doom 3 and opengl 2.0 questions

Ok, I’ve been developing a game engine in my spare time for the past few years. I’m adding some cool fx to the engine and I’m trying to decide where to cut off video hardware. My current min requirement is Geforce 2.

The questions are when do you think opengl 2.0 will have heavy support? and what are the min requirements going to be for doom 3? If id pushes the market a lot of people will upgrade and I could take advantage of that.

Thanks…

John.

In an interview with Carmack at Gamespot, he says that the minimum hardware for doom 3 will be GeForce1 level, so that he can use dot3 and stencil. He also uses cube maps on these cards.
Extra speed and features should be available on a geforce3 and above, using vertex programs and 3d textures.

http://valve.speakeasy.net/survey/
survey of what ppl have
interesing to note the high number of amd cpu’s + the averge cpu seems to be about 700-800hz very high

Originally posted by zed:
http://valve.speakeasy.net/survey/
survey of what ppl have
interesing to note the high number of amd cpu’s + the averge cpu seems to be about 700-800hz very high

That’s an older survey (last year I think).
A more current one is here: http://valve.speakeasy.net/
(note the subtle change in the url )

well I know this is something you all have had to do before, I trying to find a reasonable hardware cut off. Cpu power is not so much an issue, I’m concerned with gl extensions for special fx and how many different pipelines I’ll need for a GF2’s 2 texture channels, a GF3’s 4, and ATI’s latest 6. All of these have different optimization techniques. All this with the knowledge that the engine most likely wont be ready for a good year or so.

John.

A lot of people (gamers) have TNT and TNT2, vooodoo 2, matrox g400, so you should consider those as well. If I were you, I would include a basic gl 1.1 engine as well as one with gl 1.3 + extensions.

I think that some gamers aren`t aware the fact that opengl has versions and extensions so they wont understand it if your app fails on their gl 1.1 complient machine.

V-man

That is a good point, I think I might write 2 generic implimentations, but they may just work based on multitexture like:

if no multitexture then your going to use the core gl renderer.
else
{
switch(channels)
case 2:
base no frills multitexture renderer.
case 4:
4 channel renderer.
.
.
.
}

Originally posted by V-man:
A lot of people (gamers) have TNT and TNT2, vooodoo 2, matrox g400, so you should consider those as well. If I were you, I would include a basic gl 1.1 engine as well as one with gl 1.3 + extensions.
V-man

looking at the survey above u will notice not many ppl have those cards at all (apart from the tnt’s) + remember this survey is always gonna be a bit behind the times + if youre aiming for something in a years time (translates to 2 years time ) some of these cards r gonna be like hens teeth.
though i do agree with supporting older hardware i dont believe u should ‘dumb down’ the game because of it.

Yes, but this is a survey of people who think enough about games to fill in a survey about them - not a very general demographic

Go down to Best Buy, and look at what’s being sold in the machines there:

Intel Built-in 3D Graphics Decellerator
ATI Rage 128
TNT2 Vanta
GeForce2 MX
ATI Radeon

The add-in cards sold at retail are mostly various variations on GF2/3/4 and Radeon/VE/7500/8500.

I think this should give you a good idea of what to shoot for. The three levels I can see right now are:

  1. Built-in graphics, TNT2: multi-texturing, soft transform, poor fill rate, low memory – your general internet surfer person who bought a machine the last year

  2. Hardware transform, two texture units (three for Radeon), 32 MB memory – your typical knows-that-graphics-matters person who upgraded in the last year or two, or just a 1) who got lucky picking out their machine

  3. Hardware transform, shader support, four-six texture units, 64 MB memory – your typical hardcore gamer who likes to stay current

I think the market size relation is something like 88:9:3 (percentage wise) but that’s just a wild guess.

>>Yes, but this is a survey of people who think enough about games to fill in a survey about them<<

exactlly what u want if youre making a game

>>I think the market size relation is something like 88:9:3<<

heres some other market size percentages (wild guesses)
hardware of the ppl who actually buy 3d games
5:60:35

there might be more 386/486’s out there than p4/athlons but im pretty sure with regards to 3d games to p4/atlon owners buy 10x the number of titles than the 386/486’s

jwatte, nice…

I think you have the right idea. Most people buy the cheapest pc they can find at the store. I’ll take a look at bestbuy.com and see what they have available. This should be a good idea of the system that the average user will be on in two years. I’ll just spec out the cheapest pc on the site.

Great idea thanks!

John.

This is funny…


Cheapest pc:

eMachines Desktop with Intel® Celeron® Processor 1.1GHz
$474.99

Graphics:

Intel® Direct AGP 3D

Video Memory:

810 shared

oh, my…

well I’ll add the gl 1.1 support and force anything lower than GF1 or RADEON to default to this.

John.

It’s a survey of people who installed the half-life patch and opted to fill in the survey. Some of them were pretty ignorant of their graphics card, look at the details in the “other” section, it’s full of OEM names, mostly NVIDIA variants. Sure it’s a filter but I wouldn’t be so dismissive of it, especially if I have anything like a game in mind. Time is on your side.

[This message has been edited by dorbie (edited 05-13-2002).]

I have not participated in the survey myself, but those fields seems like they could have been filled out by an automatic program. How many average gamers know if they have SSE? And how many users would say that their video card is a “Microsoft Corporation GDI Generic”?

I did complete the survey, that’s how I originally saw the link.

Certainly some of it was automated, I forget the details but I didn’t fill in my system memory, SSE etc, I seem to remember it asked a few questions but I forget which. You did have to opt in to the survey. The biggest filter IMHO is that it’s only gamers who patched their half life installation which probably narrows it to a slightly more hard core group.

You can also look at the stats on the MadOnion.com Hall of Fame page here . Look at the User’s Choice at the bottom. Though beware, it too is heavily tilted to the hardcore, but even there GF2 MX is the among the most prevalent cards being used.

It’s also too bad that many people who would consider upgrading their video card (even on many new machines) find themselves stuck with no AGP slot. :-/

Does anyone know where to find a list of videocards and the extensions they support. I have been up and down the nvidia sight and have found nothing. I haven’t checked ati’s site yet. I was looking at nvidias developer section. Any ideas?

Thanks…

John.

http://www.delphi3d.net/hardware/index.php