What's with the EA/Nazi thing?

[MKSheppard]

Almost every new game that comes out requires a DirectX 9 compliant driver, but virtually none require DirectX 9 hardware. Hell, the vast majority don't even require DirectX 8 hardware.

Yet, they can't run without that DX9 compliant driver. Or will look like crap; need I point to you those guys who hacked Doom 3 to run on a
Voodoo 3/4 or whatever?

486 processors are still sold moron.

Really? Then where can I get a 486 CPU at my computer store? Or a 486 powered desktop for that matter?

[The Kernel]

Yet, they can't run without that DX9 compliant driver. Or will look like crap; need I point to you those guys who hacked Doom 3 to run on a
Voodoo 3/4 or whatever?

What the fuck does this Red Herring have to do with what I said? The GeForce 4 HAS A DIRECT X 9 COMPLIANT DRIVER! Do you even know what Direct X is?

Really? Then where can I get a 486 CPU at my computer store? Or a 486 powered desktop for that matter?

Fine, you want to talk about hardware that is at your local computer store? Try buying any budget PC. They'll give you integrated graphics based on Direct X 7/8 hardware with no AGP/PCI-e slot. There, you have an example of BRAND NEW hardware being obsoleted before it even gets out of the box.

[MKSheppard]

What the fuck does this Red Herring have to do with what I said? The GeForce 4 HAS A DIRECT X 9 COMPLIANT DRIVER!

Yet it doesn't have the DX9 Compliant Hardware; meaning as
newer games come out taking advantage of the DX9 feature sets,
the people who won't upgrade will be SOL. It just happened earlier
with BF2. To give you an example of SOL, look at Silent Hunter 3,
the ocean's surface is rendered with pixel shaders, meaning if your
card doesn't have pixel shaders, well you're SOL.

Fine, you want to talk about hardware that is at your local computer store? Try buying any budget PC. They'll give you integrated graphics based on Direct X 7/8 hardware with no AGP/PCI-e slot. There, you have an example of BRAND NEW hardware being obsoleted before it even gets out of the box.

And we don't see computer game makers or programmers accomodating
such morons who buy said hardware. So why should they accomodate people who stubbornly refuse to give up their increasingly obsolete
hardware? There was a bunch of people who kept onto their Voodoo
3/4s after 3DFx went bankrupt and got bought by NVIDIA, because it
gave better antialiasing and color performance. Should we accomdate
those people?

[Vertigo1]

What the fuck does this Red Herring have to do with what I said? The GeForce 4 HAS A DIRECT X 9 COMPLIANT DRIVER!

Yet it doesn't have the DX9 Compliant Hardware; meaning as
newer games come out taking advantage of the DX9 feature sets,
the people who won't upgrade will be SOL. It just happened earlier
with BF2. To give you an example of SOL, look at Silent Hunter 3,
the ocean's surface is rendered with pixel shaders, meaning if your
card doesn't have pixel shaders, well you're SOL.

Do you even know the difference between compliant and compatable? No single FX card (including yours) is DX9 compliant. COMPATABLE (meaning it can run some of the instructions, but it doesn't follow the DX9 standard), yes.

And we don't see computer game makers or programmers accomodating
such morons who buy said hardware. So why should they accomodate people who stubbornly refuse to give up their increasingly obsolete
hardware? There was a bunch of people who kept onto their Voodoo
3/4s after 3DFx went bankrupt and got bought by NVIDIA, because it
gave better antialiasing and color performance. Should we accomdate
those people?

When they're the majority of your customers, hell yes you should! Its called good business you retard! They've ALREADY accomidated us by porting it to the X-Box....WHICH USES A FUCKING GEFORCE 3! They could have EASILY incorperated visual options for those of us that can't afford a brand spanking new 6800GT or R800XT.

[The Kernel]

Vertigo took care of the first part, but I think I can further bitchslap your absurd notions on the second.

And we don't see computer game makers or programmers accomodating
such morons who buy said hardware.

Actually we do moron. Almost every game that comes out supports integrated graphics at some level, including graphically intensive games like Doom 3.

So why should they accomodate people who stubbornly refuse to give up their increasingly obsolete hardware?

A two year old core is hardly obsolete. Cutting NV10 support at this point is acceptable, but cutting out cores that don't support the latest Shader Model is ridiculous and unnecessary. Plenty of people still own these cards and it is historically not necessary to upgrade just to play games more than once every four years.

There was a bunch of people who kept onto their Voodoo
3/4s after 3DFx went bankrupt and got bought by NVIDIA, because it
gave better antialiasing and color performance. Should we accomdate
those people?

Careful Shep, your stupidity is showing.

3DFx is out of business and they don't do driver support for the latest Direct X revision. Thus, they should have been cut off the moment that their driver became obsolete. That's too bad for these people, but it's not the game companies that are at fault, it's 3DFx, and game developers are not obligated to support obsolete drivers.

Furthermore, Voodoo 5 didn't even have support for basic T&L, those people should have been cut off at the same time as the TNT2 crowd, regardless of driver support.

[Pu-239]

Heh, nVidia still supported the TNT2 in their unified driver package until recently (it's supposed to be split off into a legacy package).

[Darth Wong]

I've looked through this whole thread and haven't seen anything even remotely resembling a reason to consider omissions in EA's graphics card support to be a moral issue rather than just sloppy programming or questionable business decisions. And if it's not a moral issue, then it hardly justifies EA=Nazism, does it? Even if we disregard the question of severity.

[Mr Bean]

No its not, something I started typing eariler but closed by accident.


Sheppard, There exists a version of Battlefield 2 that runs on Geforce 4's, Heck it runs on Geforce3's.

The graphics portion which they had to re-write would cost them nothing to add onto the PC version except a few tweaks here and there.

Considering they programed it in windows they had to go out of their way to make it Xbox complinate but PC incompatable.

This is just a shitty tatic to help the jolly green sell more new video cards.
Pure and simple, they can't defend this from a techincal, moral, or cost prospective.

[Xon]

I've looked through this whole thread and haven't seen anything even remotely resembling a reason to consider omissions in EA's graphics card support to be a moral issue rather than just sloppy programming or questionable business decisions. And if it's not a moral issue, then it hardly justifies EA=Nazism, does it? Even if we disregard the question of severity.

The whole graphics card things is nothing on thier past actions. The bf2 patch was horrible and was recalled and with an expansion pack announced based off a known buggy codebase.

Then there is the fact that bf2 is a buggy POS in its current state, the netcode sucks some serious ass.

Then there is the past actions of EA. Borgifying smaller development houses and turning thier works to utter shit. As well as their known history of mistreating thier employies.

And the unskippable EA motto avi in thier games really anoys the fucking crap out of me.

[BabelHuber]

I think one thing hasn't been addressed in this thread:

It not only involves cost to support a certain technology for EA, it also involves cost to actually test it:

See it this way: The unofficial BF2 patch for the GF4 ti has some issues. These issues EA would have to solve. This surely involves heavy testing.

Also for each patch which is released, the tests would have to be repeated.

I guess that EA made this decision because they think that the revenue from games sold to people still using pre-1.4 pixel shader would be lower than the costs involved to support the according cards.

I am a programmer myself (albeit my company sells business software), and we cannot validate our software for each and every scenario one could imagine, too.

There has a line to be drawn somewhere, since you cannot spend an infinite amount of testing effort for a given application.

[Mr Bean]

I think one thing hasn't been addressed in this thread:

It not only involves cost to support a certain technology for EA, it also involves cost to actually test it:

See it this way: The unofficial BF2 patch for the GF4 ti has some issues. These issues EA would have to solve. This surely involves heavy testing.

Also for each patch which is released, the tests would have to be repeated.

You know about Nvidia's Unified Driver's Right? The only test they have to redo is one for the switch between 2.0 and 3.0 and 1.4

Which means with a single change they support Geforce4's and eariler.

---
Oh and I caught something from eariler, the guys in question were running Doom 3 on a Voodoo2.
---

[BabelHuber]

Which means with a single change they support Geforce4's and eariler.

You haven't gotten the point: While it may be easy to implement a feature, it isn't necessarily cheap to test it, too.

Of course the developer can say 'it should work', but then you have to make sure it works flawlessly. This involves hiring additional testers, perhaps buying additional test systems, it involves time to instruct the testers, it involves discussions between the developers and the testers about the test results, ....

And as I've already stated, the unofficial BF2 patch doesn't work without issues, so for me it doesn't seem to be such a trivial task to add this feature.

[The Kernel]

You haven't gotten the point: While it may be easy to implement a feature, it isn't necessarily cheap to test it, too.

Of course the developer can say 'it should work', but then you have to make sure it works flawlessly. This involves hiring additional testers, perhaps buying additional test systems, it involves time to instruct the testers, it involves discussions between the developers and the testers about the test results, ....

And as I've already stated, the unofficial BF2 patch doesn't work without issues, so for me it doesn't seem to be such a trivial task to add this feature.

Oh gee, the biggest games company in the world has to support a graphics card that nearly every other game in existence does. I feel SOOOO bad for them.

Sorry, but the GeForce 4 is one of the most popular cards among gamers who don't upgrade every year (just take a cursory look at the statistics on Futuremarks 3DMark page) and it makes zero sense to cut them off to save a few bucks on a blockbuster game.

Funny too that they couldn't even seem to get THAT right considering how full of bugs BF2 is.

[Mr Bean]

Which means with a single change they support Geforce4's and eariler.

You haven't gotten the point: While it may be easy to implement a feature, it isn't necessarily cheap to test it, too.

Supporting the single most popluar shadar model out there is not a "feature" its freken common sense to make sure you can have an extra two million buy your game and it work on their computer.

Of course the developer can say 'it should work', but then you have to make sure it works flawlessly.

Prehaps you have not played any EA games recently, they do not 'Work Flawlessly" even thier Console games are prone to crashing or have well know easily identified bugs.

Or prehaps you missed the whole "If your playing on Windows XP the only OS BF2 officaly supports, and your using a Nvidia or ATI card, the only cards that we support, the 1.01 patch causes a massive memeory leak that renders the game unplayable in half an hour.

Its kinda hard to get those kinda bugs out the door if it "works flawlessly"

And as I've already stated, the unofficial BF2 patch doesn't work without issues, so for me it doesn't seem to be such a trivial task to add this feature.

The offical patch breaks the game(Pre 1.02, which is still be "testing" but by the public)

EA has a traditon of "patches" that break the game, they obviously don't have any sort of testing staff, or if they do, their competence must be slightly less than that of your avarage brain-dead cucumber for these sorts of bugs to make it out the door.

[BabelHuber]

Oh gee, the biggest games company in the world has to support a graphics card that nearly every other game in existence does. I feel SOOOO bad for them.

If you have limited ressources for development and testing you have to draw a line somewhere. Is this so hard to understand?

We have 2005 now, not 2004. The GF4ti is a 2002/ early 2003 model. Meanwhile the GF FX 5X00, GF6x00 and GF 7800 are out. This card is 4 generations behind.

[Mr Bean]

Oh gee, the biggest games company in the world has to support a graphics card that nearly every other game in existence does. I feel SOOOO bad for them.

If you have limited ressources for development and testing you have to draw a line somewhere. Is this so hard to understand?

We have 2005 now, not 2004. The GF4ti is a 2002/ early 2003 model. Meanwhile the GF FX 5X00, GF6x00 and GF 7800 are out. This card is 4 generations behind.

And guess what? Thats 60%+ of the market your pissing away.
You can draw the line at the Geforce 2 which can barley run the game even in low end mode.


And not to mention as said before THEY HAVE A WORKING 1.4 MODEL They HAD to support 1.4 in order to port it over to the Xbox, the Coding work is identical, it would take them next to nothing to rework the Code they ALREADY DID and release it for the PC.

[Xon]

You know about Nvidia's Unified Driver's Right? The only test they have to redo is one for the switch between 2.0 and 3.0 and 1.4

A Unified Driver means 1 driver for all sets of hardware, not that all sets of hardware will behave the same or the drivers will even offer the same ability on different hardware.

[Xon]

And guess what? Thats 60%+ of the market your pissing away.

So? Testing costs mega $$$. The lack of testing might be worth that +60% posible market.

And going by how buggy EA stuff is, they really must skimp on the testing.

And not to mention as said before THEY HAVE A WORKING 1.4 MODEL They HAD to support 1.4 in order to port it over to the Xbox, the Coding work is identical, it would take them next to nothing to rework the Code they ALREADY DID and release it for the PC.

The Xbox is a fixed set of hardware. They only have to rest 1 configuration, period.

Porting the changes to the PC version just increases the number of posible configurations for the PC version.

[BabelHuber]

And guess what? Thats 60%+ of the market your pissing away.

Where do you have those numbers? Have you pulled them out of your ass?

I don't know one gamer who has a pre-DX9 card nowadays. The Radeon 9700PRo came out in september 2002. That's almost 3 years of DX9.

And since when do OEM PCs (models which don't use on-board graphics) have DX9 cards? Since more than 2 years.

A DX9 card which can play BF2 costs $100. Big deal.

And not to mention as said before THEY HAVE A WORKING 1.4 MODEL They HAD to support 1.4 in order to port it over to the Xbox

How often do I have to point out that shipping a feature involves much more effort than just the time of the implementation of the developers? Do you have any idea how complex games nowadays are? Do you honestly think that when it is easy to implement a feature, it is also easy to figure out all side-effects in the whole application for every imaginably scenario?

[The Kernel]

If EA wants to be shitfucks and give up what little goodwill they have left, then fine, fuck em. But if the latest titles can still see their way to supporting integrated graphics, then I say the GeForce 4 is still fine for a lot of people.

By the way, just because the Radeon 9700 came out in late 2002 doesn't mean that the GeForce 4 ceased to be popular. Until the release of cheaper parts (and even after then since that generation had too many compromises on performance) the GeForce 4 4200 was still very popular, well until the end of 2003. That makes it a two year old selling card, as it was still positioned on the midrange and lowend market two years ago.

Excuse me for expecting a card that was sold as a serious midrange solution to be supported in the latest games. Usually the window is four to five years on even the top titles.

And btw, this doesn't apply to me since I own a 6800GT, but I still think it's bullcrap to the people who own perfectly good GeForce 4 cards.

EDIT: BTW BabelHuber, I think it is very funny that you criticize someone for not having hard numbers, then follow it up with your own personal experience on card ownership statistics.

[BabelHuber]

Until the release of cheaper parts (and even after then since that generation had too many compromises on performance) the GeForce 4 4200 was still very popular, well until the end of 2003.

While this is true, don't forget that the Radeon 9500 came out in 2002 followed by the 9600 in 2003, and the GF5600/5700/5900XT came out in 2003, too.

This means while the GF4 ti was cheaper than the before-mentioned midrange cards in 2003, everybody buying a GF4 ti back then must have known that it's just a DX8 card, so it will be out-dated earlier than the newer cards.

Now you can hardly complain that exactly this happens.

BTW BabelHuber, I think it is very funny that you criticize someone for not having hard numbers, then follow it up with your own personal experience on card ownership statistics.

This is an utterly stupid strawman attack. I have never stated numbers. I have just pointed out that your numbers were not supported by hard evidence, and that I have reasonable doubts about their correctness (those who can read do have a nadvantage ).

[The Kernel]

While this is true, don't forget that the Radeon 9500 came out in 2002 followed by the 9600 in 2003, and the GF5600/5700/5900XT came out in 2003, too.

The 4600 was more powerful than the 5600/5700 though, that must be taken into consideration. For nVidia people back in 2003, the 4600 was still the best purchase for those on a budget since it had the graphics horsepower that the mid-low end 5xxx series lacked.

This means while the GF4 ti was cheaper than the before-mentioned midrange cards in 2003, everybody buying a GF4 ti back then must have known that it's just a DX8 card, so it will be out-dated earlier than the newer cards.

True, but unlike any previous generation of nVidia cards, aside from the new DX9 features, the previous gen was superior.

I'm not saying that eventually cards shouldn't be dropped from the supported list, what I'm saying is that it is way too early to start dropping cards that are only 2-3 years old. PC gamers aren't going to respond well to this, enough of them already are picking up and leaving for consoles because of the cheaper costs.

Besides, you know as well as I do that EA's decision to not include the GeForce 4 has nothing to do with the cards performance or features, and that's the only legitamate reason to cut a card from either nVidia or ATI from the supported list.

Now you can hardly complain that exactly this happens.

Actually I can, EA is the leader in game sales, they should be setting an example for others to follow, not being the odd man out. OTOH, this is exactly the sort of sleezy, money saving tactic that a company that mistreats the fuck out of their own employees should be expected to take.

This is an utterly stupid strawman attack. I have never stated numbers. I have just pointed out that your numbers were not supported by hard evidence, and that I have reasonable doubts about their correctness (those who can read do have a nadvantage ).

They weren't my numbers jackass, learn how to read.

[BabelHuber]

They weren't my numbers jackass, learn how to read.

You're right. Nevertheless, it was a strawman attack.

what I'm saying is that it is way too early to start dropping cards that are only 2-3 years old

As I've already stated, it depends on the revenue you get if it makes sense to include a feature. It's not a matter of opinions.

Besides, you know as well as I do that EA's decision to not include the GeForce 4 has nothing to do with the cards performance or features, and that's the only legitamate reason to cut a card from either nVidia or ATI from the supported list.

No. The legitimate reason is that only a certain amount of people are interested in GF4 ti support. I am not, for example.

EA is the leader in game sales, they should be setting an example for others to follow

I don't see an ethical problem here. EA is in to make money. If a few people are angry, so what?

[Alyeska]

To save money EA will do business practices that will cost them sales.

Real brilliant logic.

Any money spent to get the GeForce 4 series working would have made significantly more money then it would have cost. But the current reasoning EA should have just built the game to run on a single video card. Anything else is a needless expense afterall.

[Mr Bean]

So? Testing costs mega $$$. The lack of testing might be worth that +60% posible market.

So? You want a game people will buy? Don't have it format their computers when they install it. Releasing a bug free game will garner you alot more dedicated fans and more sales then a half completed, then patched to completion game.

Battlefield 1942 was such a novel game at the time combined with the excellent demo they put out, made tons of people go out and buy the game, people expect more from a sequal and rather expect they can play said sequal on thier computer.



And on testing, prehaps, just prehaps they should do some public beta testing? There are quite a few companys doing it and MMORPG's are famous for it, they toss it over to Fileplanet, offer it up as a "Free/Limited" beta test, watch people play for a few months and fix the bugs they encounter.

The Xbox is a fixed set of hardware. They only have to rest 1 configuration, period.

Porting the changes to the PC version just increases the number of posible configurations for the PC version.

Shader 1.4 is the only thing preventing it from running on Geforce4's and eariler, come on now.

Where do you have those numbers? Have you pulled them out of your ass?

Sales figures from a long ago Inquirer story combined with educated guesswork. The Geforce 4 TI's sold a shit-ton of cards and they sold even more when the 5xxx series came out.

I don't know one gamer who has a pre-DX9 card nowadays. The Radeon 9700PRo came out in september 2002. That's almost 3 years of DX9.

I know quite a few hundred. Not all of us have tons of cash sitting around for the next $500 release, some of us don't have the $400 for it a year later, but we might have the $280 for it two years from now.

Now if you had slaped "serious as in proffesional gamer" I would agree with you, but I only know two people who are trying to play video games for a living. But I do know a few hundred folks who stop by the WOLF gaming server each night using everything from Geforce1's through ATI 8500's.

And since when do OEM PCs (models which don't use on-board graphics) have DX9 cards? Since more than 2 years.

Oh you mean "Intel's Extreme Series?" That won't play BF2 either

A DX9 card which can play BF2 costs $100. Big deal.

Play AT ALL or play well?