» Wed Aug 05, 2009 1:41 pm
I know of many games out there now that have some really nice eye candy within their engine that also allow for older systems to run the programs "decently", however it's still comparing apples and oranges.
Let's say the engine uses Physx and a minimum of DX9. While those are by no means junk they both have their limits compared to something that's going to be running the latest version of DirectX on today's technology.
Let's take entity counts and viewing distances into account. Older systems will be running much older RAM, processors and cards, which we all know will have limits. If the overall terrain for the game is built on a complex engine with a very detailed world then you can instantly expect a heavy burden on memory and processors. Assuming they aim to develope their terrain to a high fidelity cluttered world for the best bang for the buck to attract customers, that'll mean massive entity count in terms of objects present in the world. Radial clutter/flora won't be a factor but cranking up draw distances in a heavily cluttered terrain will eat a older system alive in a heart beat depending on how complex the models are to be within the program. Again, assuming they aim for the highest level possible on today's technology using very complex highres models and textures.
Then we reach a point where we have to ask, at what point is it to old for compatibility? Do we really expect 486dx Windows 3.1 machines to run it? Of course not. How about 1ghz single core processor machines with 64mb cards and 256 RAM? Probably not. 1.8ghz dual core machines on a 128mb card with 2gb RAM? That'd be pushing it, but doubt it. So really it comes down to, how advanced should we want this program to be developed. I for one wouldn't want them to tailor the engine to support a 5 year machine with outdated hardware.
While it is a valid point that there are a lot of games on the market today that support a wide variety of compatibility and settings I think it'd be fair to say that we shouldn't expect this game to fall short and support really old hardware and operating systems.
If you are running a 2.5ghz dual core processor with 2gigs RAM and a 512mb graphics card, you might want to start looking at a upgrade real quick because your game selection is going to shrink real fast in future game releases.