Bungie is doing all the four versions of the game by themselves. I doubt that they want to work on a fifth version. Besides there's probably some good reason as to why they're not developing for PC. I wouldn't expect a PC version of destiny. If you truly want to play it buy a console.
Personally I find it funny and ironic, that (not all) PC gamers are screaming "PC Master race" yet they continue to ask for console exclusives on PC.
English
-
...what? How does PC gamers being the master race (not that they are, necessarily) have anything to do with wanting more games? Wouldn't it be normal that a group of people who think their platform is the best would want more games to be on that platform?
-
and the "5th version" is a lot more than just a single version - whole lotta different hardware configurations on the PC side.
-
Yea but the Xbox uses directX and computers tend to use that as well so its actually easier to bring something to PCs from Xbox then other consoles (at least it was like this in the past).
-
True it is easier than in the past since both the next gen consoles are x86 like most PCs, however, inconsistent screen sizes, memory capacity and speeds, disk speeds, a myriad of GPU vendors and models, and differing CPU architectures are just a few of the issues that need to be faced. Not impossible (obviously since there are tons of great PC games) just not as easy as maintaining a few different console versions.
-
That's why they have minimum spec requirements, though a console developer might have issues with this since they won't be use to dealing with all the variables for system specs that everyone will have. Though I meant how Microsoft designed the Xbox to use directX so you could do all the coding through that and it would be easier to bring it over to computers because of that. And honestly there are only 2 companies who make GPUs (Amd and Nividia) and 2 companies that make processors and motherboards (Amd and Intel), everyone else out there (Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, EVGA, XFX, etc..) just takes the reference boards or cards and add their own features or overclocking.
-
Edited by freefall722: 7/4/2013 3:08:58 AMYes minimum specs - but yeah the variables is what will get you. You're right too about CPUs only real players (especially in x86 like we're talking about here) are Intel and AMD - which is why for CPUs I mentioned architectures (which is where the variability is). But for GPUs don't forget integrated vs. discreet - that will increase your pool of possible GPUs.
-
But the whole point of a GPU is to take the load of rendering images away from the CPU, and no one really uses integrated graphics for gaming, yea its there but it doesn't make sense to optimize a game to run on that when majority of people will have a discreet card. How you access memory is dependent on software not hardware (at least for higher level programming, which is what is typically used for programming games). For example to get the size of the input buffer in C++ I used std::numeric_limits<std::streamsize>::max() You're not going into low level programming languages for games (RollerCoaster Tycoon actually did though) so you don't have to be perfect with hardware settings, espically with how little its been changing recently.
-
True you're mostly programming high level (though since Bungie writes their own engines I'm sure they have a lot of low level optimizations going on) but that doesn't help you escape system variability. More specifically it makes it more difficult to optimize - how large should the textures be on disk? Should I load all the textures in early because the disk is too slow to load on the fly or will I run out of memory if I load too many too fast? And does loading these high res textures even matter if my target resolution is only going to be 1024x768. Again I'm not saying these are overly difficult issue nor have they never been solved over and over again by PC games over the years. I'm just saying porting the PC is more involved than porting to another console. You would be shocked how many people are playing games on integrated graphics (heck even both the new consoles are integrated graphics). Yes there is a whole subset of people who build awesome gaming machines but the vast majority of people are just playing on regular computers. More specifically they're playing on laptops and you're more likely to find integrated than discreet there. Now at this point you're probably thinking well they should just have minimum requirements that only allows those awesome gaming rigs - and I agree - but now we get into how much effort do you want to put in for such a small market and things get complicated again. The higher your minimum requirements the lower your potential market the less worth it is to make.
-
[quote]True you're mostly programming high level (though since Bungie writes their own engines I'm sure they have a lot of low level optimizations going on) but that doesn't help you escape system variability.[/quote] Low level can be used on consoles because the hardware will never change, with higher level programming languages you can basically negate that problem (if you know what you are doing) and then its up to what OS they are using. With C++ you can run it on your system, you just need to compile it first and the problems are usually from using different software not hardware. Where Java will basically run the same on any computer as long as you have the environment for it installed, again hardware variables isn't an issue here. [quote]More specifically it makes it more difficult to optimize - how large should the textures be on disk?[/quote] You can use multiple discs and just run it off the HDD or SDD, the question now seems to be how much do I need to compress the files. [quote]Should I load all the textures in early because the disk is too slow to load on the fly or will I run out of memory if I load too many too fast?[/quote] Honestly this really depends on what type of game it is too. If its a FPS with small maps then load it all at the beginning, if its an MMO then you can choose to load in certain things when they are needed. [quote]And does loading these high res textures even matter if my target resolution is only going to be 1024x768.[/quote] This I can't say much on because I don't know about it that well. [quote]Again I'm not saying these are overly difficult issue nor have they never been solved over and over again by PC games over the years. I'm just saying porting the PC is more involved than porting to another console.[/quote] Which is why I mentioned that going from Xbox to PC is a lot easier than going from PlayStation or Wii to PC. Being on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One makes this a little more difficult though but like I said Microsoft actually made it a bit easier to port games from their consoles to PC because of directX. [quote]You would be shocked how many people are playing games on integrated graphics (heck even both the new consoles are integrated graphics).[/quote] For older games and ones that don't have super high graphic requirements yes, but for games like Battlefield or Crysis no. Also [quote]The PS4, in comparison, has an 8-core Jaguar AMD CPU, with a GPU that’s around the same level as the Radeon 7870 (which is significantly more powerful than the 7790). The PS4 has 8GB of GDDR5 RAM, providing 176GB/s of bandwidth to both the CPU and GPU. The Xbox One mostly ameliorates this difference with 32MB of high-speed SRAM on the GPU, but it will be a more complex architecture to take advantage of.[/quote] [url]http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/156273-xbox-720-vs-ps4-vs-pc-how-the-hardware-specs-compare[/url] That doesn't sound like an integrated GPU to me since they mention CPU and GPU separately. [quote]Yes there is a whole subset of people who build awesome gaming machines but the vast majority of people are just playing on regular computers. More specifically they're playing on laptops and you're more likely to find integrated than discreet there.[/quote] It really depends the game though, yea a lot of people will play something like WoW or LoL on those computers but you don't need much power to run those games. And labtops have their own GPUs, yea they are weaker but people don't really buy a labtop to play those games with super high graphic quality. Honestly you don't need a lot to just run games, most of the work is done by your GPU anyway so you can skip out on other parts if you really need to. IMO, I go with a minimum of around $800 for a gaming system but that is just me. Though it really depends on what you mean by awesome gaming machines, a $1000 system might be over the top to one person and entry level to another. Also if you already have a computer and are getting a console, think about if you spent a little time to learn to build your own PC and spent those $400 from a new console to upgrade a part or two, then you end up pretty even there anyway. Think about it a $600 computer plus a $400 gaming console puts you at $1000 spent, thats enough for your own gaming computer. [quote]Now at this point you're probably thinking well they should just have minimum requirements that only allows those awesome gaming rigs - and I agree - but now we get into how much effort do you want to put in for such a small market and things get complicated again. The higher your minimum requirements the lower your potential market the less worth it is to make.[/quote] Mnimum requirements are usually pretty low though, like 3 Gb of RAM (4Gb and up is pretty standard right now anyway.) and fairly old GPUs. Most people are probably running Windows 7 (some might still be on XP), Win 7 already has a spec requirement so you could always base it off that, or just go head and say you are willing to sacrafice a couple sales so your game takes advantage of better hardware. Even then older hardware still has some games that will run on it. Some recent games have gone as low as Nividias 8800 or 9800GTs ( I knowDiablo 3 did), yea you'll probably have it run on the lowest possible settings but they could still run. Then with intel their processors have barely been improving since Sandy bridge, Ivy bridge was basically a slight upgrade with a smaller die so it ran a little hotter and Hasewell was another slight improvement and that runs hotter again. There is also potiental power from overclocking but that's a whole ordeal in itself.
-
I'm just gonna stop us here - because we've started to say the same thing (and really the point of this nice discussion we're having) and that's that while porting to the PC would be nice (I'd love it) it is a different beast than porting to a console. And while I'd love to go down the rabbit hole and talk nitty gritty with you (it's been fun) I don't think it'll change our conclusion much. I'll side note though that both the xbox one and ps4 are using one of AMD's APUs - which is an integrated CPU GPU. (You get some more confirmation of this with the shared memory and hUMA support) Integrated just means the CPU and GPU cores occupy the same die - but in both cases (integrated and discreet) CPU and GPU cores are very different than each other. AMD does a much better job than Intel at the integrated GPU (which is why Intel made such a big deal about their integrated performance with IRIS on Haswell - though they're obsessed with performance per watt right now so their GPUs don't get much love).