Average Casual Gamer's Computer

#1 A casual gamer who buys Pre-built PC's and stuff would definatly be able to run TSE in two years imo with the way integrated graphics are going, and the price drops on decent video cards.

#2 The problem is that the average *casual* gamer two years from now, is whatever the cheap computer was three years ago. People don't upgrade that often, and three years ago, the typical PC was a 2.0 GHz Pentium 4 with 256 MB of RAM and Intel 845 Integrated Graphics. That ran at 166 MHz, and did one pixel per clock, with no pixel shader support (but four texture units -- that run really slow if you use them).

Also, all of the integrated graphics computers have shared memory -- the CPU (which does vertex transform) shares memory bus with the rasterization and texturing engine.

The world really is split in two groups: integrated, cheap graphics, and accelerated, reasonable graphics.

#3 I would recommend TGE 1.5 for people that want a wide range of performance
and little complaints or problems with end users framerate wise.

To include older non 9.0c designed GPU's and systems. Anything slower than a 6800 is
too slow for a full featured TSE game IF you never want to hear a complaint of see a
little chop.

That's just my opinion.

In addition i'll agree people are not upgrading as often. As current machines are snappy fast
(relative to older Pentium I II III etc) and reliable. They don't break as often once broken in.

There was a 3 year IT cycle that seems to have morphed into a 5 year cycle. With some
places in the world lagging even farther behind.

Programmable GPU's are still a new technology IMHO. My TSE games, I want to make new
fantastic game experiances so I have no time for slow machines. Anything below a 6800GT
and don't cry to me (hehe for the TSE games).

#4

Quote:My TSE games, I want to make new
fantastic game experiances so I have no time for slow machines.

Where do you find the artists that can work with this technology, for a fee that you can afford?

#5 As for art well that's the tricky part no?

The art assets will mostly work from TGE into TSE as there is a collection of procedural shaders
that are easily applied via a material. I.E. I can make a transparent character with just a couple
lines of code and no art work using an existing DTS.


ATI and Nvidia are already way ahead of the curve here.. they have a lot of older stock
that's still being sold retail. But the newest GPU's well..

Let's just say the fantastic way TSE is built.. it's gonna scale up right along with
Moores law.

Let's look at some programmable GPU's.
ATI 9200 - 1.5 micron 36 million tr.
Nvidia 5200 - 1.3 micron 43 million tr.
Nvidia 6800 - 1.3 micron 222 million tr.
Nvidia 7950GX2 - .90nm - 556 million tr.
ATI R580 - 90nm - 384 million tr.

Just imagine in bout' 2 years they will have .65-.35 nm GPU's...
With 2-4 of them on a MCM module. (Multi GPU cards).

#6 The average casual gamer 2 years from now STILL won't know how to upgrade his drivers so it's a lost cause.

#7 I'd suggest browsing a few copies of any similar games or genres at your local Best Buy and see what they list as minimum and recommended specs.

#8

Quote:I'd suggest browsing a few copies of any similar games or genres at your local Best Buy

Those are not "casual" games. "casual" games are by and large downloadable. Try sites like popcap.com or miniclip.com or king.com -- that's "casual" games.

The lowest common denominator is Flash 6.

#9 Oh, cheese and rice! Cut me some slack.

There are plenty of casual games on store shelves. And as far as I know, Flash 6 doesn't support shaders. Or is a true 3D engine, like TSE (which he listed above).