ah!! I love the smell of fresh napal...uhm, I mean coffee, in the morning
g'morning ladies!! Just wanted to do a quick run through before I get my day going. I'm only going to respond to the choice posts, so, don't expect too much.
Soooooo, lets get this gig going..
Althornin said:
Looking forward to more discussions .
PS: gWhy do you so deeplt dislike Joe?
He is one of the more reasonable people here, and is far from stupid.
uhm, I don't despise him. If I did, I'd say so. My thing with Joe is that he's not particularly consistent nor clear in some of his posts. At least not that I've noticed. Thats why I stopped responding to him. And my subsequent posts about him - not TO him - are just evidence of the tongue in cheek manner in which I intend to deal with him going forward. You see, contrary to popular belief, I do have the power to ignore posts. And when I do, people can form their own opinions and kill themselves all they want. It still won't make me respond. Sooner or later, they'll learn that.
nhp said:
Derek, this is slightly off-topic and I apologize, but there's something I'd like to ask you.
There is one area in which you have expertise that I've never heard you discuss, and frankly it's the one I find the most interesting: independent development. BC is your game. As far as I know, you made it as an independent, and have seen it through years of patches, marketing, upgrades, etc.
That honestly impresses me. I've never played your game, and you can be kind of a dick in forums (and I'm sure you know that and are okay with it). But the fact that you actually _did_ that is pretty impressive.
I'd like to hear you speak about this more often. Not that I want you to gloat, but some of us would like to do the same thing and it would be great to learn from your experience. There's a lot you can tell other developers about your experiences with development, marketing, and general business that can help us to become more empowered in this industry.
Perhaps you could dedicate one of your soapboxes to this.
Well, I
speak about it all the time. You can also check some of the media
interviews I've done and if there is anything specific in this regard you'd like to ask, we should start a new topic, rather than pollute this one with off-topic banter. Here's one
interesting one from CGW and here is the
theme from on the cover. Ring a bell?
Joe DeFuria said:
Then again, Derek's approach appears to "get results" as far as he's concerned. The ol' Squeaky Wheel theory. 8)
Having another game dev on this board is a good thing. All that's asked for is mutual respect....as can be evidenced in this thread. Have some respect for the issues and problems faced by others, and they will likely have respect for yours and even, heaven forbid, actually try and help.
See what I mean? *sigh*
1. There's no implied
tactic to my methods. When something irks me, I just post. m'kay?
2. I didn't come here to bitch at anyone. I've told you this before, all you have to do is READ my posts and quit making such incorrect and highly inappropriate assumptions. I came here - not knowing that ATI was even here - in response to a troll who posted crap at another board that I frequent. A board that is devoid of any IHVs or the like. Its just gamers, some media etc
3. And that nonsense about respect? Its just that
NONSENSE. Here's a clue ---->
PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH
Look, I'm not out looking for respect. Usually I'm out looking for a good debate or a sound beating. Depending on the topic, how I feel and what day it is. You don't go out seeking respect. You earn it. And if you or anyone else wants to kid themselves into thinking that respect is first and foremost on my mind, you have a LOT to learn about me. A LOT.
I have a mutual and sound respect for my peers, colleagues and people who extend the same to me. When I came here, I respectfully jumped right in, posted my thoughts and a skirmish ensued. In the, not only did YOU and your silly tinkering friends start taking my posts out of context, you felt that you had something to prove by engaging me. Nothing with debatable and/or meaningful rhetoric, but with pure adulterated BULLSHIT.
You
failed to make a SINGLE point or case in contrast to what I had posted. To me, it seemed as if you were just posting for the hell of it - or maybe because you perceived yourself to be the one to take on the big bad Derek Smart and gain support therein. How's the view from over there?
Every forum on the Net has a few people who have this idea that because they are regs, there is some preconcieved alliance and/or notion of respect and the need to belong. You should get out more.
There are a LOT of people with their own views and opinions. Those who have nothing meaningful or worth processing to post, just assume an alias and just post. Others, though noted (e.g. Democoder posting a now removed link to a notorious and libelous site), just seek to cause disruption and take attention away from the issues at hand because, well, they have
NOTHING meaningful to add. Its like sitting in a board room and have the wanker from PR start talking about a coffee machine, in the middle of a dev meeting. You tell him to STFU and clear the room.
Look, I know some people don't like me. However, the fact remains that NO matter what you or anyone else thinks of me, I do what I want to do. Say what I want to say. And get results. I have a LOT of say in what goes on around me and that is one thing that I am proud of. Most people kid themselves into thinking that for some odd reason, there are gutless, spineless fools, wandering the Net and with no mind of their own - and as such, just buy into all the rubbish thats posted by a bunch of creeps who
think they know who Derek Smart is. They don't. PERIOD. All they want is to
be like me. But alas, it takes a lot more than steamy rhetoric and libelous nonsense to get where I'm at - especially given where I've come from and what I've had to endure to get here.
So, if you're going to engage me in any meaningful dialog, make sure that the rhetoric is clear, concise and intellectually stimulating. When in doubt, DON'T POST or I'll either ignore it or engage in a manner that is unacceptable to you. Eitherway, consider yourself warned.
As I've said before, that whole
mine is bigger than yours, where's yours mantra is for underachievers and untalented, gutless wannabes hiding being a keyboard and an alias on the Net. If you're going to have that stance, the best anyone can do is to prove it. After all, you can't engage in a conversation about video games is you don't play and/or develop them, can you? The same holds true for any topic. If you don't have anything to add, just read - and lets those who DO have something meaningful to add, do so. You'd be surprised at how much more you can learn from doing just that. And that, my friend, is why there are lurkers on boards, but who don't post.
Deflection said:
I think this question is largely already answered in this thread. What traits does he exhibit here?
Relentless Persistancy
Bull-headedness
Proactiveness
Attention grabbing
Craftiness
...
etc.
Like Derek has said he is a happy camper at the end of this thread! In one fell swoop this little developer has managed to market his game to 1000's of potential buyers, influence his peers, and grab the attention of the driver designer responsible to look at his problem
Think he knew? Congrats you've been played
I don't mean the above to sound negative at all. I look forward to Derek's added insight to this board myself!
You bastard!! Did you have to go and spell all that out? Couldn't u just have kept it all to yourself and let them keep guessing?
Nagorak said:
Joe DeFuria said:
Then again, Derek's approach appears to "get results" as far as he's concerned. The ol' Squeaky Wheel theory.
There is something to be said for that theory.
What? Thats it rubbish? You're right. It is.
JoshMST said:
Even though I may not always agree with Derek, I think having an outspoken voice in the community does help to draw attention to some nasty little problems. Nice to see you here Derek.
I have a few things to ask:
1) Would you be so kind to put a timedemo function in BCG Derek?
I think it would be a wonderful addition to my benchmarking portfolio!
2) Ok, a bit more seriously. How is DX9 going to handle the situations where the W-Buffer was implemented. If the 9700 only has a 24 bit Z, will that carry over into DX9 functionality, or is the overall increased precision of DX9 going to make the standard framebuffers unrecognizable from what they were? In DX8.1 we have the 24 bit Z, 8 bit stencil, and 32 bit color depth. In DX9, does the way it handles Z queries also become floating point? Or does it stay integer based (or am I just so wrong here it isn't even funny)? Or is DX9 programmable enough that this is somewhat of a trivial concern?
If anyone can shed some light on this, I would be extremely grateful.
Thanks for the welcome. I promise to behave
I had thought of putting in a time demo function in BC games, due to the heavy amount of processing that they do, but never did get around to doing it. I'd be willing to work with you speed kiddies on that, if you send me an email proposal indicating what you need to me to do and how. It could be a nice side project.
As for W buffer on DX9, I don't think developers have fully grasped the impact of this yet. In fact, last night I sent an email to an MS contact of mine in the DX beta program and made some specific inquiries about legacy support in DX9. Right now, its all speculation - especially since DX9 is still only at Beta 2 stage.
As for precision in 24 Z, maybe OpenGL_guy can answer that because I don't want to speculate and I do not have my 9700 tech specs on this machine. However, floating point or not, the 24bit range of the Z buffer is not enough for games with large open spaces or large worlds. We got around it - even with the W buffer - and for cards that do not have a W buffer or 24 Bit Z buffer, by doing some clever partioning along Z. It does work well, be even then, you can still see some artifacts in some circumstances. The good thing is that they don't detract from the game.
If you look at the
shots I uploaded yesterday, in one shot you will see a massive station in the background with a space force marine in the foreground. If you look really, really close, you might see some artifacts on the station, though the marine is rendered just fine.
My concern with the W buffer being gone is in the interest of legacy apps. Sure, in 2004, if you are playing a game developed in 1999 and released in 2001 (e.g. Battlecruiser Millennium), you would expect to see some artifacts if you are running on hardware that only has a 24 bit Z. This is normal because you buy into the thought that, well, its legacy software and isn't expected to work right. Thats OK.
I got some ideas yesterday from DaveBaumann's contact about how to emulate (thats all it is, really) a W buffer using pixel/vertex shader. I have my doubts about it working as advertized, but it all looks good on paper. If that works, its no biggie, because after all, thats some of the things we expected from a shader engine. Then you come to the problem where, what if the card doesn't have a pixel shader part? OK, so, as before, we're back writing exclusion code for who's hardware? ATI. See where this is going? The more things change, the more they stay the same.
IMO, the lack of a W buffer in DX9 (which is not yet finalized) is NOT a good reason to remove if from the hardware. In this case, the 9xxx series.
If we can deal with some artifacts in hardware, as we have in the past and all these years, why didnt' ATI leave us to deal with artifacts (as they claim) in using a W buffer on the 9xxx series? Why make the decision to remove it and, get this,
NOT TELL ANYONE. I have search the entire ATI dev forum, including the secure sites that I have access to and there isn't a single word about this. At least not that I could find. I even check the DX9 Beta docs in case I missed something. The first time I found out about this, as I stated earlier, was when I noticed artifacts that I attributed to W/Z artifacts, peeked as the card's CAPS and yelped.
You know, this is NOT the kind of thing you just quietly remove and not tell anyone. OK, breaking hardware TnL or an aspect of MT, is one thing - but flat out removing a tech that quite a few games rely on, is just bad. Very bad.
ExitiosuS said:
After reading this, I think I've become a fan of this BC game. Looks very interesting. =)
(I'll have to try the demo, now!)
Thumbs up!
(Wow, aren't I easily won over? Lol)
Freedom of speech is obviously heavily exercised here.
I like this site!
LOL!! Talk about lamb to the slaughter.
No seriously, the BC suite of games are
NOT for every one. If you are into deep, HUGE and highly involving games - complete with a learning
curve, you're in for a treat. If you're looking for a quick fix, look elsewhere.
Take my advice, read the
reviews first, then try the
Episode 2 demo (the one with the space and planetary regions and which runs on DX8/9) before you fork out your $19.99 (it has been reduced, now that its almost a year old) right
here.
You should also check out the forum threads, particularly
this one which deals with all the crazy and whacky things people do in my game.
Hellbinder[CE said:
]AS for proof that the 9700 is *ready for primetime*...
Look at this thread. I have pics of several games. They all look *perfect* and are playing really fast with FSAA and Aniso.
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33635479
AS proof that the 9700 is *not ready* for primetime.....
Look at this thread. All 18 pages of it. They all do *not* look perfect and are mostly *not* playing fast, really fast or otherwise. In fact, in most cases, they're not playing. PERIOD. Some got going after ATIs quick patch released on 9/10. The card was released more than six weeks ago.
Enjoy!
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33633219&perpage=20&pagenumber=1
misae said:
I might have agreed with you RaolinDarksbane if it wasn't for the fact that BC3000AD is not new... its old been released yonks ago and it still doesnt work properly. Whose fault is it now?
Rubbish. BCM and BCG have the SAME problems on ATI boards.
For one thing. Here is the release timeline for the BC games. And only the FIRST one was controversial, as a result of it being released in Beta by Take2
1996 - BC3K, Take 2 Interactive / Gametek (UK)
1998 - BC3K v2.0x, Interplay
2001 - BCM, 3000AD Inc
2003 - BCG, 3000ad Inc
Get your FACTS right! Is that so hard? Have you even read ANY of the reviews of BC3K v2.0x or even BCM? No? Then go
get educated. You might
learn something.
Kassandra said:
OMFG. I do not even dare to describe my reaction as 'ROFLMAO'. If I hadn't survived my almost spastic seizure of laughter when reading
It was fun back then, right now it has degenerated to a mass of dangerously litigious and libelous nonsense in aid of an orchestrated character assassination. Some people must mistake me for Bill Gates.
