The future of PC gaming - 2009 edition

[lord of the mark]

fun with capitalism department


"Receive 10% on everything your Friends spend on GamersGate during the first twelve months after their registration.
Your 10% will be added to your "Account Credit" which can be used to purchase any games via GamersGate."

So if anyone here IS considering joining gamersgate anyone, please let me know and I will send you the link so I get credit. Thanks in advance

[DrSpike]

Unfortunately there aren't that many people playing 10 year old games.

[Unimatrix11]

El Cid: AR? Alternate Reality? Few game acronyms i wouldnt know, but this one left me kinda puzzled...

[El_Cid]

El Cid: AR? Alternate Reality? Few game acronyms i wouldnt know, but this one left me kinda puzzled...

you shouldn't encourage me over this ok

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=135591

This is the link you need from that thread i posted years back:

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=69356

good luck

[Nikolai]

Unfortunately there aren't that many people playing 10 year old games.

GG is not an old games site.

[DrSpike]

Shhhh.

[Unimatrix11]

Haha - so i was right - alternate reality... I remember how i wanted this game, after having read a review of it, when i was like 9 or 10 years old. It never happened. This is the first reference to it, i saw since - so it was a quite wild and daring guess. About the thread asking, if it was the first 3D-bitmap-game, i wonder if ´The Bard´s Tale´ wasnt released a few weeks earlier - and then there is ´Wizardry´, but it only came to my attention with part VI, so i wouldnt know, when they started using 3D-bitmaps.

[El_Cid]

I worked out I actualy spent a whole 8 months of my life playing "The City" and "The Dungeon" as a kid.

I mapped the games and got those maps published in a magazine. If you have never given them a go, i would suggest trying it as outlined in the atariage forum thread. They are quite unforgiving games by todays design(perma-death/poisons/illness etc), but Phillip Price had packed magic dust into the atari version, a very special game and very ahead of its time. I still give it a run from time-to-time

Not sure if it was the actual first game to use 3D bitmaps, but Bill Gates saw the games opening sequence and made the 'scrolling starfield' his windows screensaver. It was incredibly ahead of it's time in many of the techniques it used(like getting so many colours on the atari screen at once). It certainly is one of the first games to use 3D bitmaps anyway. Worth a spin, tell me if you solve the puzzle of the guardians riddle if you get that far!

[El_Cid]

ok well i have news that may well be the future of PC gaming!

http://gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22875

In short: Play a PC game on any PC or TV screen without needing to reach the specs normaly required to play. You need a decent internet connection though(well quite a basic one, but not dialup), and a monthly subscription.

I don't know if this will be a good thing or a bad thing in general? But it certainly could cut out 90% of the problems associated with modern PC gaming(hardware issues etc).

[El_Cid]

"Not only have we solved the problem of compressing the video games, we've solved the latency problem," Perlman said to Gamasutra. "We knew, in order to make this thing work, we'd have to figure out a way to get video to run compressed over consumer connections with effectively no latency. Our video compression technology has one millisecond in latency -- basically no latency at all. All the latency is just for the transport, and we've also addressed that."

- from article.

And yes i have heard of latency, experienced it more than a few times in mp games back in the day. Still if their tech works as well as it claims in the real-world, then they might have something? It's certainly an interesting development.

[DrSpike]

Ever heard of latency?

The most stressful part of PC gaming is the graphics, which are not suitable for cloud computing.

Did you read the article?

"Not only have we solved the problem of compressing the video games, we've solved the latency problem," Perlman said to Gamasutra. "We knew, in order to make this thing work, we'd have to figure out a way to get video to run compressed over consumer connections with effectively no latency. Our video compression technology has one millisecond in latency -- basically no latency at all. All the latency is just for the transport, and we've also addressed that."

It's natural to be sceptical of course (I certainly am - it sounds like something for nothing to my non-technical self) but they say they've got it covered.

[DrSpike]

[DrSpike]

This bit does make it sound like something beyond the immediate future.

"While it is of course impossible to completely eliminate the possibility of latency over a network, OnLive has actually gone to such lengths as to work directly with cable and internet providers to identify and repair inefficiencies in their systems that resulted in dropped packets or other flaws.

Eventually, the company hopes to provide even faster service by streaming directly through cable to users' homes, much like paid television currently is."

[Unimatrix11]

Apart from the apparently inevitable personal insults, i do agree with Asher (again). I am by no means an expert on this, but this just sounds too good to be true. I would also think, that if there was something to it, the hardware industry would jump them to death, for fear for their sales - except of course, if they hoped that company would replace all their costumers as buyers. No, seriously, Apolyton is the best thing, to rid you of the illusion of universally fast internet services.

Apart from all that, if today, some software doesnt work on my comp, i can at least hope to be able to fix it. But if all software runs on some planetary mainframe super-server (or whatnot), and THAT crashes, Y2K-horror will become a reality. So, yeah, i dont think so.

EDIT: Plus, it´s too big-brotherish for my taste. Theoretically, banning you from the use of any comp, given this tech has gone far enough, would be as easy as turning a switch - you simply would be denied access to the planetary super-thing.

[DrSpike]

You can't be this naive. Do you know how the internet works?

They can't magically "solve" latency.

I said I was sceptical, and it's right to be. If you had originally responded with "that's BS, because of x, y and z" then you probably would have got everyone to agree with you except maybe El Cid ( ). As it was I don't think that you read the article before you first responded.