Actually, Sirlin goes well beyond the gameplay aspects of scrubdom. He goes so far as to endorse bug exploitation until such bugs are fixed. I concur with that logic. Sometimes bugs become gameplay (e.g. fps rounding errors). To not take advantage of every legal avenue because of some sort of “ethical code” would indeed be a gray area, since ethics are as varied as the individual. The game is the sum of it’s parts. So long as I don’t use outside assistance (e.g. hacks), all feasible settings are perfectly legitimate until deemed otherwise by some governing power. Note that Joe999 is not such a power.
I’m not lots of people.
Gameplay > graphics. A game could be red and blue cubes in a pure white map for all I care. I often wish some games were, for various reasons (e.g. performance). Any game that can’t handle being reduced to such a basic level without losing it’s appeal will probably fail anyway.
I think you’d be surprised how nice my ET config actually looks, however. I tweak for frames, which means I tweak to reduce tris, not textures. That does mean r_fastsky 1, however. Sorry, Joe.
Geez, I post a picture of a flying tank and it ignites a cvar war! Look, SD, these players are getty pretty edgy waiting for a demo…it could get ugly unless we get a FP ETQW test soon!
FWIW - as a server and anitcheat admin, I set my computer in all kinds of modes to test how things look to other people. But I normally play with normal etpro based settings, and com_maxfps 76 to keep it pegged. The flying tank demos actually came from third parties (at one time I had a few of them), but I had seen it many times online and it always made me laugh.
dude, still i ask: why that attitude against me? did i say anything to offend you? i really don’t care with what settings you play, what you play, if you play or whatever.
all i ask myself is whether some of the gameplay graphics can be tweaked away or not in QW. as none of the devs has yet given a statement regarding this i think we’ll have to wait until the final game is out. i’m not so sure about the demo because once the demo is out people will start making screenshots n such and these will spread like fire and if there are some screenshots with tweaked crappy graphics like the one in the first post then i don’t think that this is good commercial for quake wars. we’ll see.
As stated before, this thread is about a flying tank, not your moral outrage at people using tweaks to gain what you percieve to be an advantage in game. Well, back on topic, seen that flying tank on Temple as well
I have no problem with you personally. I do have a problem with someone trying to tell others how to play, especially when they are so clearly uninformed as to think such perfectly benign settings as r_picmip and r_fastsky are advantageous beyond their marginal performance benefits.
As for ET:QW, I’d venture to guess that it will be roughly as tweakable as D3/Q4, which are both quite lenient, and for good reason. That engine can tax even the best hardware. Allowing a wide range of settings allows a wider range of players. Let’s just hope ET:QW doesn’t suffer the same lack of enthusiasm from the community as those games have.
Tweaks need to exist for a reason. In your console games everyone has the exact same hardware. FPS is not an issue, if a game gets a bad framerate it is dubbed crap and avoided. In the PC market everyone has different hardware. Your machine may be a beast, but someone else may be stuck trying to play this game on an old GF2. They can’t realistically run the game a 1600x1200 on high and get anything more than a slide show. ET has teh great ability to limit CVARs by server and the TWL limits are fair. If you think the league you play in is too forgiving tell them. A majority of the ET community feels that the TWL limits are reasonable.
well, in that case please show me the post where i say that anyone has to play a game this or that way. besides i wonder how you always come to only fastsky+picmip from a general “graphics tweakings” post:
Yes because fastsky + picmip = dirty tricks.[/quote]
i think the answer is that you only want to play it down because you use those tweakings yourself and not only fastsky and picmip and you have no real argument against what i initially said. come on, try a bit harder.
Finally, someone that tackle’s Joe’s point head on. Firstly, yes we’re all aware consoles are fixed hardware that’s why I mentioned devs can do something about this by being reasonably with the min spec requirements. Everyone and their mother fell on DICE because BF2 required a DX9 card when it was obvious a GF4 Ti4600 would be able to run the game if only PS1.1 shaders had been provided but I applauded the decision because that would mean the game’s lower quality limit would be higher as a result. FYI Dx9 cards are nearly four years old now.
Secondly, you can have different quality settings without having statisticaly significant advantages; unlike someone seems to think that flying tank image has textures with about 16 colours increasing contrast and making player model textures that much visible (especially on fueldump). This clarity may not increase your inherent aiming ability but it does increase your peripheral vision allowing you to notice enemies farther away trying to flank you. Turn off atmospheric effects and radar becomes that much easier.
So, while you don’t have to have fixed hardware on PC you, as a dev, can do somethings to make it nearly the same. Joe’s point is that if this doesn’t happen on the PC, more players are going to move to consoles. It’s unfortunate that some people can’t meet a min spec requirements but allowing them to tweak cvars not present in menus or to values farther than menus allow means EVERYONE, even the guy who just spent $5000 on a brand new PC, to play a 5 year old game that came out last week.
The problem, obviously, is that there is a tremendous pressure, usually from the publisher, to make the game run on the widest machine spec range possible because this brings in more sales. Now, from what I can understand, ETQW will require a video card with fragment program capability at floating point precision which is excellent but, like Joe, I too would like to know SD’s specific plans concerning IQ downgrades available in the game.
Just to reiterate because some don’t get it. Neither me nor Joe (if he allows me to speak for him) are saying you should play the game like we tell you to; in part we agree that if the game allows it it’s not morally wrong or anything. We’re saying the responsability lies in the hands of the developers to make sure the game IQ can’t be defaced enough to provide a statistically significant advantage. Wolf: ET is a free game so far from me to demand any sort of post-release support; any we get is a bonus. But when I put down my 50 bucks/euros (or 60 for the Collector’s Edition) for ETQW I expect to be able to play a 2006 game and not being forced to downgrade my IQ to remain competitive. I love D3 but I hardly ever played MP because I would have to turn off shadows since everyone else did.
Or to put it another way, the tweaking horse isn’t just dead, he’s already turned to glue. Seriously, this debate has been going since quake 1 at least.
About the flying tank, you end up with uglyness which ever way you do it. Either you get tank blocking dynamite, or you get flying tanks. Flying tanks are cooler, IMO :moo:
So, while you don’t have to have fixed hardware on PC you, as a dev, can do somethings to make it nearly the same. Joe’s point is that if this doesn’t happen on the PC, more players are going to move to consoles. It’s unfortunate that some people can’t meet a min spec requirements but allowing them to tweak cvars not present in menus or to values farther than menus allow means EVERYONE, even the guy who just spent $5000 on a brand new PC, to play a 5 year old game that came out last week.
You will drive far more gamers to console by heavily restricting hardware than by allowing tweaking of CVARs. It is the minority of players who will tweak their CVARs to get the most out of play. In fact for most gamers this doesn’t even cross their mind. They want the game to look as good as possible, while running at a playable level. You will offend far more players by not having the game run at all on their system. For most people a PC is a much bigger investment than a console and for them to shell out $150-200 for a graphics card upgrade the game has to be really darn good. Allowing players to be somewhat liberal with settings is one of PC gaming’s strengths, not one of its weaknesses. If you spend $5000 on your rig you can play a beautiful game, but you can still play it on an older machine also. A lot of people still have a GF4 because it is a good card that can still perform pretty good. If you can take something away without having a significant effect on gameplay a player should be able to.
Using fast sky is considered a great way to reduce the load on your CPU, it is also not considered an advantage by most reasonable players. Sure, turning off smoke and tree cover should obviously not be allowing in multiplayer. However for greyline tweaks it is really for the leagues to decide on a fair boundries for CVARs. The leagues have made other choices, such as adopting a the ability to dynamite the backdoor in Battery and creating a rule that disarms must not require a boost. They can handle deciding on fair limitations for CVARs too. Their choices usually tend to trickly down and influence the public servers too. It is healthy for the game to allow a bit of wiggle room and for the players to decide what is fair on their own. Too many unanticipated combinations emerge with time that the developers never expected.
If developers began developing for specific hardware I think you would be disapointed in the result. They would shoot lower, not higher. The money is in appealing to a wide audience, not the small percentage of gamers who have truely high end rigs.
With consoles you accept the fact that you are going to be years behind the PC crowd for a simplier, more stable experience. Consoles are just coming to their own in online multiplayer gaming very recently.
We’re in complete agreement then. I’m all for simple skies myself; again I’m not debating individual CVar tweaks here and I’m not trying to tell people which ones are ethical or not. You make a good point about raising the min spec too far however, don’t you think it’s reasonable for a game nowadays to require at least a 4 year old video card? My previous system was 4 years and half when I upgraded and I didn’t complain about games’ requirements. I mean, just because ETQW ships doesn’t mean those that don’t meet the specs have to stop playing Wolf: ET. Otherwise where is the line drawn? The GF3 is only a tad slower than the GF4 and then the GF2 Ultra is very much the same performance wise as the GF3, ad infinitum… You may think Dx9 is too steep a requirement and think GF4 should make the cut but another might take offence and want his Voodoo 2 to be supported.
However for greyline tweaks it is really for the leagues to decide on a fair boundries for CVARs. The leagues have made other choices, such as adopting a the ability to dynamite the backdoor in Battery and creating a rule that disarms must not require a boost. They can handle deciding on fair limitations for CVARs too.
Like I mentioned comp play can use a simple mod that unlocks the needed CVars. Most run mods like ETpro anyway.
Their choices usually tend to trickly down and influence the public servers too. It is healthy for the game to allow a bit of wiggle room and for the players to decide what is fair on their own. Too many unanticipated combinations emerge with time that the developers never expected.
Healthy? In theory, practice shows people will reduce quality even though their systems can handle it (see first post on this thread); if it isn’t to increase performance why do they tweak?
If developers began developing for specific hardware I think you would be disapointed in the result. They would shoot lower, not higher. The money is in appealing to a wide audience, not the small percentage of gamers who have truely high end rigs.
I never asked them to design for specific hardware. And as I mentioned I want quality to go up which is what happens when you raise the min spec requirements.
With consoles you accept the fact that you are going to be years behind the PC crowd for a simplier, more stable experience.
And fairer. I don’t know what you mean by simpler. Xbox live is quite popular and involved and MS will bring it to the PC with Vista.
People with better computers, able to run at high resolutions like 1600x1200 actually have more of an advantage than people tweaking.
You can see enemies in the distance and recognize them (axis, allies) easier than someone running at 800x600.
Your sniping can be improved since the single pixel you needed to hit at 800x600 is now multiple pixels for a hit.
You never have a slowdown that might hitch a lower computer.
You might be able to use crazy fields of view that would bog down a lesser comp.
If I cant tweak my settings anymore, than you shouldnt be able to play with a computer that costs more than $750. Is that fair, or should we still allow tweaking?
People with better computers, able to run at high resolutions like 1600x1200 actually have more of an advantage than people tweaking.
You can see enemies in the distance and recognize them (axis, allies) easier than someone running at 800x600.
Your sniping can be improved since the single pixel you needed to hit at 800x600 is now multiple pixels for a hit.
You never have a slowdown that might hitch a lower computer.
You might be able to use crazy fields of view that would bog down a lesser comp.
If I cant tweak my settings anymore, than you shouldnt be able to play with a computer that costs more than $750. Is that fair, or should we still allow tweaking?
In fact just the opposite.
In Battlefield 2, those running low settings have a distinct advantage as the game decrease the rendering distance to conserve rendering power. The result is if you run HIGH settings you can be behind a bush or in grass and hidden on your screen with the enemy totally obscured, but in full view on someone else’s with low settings. Used to p*ss me off no end that I’d get shot whilst totally concealed just because I ran high settings.
I reckon if anything they should ban people with poor pc’s, not only does it give them an unfair graphical advantage due to rendering restrictions, but they also lag the servers.
Oh, and to feed the ongoing cvar debatw, another heavily tweaked config, but to my defence, that screen was taken when I still had a 1GHz Duron and a GeForce4200, and even with that config this map was lagging like hell, close to beeing unplayable at times
In Battlefield 2, those running low settings have a distinct advantage as the game decrease the rendering distance to conserve rendering power. The result is if you run HIGH settings you can be behind a bush or in grass and hidden on your screen with the enemy totally obscured, but in full view on someone else’s with low settings. Used to p*ss me off no end that I’d get shot whilst totally concealed just because I ran high settings.
I reckon if anything they should ban people with poor pc’s, not only does it give them an unfair graphical advantage due to rendering restrictions, but they also lag the servers.
Al.
Thats fact only for Betafield 2, and other games that allow it.
If your game design says people should be able to hide in foliage, then players shouldnt be able to bypass having it drawn. If you do this however, you alienate a potentially large customer base because they cant run the game with an acceptable frame rate. So, you do one of two things - redesign your gameplay for the problem area, or let people bypass graphics. Dice went the second way, and made more money at the expense of tweak cheating. BF2 is a great game wrapped in crap- spawn killing as part of the game mechanic, tweak cheating, side flying bullets, and non registering hits for example.
Tweaking ET does NOT turn off foliage, since there really isnt much to begin with, and SD didnt need to address the problems inherent in huge enviroments like BF2. Who knows how Quake Wars will address this, but I’d give 50 to 1 odds on SD making something work that Dice just hacked together.
