NC> :) I still think the /majority/ of PC developers 
 NC> *don't* produce effient stuff, though this is most 
 NC> probably the fault of MicroBloat O/S and the 
 NC> developement tools. My friend in London is (hopefully) 
 NC> going to be programming the next (Fifth) generation dev 
 NC> tools.
  This is, of course, assuming that people follow Microsoft's guidelines by 
the book, which isn't necessarily the case.  You don't have to write to 
Direct3D if you don't want to - you can write chip-specific versions of a 
game, and so on.
  Also, DirectX 5 is actually quite fast.  Not as fast as OpenGL, mind you, 
but more compatible for sure.  There is plenty of room for super-fast game 
engines, and they do exist.  DirectX 6 should be available soon, too!
  By the way, just what rendering features does the PSX library have?  It 
doesn't have perpsective correction (a commonly-used PC game feature), nor 
does it have bilinear filtering.  Those aren't in there BECAUSE THE PSX ISN'T 
POWERFUL ENOUGH.  Even a relatively pokey game like Carmageddon has bilinear 
filtering on a 3Dfx board.
  Oh, and DirectX 6 has support for bump mapping... how about the PSX?  Too 
bad.
 NC> When was the last time I fired up the TV to cook some 
 NC> dinner? The PSX is engineered for one purpose: games, 
 NC> if it was engineered to web browse it could, but it isn't, so it won't.
  Even though the Web browsing could help your gaming experience?  And what 
about multiplayer gaming?  Wouldn't Tekken 2 be much more fun if you could 
find a person to play at almost any time of the day?  Wouldn't it be fun to 
dogfight someone in Colony Wars?
 NC> Frontier: Elite 2 or the sequel to that, if there was 
 NC> one, Frontier was the buggiest game of all time, 
 NC> several fixes were released and it ran like a dog with 
 NC> only one leg. It sucked Big Time.
  Of course, one wonders just how much involvment Braben actually had in the 
development of that game.  Since it was a sequel with a big development team, 
Braben might have only consulted on it.
  But right now, Braben's with a different (and probably smaller) team, and 
he's working both on consoles AND PCs.
 NC> There are no effient programmers producing PC games 
 NC> atm, all games are team efforts, produced by masses of 
 NC> people and all bloated as heck.
  Now that is an awfully broad (and inaccurate) generalization!  What about 
id?  They did a LOT to Quake II, including optimizations.  Longbow 2 has 
TREMENDOUS amounts of detail, from the terrain to the pilots sitting in the 
cockpit.  Even Sega, who seems to be terrified of 3D boards, seems to be 
getting better results out of the PC.  I just got the Last Bronx demo; with 
more detail, it still runs faster than the VF2 port did.
  And that "masses of people" is certainly an exaggeration.  id is about 16 
people - only 2-4 of those people actually program the game.  Origin may have 
30-50 people on a project, but most of those aren't actually coding!
  Oh, and since companies who manufacture for consoles are supposed to be 
even bigger than your average PC game maker, couldn't you bring the same 
argument to bear against them?
 NC> Same mindset behind the technology though? :) 
  Well, yes, but you could argue that about most any 3D chipset maker.  No 
one's making a consumer-level chipset just for a VRML Web browser, after all!
 NC> I ain't seen it though. :-/
  You'd like it, I think.  SF Rush has much better (if not terribly 
forgiving) physics compared to something like Daytona USA.  For instance, 
there's an interesting chicane around some small mounds on a field.  Now 
normally, you're supposed to just follow the road; but the more adventurous 
racers will say "damn the torpedoes" and just leap the mounds!  There are 
plenty of "alternative" routes in the game, and that's one of its highlights.
 NC> Stutter? And you look forward to a time when a game is 
 NC> too complex/bloated/advanced that the hardware can't 
 NC> even cope?!! 
  You're assuming that this is going to be bloated - not more advanced.  
Right now, Trinity character models are expected to be around 5,000 polygons, 
complete with bump mapping and real-time shadowing.  The requirements will 
still be relatively high - I've heard it may be a Pentium II, 32 MB of RAM, 
and something equivalent to a 3Dfx Voodoo (not Voodoo 2, thank goodness) 
board in terms of performance.  Considering just what's being done, that IS 
impressive!
 NC> Woopy do. Its just another tool to try and make the 
 NC> glorified Babbage Difference Engine play games. ;)
  But that's what you have in your PSX!  :-)  It has a CPU which crunches 
numbers just like mine - well, mine's a lot faster, but still...
 
--- Maximus 3.01
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