OK, so I *finally* have a new PC, over 8 years after I built the old 
one. My sister got my the astonishingly expensive CPU for Christmas, I 
reused the recently upgraded GPU from my old PC, and I bought myself a 
roomy new case to house it all.

Naturally, having built the monster, the first thing I did with it was 
to install Crysis. ;-)

We recently had our broadband upgraded, so rather than taking several 
hours to download, Crysis took only 15 minutes to download, despite 
being over 6GB in size. (!!) That was the first surprise.

I went into the options screen and told it to select the best graphics 
settings for my system. So it decided to turn every single setting up to 
maximum. Squeeeee! :-D More to the point, unlike last time I played, it 
now runs smoothly.

(So 4 *years* after the game's original release, a high-end PC can just 
about handle it? That's nice. What the *hell* did they develop this 
thing one?!)

All is not perfect, however.

While playing through Core, I tried to shoot one of the enemies, and the 
screen turned bright green and my headphones nearly blasted my hears off 
with a loud buzzing tone. I had to reboot the PC to get it to respond 
again. Putting the pain back into crashing, eh?

Best of all, when I loaded up the game again, all of the game saves from 
the last two hours were gone. I had to replay the entire level. Not that 
the levels aren't cool or anything, but redoing several hours of work 
just because of a computer glitch is *not* my idea of a fun time. >:-[

Then I got to that level where you pilot a VTOL. It was impossibly 
difficult the first time, and it doesn't seem to have gotten any easier. 
I don't understand why the controls do not work as advertised. It says 
"press [Space] to climb". Yet sometimes pressing [Space] makes the craft 
go on, and sometimes it makes it go *down*. WTF?

The afterburner has no effect that I can detect, other than making lots 
of noise. And, worst of all, the craft keeps doing this thing where it 
goes slower and slower and eventually completely stops. I can rotate 
around, I can fire, but I CANNOT MOVE AT ALL. Tell me, in which universe 
is that fair? How am I supposed to do anything if I'm pinned to the 
spot?! I've got people screaming in my ear "We need help here! Where's 
our air support?!" BUT I CANNOT ****ING MOVE!!

After repeatedly replying the same half mile of airspace, I eventually 
managed to get the plane to the end of the mission. And then the game 
crashed. Just dumped me back onto the desktop, without so much as an 
error message. So now I have to play this hateful infuriating level ALL 
OVER AGAIN! >_<

Six separate times I struggled to the end of this miserable level that I 
hate more than any other in the entire game. And five times the game 
crashed as soon as the level ended. Only on the sixth attempt did it 
*finally* load the next level - like it should have ****ing done in the 
first place! >8-[

Playing through the last level, I noticed something strange: from time 
to time, usually when a new sound needs to play, the game video will 
lock up for several seconds. (The audio continues to play normally.) And 
then the game continues like nothing happened.

Usually this indicates the system paging data back in from disk. Except 
that this is impossible. My PC has an insane EIGHT GIGABYTES OF RAM! 
(Yes, I know it's excessive, but it was surprisingly cheap.) The entire 
game is only 6GB. I don't even *need* a harddrive; THE ENTIRE GAME FITS 
IN RAM! Even though it's Crysis! Amazing, but true. So... WTF is pausing 
it?!

I made it to the end of the game without too much difficulty. But the 
final stage caused me severe problems. Trapped on the deck of the 
carrier, I ran out of ammo for everything. And there's no ammo anywhere. 
So I'm basically being chased around the burning deck with absolutely no 
way of fighting back.

It took multiple plays, but eventually I managed to defeat the final 
challenge. Except... here is the ultimate insult. To complete the game, 
you blow open the pod doors on the underside of the monster, lock on to 
the hole with your tac cannon, and fire a single shot to take it out. 
But you know what? I blew the doors off, pointed the tac cannon at it... 
and it WILL... NOT... LOCK... ON!!! >_<

Literally, I'm casually strolling around the empty deck, there's this 
huge hole above my head lit up like a Christmas tree, I've got a voice 
in my ears yelling "Nomad, use the tac cannon to take out the ship!", 
and the gun WILL NOT FIRE. No reason, it just won't.

Five times I replayed this punishingly difficult segment, and five times 
the cannon refused to fire. I've tried taking aim from every possible 
angle, I've explored every inch of desk. Nothing.

In summary, I've completed the game, but it keeps pretending that I 
haven't won. This, surely, must be the ultimate in unfairness.

I wish I could say it's the first time this has ever happened to me. I 
still remember completing HalfLife, killing the Nihilanth, and then 
spending several hours walking around the room trying to figure out what 
I'm supposed to do next. When I restarted that level and killed the 
Nihilanth again, the next level loaded. It seems the first time, the 
end-of-game script glitched and didn't run like it's supposed to. So *I* 
didn't do *anything* wrong - the game was buggy.

More recently, I attempted to complete Batman: Arkham Asylum. I ended up 
on the roof battling the Joker, except that he just stood there frozen 
to the spot. Nothing I did seemed to have any effect. Eventually I 
reloaded the previous level and struggled to complete it again. This 
time I ended up back on the roof, except now the Joker actually attacks. 
And if you hit him enough, you win the game.

Nothing is more rage-inducing than just barely making it to the end of a 
game, only to have the game stubbornly pretend that you haven't won. 
IT'S NOT FAIR!

Hmm, that's a thought... My new PC can handle Crysis, I wonder if it can 
run Batman on lowest detail settings? (Stupid, isn't it? Crysis was a 
cutting-edge masterpiece, whereas Batman has quite low graphical 
quality. And yet, Batman takes more compute power than Crysis? WTF?)

Post a reply to this message

> Usually this indicates the system paging data back in from disk. Except
> that this is impossible. My PC has an insane EIGHT GIGABYTES OF RAM!
> (Yes, I know it's excessive, but it was surprisingly cheap.) The entire
> game is only 6GB. I don't even *need* a harddrive; THE ENTIRE GAME FITS
> IN RAM! Even though it's Crysis! Amazing, but true. So... WTF is pausing
> it?!

Win32 apps can only use 2GB of memory (three with OS tweaking).  Having 
8GB only means it shouldn't swap the game out to run an OS function 
because something triggered an interupt.

If the game pauses, I guess it's reading a new map chunk, and the OS 
told to wait because it was busy updating its file cache, or Java quick 
start decided it was time to reload all its stuff, or the anti-virus 
phoned home to see if there was a new signature file, or something like 
that...

-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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On 24/01/2012 01:39 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:

>> Usually this indicates the system paging data back in from disk. Except
>> that this is impossible. My PC has an insane EIGHT GIGABYTES OF RAM!
>> (Yes, I know it's excessive, but it was surprisingly cheap.) The entire
>> game is only 6GB. I don't even *need* a harddrive; THE ENTIRE GAME FITS
>> IN RAM! Even though it's Crysis! Amazing, but true. So... WTF is pausing
>> it?!
>
> Win32 apps can only use 2GB of memory (three with OS tweaking). Having
> 8GB only means it shouldn't swap the game out to run an OS function
> because something triggered an interupt.

I'm actually running a 64-bit edition of Windows. However, I would 
assume that Crysis is a 32-bit application, so I guess your assessment 
stands.

> If the game pauses, I guess it's reading a new map chunk, and the OS
> told to wait because it was busy updating its file cache, or Java quick
> start decided it was time to reload all its stuff, or the anti-virus
> phoned home to see if there was a new signature file, or something like
> that...

...except that so far I've only installed Windows and Crysis. I haven't 
installed Java or Acrobat Reader or anything else which might attempt to 
update itself.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> While playing through Core, I tried to shoot one of the enemies, and the 
> screen turned bright green and my headphones nearly blasted my hears off 
> with a loud buzzing tone. I had to reboot the PC to get it to respond 
> again. Putting the pain back into crashing, eh?

> Best of all, when I loaded up the game again, all of the game saves from 
> the last two hours were gone.

  That's the downside of PC gaming. No such problems on the consoles.
(Ok, there are similar problems with console games as well, but they
are way, way more rare. Perhaps in 1% of all games, while the same figure
on the PC side is more like 50%.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 24/01/2012 04:49 PM, Warp wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> While playing through Core, I tried to shoot one of the enemies, and the
>> screen turned bright green and my headphones nearly blasted my hears off
>> with a loud buzzing tone. I had to reboot the PC to get it to respond
>> again. Putting the pain back into crashing, eh?
>
>> Best of all, when I loaded up the game again, all of the game saves from
>> the last two hours were gone.
>
>    That's the downside of PC gaming. No such problems on the consoles.
> (Ok, there are similar problems with console games as well, but they
> are way, way more rare. Perhaps in 1% of all games, while the same figure
> on the PC side is more like 50%.)

On one hand, all Xbox 360s are identical, which makes testing a software 
product vastly easier.

On the other hand, if an Xbox breaks, the manufacturer can charge you 
arbitrary amounts of money to fix it. If a PC breaks, you can just 
replace the offending part, available from a bazillion sources. ;-)

I should point out that this experience of a game crashing like that is 
unusual enough that I mention it on the Internet. I don't think I have 
/ever/ seen Quake crash. Nor HalfLife. Nor CSS. (Although... there /was/ 
that time my graphics card broke, and I had random polygons everywhere 
and psychedelic colours... man, that was trippy!)

Post a reply to this message

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> On the other hand, if an Xbox breaks, the manufacturer can charge you 
> arbitrary amounts of money to fix it. If a PC breaks, you can just 
> replace the offending part, available from a bazillion sources. ;-)

  Do you have any actual figures how much it costs to repair an Xbox 360
after the warranty has been expired?

  Anyways, advantages of PC gaming over console gaming:

- Keyboard and mouse. I can't stress this enough. Playing a FPS with a gamepad
is a pain. (And if you want to play a game with a gamepad, you can. It's not
like it's a mutually exclusive thing. In fact, Windows supports Xbox 360
controllers out-of-the-box. Or you could buy a PC-specific gamepad.)

- The keyboard and mouse as controlling devices also allow for game user
interfaces that are very awkard with consoles (such as point&click, and
anything requiring writing text). Level editors and such are also usually
much easier to implement for PCs due to this same reason.

- As time passes, graphics hardware and graphics get better, while consoles
are stagnant. Consoles upgrade only once every 5 years or so (and in fact
the current generation of consoles has lasted unusually long), and very
often are backwards-incompatible (although this isn't really a huge issue
in practice).

- Many gamers appreciate the ability to mod games, and to download and
install such mods. This is just not possible in consoles. (Well, not
unless you want to physically hack your console and get banned from the
console's online server system and stop being able to do anything online
and receive upgrades to anything.)

  Disadvantages of PC gaming:

- Crashes. From all the PC games I own, *at least* 50% have presented
crashes in one form or another. The amount of hardware and software
configurations is virtually endless, and so is the incompatibilities
list that cause crashes and other misbehavior. Also Windows tends to
"rot" over time, even modern versions (although Windows itself has been
less and less the culprit with newer versions, the culprit being usually
third-party drivers and such).

- Games tend to be optimized for top-of-the-line PCs, often making them a
pain to play with older PCs.

- Game availability. Many game houses do not port their games for the PC,
either because of marketing reasons, technical reasons, or just because
it's not profitable enough (because of rampant piracy). There are countless
very great games that are just not available for the PC, period.

  Advantages of consoles:

- Plug&play. Really. You just buy a game, put the disk in, and start
playing. That's it. No configuration, no updating drivers, no crashes.
Just plug and play. (On the current-generation consoles you can install
the entire game disk on the hard drive, making loading times faster, but
at least on the Xbox 360 that's optional. Although usually advantageous.
Nevertheless, it's a very trivial operation to do.)

- Did I mention no crashes? (Ok, that's not 100% true, as some games do
get somehow published with bugs in them. However, the crashes are really,
really rare. I'd say in less than 1% of all games. Probably significantly
less. And even with those games, it's rare for it to happen. After all,
they *have* passed a huge battery of testing.)

- Games are optimized for the console, so they will usually look as good
as the console allows, while having a good framerate. This even if you have
a huge HD TV or LCD monitor.

  Disadvantages of consoles:

- The controller. Well, of course not with all types of games. With many
types of games the controller is just marvelous. However, with other types
of games, especially first-person-shooters, it's a real pain. And there are
no options. (The PS3 has a third-party mouse periferal which might work.
I think it works by simulating the controller, rather than games having
direct support for it. The Xbox 360 has system-level non-support for mice
as a matter of principle. Don't bother hooking one in. It won't work.)

- Aging hardware. PCs advance, consoles don't. A new generation of consoles
will eventually emerge some time in the future, but you'll have to then spend
big buck to buy one, and wait for any good games to appear.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 24/01/2012 13:42, Invisible wrote:
> On 24/01/2012 01:39 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:

>>> Usually this indicates the system paging data back in from disk. Except
>>> that this is impossible. My PC has an insane EIGHT GIGABYTES OF RAM!
>>> (Yes, I know it's excessive, but it was surprisingly cheap.) The entire
>>> game is only 6GB. I don't even *need* a harddrive; THE ENTIRE GAME FITS
>>> IN RAM! Even though it's Crysis! Amazing, but true. So... WTF is pausing
>>> it?!
>>
>> Win32 apps can only use 2GB of memory (three with OS tweaking). Having
>> 8GB only means it shouldn't swap the game out to run an OS function
>> because something triggered an interupt.
>
> I'm actually running a 64-bit edition of Windows. However, I would
> assume that Crysis is a 32-bit application, so I guess your assessment
> stands.

On further reflection... Crysis can use only 2GB of RAM, but surely the 
OS can use all that cavernous space to cache disk files?

Post a reply to this message

On 24/01/2012 18:18, Warp wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> On the other hand, if an Xbox breaks, the manufacturer can charge you
>> arbitrary amounts of money to fix it. If a PC breaks, you can just
>> replace the offending part, available from a bazillion sources. ;-)
>
>    Do you have any actual figures how much it costs to repair an Xbox 360
> after the warranty has been expired?

No. But I imagine it's cheaper to buy an entire new Xbox.

This is based on my observations of what happens with laptops. Typically 

is obviously absurd. The manufacturers are simply preying on the fact 
that nobody else can supply this part.



would actually pay for...

It's news to me that the Xbox comes with a warranty. Usually MS products 
come with a disclaimer of liability. :-P

>    Anyways, advantages of PC gaming over console gaming:
>
> - Keyboard and mouse. I can't stress this enough.

Granted.

> - As time passes, graphics hardware and graphics get better, while consoles
> are stagnant.

Again, agreed.

> - Many gamers appreciate the ability to mod games, and to download and
> install such mods. This is just not possible in consoles. (Well, not
> unless you want to physically hack your console and get banned from the
> console's online server system and stop being able to do anything online
> and receive upgrades to anything.)

Well, it /could/ be possible, if the makers allowed it. But they don't, 
so that's merely a technicallity.

>    Disadvantages of PC gaming:
>
> - Crashes. From all the PC games I own, *at least* 50% have presented
> crashes in one form or another.

My experience differs.

Granted I've only played Quake 2, HalfLife (and Opposing Force, and Blue 
Shift, and Gunman), HalfLife 2 (plus EP1 and EP2), CounterStrike: 
Source, Portal, Portal 2, Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty 4: Modern 
Warfare, Modern Warefare II, Alieans vs Predator (the old one), 
Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, Oddworld: Abe's Exodus, Bastion, Braid, Batman: 
Arkham Assylum, Crysis, Crysis: Warhead, Cryostasis, Assassin's Creed, 
Assassin's Creed II and a handful of other PC games. (That's over 20 so 
far, if you're counting.) Almost all of these have been entirely 
crash-free the vast majority of the time.

> - Games tend to be optimized for top-of-the-line PCs, often making them a
> pain to play with older PCs.

Again, I'm not sure about that.

People complained about, say, HalfLife 2, but in fact it turns out to 
have surprisingly modest requirements. It played perfectly well for me 



> - Game availability. Many game houses do not port their games for the PC,

Many PC games are not available on consoles. If you have console X, many 
games on console Y are just not available.

I would say that the PC probably has the largest catelogue of games of 
any platform. There may be a few notable titles available only on one 
console, but that aside, there's a fair bit to choose from.

>    Advantages of consoles:
>
> - Plug&play. Really. You just buy a game, put the disk in, and start
> playing. That's it.

I put my new PC together, installed Windows 7, installed the Steam 
client, waited 15 minutes for Crysis to download over the Internet, and 
then I was playing Crysis. That easy.

I take your point though; sometimes things do /not/ go so smoothly. 
Sometimes you really have to bugger around with things to get a game to 
work.

One problem that doesn't seem to exist on consoles is stupid DRM. For 
example, I cannot play Crysis if Process Explorer is running, since it 
is classed as a "hacker tool" (which it obviously isn't).

> - Did I mention no crashes?

Try "fewer crashes". Although, again, I /have/ seen a console crash 
(despite not actually owning one, so I haven't mad much exposure). And 
my PC games don't crash all that often. (With a few titles being 
irritating exceptions.)

> - Games are optimized for the console, so they will usually look as good
> as the console allows, while having a good framerate. This even if you have
> a huge HD TV or LCD monitor.

Quite. There's no fiddling with quality settings to get just the right 
balance of quality and performance. It just *works*.

>    Disadvantages of consoles:
>
> - The controller.
> - Aging hardware.

Indeed.

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On Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:12:40 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> This is based on my observations of what happens with laptops. Typically
> if you buy, say, a £300 laptop, a replacement battery costs £280 - which
> is obviously absurd.

If you buy from the manufacturer, it is.

I bought a replacement battery for a Dell D610 (my old laptop) about 8 
months ago, and it cost me about $50 IIRC.

Bought it through Amazon.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:12:40 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> People complained about, say, HalfLife 2, but in fact it turns out to
> have surprisingly modest requirements. It played perfectly well for me
> on a lowly £60 graphics card. And when you consider that the
> top-of-the-line cards are usually £300 or so, £60 isn't exactly pricey.

"Surprisingly modest requirements" by today's standards.

8 years ago when it was released, the requirements weren't particularly 
modest.

Jim

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