My fellow Netizines, earlier today, I logged on and was greeted with a flurry of particularly offensive personal attacks on me, to which I did not respond kindly. In fact, not only was my original post deleted, the entire thread was shutdown for a few hours and disappeared from the index.
A LOT of people who know me, whether they like me or not, know that (a) I am extremely reasonable (b) that I only lash out when provoked.
I do
not take too kindly to being provoked. Nor do I like the fuzzification of facts and the smoke screen that some would otherwise throw up, in a pitiful attempt at silencing me. I CANNOT be silenced.
Sure, I'm not the poster boy for good behavior nor one to turn the other cheek, but my particular anger in this regard is that a certain group of people (read: ATI fanbois) are staging a concerted attack on me in order to remove attention from the discussion and the spirit in which this thread was created and the premise under which I started posting here.
Look, I am not a diplomat or a politician. I am a highly passionate game developer. I LOVE what I do and I do it for
fun. Money is nice too, but if it was about money, I'd be sitting on an island somewhere and letting someone else do the work. I can certainly afford it at this time, given the success of my last two games.
Before I became a game developer, I was a gamer. Before I became a gamer, I was just another geek running around with cassettes and a copy of Byte magazine. I didn't enter this business to change anything, nor to make a difference to anything or to anyone. I'm not a crusader. Again, I'm a game developer. I entered this business because I am creative and the idea of developing something that brings pleasure to a lot of gamers - no matter how many - brings pleasure to me and allows me to keep trying to be the
best at what I do. Today, I can safely say that, above all else, think what you want, I am at the very top of my game. It took a LOT of hard work, trials, tribulation, success and failure, to get where I am. It wasn't an easy ride and I'll be damned if I'm going to let some idiots give me a hard time.
The reason this whole ATI driver business is spiralling out of control and reaching places it otherwise wouldn't, is due to the very fanbois kicking themselves in the foot. Drawing attention away from this isn't going to solve it. Bringing attention to me and making it about me, isn't going to change it.
With that and with Dave's permission, below is the text (revised slightly to protect the innocent) of my morning's diatribe. I have tried to be as objective and direct as only I know how. Take or leave it, I stand by what I have written and am prepared to bear the consequences therein. Worse case scenario, the personal attacks will keep coming. pah!
Hopefully, setting aside the dramatics of the text, the sensible few will be able to get an idea of what this is all about and why I'm hoping
mad about this farce.
Read on.
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....thinking what to type and where to begin.....This is going to be a war of epic proportions - and I'm bringing my toothpick. You guys want war? I'll give you war. And we were doing so well in this discussion. Some of you need to realize that, considering what I've gone up against in the past and come out ahead, this is
NOTHING. Just wait, you'll see. Derek Smart against the
SPINELESS hordes? Good odds I'd say.
Ok, without further ado, Lets do this....
/me fetching my toothpick
First of all, let me say this, if ANY of you ladies making personal attacks at me have an inkling that it affects me, again, I say this, you DO have a LOT to learn about me. I don't care WHAT you write about me, whether true, false or otherwise -
I DON'T CARE. Write it. Print it. Tatoo it is on your collective asses.
I DON'T CARE. You want to behave like spoiled 12 yr olds and shove me a barrel of crap telling me that I have to act all professional-like when you idiots are doing nothing but personal attacks, character assasination, finger pointing and smoke screening? Yeah right. Sure, that can happen. In heaven maybe.
Let me make one thing painfully clear. My name is Derek Smart. I'm a game developer. I'm
PROUD of who I am, where I came from, where I am and of what I have achieved - good, bad or ugly. My name is Derek Smart. And I'm not here to set an example to anyone nor for anyone. I am an
INDEPENDENT individual who owns an
INDEPENDENT game dev company. As such, I answer to
NO ONE but me.
I just wanted to get that out of way, in order to wipe off those deliusional thoughts of grandeur from your minds.
That said, it is quite easy for the ATI fanbois (think mercs) to
- start the personal attacks and character asssassination
- fuzzify the discussion
- take posts out of context
- ignore the issues I present etc etc
And as soon as some semblance of continuity is established in the discussion, someone jumps in (e.g. fresh, democoder et al) and start with the personal attacks, thereby taking the thread down a path of non-compliance with the discussion.
HOWEVER, from what I've seen, and I'll say it again, apart from the
NO TALENT having wannabes posting ALL manner of nonsensical rubbish, the majority of the B3D visitors, lurkers and/or posters, have a mind of their own and IMO (and going from the tons of emails and PMs I've been getting in the past few days) are able to see through all this smoke and mirrors that
BOTH ATI, their fanbois and the ATI reps posting under assumed and guest aliases, are throwing up. heh, no wonder they broke table fog at one point.
HOW DO YOU BREAK FOG AND NOT NOTICE?!?!?!
ahem, anyway..
This concerted effort to ignore the issues at hand and make this whole thing be about
Derek Smart is not only going to
FAIL, but it has already failed. Not only that, some of you ladies have NO clue just how much attention this thread is getting - to the extent that I am in the process of writing a piece about this farce for a print magazine and an online site. You'll read about it.
Let me say this again, NONE of this is news to ANYONE who has a history of dealing with ATI's
shoddy, piss-poor, embarrassingly BAD driver support and blatant disregard for gamers agonies and concerns
If it wasn't for folks like
ME, yes, ME and a few brave souls in the media and the game dev community at large, ATI would NEVER have even considered
- releasing frequent driver updates
- getting reps out into gaming forums (even if OpenGL_Guy is more defensive that he is helpful)
- ACKNOWLEDGE that they have a problem with driver development
- consider gaming as a mainstream revenue stream
While ATI was busy pissing around with OEMs and putting chips into toaster ovens and garbage bins, the likes of 3Dfx, nVidia, 3Dlabs, CL et al, were working
with game devs and gamers because they, wisely recogized that these two groups of people are the very reason they have a frigging stock to begin with.
While ATI was playing
catch-up with nVidia -
AND LOSING BADLY, they [nVidia, Matrox et al] were hunkered down with a robust driver development program, a regular driver release schedule, regular developer orientation and educational programs and a unified driver architecture.
Then, ATI upped and seemingly overnight, invented their own unified driver suite, dubbed it Catalyst and expected that we were all going to heave a sigh of relief that they'd gotten their act in gear. Not only was this a
FALSELY ADVERTISED sham and an existing driver subset (yes, I
can prove it, send in the lawyers), it was a
PITIFUL attempt at even remotely mimicking nVidia's bleeding edge Detonator. The only problem is that, nVidia's drivers were at the point of maturity, prior to their Detonator suite. In the case of ATI, someone in marketing must think that taking crap and wrapping it up in Christmas paper is not going to smell like crap from a mile off.
The ATI drivers are
CRAP. They just happen to now be nicely packaged crap.
Catalystic crap that is.
According to dictionary.com, the
definition of Catalyst is
cat·a·lyst Pronunciation Key (ktl-st)
n.
1. Chemistry. A substance, usually used in small amounts relative to the reactants, that modifies and increases the rate of a reaction without being consumed in the process.
2. One that precipitates a process or event, especially without being involved in or changed by the consequences: “A free press... has remained... a vital catalyst to an informed and responsible electorate†(Robert O'Neal).
In the case of the ATI drivers, it would seem that they are living up to their name, aren't they?
The ATI Catalyst drivers are usually developed in small amounts relative to what a
finished driver subset should be. These drivers modify and increase the rate of reaction (read: bugs) to hardware/software without themselves being consumed in the process. In other words, they precipitate the
bugs in hardware/software, without they themselves being involved in or changed by the consequences of said
bugs.
And you wonder why, short of nuking your damn computer, you can NEVER, EVER really get rid of ATI drivers from your system - short of calling in an exorcist or
format C: /s
IMO the majority of the ATI driver development team are just way out of their league. I don't think they have a
firm concept of what
TESTING for games is about. Here's a clue, if you are working with games and developing drivers for games,
HIRE GAMERS!!!. With all the money ATI makes off gamers who have no choice but to stick with your cards, you can put some of that money into a team of tech support personnel who do NOTHING but test games. What is nVidia, Matrox or anyone else doing that you [ATI driver devs] can't do?
In less than six months, ATI driver dev have not only succeeded in reaching new heights of medicority (sp), but they've also found new and inventive ways of
BREAKING STUFF THAT USED TO AND SHOULD WORK. This includes table fog (!), specular lighting, text buffering, TnL, illegal ops in driver calls (lots and lots of those!), multi-texturing and a host of others (I have an ENTIRE history log going back to 2000). Here is my favorite doozy (no, breaking table fog was not my all time fav) from one of my logs. They subsequently fixed it.
The problem is that due to a bug in the Radeon drivers, when specular lighting was enabled, lighting disabled and something was rendered using the D3DFVF_XYZ | D3DFVF_DIFFUSE | D3DFVF_TEX1 vertex format, it would cause screen flickering, tearing and other anomalies in the scene.
As I have said before, I don't mind the fact that ATI driver development are trying to fix these issues. But WHY should THEY get a free pass? Who gives us [game devs] a free pass when our games don't work and everyone starts pointing the finger?
If I ask nVidia, Matrox or any other IHV for a list of fixes in their drivers, I would usually get it. But ask
ATI and you'll never get it. Instead, they only release vague descriptions of items that they want you to know
about. I don't have a CLUE what they're hiding or why. I mean, they
removed W buffer support from the 9xxx
driver series
WITHOUT telling anyone. I don't know about you, but as a developer, I want to be the
FIRST to know about such decisions and architectural changes. Wouldn't you? Why did I have to find out the
hard way - and only when I noticed artifacts in my game and then peeked at the driver CAPS?
Here is what the version control file (VCF) for my last game looks like. And
here is the Beta copy. No matter HOW
bad it looks (count the number of entries marked FIXED), there is NOTHING hidden. No matter how trivial or major,
its ALL there in plain view. If ATI had bothered to let us [devs and/or gamers] in on such changes and problems,
we'd all be in the know, instead of finding out the hard way and running into problems.
Why should the definition of
BROKEN have a different meaning when it comes to ATI driver devs? See the previous page for an idea of what I'm talking about. Look --->
IF IT AIN'T WORKING AS IT SHOULD - ITS BROKEN!!!!
ALL these fanbois and are doing is throwing fuel on an already burning fire and as for me, I'm
NOT going to shut up. EVER. I don't care WHAT you do or HOW you do it. Call me a liar, fraud, hypocrite, loudmouth, ass, jackass, stupid, comedian, anti-social misfit, smalltime-dev-with-no-voice etc etc etc or dress me up in a frock and call me Sally. Did I leave any commonly used adjective out? Because thats ALL you're going to be doing,
CALLING ME NAMES AND MAKING UNFOUNDED PERSONAL ATTACKS. None of which is going to change a
DAMN THING. It certainly isn't going to make the ATI devs develop better drivers. And I'm still going to wake up in the morning, look myself in the mirror and like what I see. Your name calling does
NOT change who I am.
I KNOW WHO I AM and thats ALL that matters.
This problem is NOT going to go away. I, Derek Smart, am NOT going to go away. There are other hardware sites, game devs, reps, gamers who I am in contact with and who just don't want to get involved. Tell u what, I'm going to be that point man. You fuckers want war? With me, of all people? Great, its war you're going to get. I'm gonna jab this toothpick so far up....oh wait, lets not get off track...
In fact, a LOT of big wigs are reading this thread due to it's popularity and pimping by other sites and gamers. And by the end of next week, if you think this is an epidemic yet, just watch. Do you have ANY idea who you're MESSING with?!? Haven't you folks learned anything about me?
Now, you have several choices :
- We can all stick to the civil discussion and acknowledge quietly or loudly that ATI driver development sucks and that each and every one of those driver devs should be given a chance to shape or ship out.
- We can all continue the personal attacks, finger pointing, fuzzification of the facts and incidents and continue along with the character assassination farce - and make this about Derek Smart.
Either way, I'm game. As I said, you fools have NO idea just how far what you consider to be an
ATI fanboi-fest vs Derek Smart, is going to go or can go. And that again goes to the fact that most of you don't have a damn clue who you're
MESSING with. At all. I won't quit. I won't falter. I won't resign. And I sure as all hell,
WON'T BACK OFF if you fockers keep making personal attacks.
So, go ahead ladies and hide behind your fancy monitors, braindead aliases and fuzzy fanboi rhetoric - we can ALL play
that game. Though I stand and fight
ALONE, if you idiots want me to put a call out to my troops and turn this nice (?) place into a war zone - just say it. Poor Dave and the admins will be working overtime to kill posts.
fresh said:
See, the difference between you and me is that I don't really need to brag on here about who I am or what I have shipped or what I'm going to ship. Looking at your game reminds me of Elite, except with texture mapping. I don't know how you're pushing the envelope on a Voodoo2, let alone a Radeon 9700.
I had my list of games typed out here, but I deleted it because I don't really care if you know or not. I like to keep anonymous. All you need to know is that I've shipped games for PS2, Xbox, GC and PC. The PS2 skus alone have sold more than 2 million. And no, I'm not a tester or something taking credit for it. I did the graphics engines.. from scratch. But hey, what do I know? I'm nowhere near the level of your expertise, Mr. Tough Guy Developer! lol. Let me know when BC3000AD ships 3000 copies and I'll send you a signed copy of my million seller to celebrate.
As for you Fresh, I can see through all that Mabelline. Just ANSWER THE QUESTION :
WHAT GAME HAVE YOU DEVELOPED?
Second, your comment about texture mapping just shows how much you
DON'T about what I'm doing. Thats the first sign of a problem, thinking you know the answer to everything.
And FYI, it takes a
TEAM to develop a game, m'kay? You doing a graphics engine (if in fact this is true), doesn't give
YOU the credit (you conceited focker) for shipping said games.
Let me cut you down to size a little bit more
fresh said:
Maybe the interpolator on the texture unit is running out of precision when you're trying to texture map you 1,000,000km^2 planet with a 128x128 4 bit texture? Maybe the internal vertex FIFO isn't getting flushed because you're only submitting 9 vertex models? I love those pictures you posted. I think the eye ball in one of our characters has more triangles and a higher res texture than your entire planet.
- I'm not texture mapping any such planet size. Never said I was. The planet sphere is generated in real-time as a mesh based on the required mesh resolution (also dependent on the equatorial diameter of the planet being generates). Due to the size that each of those tris can be e.g. equatorial diameter of Earth (12756 km) compared to that of Jupiter (142796 km), only a 1024x512x24 bit texture is used. And detail texturing takes care of any pixelation at close range. There are 75 planets and 145 moons in my world. They're all processed independently and not at the same time. duh!
- That bit about the FIFO? I'm still laughing at that one. You ignorant fool.
- Each of those character models is between 2500-3000 polys and use a single 512x512x24 bit texture. m'kay? Don't blame me if YOUR graphics engine is not powerful enough to process in excess of 500+ models of high-mesh resolution (during intense fleet battles) some of which (e.g. stations) contain over 10000+ polys - complete with detail, glow and specular mapping in a single pass. I'd like to you you jam that into a PS2 or Xbox rendering pipeline, you incompetent ass.
- And if you READ my post, I never said that the size of my planet is what you quoted. That number I gave - and clearly described - is the size of the SPACE REGION which hosts the damn planets. And thats just 1 off over 100 connected regions - EACH ONE being roughly about 2,000,000km wide in 3 dimensions. e.g. the space region hosts Earth and its moon. The surface area of the planet terrain is completely different from the space region above. *sheesh* Why not just ask, instead of speculate??
And finally, guess what brainiac? It WORKS. On ALL BOARD. EXCEPT ATI's 9xxx series. So, barf all you want, its NOT want I'm doing thats wrong, its those
PISS POOR ATI DRIVERS that are making my life a misery. Kinda like those freaks keep the Doom3 team up
nights trying to get the game to run on 9700 at E3. Does that ring a frigging bell?
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