I'm devastated! I was looking forward to pog and cs and all I have is an original imac. Would I be able to use cs or pog if I got more ram? and how much would I need?
-
Quote
Originally posted by someguy:
I'm devastated! I was looking forward to pog and cs and all I have is an original imac. Would I be able to use cs or pog if I got more ram? and how much would I need?If you were to add another 128Mb RAM you would probably have little or no trouble. (Cost under $30.00). Run it (POG) in full screen 640x480 mode. There might be a little jerkiness but nothing serious.
Toward the end beta testers get very critical
And some actually start to realize (again) that human creativity far exceeds the power of computers to represent it!
Skip
------------------
...it wasn't me... -
(quote)Originally posted by SkipMeier:
**And some actually start to realize (again) that human creativity far exceeds the power of computers to represent it!:)RAM is almost too cheap. I've started giving it as birthday presents to my friends. I bought 256 megs for 48 dollars**.
------------------
Do not follow me for I may not lead. Do not lead for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me, either. Just leave me the hell alone.
-Jedi -
Have you all forgotten about VM? You don't need to have a vast quantity of physical RAM. It may be slightly slower, but it works. Also, A map would not take up 67 megs as you said if you used compression on the graphics. I believe PNGs can have lossy compression. If you balance it out well, you can signifigantly reduce the amount of disk space it takes up.
I think people are being overly paranoid about system requirements. It's not like 2d scrolling games with alpha effects are new technology. I have a tendancy to agree with saphire; I think that CS will be plenty fast enough to render night and day effects. The only question is whether there is a built in timer function; if not, you can do as myshkyn suggests (I've seen this done in games, and it worked ok). Or, as in some games, you could make it so that at various points in the game a night/day transition is explicitly triggered.
------------------
-
Quote
Originally posted by ben1cohen:
**Have you all forgotten about VM? You don't need to have a vast quantity of physical RAM. It may be slightly slower, but it works. Also, A map would not take up 67 megs as you said if you used compression on the graphics. I believe PNGs can have lossy compression. If you balance it out well, you can signifigantly reduce the amount of disk space it takes up.**
First, VM:
It takes a very fast machine and very fast hard drives to stream full-screen graphics directly to the display device and if any processing need be done in addition to the streaming (scrolling), you could still have jerkiness and lags. Games are not simply DVD players. Note the problems with Quicktime movies on slower machines.Second, Compression:
Compression is used for the storage and transmission of information. The graphic playing field of a game resides uncompressed in memory. Again, if the need is simply to play a movie, then the image stream could be decompressed on the fly. In the case of a scrolling game, however, the data must be in RAM and uncompressed.Skip
------------------
...it wasn't me... -
Quote
Originally posted by ben1cohen:
**
I think people are being overly paranoid about system requirements. It's not like 2d scrolling games with alpha effects are new technology. I have a tendancy to agree with saphire; I think that CS will be plenty fast enough to render night and day effects. The only question is whether there is a built in timer function; if not, you can do as myshkyn suggests (I've seen this done in games, and it worked ok). Or, as in some games, you could make it so that at various points in the game a night/day transition is explicitly triggered.**
My thoughts exactly. I'd be surprised, disappointed, and furious if a computer with 64 or more megs of ram couldn't handle the type of gameplay displayed in games made with Coldstone. C'mon people, they have N64 and PSX emulators. Granted, the latter is disc accessed, but that's just the same as a drive. Not to mention beautiful, much more lustrous games marketed with reasonable sys. requirements. Why should this be any different?
Saphfire
------------------
-
Quote
Originally posted by saphfire:
**My thoughts exactly. I'd be surprised, disappointed, and furious if a computer with 64 or more megs of ram couldn't handle the type of gameplay displayed in games made with Coldstone. C'mon people, they have N64 and PSX emulators. Granted, the latter is disc accessed, but that's just the same as a drive. Not to mention beautiful, much more lustrous games marketed with reasonable sys. requirements. Why should this be any different?Saphfire
**I've not played a console game machine since the original Nintendo. With it, the output was NTSC resolution which is roughly 1/4 the resolution of full-screen 640x480 computer games. This allows for much smaller memory requirements and much faster screen display (NTSC).
Are the newer (newest) consoles still limited to NTSC output (to TV,s) or are they capable of higher resolutions? And I don't mean monitor out jacks (which eliminates the carrier frequency), I mean resolution.
Skip
------------------
...it wasn't me... -
Have you played Diablo 2 recently? That has more sophisticated graphics than PoG, and it plays just fine without accelerated graphics. The point is, there are many well known tricks and optomisations. This style of graphics is used all over the place. It is well documented, and there are many examples of it working. It's true that consoles only do NTSC. However, the SNES had a 16 bit processor (25mhz, iirc), and the largest cartridges were 256 megabits. That's right, megaBITS. And still, this machine was capable of pumping out graphics, WITH translucensy effects, at a very decent frame rate. I think you all underestimate the skill of programmers, as well as the power of your machine. C'mon, if my machine can play Quake 3, than it can certainly play a tile based rpg.
------------------
-
Quote
Originally posted by ben1cohen:
**Have you played Diablo 2 recently? That has more sophisticated graphics than PoG, and it plays just fine without accelerated graphics.It's true that consoles only do NTSC. However, the SNES had a 16 bit processor (25mhz, iirc), and the largest cartridges were 256 megabits. That's right, megaBITS. And still, this machine was capable of pumping out graphics, WITH translucensy effects, at a very decent frame rate. I think you all underestimate the skill of programmers, as well as the power of your machine. C'mon, if my machine can play Quake 3, than it can certainly play a tile based rpg.
**A few things should be kept in mind:
• Most Consoles prior to the Sony Playstation required programmers to write their games in an assembler language particular to the console.
• Neither PoG nor Coldstone are done being optimized yet. Alice , which uses the Quake 3 engine, feels quite a bit slower than, um, well... OK, nevermind the example.
• If you keep your graphics simple, then RAM requirements will be lower.
------------------
People who claim the sky is falling obviously aren't aware the earth is falling, too. -
Quote
Posted by sanehatter: Even someone like mouse should be able to see that ten of these maps
wouldn't be able to fit on a single CD-ROM.If I weren't in such a good mood, I'd be insulted.
(we need a bliss smilie 
) -
Quote
Originally posted by ben1cohen:
more sophisticated graphics than PoGyou haven't played PoG yet. I think this topic really needs to wait until people have played a ColdStone-created game. then we'll see what's what.
------------------
Do not follow me for I may not lead. Do not lead for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me, either. Just leave me the hell alone.
-Jedi -
Quote
Originally posted by jmitchell:
**you haven't played PoG yet. I think this topic really needs to wait until people have played a ColdStone-created game. then we'll see what's what.
**Not to take sides or anything, but from what I've been told, there is absolutely NO parallax scrolling, and that is already a very large portion of graphics sophistication that Diablo has over coldstone. But then again, that's about the only thing that I can think of so don't yell at me please.
------------------
-
And even the parallax scrolling is up in the air. Keep in mind, nothing is final yet.
------------------
People who claim the sky is falling obviously aren't aware the earth is falling, too. -
That perspective stuff in Diablo II on the other hand is insanely complex, I don't see how they even pulled that off. It LOOKS impossible while you're playing the game, the ground all by itself has atleast two layers of graphics just for the parallax scrolling. The World Stone was made of like 50 peices, that shouldn't even be possible for a computer to pull off. That is the one thing that'll probably never be in any other RPG ever because Blizzard seems to be the only company that knows how to do that with a two dimensional game. I wouldn't even pretend like something like that would be put into Coldstone, that'd be another 6 month delay and there goes half of the computers theat may have been able to use Coldstone.
------------------
-
What's parrallax scrolling?
------------------
.... So, two guys walk into a bar...... the third guy ducked. -
Quote
Originally posted by MrStuffTheIT:
**What's parrallax scrolling?**
i would like to know
and besides i wanted to achieve a night and day and what not by applying a semitransparent laer with different shades in it, how is the question .
------------------
"I'm not imagining things, you bastards deleted my reply, may carpal tunnel befall you all"
~TheChill -
I think some of you are underestimating how small you can make an image (in terms of mega bytes) and still retain a decent look. I've spent a lot of time developing plug-ins for Myth II: Soulblighter and you can easily create a level that is over 5,000,000 total pixels that only takes up about 10MB of space. Granted, these aren't 32-bit graphics, they're indexed color files (256 colors) but used skillfully, that's plenty of color to create some very nice looking terrain.
Does anyone know if CS will import graphics that have been JPEG compressed? This would reduce file sizes incredibly, without sacraficing too much in the way of quality. This is one of the ways Myth III is going to be able to be a total 3D game with roughly the same system requirements as Myth II (a game which supportes 3D terrain, but only 2D annimated characters).
--
Mauglir -
This topic is wandering a little, but that's ok.
As to the day and night thing, it's probably possible. But as was said, it will (most likely) consume RAM comparable to Microsoft Word. (Maybe not that much )Quote
Originally posted by Mauglir:
**I think some of you are underestimating how small you can make an image (in terms of mega bytes) and still retain a decent look.
**Amen to that. This is a job for Photoshop and (especially) ImageReady
But however small diskwise, that will probably not effect the RAM dilema a whole lot, but I'm not an expert on RAM.Quote
**
Does anyone know if CS will import graphics that have been JPEG compressed?
**Yup, I think that the FAQ might have been able to help you here.
(edited for improper UBB Code)
------------------
V-16 Twin Bombers: $800,000
1 Aircraft Carrier: $4,000,000
Battlecruiser loaded with marines: $8,000,000
The look on Bin Ladin's face when we get him: Priceless...(This message has been edited by spitfire (edited 10-25-2001).)
-
Day and night would be so easy to do night and day with a coldstone game... IF palatte shifting is supported for the graphics. Palatte shifting is when you select a color in the graphics file, and then select another color you want to blend with it (ie black for a nightime feel), and then the game reads this information and shows the appropriate hue. This could also be used to do seasons, enemies with multiple colors, shadow effects, etc. without including all new graphic files for each tile/monster. This would be a major space saver, like maybe 75% of your graphics could be eleminated if your doing a village "Day Map" and a "Village Night" map. Just think Myth 2, which used this process to produce day and night units from the same sprite collection.