If you don't have T&L, don't buy The Movies?

[Sidhe]

Here are the sys req for The Movies. I'll bold the important entry..

The Movies(TM) Minimum System Requirements

- A version of Microsoft(R) Windows(R) 98SE/ME/2000/XP
- Pentium(R) III 800 MHz or Athlon(TM) 800MHz processor or higher
- 256MB RAM
- 8x Speed CD-ROM drive and latest drivers
- 2.4 GB of uncompressed free hard disk space (plus 500MB for Windows(R) swap file)
- 100% DirectX(R) 9.0c compatible 16-bit sound card and latest drivers
- 100% Windows(R) 98SE/ME/2000/XP compatible mouse, keyboard and latest drivers
- DirectX(R) 9.0c (included)
- Updated Windows Media(R) Player 9 Codecs (included)
- 800 x 600 Monitor Resolution
- 3D Hardware Accelerator Card required - 100% DirectX(R) 9.0c compatible 32MB Hardware T&L-capable video card and latest drivers*

Supported Graphics Cards:
ATI(TM) Radeon(R) series (7000 or better).
7000, 7200, 7500
8500
9000, 9200, 9250, 9550, 9600, 9700, 9800
x300, x600, x700, x800, x850

NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) series (GeForce 3 or better).
GeForce 3, 3 Ti
GeForce 4, MX, Ti
GeForce FX 5200, 5600, 5700, 5800, 5900, PCX 5300, 5750, 5950
GeForce 6200, 6600, 6800

Important Note: *Some 3D accelerator cards with the chipsets listed here may not be compatible with the 3D acceleration features utilized by The Movies(TM). Please refer to your hardware manufacturer for 100% DirectX 9.0c compatibility.

Online Requirements: Internet (TCP/IP) supported Online content requires broadband connection and the latest drivers.

NOTICE: This game contains technology intended to prevent copying that may conflict with some disc and virtual drives (Not Starforce!)

This is the same pitfall that hangs up Civ IV for a lot of people. If you can't run Civ IV, my guess is hold off on getting The Movies until you know there's a workaround for your system.

Man, I was so looking forward to this one! All I got is this (brand NEW) laptop for games, and it doesn't have hardware T&L.

[Pumpy Tudors]

Woohoo! This game will be mine on Wednesday, unless all the stores sell out.

[DaddyTorgo]

T&L ??

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

T&L ??

Transform & Lighting

http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/t/tandl.htm

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

T&L ??

Apparently "Thunder & Lightning", beyond that, still beats all hell outta me.

All I know is that it seems to be the new codeword for "games that I won't be buying since I'll be damned if any game is worth buying new video/new computer over."

edit to add: Hell, I didn't even remember the abbreviation correctly apparently.
The rest still applies however.

[Passacaglia]

So you need to have Tiki Barber AND Ron Dayne? Good luck.

[gstelmack]

The shame is the companies that have been putting out video cards over the last couple of years WITHOUT hardware T&L. Even laptops have had hardware T&L available for a while now, but everyone goes cheap on the motherboard parts.

Expect to see more and more of this as games move more to programmable pipelines (pixel and vertex shaders) and away from fixed-function pipelines (like the defunct 3dfx cards). Seriously, a GeForce 3 meets these requirements, and it's how old?

[Sidhe]

I've got an older laptop with a GeForce4 on it.. I'll bet it would run the game just fine.

What a load of crap that I blame DELL for. My first Dell ever, and probably my last.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by Sidhe

What a load of crap that I blame DELL for. My first Dell ever, and probably my last.

If you bought a new laptop for games, what video card was in it? I can't believe you bought a gaming laptop with a hunk-o-junk video card. Which Dell model?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

The shame is the companies that have been putting out video cards over the last couple of years WITHOUT hardware T&L. Even laptops have had hardware T&L available for a while now, but everyone goes cheap on the motherboard parts.

Expect to see more and more of this as games move more to programmable pipelines (pixel and vertex shaders) and away from fixed-function pipelines (like the defunct 3dfx cards). Seriously, a GeForce 3 meets these requirements, and it's how old?

What's missing in your assessment, IMO, is the reality that the average computer user doesn't have the foggiest notion that T&L exists now, much less anytime in "the last couple of years". AFAIK, not once in my life had I ever heard or seen the phrase until it came up in the Civ4 discussion last week. Until then, I'd have been closer to guessing you either meant TRL, [i]T&A[i], or maybe TNA ... but if someone said "T&L" & even put in it a computer context for me, I wouldn't even have known it referred to something related to graphics.

To put this in some sort of perspective, consider this:
[/b]I'm[/b] the ersatz tech support for about a dozen different people I can think of off the top of my head. A newspaper publisher, a radio station owner, etc., people who use computers every single day & often all day. But I've lost count of how many times I've walked through simple procedures like attachments to emails, setting up a new mailbox, etc. I have absolutely no illusions about what I know/don't know when it comes to hardware -- I'm closer to the village idiot than not -- but I'm ahead of at least 95% of the computer owners I know, maybe more than that.

Maybe it's all a matter of marketing -- maybe I've just aged out of the demo that anybody is marketing computers to these days & so have all of my friends & associates. Problem is ... we're the ones who handles the buying for the pc's our kids/teens insist they need/want/have to have.

edit to add: with a little luck (and a quick check of the link up the thread a bit to refresh my memory), I managed to discover that I have "NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX Integrated GPU" for graphic capability. Well, that's nice I guess, probably handy to know at some point or another. But to further illustrate the problem I see with all this stuff:

a) Of all the people I know IRL, I can think of exactly one who could have found that bit of information by themselves (and he's a veteran IT guy).

b) Of the rest, past experience tells me that even if I walked them through click by click to where to find even that bit of info, not a single one of them would have gotten to it without having to go back to square one at least once & it would have been a minimum 15 minute ordeal to get them there.

c) I may know what vid card I have but I still haven't the foggiest whether its T&L equipped/capable/compliant/whatever, nor do I really have too many guesses on where to begin finding out (outside of just straight out asking here on FOFC). Everybody else I can think of IRL would simply pick up the phone & call me to ask (if they could manage to get the question across without mangling it too badly).

[sachmo71]

Originally Posted by Sidhe

I've got an older laptop with a GeForce4 on it.. I'll bet it would run the game just fine.

What a load of crap that I blame DELL for. My first Dell ever, and probably my last.

I just went through the Dell computer buying experience. While I didn't know anything about T&L and I chose to go with generic video card thinking that it would be fine for my purposes, I did have a choice about which card I bought with my system. If I were concerned, I would have looked the specs up. Blaming Dell for my inability to play certain games doesn't really factor in. If they told me that I was getting a top of the line video card and it didn't work, I would be upset.

[SackAttack]

I'm seeing a lot of Intel processor-driven computers coming with the crappy Intel integrated video stuff. I had a kid come in to work yesterday looking for a new video card because his brand new $2000 machine was worthless for playing games.

Meanwhile, my new computer was a $500 e-Machines, Athlon 3500+ processor, and Radeon 200X video card. Good enough to run Civ IV without upgrades.

I'm also told that the Athlon chip is more stable than the Pentium anyway, so bonus on both counts.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

What's missing in your assessment, IMO, is the reality that the average computer user doesn't have the foggiest notion that T&L exists now, much less anytime in "the last couple of years"

Which is why I put the blame on the computer manufacturers.

Originally Posted by me

The shame is the companies that have been putting out video cards over the last couple of years WITHOUT hardware T&L.

The blame that goes on consumers is "I want the absolute cheapest". That leads to things like the "GeForce 4MX" abomination, which was really a faster GeForce 2 (it didn't have hardware T&L like all the other GeForce 4s). It also leads to the lousy Intel integrated graphics parts that Sack is talking about. There's a lot of cheap junk going into computers these days to keep the prices down.

But if you're buying something "for games" and you aren't spending $150+ on your video card, you aren't buying a computer "for games". For the last 2 years or more, if you walked into your local Best Buy and plunked down $100 or more on a video card that WASN'T a GeForce 4MX, you got hardware T&L. Look again at the list they give above (although why they include the MX when they claim you need T&L, I don't know).

[Sidhe]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

If you bought a new laptop for games, what video card was in it? I can't believe you bought a gaming laptop with a hunk-o-junk video card. Which Dell model?

Why can't you believe that I might have been ignorant? Apparently you don't know me that well..

Jon said it for me:

the average computer user doesn't have the foggiest notion that T&L exists now, much less anytime in "the last couple of years". AFAIK, not once in my life had I ever heard or seen the phrase until it came up in the Civ4 discussion last week. Until then, I'd have been closer to guessing you either meant TRL, T&A[i], or maybe [i]TNA ... but if someone said "T&L" & even put in it a computer context for me, I wouldn't even have known it referred to something related to graphics

I'm one of these guys..

[Samdari]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

Seriously, a GeForce 3 meets these requirements, and it's how old?

I saw something from either Civ IV or The Movies claiming that GeForce 2 had hardware T & L.

I think it is not ridiculous for gaming companies to assume its going to be installed in machines. Yes, the average computer user is not aware of these things, but the subset of users most likely to be aware of what their video card is, is gamers.


And JiMG, yes you are in charge of buying hardware for your kids, but I think most people in that boat need their kids to tell them what they need to buy. I think that goes a long way towards explaining the inferior consoles as more popular gaming platforms. Parents understand "XBox 2" whereas they do not understand "a video card with hardware T & L."

[ISiddiqui]

I agree with the Intel integrated graphics crap. Most people don't realize that getting a computer with that video card means you aren't playing anything good. Most people don't realize that if you want to play games on your PC, be sure your system specs say ATI or NVIDIA somewhere on them for the video card.

Or get an XBox or PS.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

But if you're buying something "for games" and you aren't spending $150+ on your video card, you aren't buying a computer "for games".

Right there, I do believe, is a big part of the problem I see -- outside of this forum, I know exactly zero people who have ever bought a computer "for games". I know a ton of people who happen to also play games on their computer, but none who have ever bought a p.c. with that as its primary purpose. And developers who are clearly marketing only to that sub-set eliminate a pretty large crop of potential customers, not to mention eliminating some number of certain customers for a particular product (i.e. it's very likely I would have bought Civ4 at some point sooner rather than later, although I'm not a regular p.c. game consumer at this point)

Make no mistake, it's their decision to make & if that's the way they want to go they're welcome to it.

For the last 2 years or more, if you walked into your local Best Buy and plunked down $100 or more on a video card that WASN'T a GeForce 4MX, you got hardware T&L.

Again, you're looking at it from a different world than me (not wrong, but very different). IRL, I know exactly zero people who have ever plunked down ... any amount on a video card -- they don't buy parts, they buy computers -- its considered a single item, they expect it to work reasonably well, and be reasonably current at the moment of purchase (although I keep telling them if they can buy it over the counter, its highly likely to be obsolete already).

Worth noting in that "zero people" IMO is the fact that the large majority of them own several p.c. games, it's not as though I'm talking about non-players. It's just that their gameplay is a hobby, an occasional diversion, not a lifestyle.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

... be sure your system specs say ATI or NVIDIA somewhere on them for the video card.

But is that (NVIDIA) a sure thing either at this point?

Hell, I can answer my own question there -- it's definitely not a sure thing ... since I don't have the foggiest notion whether my NVIDIA is T&L or SOL.

[sachmo71]

Jon, you are off on your html tags today. Perhaps you need a better video card?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by sachmo71

Jon, you are off on your html tags today. Perhaps you need a better video card?

Fixing that.
And trust me, it ain't just today (probably 99% of my edited posts are to repair some tag I f'ed up).

Maybe what I need is an hT(&)mL card?

[digamma]

Originally Posted by Sidhe

I'm one of these guys..

Me too.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

But is that (NVIDIA) a sure thing either at this point?

Hell, I can answer my own question there -- it's definitely not a [i]sure[i] thing ... since I don't have the foggiest notion whether my NVIDIA is T&L or SOL.

Any computer you buy from Dell or Gateway or whoever today (and for the past 3 years) includes NVIDIA or ATI cards with hardware T&L support.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by Sidhe

Why can't you believe that I might have been ignorant? Apparently you don't know me that well..

Jon said it for me:

the average computer user doesn't have the foggiest notion that T&L exists now, much less anytime in "the last couple of years". AFAIK, not once in my life had I ever heard or seen the phrase until it came up in the Civ4 discussion last week. Until then, I'd have been closer to guessing you either meant TRL, T&A[i], or maybe [i]TNA ... but if someone said "T&L" & even put in it a computer context for me, I wouldn't even have known it referred to something related to graphics

I'm one of these guys..

I was asking which Dell you bought and what video card was in it. You said you bought it "for games" (Jim, please pay attention to this quoted bit, it's important in our debate), so I'm trying to figure out how Dell led you to believe this laptop was "for games" and yet did not have hardware T&L in it. Was it one of their XPS laptops (which is their gaming laptop), or something else?

Again, I agree that many manufacturers are selling cheap junk that doesn't have the min specs it should. I'm also claiming that most of these aren't then sold as "for games". Anything I've seen that is "for games" in the desktop market has had a hardware T&L card for several years now. Laptops are more recent in getting decent video hardware, so I'm not surprised that even a decent laptop from 6 months or more ago doesn't have hardware T&L. But gaming laptops are also a fairly recent phenomenon, and both ATI and nVidia have been starting to put their current gen parts into laptop configurations to help their gaming performance.

[WrongWay]

That is what blew my Laptop out of the water.

P4 2ghz 1gb ram 64mb video memory And an Intel Graphics chip that does not support T&L. Hell, when I shelled out the money for my lap top I had no idea what T&L was and the Guy at Best Buy said I would be able to run all the games out there.

What kind of Tech guru out there would of asked about T&L 6 months ago when buying a lap top?

[sachmo71]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Fixing that.
And trust me, it ain't just today (probably 99% of my edited posts are to repair some tag I f'ed up).

Maybe what I need is an hT(&)mL card?

Nicely played.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by WrongWay

...and the Guy at Best Buy said I would be able to run all the games out there.

Thanks for illustrating another point that seems to get lost in these conversations a lot -- there's still a whole lotta people buying their pc's at various big-box retailers (I'm on my 3rd straight from Best Buy myself, including the one I'm at right now).

I do know a few people that have ordered online from either Dell or IBM (those who ordered from Gateway did so against my strong advice & at their own risk).
but the majority have bought from either BestBuy, Wal-Mart, or a couple from CompUSA.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

(Jim, please pay attention to this quoted bit, it's important in our debate)

Bah. I apologize, stupid mistake. I meant Jon (Jon Jon Jon Jon, maybe I'll get it right now).

On the laptop question, I'd like to highlight that it was only recently that laptops started being considered gaming platforms. And the first ones were only because the CPUs got fast enough and they needed decent video hardware for DVD playback.

What's changed is the push to make everything, including traditional 2D apps like the Civ series, into 3D apps. Even Vista is going to use 3D for all of its 2D windows rendering, using it for cool effects and the like. Laptops are just starting to catch up with this.

I'm going to be curious how well some of these integrated chipset desktops do with the next version of Windows...

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by WrongWay

the Guy at Best Buy said

I think I found the problem.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

Bah. I apologize, stupid mistake. I meant Jon (Jon Jon Jon Jon, maybe I'll get it right now).

[QuickDraw McGraw voice on] And doooonnnnncho for-git IT[/end QDMcG]

What's changed is the push to make everything, including traditional 2D apps like the Civ series, into 3D apps.

Which, far more than anything I feel toward the computer manufactuers, is who I'd like to slap the blue hell out of on a daily basis. Just like I've seen with online content over the years, a lot of stuff is being done simply because it can be not because it needs to be. Is the pretty pictures crowd really expected to suddenly decide text sims (which is what I consider Civ at its base) are worth taking time away from their FPS? Sorry, given the level of detail I've seen discussed in the Civ4 thread, I doubt that very seriously.

[JonInMiddleGA]

At least I know when not to muck around with something that's already working.
This thread illustrates why:

http://forums.gamershell.com/index.p...T&f=48&t=13418

[ISiddiqui]

Eh... I think it was about time CivIV went to 3d. Yeah, gameplay is the most important thing, but I want it to look good as I'm doing it.

I love the "world view" and the ability to look at the map from top down or iso view.

[WrongWay]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

Any computer you buy from Dell or Gateway or whoever today (and for the past 3 years) includes NVIDIA or ATI cards with hardware T&L support.

Where are you getting this info? My HP Laptop with its Intel chipset does not have T&L support?

[WrongWay]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

Meanwhile, my new computer was a $500 e-Machines, Athlon 3500+ processor, and Radeon 200X video card. Good enough to run Civ IV without upgrades.

Care to point me in the right direction for this machine?

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by WrongWay

Care to point me in the right direction for this machine?

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1124431830507

Make note of the skuId= tag. That's the number you can give the computer rep at your local Best Buy to see if they have it.

As for the price, it was about a hundred bucks less than that when I bought it, although I'm not sure if it was on sale, if the price I saw included rebates, or what. I just remember that the final damage was in the neighborhood of $500 (maybe this one is including a monitor, which I didn't purchase).

[Sidhe]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

You said you bought it "for games"

I should not have used those words without more context. I bought it for other purposes too, but it's the only thing I have "for games". I did not shop for a computer to buy games on. And even if I had, I don't know what "hardware T&L" is, and why my four year old Toshiba would have it, while a new DELL wouldn't. Other than the T&L, the new Dell does everything I want it to, including running other games.

But rather than bog down in the semantics of whether or not I wrote the right words, lets return to the essential question:

Is it ok for cardmakers, computermakers, and gamemakers, to go to war over specs and not tell us what they are up to? A whole lot of folks who aren't into "gaming rigs" and all the knowledge that goes with them will want to buy Civ IV, and The Movies too I would guess, and more than a few will be (and have been) disappointed to find out they can't run the game without serious graphical glitches.

Before this last fortnight, I don't think as many people were aware of hardware T&L as are now. Even seeing it as a requirement on a list won't have meant anything to vast numbers of people. There was an opportunity somewhere along the road to make it explicit.. seems to have been punted by all three parties up until now, which means Firaxis and Lion's Gate will get all the crap, though I'm not sure they deserve it. I think it goes back to card and computer manufacturers.

[jbmagic]

that why building your own computer is way better than buying one from the store or ordering one from dell.

at least you can put what brand you want inside.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Which, far more than anything I feel toward the computer manufactuers, is who I'd like to slap the blue hell out of on a daily basis. Just like I've seen with online content over the years, a lot of stuff is being done simply because it can be not because it needs to be. Is the pretty pictures crowd really expected to suddenly decide text sims (which is what I consider Civ at its base) are worth taking time away from their FPS? Sorry, given the level of detail I've seen discussed in the Civ4 thread, I doubt that very seriously.

Actually, there are a lot of performance benefits to going to 3D for everything. Everyone "oohed" and "ahhhed" over AoE II's graphics, and it's because they went to 3D for an otherwise-2D RTS. Without getting too technical, there are many benefits to treating everything as a texture on a quad, from visual quality improvements (filtering instead of pixelation, resolution-independence) to gameplay improvements (far more units on screen).

Plus the video cards get cheaper if they don't have to do dedicated 2D parts and pipelines along with their programmable 3D pipes.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by Sidhe

Is it ok for cardmakers, computermakers, and gamemakers, to go to war over specs and not tell us what they are up to? A whole lot of folks who aren't into "gaming rigs" and all the knowledge that goes with them will want to buy Civ IV, and The Movies too I would guess, and more than a few will be (and have been) disappointed to find out they can't run the game without serious graphical glitches.

Before this last fortnight, I don't think as many people were aware of hardware T&L as are now. Even seeing it as a requirement on a list won't have meant anything to vast numbers of people. There was an opportunity somewhere along the road to make it explicit.. seems to have been punted by all three parties up until now, which means Firaxis and Lion's Gate will get all the crap, though I'm not sure they deserve it. I think it goes back to card and computer manufacturers.

I guess this is a failure of ATI and nVidia. They've been pushing you for years to buy their stuff, it's branded all over the place ("Plays best on nVidia!"), and buying advice websites have been extolling game players to buy a dedicated 3D card and to watch out for the integrated junk. Problem is, that's all been tagged as "enthusiast", so people are just out buying whatever machine they can find cheap and not worrying about this stuff.

And as I've pointed out, there is a key difference between laptop and desktop in this discussion. If you've bought a desktop in the last 2-3 years that DIDN'T have hardware T&L, you were either really cheap, asked the salesman for a machine "for word processing and e-mail", or were sold a bill of goods (which I expect is the case for most people). Any decent machine out there has had a decent video card, it's mostly the really cheap business boxes using integrated graphics that don't.

Laptops are another story. It's been about 2 years since they even STARTED being considered gaming rigs, and until 6 months or so ago they weren't considered usable for the latest-and-greatest stuff. Note that Dell is JUST shipping laptops marked as gaming rigs, for example. You can now buy really nice gaming laptops, but not every nice laptop is suitable for current games.

This is another evolution on the gaming hardware path. It's similar to games no longer shipping on floppy anymore. If games still have to support older 2D-based hardware, games will stay stuck with 2D limitations. Resolution limitations, animation limitations, unit limitations, etc.

[Sidhe]

I would say that inhibiting progress in software design is probably a losing strategy, and that in the end it's the card manufacturers, and the computer builders, who are going to have to change, but in the short term it's the game designers who will bear the brunt of consumer outrage.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by Sidhe

I would say that inhibiting progress in software design is probably a losing strategy, and that in the end it's the card manufacturers, and the computer builders, who are going to have to change, but in the short term it's the game designers who will bear the brunt of consumer outrage.

That's pretty much the way it always is. Buggy drivers are a tech support cost for the game developer, not the video card maker. It was really bad when the first DirectX 8 cards shipped and most of the MOTHERBOARDs had buggy AGP drivers that led to slow software performance. It was something like a year from when DirectX 8 was released until most motherboards were working properly with AGP memory.

I think another problem here is an unrecognized market shift. Gamers have generally fallen into 2 categories: casual gamers (who play hardware-lite games like Tetris, Bejeweled, etc) and hardcore gamers (who play Quake, Doom, etc). The first are playing whatever works on their internet machine, while the latter generally pay attention to their hardware. Even if they don't know what "hardware T&L" is, they've done enough reading to know they have to spend $100 or so on a decent video card, and aren't going to accept integrated graphics.

I think there may be a third category: grognards (for lack of a better term). They aren't into flashy graphics and 3D games, so their games (FOF, Battle of the Bulge, etc) have generally run on their internet box. Maybe every now and then they get nervous because they want to play "Close Combat" and it's a bit more graphically intense than they are used to, but they've generally been lucky and have not had to pay too much attention to their hardware. Their business apps usually require a bit more horsepower and memory, so the CPU and RAM are pretty set, but the video card that runs Excel at 1024x768 has pretty much been fine for them. Maybe they needed to worry about VESA back in the day, but that was it.

Problem is, the strategy games have become more complex, and all of a sudden the graphics requirements have taken that leap. And people that aren't used to worrying about what video card is in their system suddenly have to pay attention.

If you've asked for computer advice on this forum in the last 2 years, any bit of advice you've been given has included a recommendation for a video card that is on the list given in the first post above. It's the people that haven't felt like they've needed to pay attention to this that are getting burned by this shift.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by WrongWay

Where are you getting this info? My HP Laptop with its Intel chipset does not have T&L support?

Usually Intel video cards don't have true T&L support. You have to have a NVIDIA or ATI card to make sure, and I'm positive that HP offers those chipsets as well for its laptops.