BTW, I'm suprised nobody has mentioned Raven Shield yet in this thread. Well, I guess I shouldn't be suprised, since most people here probably think it's OK to optimize a game for a certain card, as long as it's not an NVIDIA card. Still, for as much bitching as you people do about games that are tailored towards one brand, you'd think you'd at least mention a game featured on the front page of the ATI website...
Pixel shaders... Nv specific titles on the way?
- Thread starter Fuz
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Randell said:
From their "Meet the Maker" Q&A for Raven Shield:
Not to mention the whole first part of that Q&A session reads like a marketing campaign with Ubi Soft praising ATI. If people are truely worried about games picking one hardware manufacturer over another, these types of comments should raise concern.
Oh, but that's right, NVIDIA is the only company capable of ruining the industry.
I'm not particularly against ATI or for NVIDIA, I just feel the opinions around here generally slant in one direction, so I find it neccessary to bring up opposing arguments occasionally. Somehow I doubt the guy calling consumers idiots for trading their Radeon for a GeForce so they can play NWN with shiny water, will be calling people idiots if they trade in their GeForce for a Radeon so they can play Raven Shield with TRUFORM for their models.
that is not the problem...
can GF3/4 do truform ( or Npatches ) ?? i don´t think so... you think developers shoudn't use it just because nvidia cards can´t do it?
it would be a problem if nvidia cards could use Npatches but the developers choose to only use the ATI approach.... and this is the case in NWN, Radeon cards can do the same effects but they choose only to use nvidia's path to do it....
can GF3/4 do truform ( or Npatches ) ?? i don´t think so... you think developers shoudn't use it just because nvidia cards can´t do it?
it would be a problem if nvidia cards could use Npatches but the developers choose to only use the ATI approach.... and this is the case in NWN, Radeon cards can do the same effects but they choose only to use nvidia's path to do it....
Crusher said:
If it has a Big Honking ATI logo at game start, I would hate it just as much as I hate the Big Honking nVidia logo in UT2k3 (still waiting for a command line switch to skip it). But this UT2k3 is not an example that parallels what we've been discussing about NwN (which does not have a Big Honking nVidia logo, btw).
The thing is, UT2k3 supports the same "ATI unique" feature that Raven Shield does, N-Patches. As does RtCW, Soul Reaver 2, etc. Why you are trying to stretch that to represent the same thing as what we were discussing I don't know.
Now, the game may very well have a Big Honking ATI logo like UT2k3's nVidia logo, and you can count me in on wishing that idea would die a quick death. But n-patch support is only ATI specific because other vendors have not exposed it effectively (Hmm...the Parhelia doesn't?).
Reverend said:
I don't think nVidia really has a problem with me as a person. After all, I am a registered developer with nVidia too. Your scenario doesn't sound unlikely to me, but it doesn't sound like the way things should work either.
I don't think that I'm going to ATi has anything to do with it, especially since I experienced the same problem before and during the time when I was actually going to nVidia for a job.
In any case, if I send an email to nVidia, I would think that unless I present myself perhaps with links to my site etc. that I would be pretty much unknown to nVidia. I can understand if they only tell a little more sensitive stuff to people they really know they can trust, but just admitting a driver bug or at least stating that they will investigate the problem I'm reporting is not what I call sensitive data.
kmolazz said:
Nope, I'm saying I don't like seeing "Optimized for ATI Radeon 9x00 cards" painted all over games, and if people want to complain about video-card-specific games, it is worth mentioning. It appears demalion agrees with me on that point.
kmolazz said:
You can tesselate your models to the same level that they do with Npatches, and it would allow other cards to render them with the same appearance (though probably not with the same performance). Will they include models like that for cards that don't have TRUFORM support? If they don't, the game will look different depending on what type of video card you have, regardless of the fact that non-ATI cards are capable of displaying the same thing. I could be wrong, but thought this was the base argument in this thread.
kmolazz said:
demalion said:
I was referring more to the general argument being presented here, not the specific case of Neverwinter Nights, which we've already discussed in-depth.
Crusher said:
There is a finite amount of polygons in game artwork. I don't think I've seen a game yet that included geometry that didn't have sharp edges. N-Patches are an effect that smooths that. The thing is, nVidia can do the things as you suggest (so can Radeon 7x00 cards) to the artwork, but it is disabled (in the case of nVidia cards) because it is not competitive speed wise. That is nVidia's decision.
Unless there is a Big Honking (should I trademark the phrase?
) logo from ATI in Raven Shield, your mentioning the game does not make sense in any context of this discussion.There are plenty of games that are "nVidia sponsored", but I've objected to NwN and UT2k3 for 2 separate and distinct reasons that may not be reflected by all such games. The reason I mention those games is because they are case examples, and one does not fit the info you complained about, and we don't know if the other one does yet (or atleast I don't...I guess I should install the demo and see, eh? I downloaded it days ago).
Crusher, i believe the big difference is simple: Nothing prevents nVidia from implementing "truform" (n patches).
ATI, otoh, CANNOT use extensions that are "nvidia proprietary".
Truform is not ATI proprietary.
Therein is the difference.
I dont think anyone here is saying, "If card A has the feature, and Card B doesnt, well then Card A's feature shouldnt be used"
The fatal flaw in your truform analogy is that performance quite simply would SUCK without a hardware npatches method - in fact, nVidia USED to support n patches in software - they disabled it because of speed issues.
OTOH, if card A and ccard B have the same features, exposed with different extensions (one of which is open and the other proprietary) then only using the proprietary one is an issue worth jumping alll over them for.
ATI, otoh, CANNOT use extensions that are "nvidia proprietary".
Truform is not ATI proprietary.
Therein is the difference.
I dont think anyone here is saying, "If card A has the feature, and Card B doesnt, well then Card A's feature shouldnt be used"
The fatal flaw in your truform analogy is that performance quite simply would SUCK without a hardware npatches method - in fact, nVidia USED to support n patches in software - they disabled it because of speed issues.
OTOH, if card A and ccard B have the same features, exposed with different extensions (one of which is open and the other proprietary) then only using the proprietary one is an issue worth jumping alll over them for.
Althornin said:
Even when the developer spends a week trying to implement it on card B without success? It sounds to me like they had two options, ship the game with broken support for shiny water on Radeons (if the QA team would even allow that, let alone the publisher, who was probably pushing to get it out the door ASAP) and deal with thousands of people bitching about their broken feature, or ship the game like they did and deal with the problem later when they had more time if enough people complained about it (and it sounds to me like they did).
What I'm hearing people say in this thread, is that Bioware didn't even want to support the feature on ATI cards, and I have seen no evidence supporting that claim. The facts show nothing of the kind, and if Bioware really didn't want to support the feature on ATI cards, and they didn't care what their customers wanted, I doubt they would have worked on it further. People don't seem to care about the facts, though. They just hear that a game shipped with something that worked on NVIDIA cards and not on ATI cards, and they jump all over it. Bitching to Bioware to fix the problem is understandable, but continuing to bitch at them once they've fixed it, and accuse them of doing it on purpose in the first place without any proof isn't what I call an objective complaint.
I would be more worried about titles that carry an "optimized for ATI" or "NVIDIA--the way it was meant to be played" sticker, than I would about titles that lacked support for certain features due to implementation problems and development time constraints.
Crusher said:
You try and make this sound unlikely, but look at the release notes on games. They are full of things like "Blah blah broken in this driver set, turn it off until it gets fixed for card A".
This senario is exactly what SHOULD be done. Then it can be turned on when the issue is fixed imediately. AND they recieve no flack, because they can point directly at ATI (IF it was ATI's fault).
from UT2K3's readme:
I mean, look at just about any games readme, its full of this kind of stuff.
The Meet The Maker section is merely to give users the insight on some features of the game and how it takes advantage of any features that the ATI-based VPU's have. In the case of Raven Sheild, since they were using TRUFORM, among other features, it made sense to promote that fact. And since it is on the ATI sight, it also made sense to talk about the game and ATI cards in the same breath.
If my memory serves me correctly for this title, TRUFORM allows the game to run at the 'NORMAL' (not sure what the setting is exactly) detail setting and give the same end result as if it were set to 'HIGHEST'. But, of course, improving game performance. I think the Meet The Maker actually mentions this...
[EDIT: Forgot to mention that we do have a small logo on the main screen, totally non-intrusive IMHO, and we did not block anyone to have it there. It was at the request of Ubi Soft that it was put there.]
If my memory serves me correctly for this title, TRUFORM allows the game to run at the 'NORMAL' (not sure what the setting is exactly) detail setting and give the same end result as if it were set to 'HIGHEST'. But, of course, improving game performance. I think the Meet The Maker actually mentions this...
[EDIT: Forgot to mention that we do have a small logo on the main screen, totally non-intrusive IMHO, and we did not block anyone to have it there. It was at the request of Ubi Soft that it was put there.]
Bigus Dickus
Regular
demalion,
The Big Honking Logo in UT2k3 can be 'changed' to an ATi one, or a 3dfx one, or whatever suits your needs. Search Rage3d forums for that... but I figured you had already seen that.
The Big Honking Logo in UT2k3 can be 'changed' to an ATi one, or a 3dfx one, or whatever suits your needs. Search Rage3d forums for that... but I figured you had already seen that.
Bigus Dickus said:
Yep, I already have a replacement. I'd prefer not to have it at all, though, no matter what the IHV. Even if it auto-adapted to whichever card you had, I'd still prefer it gone...I really don't want to have a game show me an advertisement as its start title. Crusher and I agree on that much atleast.
As I said, I keep hoping for a command line switch to simply skip it. The lists of command line options I've seen so far does not include one.
Bigus Dickus said:
OFF here are the logos: http://www.hwsw.hu/perl/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=001159&p=3#000125
Joe DeFuria
Legend
http://nwn.bioware.com/support/patchdetails.html
...and all the children of the world joined hands together and sang of peace and harmony...
...and all the children of the world joined hands together and sang of peace and harmony...
Doomtrooper
Veteran
You can thank Rage3D for that, after some bonehead from Bioware posted ATI cards were not capable to do Shiny Water ..the shit hit the fan baby.
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33636761&highlight=neverwinter
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33636761&highlight=neverwinter
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