800x600 only? Your kidding me.... - Page 2

Desprez · November 6, 2002, 22:02

Wasn't there an option to run MOO3 in a window?

You could use that if you absolutely didn't want to switch resolutions.
I don't know what the problems is with that though. Most games swith the resoultion automaticaly on the fly. I hardly notice.

3d acceleration is a non-issue. Let me get this straight, you want to tripple the sys reqs just so you can have the ships rendered vector and textures instead of voxels? Come on, this isn't a FPS.

It's my understanding you won't even view battles close enough to SEE textures. Not that you can't, but you will need to stay zoomed out to see a bigger picture of what's going on. Someone from the developement team said awhile back, that if you are zoomed in too close you get your butt kicked.

All so you can look at pretty ships the first 5 times you play. Sheesh.

Desprez

vmxa1 · November 7, 2002, 00:47

True most will switch, but not all. How about Civ3, need to set an ini value.

Llama · November 7, 2002, 05:53

Quote:

Originally posted by Desprez
Wasn't there an option to run MOO3 in a window?

I could be wrong, but I don't think so, there was quite a lengthy discussion on the IG forums as to why MOO3 wouldn't allow you to Alt-Tab out. Although I could be confusing the two issues.

Xentax · November 7, 2002, 10:00

AFAIK, MOO3 will only run full-screen in the final release. Last I heard, Alt-Tab was going to be disabled, but who knows where that's at by now? It's been months since that was "officially" discussed.

Sarxis · November 7, 2002, 11:05

Ugh! This is unsettling and disheartening.

I hate hearing this kind of stuff, because things like this are symptoms of 'other' cut corners..

Harry Seldon · November 7, 2002, 15:02

I've been browsing through this link and just can't believe what I'm reading. I don't care what the screen size is; I want incredible game play. If anyone's seriously considering dumping MOO3 because of something as superficial as that, or because the graphics aren't bleeding edge, then maybe you should consider buying a game like Azurik. It's a beautiful game and you'll have plenty of time to admire the scenery because it plays like a one legged dog that's been hit by a bus, trying to strum mariachi solos. This game could use ASCII characters for graphics, size to 320x240, and use IBM speaker sound as long as the AI's intelligent enough that when it signs a Non Aggression pact with me it doesn't viciously attack me two turns later. Long live MOO!

vmxa1 · November 7, 2002, 15:15

While the play is the most important thing, there is a limit as to what the thing can look like before most will not buy it. There is no reason to force a resolution limit. It has nothing to do with the play as different people are working on the art, than the mechanics.

Harry Seldon · November 7, 2002, 15:36

I agree that there should be no limit to this setting. It would have behooved the development team to have been better prepared for future expansion. Unfortunately, it looks like the shuffling of companies has caused some things to be overlooked. That said, we have waited around ten years, through letdown and heartache, for this game to come out. It makes me sad that someone would get so upset over one or two small problems that they wouldn't purchase the game.

November 7, 2002, 15:44

Quote:

Originally posted by Harry Seldon
It makes me sad that someone would get so upset over one or two small problems that they wouldn't purchase the game.

Rantz just posted in another thread that he fired up a game last night to just check out one thing, and the next thing he knew it was past 2 in the morning and he was 200+ turns into the game! If that is the typical game experience reported here at Apolyton it won't take people long to forget about 3D acceleration, voxels, resolution, IFP's, et cetera.

(Not to mention, forgetting about our spouses, kids, jobs, hygiene, meals...

)

Craig P. · November 7, 2002, 15:45

Quote:

Originally posted by vmxa1
There is no reason to force a resolution limit.

Aside for the reason why the limit is there, which is that the screen design does not scale to a higher resolution.

Mahdimael · November 7, 2002, 16:11

I don't think anyone is saying they're not buying the game because of the resolution or lack of 3d acceleration. Personally, I don't really care what it looks like as long as it's intuitive and fun. That said, it's amazing that a product in development for so long would not be updated to take into account many standard conventions for graphics- namely, different resolutions and 3d acceleration (mostly the former). If you really would be happy with ASCII graphics, more power to you, but the majority of releases in 2002 will have the aforementioned features.

wervdon · November 7, 2002, 17:27

Quote:

This game could use ASCII characters for graphics, size to 320x240, and use IBM speaker sound as long as the AI's intelligent enough that when it signs a Non Aggression pact with me it doesn't viciously attack me two turns later. Long live MOO!

Wow, uhm thats dedication :P I have to admit I wouldn't buy that, and Im mostly interested in the gameplay

But I am fine with 800x600 and the screenshots of the interface and battle ive seen. The main thing I want out of the graphics is an easy to use/intuitive interface, and I dont mean that in terms of learning curve necessarily, but rather how convenient it is to use once you've played 30+ games

*** more off topic, or is it on topic ***
As far as the 800x600 thing, with my software engineering project (just a 2d tile based game), I supported higher res's than 640x480 by just using a simple direct 3d blt operation, I drew the "screen" in an off screen buffer set to 640x480, then copied it to the screen with a stretch blt to whatever the screen was set to. It worked well on some cards and crappy on others though :P It works great on my current geforce 4, and used to work horrible on my voodoo 5 :P I also tried on some ati card at an in-laws house and it looked fine. It just depends on how the video card handles stretching bitmaps: If it doesn't handle it then direct x does it in hardware bi-linear I think, if the card does then its however the card does it. If it's done bi-linear, then it looks ok, otherwise it goes blocky.

So basically, what Im asking, can't they add a scaled display method like that as unsupported/unofficial means of allowing higher resolutions for those who want it bad enough to put up with any distortion it causes. (ie) just put something like that in the ini file, with the understanding that its an unsupported mode.

Of course, I understand it might require alot of work to impliment if they are currently using the built in flipping chain

And at this point, it'd be more likely to come up in a patch. Or even an expansion (though hopefully in that case implimented properly with seperate routines to handle each screen res, or one that handles an arbitrary one)

November 7, 2002, 17:41

wervdon, interesting insights on the scalability of graphics.

If I understand you, this would simply make the existing image bigger--filling the 'available' resolution. But the whole reason I use a large monitor/high resolution combo is to see more context.

Again, if our experience is similar to what Rantz is reporting, all of this may be moot!

Harry Seldon · November 7, 2002, 17:42

Quote:

Originally posted by wervdon

Wow, uhm thats dedication :P

I like to think dedication to gaming. I still like to pull out my old Infocom games (Zork, Planetfall, etc.) and give them a whirl. Even though they're text games, they're still some of the best games I've ever played. I mean, where else could you be eaten by a grue?

vmxa1 · November 7, 2002, 18:01

Phil S. of Tropico and Railroad Tycoon2 (also was involve in some heroes games) wrote an article about that subject in one of the gaming mags awhile back. They can and did make the art scalable for graphics and cpu concerns, so lessor systems could play the game. It does not have to be a problem as the solutions are already known.

wervdon · November 7, 2002, 18:36

Quote:

wervdon, interesting insights on the scalability of graphics.

If I understand you, this would simply make the existing image bigger--filling the 'available' resolution. But the whole reason I use a large monitor/high resolution combo is to see more context.

Thats exactly what it would do, and depending on the video card, it would either be very blocky, or slightly blurred (much preferred, just like what happens in more recent 3d games when textures are scaled). It would however, not be any "better looking" than it did at lower resolution, and may/probally even look slightly worse. What it would do though is allow people who want to run it at higher res's for reasons other than appearance (such as the person with the flat screen monitor that doesnt resize well above), a way to do so.

Oh and with my class project game that I did this with, it did actually make it look better to be scaled up by a decent card that did the averaging to fill in empty pixels. But that was just because my artwork is horrible and blurring it a bit (actually its more like the "soften" filter in photoshop) hid some of that :P

Quote:

Again, if our experience is similar to what Rantz is reporting, all of this may be moot!

Oh I definately agree, I already said Im perfectly happy with 800x600. Id even be happy with 640x480, though less so because of screen real estate on the galaxy map :P

MOOFAN314 · November 7, 2002, 18:41

If you want it on a higher resolution what do you want them to do about it?

It would drastically slow the game down to scale and blur for every frame (not to mention making it blurry).

There would be no point in scaling and pixelating, you might as well be on the normal resolution.

No one want's it to not scale, and have a black frame around it for a higher resolution.

And it would take a lot more time and money to design everything seperately for each resolution.

This is not a game that can easily have multiple resolutions, unless you want them to start over.

Desprez · November 7, 2002, 19:04

I've seen some games/apps use a seperate window or pallette for different reports and functions. This would let you customize your set up according to your screen realistate.

When integrated well, it can be great feature. However, if done poorly, all you have is a bunch of awkward windows cluttering everything up.

Too bad more games of this sort don't seem to pull this off.

Craig P. · November 7, 2002, 20:02

Quote:

Originally posted by vmxa1
Phil S. of Tropico and Railroad Tycoon2 (also was involve in some heroes games) wrote an article about that subject in one of the gaming mags awhile back. They can and did make the art scalable for graphics and cpu concerns, so lessor systems could play the game. It does not have to be a problem as the solutions are already known.

And yet, unless I'm missing a setting somewhere, RT2 is fixed resolution, even though the map graphics do scale according to zoom level. The non-map graphics are designed such that I don't think multiple resolution support would be feasible. Which is, incidentally, largely the same problem MOO3 has.

vmxa1 · November 7, 2002, 21:37

Yes Moo3 is not the only game to fix the res annd some even fixed it at 800, but not a lot of them. Most fixed it at 1024.

Master Marcus · November 7, 2002, 22:42

Quote:

Originally posted by Rantz
I'm currently running 1200 x 1024 as my desktop rez, and it resizes no problem, both going into the game and out of it.

Does that means the game has or will have a simple and very practical checkbox like "full screen" ( video settings) whatever the desktop/video card res?

Rantz · November 8, 2002, 13:45

Quote:

Originally posted by Master Marcus

Does that means the game has or will have a simple and very practical checkbox like "full screen" ( video settings) whatever the desktop/video card res?

Video setting automatically change to game rez from whatever your desktop rez is and vice versa without a hitch.

So say you have your screen set to 1600 x 1200, launch MOO3, it goes full screen, changes the rez while your playing the game, when you quite it go back to the desktop rez.

is that explaining what you're asking? forgive me if I'm a bit dense, lack of sleep.

Atragon · November 8, 2002, 16:31

One point for setting the game up to stretch the graphics to the desktop resolution is so that people with multi-monitor setups won't have trouble with whatever's on the secondary monitor shifting around.

This happens in several current games that don't/can't run at my full primary resolution.

So, if a game runs in 800X600 native, then stretching the graphics up to 1600X1200 would have the same effect as changing the monitor's resolution to 800X600, but it WOULDN'T affect anything else, you could alt-tab out to your internet browser and it would be running at 1600X1200, and so on.

Zanthis · November 8, 2002, 18:41

If the game has the same depth as the previous Moo games, the eye candy will soon be forgoten as the player gets used to it. It will be the deeper content that will keep people playing for years after its release. I played moo1/2 for years. I even played games like Colonization and Master of Magic for years until the games became so old they were incompatable with the new computer technology and I could no longer load them. There's only so long graphics alone will entertain the player.

pg · November 8, 2002, 19:14

Quote:

Originally posted by Craig P.
My desktop at home is 1024x768 (on a CRT). When I play a game that's at 800x600 (like Railrood Tycoon II or HoMM3, lately), I don't even notice until after I quit, when my Webshots desktop image has been sized to 800x600 instead of 1024x768.

this is odd. do lots of people have computers that change your windows resolution when playing games at 800*600 when your windows res was 1024*768? then you have to manually change it back?

just for example... i can play games(both 2d and 3d) in 800*600 without my desktop resizing. i can even alt-tab out of the the 800*600 game i'm playing and my windows will be 1024*768 already. and of course when i exit the game i go back to 1024*768, there isn't even a delay like it's changing back.

Master Marcus · November 8, 2002, 19:16

Quote:

Originally posted by Rantz

Video setting automatically change to game rez from whatever your desktop rez is and vice versa without a hitch.

So say you have your screen set to 1600 x 1200, launch MOO3, it goes full screen, changes the rez while your playing the game, when you quite it go back to the desktop rez.

is that explaining what you're asking? forgive me if I'm a bit dense, lack of sleep.

yeah, thanks for the reply

vmxa1 · November 8, 2002, 21:30

Quote:

Originally posted by Zanthis
If the game has the same depth as the previous Moo games, the eye candy will soon be forgoten as the player gets used to it. It will be the deeper content that will keep people playing for years after its release. I played moo1/2 for years. I even played games like Colonization and Master of Magic for years until the games became so old they were incompatable with the new computer technology and I could no longer load them. There's only so long graphics alone will entertain the player.

Incompatable? They still work for me on my XP PRO box, sound and all. Well I do not have colonization, but Mom and Moo ae fine.

Main_Brain · November 9, 2002, 08:13

Of the Four Monitors I own only one runs in 1024* so im happy :=)
*Happy not being at the Top of the HighTech pyramid*

Deathmerchant · November 10, 2002, 18:19

The 800x600 issue has already been beaten to death on the offical forums. It is 16 days untill the offical street date. Everything is quite locked at this point. I think your a bit late to be arguing over the resolution.

vmxa1 · November 10, 2002, 21:06

An we have better things to do? It is just a dialogue amonst gamers. People still talk about many issues that they will have no impact on.