Brad Wardell's views about technology, politics, religion, world affairs, and all sorts of politically incorrect topics.
Why did we put so much effort for low end systems?
Published on February 19, 2006 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

Some of my friends who work in the game industry (you know who you are) have been teasing me about why we put so much effort into low end hardware support.  That is, GalCiv II supports kind of ridiculously low end hardware. 

I mean after all, who has an 800Mhz computer?  What gamer has a really low end graphics card?  Those people don't play games. They won't buy games. So why support them?

Our view is that it's not low end desktop users that we're targeting. Sure, they benefit from the work but it's LAPTOP users who play it. Our company's IP attorney, who is in his mid 50s, plays strategy games on his laptop when he travels (which he does considerably).  His home machine is plenty powerful but his laptop isn't quite as powerful.  And we think there are a lot of people out there who do this kind of thing.

Tell us what you think? Does laptop playability matter to you?


Comments (Page 4)
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on Feb 21, 2006
My only computer is a laptop. It's a 2 1/2 year old Presario. Fast machine: 2.66 Ghz with 768 (512 + 256) memory, but the graphics card is crap. So i'm glad it'll work for me. I couldn't buy it any other way.

CKayote@gmail.com
on Feb 21, 2006
I've never really liked laptops. I don't like the constriction, relative lack of power, difficulty of upgrading, or the cost. I've been programming and gaming for 20+ years. I prefer a natural keyboard, wireless optical mouse, and huge 22" CRT. The tiny keyboards with whacked layouts, mouse substitutes, and tiny displays of laptops make me cringe. Granted, you can plug in other devices or dock your laptop - but IMO, if you're going to go thru all that hassle then why have the laptop in the first place!?

Next - I think anyone who's serious about gaming should have a decent computer running Windows XP. XP is exceptionally stable and works great for gaming (with 1g of RAM). You should also have a decent graphics card. Anything less, and sorry, you're not very serious about gaming. Get a job, get a 2nd job, get a credit card - sell your soul in some way and get a decent computer!

So, IMO, games should be developed for XP and desktop PCs and if they happen to work on lesser machines (or other OSes) used by the minority then that's a bonus.
on Feb 21, 2006
im sorry i lost the topic which is actualy devoted to this but will my laptop play this ok its current cpu and gpu are rather pathetic. they are as follows:
2.19 ghz processor (intel celeron not sure of the exact model)
448mb ddr ram
(and my main query) intel extreme graphics card (which is ancient i must say, older than the old ge force 2 lol)

i dont mind turning features down but i dont want to miss out on this game...ive bin waiting for so long i just have to have it
on Feb 21, 2006
My main computer is a laptop. Granted, I bought a gaming laptop so it has the power to handle anything I throw at it, but it's still a laptop. I'm never going back to a desktop, I just love the convenience of gaming wherever I want in the house with a wireless connection. I also really like using a touchpad.

I appreciate any and all efforts to support laptop gaming!
on Feb 21, 2006
Well, out of all the immensely interesting stuff, I've read on these forums, this post got me out of lurk-mode. Yes, laptop playability matters to me!

I might not be "serious about gaming", but even though I have a desktop pc, I find myself doing most of the gameplaying that I have time for (too seldom nowadays, sadly) using my laptop in my cozy chair. Until I get a plasma screen hooked up with my main PC , that is probably going to be the way I play most of my games in the near future, I think. So thanks a lot for giving me that opportunity with what seems to be a fantastic game. Looking forward to playing it!
on Feb 21, 2006
all i use is a laptop for gaming, since our home computer is a mac. i have a couple month old dell multimedia laptop though that is pretty beefy and will play battlefield 2 just fine. but GC1 is one of my favorite games and I have been waiting ever so patiently for the sequel, I've been on this website all day reading whatever I can about the game since I cant get it till later in the week when I can make the 30 min drive to an EB or our local walmart gets it. thanks for thinking of us laptop players though.
on Feb 21, 2006
I have a baseline Dell and that means built in graphics. I added a stick of 256 MB of RAM and now i have 512 MB total...well, really its 448 MB, because 64 MB is alloted to my built in graphics...but my CPU is a 2.2 Ghz (celeron ) but at least it does the job. I cant really play most games which sucks but i get by
on Feb 21, 2006
Definitely, definitely, definitely YES! It does matter. Low end hardware is just an expression as I think to put all the good things about low-end-hardware aside and forget them, yes, even put them down in a kind of way. I mean if something works well - why bother upgrading? I am so glad Stardock took some time and made GalCiv II low-end-hardware friendly cuzz the truth is IF other game developers would make the effort to optimize their behemoth titles they would all run smoothly on a respectable 1,0 GHz system with let's say the Voodoo 5500 graphic card. We need more ppl who care about consumers cuzz not everybody can affort a new 4-core-Pentium IV along with 4 GB of DDR III RAM to be able to play ONE SINGLE game smoothly. It's beyond ridiculous that some ppl let themselves be torn into the commercial deep river called "The fast/newest is the best". That goes for laptops as well. You guys keep up the good work.
on Feb 22, 2006
Yea It works on my laptop which makes me happy(although it is quite slow )

Now I've got something fun to do while in my boring lectures in class... and because my desktop is broken its all I got right now

So yes, it is greatly apreciated that the support for low end systems is there
on Feb 22, 2006
Well it would be cool to see the difference between my Desktop (AMD Athlon 1GHZ, 768 MB RAM, 19" Monitor and a GEFORCE TI 4600 wih 128 MB RAM) and my newly acquired Laptop ASUS Pro60VC (Intel Celeron M370 1,6 GHZ, 512 MB Ram, Geforce Go 6600 256 MB Ram, 15,4" WXGA TFT Disply).

I run parallel Imperial Glory on both systems and the Laptop won...so far.

Did anyone who allready has it, compare? We in Germany unfortunatelly have to wait a little longer.

See Ya...or Read ya would be better right?
on Feb 22, 2006
Your are completely right and forget about your colleagues. Thank you very much that you did your own way one more time.

At home I have an Athlon 800 with Win98, Radeon 9250 (128MB and 128Bit) and 384 MB (Did you ever try to run XP SP2 on a machine with less than 512 MB?. You don't want that. Believe me.) This computer is more than enough for word processing, image galleries, music, tax computation etc.

When GCII would have forced me to buy a new computer I could not have ordered it. As a student I had state of the art hardware. But now I have a family

I have a tight budget and I can spend it only once. Do you want to spend me my monney for hardware or for your software?

Though in the office I have a decent 3GHz machine with 2GB and (unfortunately) Intel onboard grafics and a 22" LCD. Thus I will be able to see all the glory of the game anyway.
on Feb 22, 2006
great, big hug for doing this
on Feb 22, 2006
Absolutely ! I'm an IT consultant which is a job with plenty of downtime ( travelling, waiting for meetings, monitoring systems that probably won't fail, etc ... ), so I tend to play quite a few games on my laptop. I'm lucky that I have a relatively powerful spec ( won't bore you with the details ) that runs CIV IV, Rome : TW and other assorted strategy games quite well at high detail, but it's not nearly as fast as my desktop machine. As such, it's very important for me that the games I wish to play on the move are resource-efficient. Indeed, while buying games I tend to weigh how they will perform on my laptop equally to performance on my desktop.

On a sidenote, some gamedevs should get their heads out of the clouds and take a good long look at the evolving games market : I know many people who play World of Warcraft, or Eve Online, simply because it runs very well on their low to midrange system while other games are barely playable. The same goes for all other Blizzard games, they are always extremely efficient. This widens your customer base considerably, especially in emerging markets like the far East, China etc ... where people are a few years behind the technology curve.
on Feb 23, 2006

I only have a laptop, but it is strong enough for TBS up to now. It's lagging with Civ4, but still capable. So I don't bother... yet. My interests grasp more of certain things out of games, and I DO buy computers for other reasons I know I game I wanted to see the demo: my laptop would not take it so just too bad. Sad, but first things first.


You see, some gamers get jaded or interested by other things... and they only keep up with their favorites, maybe as fervently as before but just with less time to spend. And some gamers just don't have parents buying them a computer every 2 years (some also have slow computers, but good Internet cafes where they became avid "gamers").



my cutie (bought second-hand, 6 months ago):
ThinkPadR50
Centrino 1.6
Radeon 32MB DDR
512 DDRAM
30Gig
See? No big beast, but it does what it's asked and does it faster than my previous desktop (700MHz, TNT2Ultra, 256SDRAM). Priorities change, even if I am still interested in games as games and works of art (with its industry). I'm anything but a classic case though, being ex-centric among ex-centrics, but it might be more common in TBS communities.



 

on Feb 23, 2006
I'm in that case so I'm very happay that you think about guys like us!
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