One thing to take into consideration while looking at this survey is that lower end players are less likely to have filled it out. Why? If you're on dial-up, you're less likely to fill out an online survey than someone on broadband.
It's the same reason that I'm sure registration results show a larger proportion of broadband users. If you're on broadband, you'll fill out a quick online registration no problem. If you're on dial-up, you're more likely to click "register later" for when you're online, and then never do it. Or at least that's how I did things when I was on dial-up. You're online time is managed differently; more tightly. Given my experience, the overall numbers seem a bit high. Maybe S&I just caters to lower end players. The second we do something that inadvertedly inconveniences people running 320x200, we hear about it. It's not the majority of players - not by far. But there are *plenty* of players running with slower computers, slower connections, or whatever. If you cease to support them, thats less people to play your mod. When you're a smaller mod, every player counts. I'm not saying cling to HL's out of the box system requirements as the world wizzes by. I'm just saying that you should respect the lower end player. -PNB -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of David Sassen Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2002 10:47 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [hlcoders] Fun and games and amateur analysis of 1.1.0.9 update hardware survey results... By any comparison, my computer's at the low end of the spectrum. I run a 700 MHz P3 with Geforce 256 with a near-full hard drive. However, I absolutely never have problems with slowdowns in my games. I play Tribes 2 at 1024x768 with settings all the way up and get smooth 30-40 fps. The only reason I can do this is I have 640 MB of RAM (PC100 RAM, even). Lots of memory, even relatively slow memory, easily compensates for a somewhat deficient processor. Most of the games written today are expected to fill up the memory space and spill over into virtual memory. As such, they have a lot of overhead left over when you drop the hard drive access times. In short, it's time to go up, not down. The 3% of people on there who used less than 640x480 were most likely mistaken or joking, and if they weren't, it's hardly reasonable to design games specifically aimed at those 3% to the detriment of everyone else. The cheapness of memory is quickly driving Half-Life's total system usage bill down. Backwards compatibility is admirable, but I have near the slowest processor and definitely the slowest named video card on that survey, and my computer runs fine. The fact that the majority of people have over 128 MB of memory is what should be telling. Persuter gettin his two bits in... :) _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
