MMO Development Lesson #11
Technological accessibility means making your game work well for a broad range of system requirements. Making your game simply work on a broad range of machines isn’t good enough; you need to ensure that the game works well and looks good even at the minimum requirements. Players won’t stand for a horrible looking game even if it runs on their low end system. You’re essentially creating a variable experience for the game and you’re actually facilitating negative impressions by making the game look like crap on low end systems. It should look good at the minimum spec, great at the recommended spec, and even better as a computer’s specs get higher.
[...] motivations for this: Part of that was done out of… Source: Geldon Categories: Bloggers 06:00 MMO Development Lesson #11 Technological accessibility means making your game work well for a broad range of system [...]
I would absolutely say this was the failing of EQ2. I did play in the beta, and while my machine was just above the required spec, I had to play with almost all the effects turned to minimum, I could only see things 5 feet in front of me, and the characters looked like blurry smudges. I heard that later on after release they fixed alot of that so that the game runs much better now, but after seeing how well WoW ran on my same crappy PC, it was far too late to win me back.
I saw this again with Vanguard, I got into the beta, and even though my PC was at the minimum spec, I couldn’t actually get the game to load past the character creator (and even the character creator didn’t run very well). Again, I’ve heard the games runs more smoothly now, and I even bought a new PC since then, but that first impression still lingers.
facilitating negative impressions by making the game look like crap on low end systems. It should look good at the minimum spec, great at the recommended spec, and even better as a computer’s specs get higher. posted by Ryan Shwayder @ 22:00 Comments Off
I’m going to have to /aol Jason. I trialed EQII and found that I had to run on such low graphic settings that it was like making putty men run around behind a tracing paper screen. EQII went on my “Tried It Didn’t Like It” list.
Over time the games rig was tarted up a bit, new card here, more memory there. So, once again feeling eMacho I trundled off to Norrath and, yep, it ran lovely and I’ve never looked back.
Then I tried Vanguard… I know, I know, it was beta, it was early days after launch, it was… oh man it was horrible. So it’s on the pile of games I might give another try “When I eventually build THE machine and can run Oblivion on anything but the bottom rung settings”. Meanwhile all the PR, email, RSS feeds, positive spin from the three people I’ve heard of who are still playing*… it’s all wasted. VSoH is one of ‘those’ games.
*Almost everyone I know who has given up on VSoH has given up, not because of the grind, not because it was complex, not because crafting is… different but because it looked like EQ on their uber machines and that made them sad puppies.
[...] MMO Development Lesson #11 [...]
Did 38Studios have a recent developer pow-wow about this? Two related topics here and Moorgard’s blog entry on the 3rd are all about the same thing: Code your game to look good on what exists at that time, and make sure that it looks good even on the minimum spec. machine. As noted here, EQ2 is a good example of what not to do, as is Vanguard, while WoW is an example of something to emulate.
So what else is new?
The present EQ2 developer team has been making some changes lately that have improved performance of the game, so there is some progress there. If/when the promised revamp to skeleton models appears, I hope that performance issues will go down even further and there will be greater diversity in avatar appearance.
I have to agree…
I went to EQ2 when it came out because my long time guild from EQL was going there. But my machine, which ran EQL well enough, was sort of on the low-end of EQ2’s specs. Normally, I’d take a little stuttering and run in moderately ok graphics (it looked better than EQL most times) but in some areas (and when raiding) I’d have to either turn it down to “I’m wearing blur-specatcles” or get like 1FPS.
Then I bought a new computer. And I could raid with max textures (some things not on… but if you ask me, turning off say specular lighting and funny shadows is OK if I get better textures). And I was happy.
And then I bough VSoH (or as I call it, VG). And I can run it ok, but its maybe as pretty as EQ2, and much slower.
Things shouldn’t be going backwards.
And that brings me to what I think is a critical issue… texture resolution.
If there’s one thing that really makes or breaks it for me, its the textures. (And maybe some associated bump mapping). If that stone wall looks like a stone wall, I don’t particularly care that that barrel over there doesn’t have a shadow. I can live with that.
But if I can see every shadow and the light effects from every torch… but all they shine on/eminate from are glossy blobs of color, thats not cool.
So heres what I say. Write your game so that you might not get all kinds of fancy shadows and lights and such at the “minimum spec,” but all the textures make the things they represent actually look like it. In other words… the minimum textures should look ‘OK’. Blurry blobs of stuff aren’t cool.
Could it not be said that the development teams are setting that min spec too low. It could be them wanting to get the largest customer base too buy instead of the best performance there game can handle possibly on a slightly smaller gap of requirements.
I say the min spec should be increased to a more realistic level. Then that way you go into a buyer beware situation if you are at a lower spec.
I still try to stay away from games in which I just barely meet the minimum specs. Your asking for a bad first impression.
You still got a crapton of uncertainty in hardware specs. People set their hardware up wrong, Dell delivers disfunctional drivers with their pre-installed package, Windows Update install some default garbage that makes your fancy 8800GTX l33t pro p1mp card have the shader support of a TNT2 and your motherboard gets some ancient chipset drivers that were written when PC was called IBM compatible.
Writing on the box that your game requires only 7700GTI pro l33t card wont save you, unless you know that it will run nicely with the shader support of a TNT2 card. Otherwise you also have to start writing on the box that you need to install drivers that support the hardware and so on - too much text to fit on the box. Advanced computer setups are not performed by the larger volume of people who install computers.
What Wolfe said is ultimately why I hope that consoles take over the gaming market, even MMOs. Much can be said in favor of standard hardware.
Now if consoles would just hold more than 16-24 people at a time. But they are the way to go for easier development. The problem is that the number of potential customers is much less on consoles.
The player limit on consoles is the same as PCs without dedicated servers. Someone is always hosting the game. Once PCs started using dedicated servers where no one played and they just farmed and managed data, more people could play… I don’t think anyone in their right mind would suggest having players host an MMO. But I know at one point Vanguard was supposed to go to the 360… there are other games toying with the idea… Sony is going to start hosting servers for PS3 games.
It’ll take a couple or three more years at least, but an MMO on a console that has no more limitations than the PC version isn’t far off.