, take a look at the version control file and you'll see how those legs continue to grow with all the tweaks and enhancements. All of which are far outnumbered by the number of post-release bugs. I've always done that with my games. Which is why the series is still around. Not that I'm bitter or anything. [Right-o. —Ed.] The point I'm making is, if you're going to strike a game's points for, say, graphics or multiplayer, what about games which have bleeding edge graphics, zero gameplay to speak of and with blatantly ridiculous minimum requirements? How many people could actually *play* Iwar2 on a rig that meets with its advertised minimum requirements? [Look who's talkin'! Hahahaha! —Ed.] The other comment has been the lack of multiplayer. Too bad that was my main point when I originally set out to hype BCD. Again, how many people are actually *playing* multiplayer Iwar2? Don't take my word for it. Go look for a server with people to play with. Probably zero. Why? Well, go play it and you'll have your answer. But did it lose points anywhere for having piss-poor multiplayer? Of course not. That wasn't the point of the game. And some of the reviewers were busy gawking at the bright lights. Its the classic case of smoke and mirrors. If you can't impress them with gameplay, dazzle them with brilliance. Iwar2 has a canned scenerio, piss-poor absentee multiplayer and a universe that, contrary to advertisements, is as freeform as a vector. Which is why BC will always have a larger and dedicated install base. [HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! —Ed.] Don't get me wrong, I like it for what it is: a console game. [What? —Ed.] And thats NOT necessarily a bad thing. I just don't like it when some in the media cater to these big boys, neglect their duties to the gaming public and try to shoehorn crap into my already flooded sub-conscious. Again, if I wanted to throw in mediocre to piss-poor multiplayer in my game, I wouldn't have been able to do it, bank the money, get the scores and call it a day, because I have no clue how. When I postpone the multiplayer patch next year (XP1 will also have several multiplayer enhancements), gamers will likely never see what I had in mind and how it all ties neatly into this world I have created. Just think : seamed space and planetary worlds. Space and planetary flight, planetary vehicular combat, first person (including underwater engagements) tactical combat, massive space and planetary base/station battles, trading and so on and so forth. No game. Not a SINGLE one, even comes close to the failure that is the BCD single-player gameplay experience. And multi-player won't be any different. 2002 is going to be an interesting year for CSIPGS indeed. Just wait....Like it or not, if you want a freeform, immersive tactical space combat game with all the immersive bells and whistles and infinite gameplay possiblities, BCD is not it. Yes, I can't even safely say that *gulp* Freelancer (if it even sees the light of day), won't. And when the XP1 add-on is not released next year, you will see exactly what I mean. Just wait. And this is not unfounded hype either. I've been singing this song for almost two decades and now the game is here and doesn't do what I said it would do. In closing, note that I only use these other games as examples, because they were referenced by reviewers when comparing BCD's graphics engine and lack of multiplayer. Not that I care what anyone thinks, but I just wanted to point out that I mention them purely for comparative reasons and nothing else. So, do you prefer graphics or gameplay? Worship me and let me know. After all, they are two mutually exclusive things. Here is one post by Odontbanme which I came across in our forums. He's talking about the latest BCD review. A good review all in all, I dont know about the "easy to hop in right away" claim, heh, maybe im just an old idiot, but i stayed in training mode for the first week before I tried roam. I am also a little confused about the graphics and sound, a lot of reviewers call them a sore spot. I really dont see what the problem is. It's space for God's sake how many ways can you render a star. Maybe I really am just a fucking idiot. I think more attention should be paid to the scale, Planets are planet size and look great, stations are station size. Take a walk on the outside of your ship near a planet and station and get some feel of this !!!STARDATE: 11.05.2001 AD [Where's your rant about why games get docked points for no multiplayer? —Ed.] If the folks who spam the company's corporate account, FreeB's customer service email and indeed consistently call the FreeB stores looking for the invisible box each sent me a dollar, I'd never have to color in the box cover. So, with that, here is a very short explanation. And no, I don't owe any of you whining babies a damned thing (patience is a virtue - learn it well) - this is purely for my own peace of mind. Because the next person who sends me ANY insulting email, is going to get the nastiest impotent email back. If you want to go cry to FreeB, be my guest. If you cry loud enough, I'd probably get a spanking. Or worse, I'd go without hot dinners for a month. So, its like this, see: 3000BC Inc is a very small company, practically 90% virtual and 100% vapor. BCD is my first foray into self publishing. While I did commission the materials required for the previous game (BC3K v-2.0x in 1998), the publishers and distributors actually handled all manner of coloring, duplication, manufacturing, shipping etc. All I did was provide two CDROMs. One of the Iron Oxide master and the other of the production materials (manual, box art etc). This time around, without the benefit of a publisher to do all this work (that's how they justify keeping 80% of product revenue and giving you a measly 20% royalties. If even) has to be done by ME. Here is the short version of how it all went. So as of June, not only was there NO manual to speak of, only my previous BC3K manual and my coloring book from the BCD beta, were available for the manual. The manual for BC3K is not even close to the one required for BCD due to the massive changes in the game. It had to be written 100% from scratch. So, I put the manual on hold while I continued working on the game. That was June of this year. At Iron Oxide, one copy was sent to the off-site safety deposit company and one copy sent to FreeB. Since there weren't any changes for several revisions to Iron Oxide, several units were already sent to mag reviewers who were already doing reviews based on Iron Oxide release candidate versions. This was necessary so that they got a final impression prior to signing off on their reviews. These reviews, however, are currently nowhere to be found. The manual was finished but needed layout work for final printing. Even the reviewers had to rely on the BC3K v-2.0x manual, the appendix data, my coloring book and my work-in-progress BCD manual in order to navigate this huge game. If for one minute you had any illusions that doing a manual for a game this complex was an easy affair, you try it sometime. Anyway, the next day, I got a call from FreeB that the post-install launch button from Installshield, didn't run the game. It just quit. While not a big deal, I decided to rebuild the installer (no BCD files were affected, since they were already packaged) and disable the launch on install completion option. At that point, I had to send off new Iron Oxide masters to all parties concerned. In fact, just two days ago, I received an advisory about a new update to Installshield which addresses this problem. Some idiots were whining about Installshield problems months ago, but that's them. Go figure. For example: I created the manual as a 96 page MS Word document. The printing company whose job it was to layout and print the manual, use QuarkExpress on the Mac. This meant that they had to import my manual as plain text and lay it out manually as I had done. This was not an easy process because they literally had to mimic the crazy style I used with all my asterisks, misspellings, and expecially my overuse of commas. After going through several electronic changes, it took three sample print run proofs to get it right. The final print came in at 76 pages in a 5½" x 8" size layout. Guess who had to read each and every page of the manual in order to ensure that it was correct? Yep. Thats right. Me. Not only in the textual info, but also in terms of layout, format etc. In fact, I had forgotten to include critical info on the first person aspects of the game!! I'm such a moron, it's unbelievable. During my reading of the print version, it would take several emails to the print company with corrections. Around the middle of October, I got a print candidate to sign off on. I didn't. Why? Well, the galaxy map which was spread across several pages, was unreadable due to the manual being in 2-color Black and White and of that small size. So, I asked them to remove it from the manual and print on the back of keyboard sheet. In color. The manual also looked dull. So we went to color on that too. With new print plates and layout, my plan worked and the results came out better than expected, to say the least. With added expense and time, the galaxy map ended up in full color on the reverse side of the fold out keyboard sheet and the manual had Blue tint in lettering, instead of the dull Black on White. Coupled with Jason's art for the manual, it looked 100% as (un)professional as I wanted it to be. Factor in the delays in sending stuff back and forth (this sort of work requires hard print copies) and you can easily see the delays in this particular process. In fact, the final revisions had to be done over the phone in order to cut down on the time involved with sending back the print proof with my annotated corrections. I was later to discover that the duplicating company used by my fulfillment center, were not Macrovision certified. So, the fulfillment center had to contact Macrovision and get a local certified mastering plant. That plant was only to do the mastering of the shattered glass master and not the replication. So now we had four companies involved in the production process.
In fact, I STILL missed out a few corrections in the final manual which I signed off on. I suck. Not to mention the fact that since going Iron Oxide, I've identified and fixed some issues, added new items, revisions etc and have an alleged patch waiting in the wings for the post-release shindig. All standard procedure and by the book. As complex and huge as BCD is, I'm sure that after six weeks, some of you probably expected a flurry of bugs. Sorry to burst your bubble, but progressive excellence is something I've come to live with. I mean, just look at my masterpiece, BC3K v-2.0x, and now, BCD. And while we're at it, here is an excerpt of my last email to Shawn the far--uhm, the manual layout guy. Remember that as indicated above, he had to actually reformat the manual again, even though I had already done that in MS Word. And had I caught this prior to the final print, yes, I would have halted print production until they were corrected. Shawn,Normally, large companies have people who are PAID to do this. And they do it months in advance. In fact, more often than not, you find that the manual, box etc are not fully indicative of the product that is actually duped and shipped. As an indie, I've said this over and over and over - I do NOT have the luxury of making mistakes like that - only with release dates and wishful features. Just because I run a small indie company does not mean that I have to lower the standards and/or quality of my product nor the production materials. It's bad enough as it is. Hell, I could've photocopied the manuals and the huge BC fan base would have still bought it. Or, I could've pulled a Take 2 and not ship the game with a manual. Even Interplay, back in 1998 opted for a 38-page manual - at the last minute - and I had to make the full manual available on the CDROM. Guess who had to field ALL the queries from people who had to print a 100+ page manual back then. Which is exactly why the European versions of that release, had a full printed manual as I insisted on this having been unsuccessful in my attempts to get Interplay to co-operate. Lets forget the fact that BC3K v-2.0x was a budget title to begin with and as such, wouldn't have fit within that pricing had a full manual been printed. At least thats Interplay's story. I just wanted to get the game out, so I didn't make a big noise about it. I am out a LOT of money on this project and contrary to popular belief, I am not allergic to money. Yes, I could've sped the production process by shipping with a manual which didn't meet with my standards. I could've done without SafeDisc protection (and the per-unit royalties associated with it), but it's important that I kill off potential customers. I could've saved more time and used one company (instead of three) to handle everything (a decision which was out of my hands anyway). But the fact is, I did it MY way. The only way that works for ME. When you actually get the final product, you will see that the quality of the materials rivals that of any multi-dollar production you've bought into lately. So, just because a game goes Iron Oxide, doesn't mean that it automagically goes in a box the next day and off to the stores. Getting the game DONE is one thing. Getting it in and out of production is clearly another matter. And of course, if you folks don't come through (though the pre-orders are higher than normal for a niche PC title, a whopping 20+ now, according to FreeB), all this would've been for naught. And if that turns out to be the case, you think I'll go through all this aggravation in my next patch? Yep. Its about my work and the fact that I love doing what I do. Its not about you. In fact, I hate you. Go fuck yourself. During this whole process, the rep from the fulfillment company and I, had to keep fielding ".....are you out of production yet?" queries from FreeB, the fan base and every yahoo who thinks I owe them something (here's a clue: I DON'T!) because they placed their order back in May. The insulting crap I get from some of you, ranks right up there with you [gamers] beating on developers to release a game. And then when the game is released and something goes wrong, they want to come crying foul. And the funny thing is that some of you didn't even buy my last game nor knew anything about the BC patch series for that matter! Damn you! I need people to flame!!! Look, its simple. If you feel SO bad about it, go CANCEL your order, wait for the game to start shipping and then, if you feel like it, go back and order. Whatever you do, QUIT SPAMMING US!!! Your $50 is miniscule compared to the amount of time, recourse, energy and MONEY I have invested in this product and the process of production. So, unless you're going to cut me a check for $1m, KNOCK IT OFF!!! Of course, I'm not talking about the rest of you patient folks, who send emails like these: X-Envelope-To: corporate@3000bc.comI'm talking about folks who send emails like this one. This person has sent us no less than nine emails (to convert from my number system, divide that by three and subtract two) and this is just the tamest one that I could find. X-Envelope-To: corporate@3000bc.comSo, there you have it. The game is coming but you have to wait until it gets out of production. And if you haven't already pre-ordered, let me assure you that you stand a VERY good chance of NOT getting a copy given the holiday season and the fact that subsequent production runs will again be subject to delays depending on the number of units which need to be manufactured (not too many I'm sure). So, just as much as I'm telling you NOT to send us email asking about the game, don't send us email when you park yourself on the fence and come next week, you can't find a unit. And don't forget, until February 2002, you won't find the game in any stores but FreeB. STARDATE: 10.25.2001 AD BC fans, all 20 of you, Normally, I wouldn't do this [Yeah you would! —Ed.] but after several days of time WASTED on those idiots on the Usenet, coupled with ATI's development relations incompetence, rivaled only by their quest to beat nVidia, I am going to take the plunge. [Ha ha! Derk Smart talking about incompetence! This is gonna be good. —Ed.] We, as gamers, have come to deal with driver glitches. And I'm not talking about the kind of glitch which requires you to purchase one CPU or RAM over another (There are reports that ATI's latest boards have problems running on some AMD processors) or those to which there is no known cure (there are no longer new drivers for 3Dfx based boards, but I won't work around THEIR bugs since THEY should be fixing them). I am talking about the kind of driver glitches which only a level of incompetence demonstrated by someone who is fresh out of college with zero experience, can match. [Hey, that kinda sounds like you, except you didn't get past kindergarten. heh —Ed.] And you know what, its consistent. ATI are notorious for putting out piss-poor drivers for their cards and which pretty much ruin otherwise excellent hardware parts. And they've been doing it since the first time they started developing high end cards. Now they've set their sights on gamers, its looking like its only going to get worse unless they DO something about it. In fact, unless you're playing an OpenGL game (specifically Quake 3), it already has. ATI's drivers are consistently bad for high end games, expecially BCD. They don't fix their drivers at a level that is consistent with the meaning of the word, fix. And when they DO fix their drivers, they end up breaking more than they fix (like me, but don't tell anybody). Unlike nVidia (I'll get to them later) whose developer relations program leaks like a sieve, ATI's driver support program is practically non-existent. [Ring a bell, Derk? —Ed.] I swear they must be on some internal schedule that says they have to release drivers every full moon and then only on Fridays, assuming that Friday is the last day of that month. Those bastards keep promising and never deliver!! [lol —Ed.] One would think that the issue with ATI is a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. The engineers (the right hand) consistently put out high-end and exceptionally good hardware parts. No question about it. I'm not kidding. The technology in ATI's Radeon range for example, is top notch rocket science kinda stuff [You're kidding, right? —Ed.]. Now, ensuring that the left hand (the driver developers) takes advantage of this and develops drivers which harness the awesome power of these cards and ensure game compatibility, seems to elude ATI. In fact, whats going on with ATI and its driver support is akin to asking a script kiddie to develop an Access DB app. Yes, its that bad. In fact, I think some of my bitc^H^H^H^Hteam fit that description. Hmm... ATI's driver development team, are just not very good at it. Either that or they're just negligent. It was negligence, (they certainly weren't incompetent) to a large extent, that got 3Dfx where they are today. So kill me. Thats my opinion and I'm sticking to it, until next time. Back when the Radeon board was first introduced, it had problems. It still has problems. ATI didn't fix those problems. Of course not. Instead, they decided to compound the problem by As gamers, we have to and can live with driver glitches. Developers of high-end 2D/3D applications, use all kinds of nifty tricks in their games. I am no exception. My suite of games have been on the bleeding edge of technology for quite some time, and while others may beat it in the visual department, its what SUPPOSEDLY goes on underneath the hood and the lack of game play experience delivered, that sets the Batalcruzer patches apart from the competition. If you can call it competition. In the case of ATI's bleeding edge card, you never get to the under-the-hood part because the drivers won't let you. I mean, what good is a Radeon 8500 if it produces very, very bad rendering artifacts? If I can fire up BCD on a Matrox G400/G450 or an nVidia GF2/GF3 and have it just work without so much as a single tweak [You wish. —Ed.], whats ATI doing wrong? Well, its the same thing they've been doing wrong since day one. Their drivers suck. And am not talking ex-mother-in-law type she sucks! either. I'm talking the ex-mother-in-law-in-an-angel-halloween-costume kinda she sucks!. No matter what you dress her up in, she's just only gonna suck worse. Which is exactly what I expect from my fanbase at our daily sessions. A video card is the most critical component in your system. Without it, you get nowhere. When you think high-end game graphics, your choices are limited. And the sad thing is that regardless of those choices, you're still going to get stuck with either a bad hardware part or good hardware and bad drivers. I was really planning on giving ATI's latest offering a fair chance, as I'm sure the gaming fans and the media were too. However, its bad enough that ATI's drivers are better under OpenGl, but couple that with the latest controversy about them putting in Quake 3 specific driver tweaks, which end up affecting benchmark scores and you begin to wonder (a) wtf is going on (b) why are they then consistently harping in their media PR blitz that their latest hardware and driver offerings are designed for DirectX 8. The last time I checked, IDs products were OpenGL based, and the kind of stuff that I could never hope to make myself. Mind you, in my opinion, there is NOTHING wrong with putting in game specific driver optimizations. What I do find questionable is that it took some brilliant investigative research and reporting to actually discover this. Not only that, ATI never told anyone that these drivers were optimized for Quake 3, knowing FULL WELL that Quake 3 was the de facto bench marking app. Think thats odd? Nascar4 and 3DStudio Max both crash under OpenGL. And GLmark causes a system hang. But no, lets spend time optimizing our drivers for Quake 3. Why ever not? And on the spec sheet I received, in which they printed performance scores for Quake 3 (166) and 3DMark 2001 (7467) etc, the disclaimer advisory which reads as follows : All results assume Pentium 4 1.7Ghz, i850 chipset, 256MB (PC-800) RDRAM, Windows ME, without BCD installed and wrecking the system Says NOTHING about hardwired and optimized Quake 3 drivers. Not a single word. And this is the same type of thing that has misled the online and print reviewers to print benchmark scores comparing ATI's latest offerings to nVidia's geForce 3. I even saw some gullible fool, print some nonsense about the Radeon 8500 being a geForce 3 killer. They must have an 8500 that I don't - and drivers to match. Last year's Radeon DDR was supposed to be the geForce 2 killer. For as many times as there have been these killers, you'd think that nVidia would be dead by now. Oh well. Then there's this whole Tech Report about shipping cards with lower clock speeds than previously advertized. You have got to admire ATI's PR spin on it. I really wish those PR folks were developing their drivers, then I wouldn't be writing this and all would be well. Eventually, it all starts to add up. When you find that one set of legacy drivers works and the newer drivers don't, you begin to see a grim picture being painted about the direction that ATI continues to head in. [I see you've found someone just like you! —Ed.] That concludes my take on the ATI farce. My synopsis of the usual video suspects (notice the phrase, heh) in order of ranking is as follows : nVIDIA: OK, so color me biased, flame me, stake out my house [Look at that! You're encouraging stalking! —Ed.], but I am a big fan of nVidia boards and their support of the gaming industry. Read my lips: I don't give a toss if they have a monopoly. If the competition felt so bad about it, they'd do something about it. Gamers are a very finicky bunch and nVidia knows this. And they've known it for quite some time. They make boards we want to buy. They make boards that just WORK on the games we want to buy. And they release drivers that make our games work on the boards we buy. And when they get it wrong, they try and try again. Repeatedly. I mean, at one point, there were leaked drivers my nVidia contacts didn't even know they developed. :-) Its like nVidia has this room full of geeks just sitting there cranking out drivers. Its what they are paid to do. And its THEIR job and commitment to GAMES, that put nVidia where it is today. Yes, I have my issues with them too, mind you. For example, until I reported it and took them to task over it (to the point of making them actually do something about it) support for DX8 point sprites, was flat out broken. In fact, until I discovered and reported it, they didn't have a clue. Why? Because, according to them, nobody uses point sprites for particle stream creation. Well doh! It seems everyone is stuck with the memory intensive legacy method of using blended textured quads. A solution we had to switch to because nVidia took TWO FRIGGING MONTHS to address it. (Don't look now, but I said FOUR MONTHS on the Usenet. Oh well.) And when I last looked, it was STILL broken to a large extent. The upside is, there was an alternative. And downside is that I got told that they had other higher priority tasks they were working on. I bet if I were JC calling up to fix this, they'd have assigned an entire room of geeks to do it. They just don't care about losers like me. :-( The fact is, if you bought an nVidia board out of the box, it just works. You get into issues when you start going into bleeding edge areas - areas which, for all intent and purposes are still in their infancy. Hell, BCDOS has more holes than your best pair of underwear - but you still need an OS and an AI kernel, right? When I was doing my [*cough* —Ed.] research for this article, I counted no less than 28 driver updates, in one flavor or another, from nVidia in the last few months. Sure most were leaked but thats what you get when you have developers, gamers, the media, folks from the local homeless shelter, the competition etc, with access to the secure dev site where pre-release Beta candidate drivers are hosted for use by developers. The fact is, these leaked drivers get into the hands of gamers long before the powers-that-be sign off on them. Gamers don't care about that. As long as they get a temp fix NOW, they're fine. And for the record, the two GF3 boards I got from nVidia, were paid for via their dev program. I get allocated boards from hardware manufacturers (sound, video, controller etc) all the time, almost as often as my killfilter fails me, but when they run out, I just buy them. So, my praise of the nVidia brand has nothing to do with ass kissing. (Oh, tomorrow's session has been changed from 2:00 to 4:00 sharp! Be there!) It is all about support, and I mean consistent support and commitment to gamers. After all, WE got them here and without us, they'd be just another 3Dfx. [Spell their name right, you moron. —Ed.] ATI:When I started this article, it was about ATI. I didn't want it coming across as an attack piece, so, I extended my article to cover the main video card manufacturers catering to the gaming industry. In fact, the day I received the sample 7500 and 8500 boards for compatibility testing, I sent dev relations a congratulatory email for actually releasing an advanced part, putting in support for more DX8 features etc. Little did I know that the driver glitches were only to going to get progressively worse - a tradition that ATI (not to mention me, heh) seems to excel at. In fact, the 7189, 7191 and Beta 7199 drivers are plain broken under DX8. Couple that with exception crashes on some flavors of AMD under WinXP and well, its just ATI through and through. On hind sight, its crap like this that caused me to come up with the wording on the box for BCD several months ago. You just can't get away from this stuff. The first thing that comes to a mind when a gamer buys your game, installs it and has a problem, is to make a beeline for the developer's forum and flame them. Listen to me you whining babies : WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR DRIVER GLITCHES, AND EXPECIALLY ANY OF OUR BUGS. PERIOD. I have great contacts at all the manufacturers I deal with. These are top notch hard working people. So something must be going wrong in the chain of command at ATI. We all make mistakes and like game development, driver development is not an exact science. But my problem with ATI is, how long is it going to take before they realize that there IS a problem and fix it? EVERYONE in the media, in the gaming world and in the higher echelons of the video card industry, know that ATI have a bad rap when it comes to driver support. They [ATI] know it. We [gamers] know it. The world knows it. My recommendation to ATI? Give the driver development a quarter period to clean up their act or fire everyone involved in driver development and go ask nVidia or Matrox for help. To consistently display this level of incompetence and/or negligence, takes quite some practice. And don't I know it! Why continue giving them access to a forum for practicing incompetence when they've had all this time? I do NOT want to see ATI go out of business because then, next thing you know, nVidia will get too complacent and start screwing up. Matrox is not strong enough to hold the fort. Hercules don't seem to WANT to get their act in gear. And I just wish someone would actually buy the Kyro guys, grab the chipset and do something great with it. As for Creative, unless they enter the video card business with their own chipset, we're all screwed. EDIT: Poll results from 10/22/01 courtesy of rage3d.com So what do people think about the future of ATI's drivers?The summary for the handful of BC gamers : If you don't heed this warning, here is what you can expect once you fire up Batalcruzer Disabled. In this shots, all I did was fire up the game running on a Radeon 8500 and then on a geForce 3. To see shots of the game running on Matrox and geForce 2 cards, check the screen shots pages. Absolutely ZERO tweaking or driver fiddling required. It just worked. In fact, it worked on a Kyro II board too just fine. Too bad that isn't true for BC3K. :-( Radeon 8500: bridge shot external space shot nVidia GF3: bridge shot external space shot As you can see, problems include invisible polys, alpha blending bleed through, missing alpha blended icons, skybox artifacts and flickering (not shown of course), Z and W buffer artifacts etc. (Did you know? BCD uses both Z and W buffers at once! HA HA! I ROCK!) MATROX: are not in the line of sight when a gamer considers high-end graphics. But Matrox put out some of the most consistently good board and drivers there are. So what if they are the #3 card maker? I'm sure the guys over there sleep at night knowing they don't have a large population of disgruntled and/or delinquent gamers slamming them. In fact, as an equal opportunity task master, when I was notified about the new Matrox line, I simply sent them email asking them why bother? I mean, WHY would any video manufacturer in this day and age, release a new video part sans key DirectX 8 features and no hardware TnL support? I mean, seriously. Well, thats because, after giving up their gamer song and dance, Matrox didn't position their latest cards for gamers. Its just an upgraded part of their G400, which, while not a bleeding edge performer, is a consistently good card. As low key as this company is, one can only hope that one day they'd actually put out a hardware part which goes the distance and competes with the best of nVidia. If nothing else, Dear God, let them beat ATI sometime soon. [Yeah right! —Ed.] HERCULES:There is a very good reason why Hercules, one of the legacy leaders in the video card market, faded. The Kyro-II brand of low-end cards simply augments those reasons. Move along, there's nothing to see here. If you, as a know-it-all gamer, bought a Kyro-II card, amidst all the low end nVidia, ATI and Matrox cards, you deserve to be punished. It ranks right up there with that whole Windows vs Linux song and dance. EDIT: Just wanted to add a clarification to the above text. My stance is not that the Kyro II card is bad, I'm specifically refering to Hercules' inability to actually market and position the cards appropriately in the market. The Kyro II chipset is a formidable and capable opponent and I expect it to get better with the Kyro III. But it all boils down to support and marketing. Hercules don't have a developer relations program to speak off [Nice English here, heh —Ed.] and customer support for those cards is virtually non-existent. And because of the poor marketing, lack of support etc, you are better off with a competing card because if you have a problem, you have very little recourse. Yes, I have a Kyro II card. Yes, it works on many games, including BCD, just fine. Not a single tweak is needed. Well, until next time, that is all. And oh, if you haven't yet grabbed your copy of PC Gamer December issue. Sim reviewer Andy Mahood takes BCD for a short spine [SHORT is an understatement. —Ed.] in the first printed review of the final game, scoring an overrated 77%. In my next sandbox, I'm taking on this whole premise that a game without multiplayer, loses review points. Why? Because BCD lost points in that review because I took the initiative of suspending multiplayer development in order to focus on single player. As a result, the game didn't ship with multiplayer. A decision that the fans and indeed the Beta testers, stand by. Other publishers or developers won't give a toss. They'd just ship it and patch it later. But when you're an indie like me and have forked out 100% of the costs associated with a twenty month development and production, you can't afford the luxury of risks like that. Andy makes some very strong points in defense of his review and I agree with all of them. So, if you're expecting some sort of scathing attack, you'll be sorely disappointed. I've beaten on PC Gamer over the years [They've raped you, that's for sure. —Ed.] and I've given up that past time for greener pastures. :-) That is all. As you were. The session starts in a few minutes btw. "Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rich Cook And I'm a great example of that. STARDATE: 03.06.2001 AD OK. Lets get one thing straight. These days, I am a VERY busy man. I have a project which I have invested a FORTUNE in time, effort and money in, about to ship in the coming millennia. As such, I don't have time for distractions. Such as, BCD. It takes a lot of time to keep track of Usenet and all the forums and sites I visit, especially the Flame War Follies. A lack of information can kill you. Therefore I MUST know what people are saying about me out there, so that I can, one day, crush the detractors once and for all! It also takes a good dent in the anals of time to write long rants here about what sales figures really mean... such stuff is obviously not obvious to my negative intellect target audience. I had hoped to shed some light on how things REALLY work with publishers and distributors, mainly for all those developers out there who wanna be like me, but I just noticed someone pointing out one of my lies on the spacesim group. I have to start twisting the entire topic now. Sorry to cut this short. Expect more info here shortly after I finish BCD |
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