lol geforce fx are best for games, radeon are best for tv out, and i dont use tv out, hehe

ok so my first 3 gfx cards were all ati and i had nothing but problems with them so they put me off anything ati forever



yep virtual porn will never be the same again when they get virtual pootie tang hair lol

btw where do u get this so called "playable" version of hl2? so i can test it and put an end to this once and for all lol

i say we jsut forget d3 exists so that your not disappointed when it arrives (i wont be disappointed because i know its gonna be a let down)

what do you all think the state of gaming will be in 5-10 years from now?

other then realistic hair, more how the scene will have changed due to the obvious technological advances in hardware and graphics, gaming styles, genres, etc

eek playable is stretching it

<img src="http://members.lycos.co.uk/horrorhasahome/cool4.jpg" width=640>

TEXTURE MISSING! It was stolen from Valve in september last year, and lots of sites went down and what have you in the aftermath. It may still be out there. Emule search for anon-hl2.rar


It's already compiled, no installing or anything. This is a raw stolen alpha (pre-beta version). Some of the stuff is rooms, some of the stuff is beautiful, some is just nothing. There's a few threads about it, "the russains are cumming! in a search of this forum should get you the thread i'm lifting these shots from.

If you have not, I can not more strongly urge you to download a video of it in motion, its a spectacle and a half! Comparing video to screenshots is like comparing coca-cola to rola-cola, normally screenshots are neat, but they really undersell it in the ones I've found. Its really is the gameplay



There'll be three sides, gameplay pushers, gfx pushers and the dabblers. GFX pushing games are what get all the attention nowadays, and in about 5 years, I don't see them having such a large market share, because all the games will look pretty much even steven, just bar the obsessive hair movement and such but the gameplay will be shallow.

Thinking a long way down the line, production costs are in danger of spiralling too high for small development houses to cope, but there will be a backlash, small firms, simple games, but quite popular.

There was an excellent article in PC Gamer, and a lot of industry speculation about what's happening after the "big two", and the common census is, people don't really buy into graphics as much any more, and they just won't sell on them alone... companies will go back to developing gameplay. I heard a few reports that sega and nintendo, and of course capcom, namco and the other japanese houses that really focus on building games round a core gameplay rather than emphasis only on will see a resurgance and stronger market position, but it seems very optimistic. But I'm not sure what's going to happen to them really, nintendo will be making software for a long time regardless... I'm thinking they are going to sell more when people get wise to the graphic situation... but then I'm obsessed by zelda anyway, so I just want them to make more games

I haven't been fond of this 'generation' at all. The games are ultimately shallow and unforfilling and its only the odd title that's really worth investing in. SNES era is still the best!

im more of a vanilal coke man myself

i had heard of the stolen stuff from valve, didnt know it was playable or anything tho, well playable of a sort



spud u really should stop saying things i agree with, ppl will talk

yeah the recent generation of games bar the few exceptions, are mostly shallow storyline lite crap, personally i think resident evil is one of the best storylines ever especially the raccoon city story as its covered from every conceivable angle to give you the whole scale of the devastation, but even ones that arent set in raccoon city, code veronica, gun survivor (yes it wasnt great but let me finish), still contain enough hidden and non hidden things that fans will pick up on but also they have enough of a great storyline to go it alone and create a good atmospheric engrossing game to play

although for me the most engrossing game ever is...... monkey island 1, never before have i felt so engrossed in a game then the first time.... and subsequent times right up to this day..... that i played monkey island 1 and of course its worthy follow up Monkey island 2 - Le Chucks revenge

i guess in a way resident evil is the modern day monkey island, it has the main central characters, engrossing interesting and enjoyable storylines, its kind of an adventure game, they both ahve puzzles that have to be solved, the only difference is re is more horror based where as MI is more a comedy thing

Link to the Past and Ocarina are joint first in "most engrossing ever" for me, I missed out on a lot of point and click but Monkey Island was great... infact pretty much all of Lucasarts original ones were great.

lets hope time is non-linear!

yeah i loved and still do all the lucas arts originals, bar loom, it was original but not in a good way. it always seemed like it was for musicians only

cant say ive played any zelda apart from one i had on game boy colour, but ill be buggered if i can remember what it was called, ill know the name if i hear/read it

i also hope time is non linear otherwise we will just keep going further along the crappy road were going

Having seen the huge gamespy E3 presentation video of HL2 plus all other videos of it, a lot of screenshots etc. I'm thinking that when this game arrives, I'll invest in the latest graphics card just to run it smoothly(which I normally don't do since I've always used budget hardware for my needs and I'm not a very hardcore gamer in that sense)
And I'm not that much looking forward to Doom3 anymore...

I really recommend getting the E3 quicktime video of HL2 which is a little under 600 MB. Not very good quality but it'll give you the idea. Afterwards you can download the shown scenes without commentary individually in BINK format, which are "perfect" quality.

the graphics, the variety of landscapes, the physics, gameplay, AI, .... everything is gorgeous

I think that it really is the "everything" that makes it look great for me, the way it plays and objects interact more than anything.

Oh and nearly forgot HL2 will be a fully hyper-threaded game at last. Now we can see if that's really worth its price tag:
(for those that don't know what it is hyperthreading seems, at least to be a great little addition, but its not been exploited yet beyond the odd penguin app)

hyperthreading eh, hl2 eh, kung fu bothan spies eh... eeeexxxcellent

and what will this price tag be that you mentioned spudly?

hyperthreading is an in?el technology , and although a better CPU, is much dearer than the athlon.

64bit wise, AMD is the only one who has their act together atm though.

thats why ive got AMD and always will, AMD ROCKZ :banana: i hate intel, fascist pigs... and in a bad way...... can u get good fascist pigs? i dont know answers on a postcard,

one of me mates (intel lover pah), had 2 processor comps and had nothing but problems with them

64 bit processors are still way overpriced though and as it happens far cry was built with a focus on 64bit processors too

Apparently the next Athlon64s will have some kind of hyperthreading / Virtual CPU Cores

i read somethign somewhere that semi organic processors, ram and hard drives are already being developed and will be bloody huge in size (data storage not physical size), i think ive posted on here about it before cant remember

Peh!

Quantum computers are on their way......

Generate a random world ?

No probs mate - gimme 1 second !

Remember spud , that Horizon episode about time-travelling ?

WE ARE A HISTORICAL SIMULATION - LOL

i seem to remember a horizon episode about time travelling, when was it on? wanna rewatch it is there links at all?

yes indeed it does, after amd sprouted about how rubbish it was (hyperthreading). Lying out of their asses of course.



LMAO! That documentry was hilarious WTF was this that guy with a phone on his head?

The latest model of Nokia's N-gage ?

"...this country is in for some rough times..............."
*man putting telephone cord around head *.
*man Humming*.........
"hmm.....I don't seem to be getting any signals right now....."


@ max - http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/20 ... trip.shtml

Another thread hitting an iceberg

well this is an interesting thread i must say, but i feel like its an unfair comparison between one great game and one game that probably will be great. I run farcry on a athlon 2.4 1 gig ram and a gf4200 64 mb, so hardly a ninja setup and i must say its the best looking game by far ive ever played, once i tweaked my settings to perfection. The cryo engine fits farcry perfectly, with amazing long distence sniping and realistic vegitation, im fairly sure the hl2 engine wouldnt handle this half as well. On the other hand the hl2 engine will be perfect for a city with more structures and buildings, something not used as much in farcry. All in all they are both great engines designed to do different jobs.

On a personal note i really am finding it harder and harder to get excited about hl2, especially reading about the subscription idea for updated content....valve really are intent on squeezing every penny out of us on this one.......and as for steam...dont even get me started on that one

well said sickboy, i think that pretty much is a definate well balanced end to this argument

whats all this about suscription? and what exactly is steam???

is it anything like ea games "punkbuster"? that stops "cheating" by taking screenshots of your screen, and reads data off your hard drive, what im wondering is though what other data does it read off ur hdd and deliever to the hands of ea for instance is your copy legal, what other downloaded items do u have that you shouldnt, games movies appz etc and of course personal data

It's an optional update delivery system, think like windows update site, but via a program you launch and it updates all your games. Steam is a steaming piece of shit, but I guess that's why no1 uses it