Off-Topic Thread

I lol'd

Where's BioWare's corpse hiding?

nesf wrote: »

Where's BioWare's corpse hiding?

with the way ea keep renaming their studios to bioware, id consider the pit to be bioware

Thank god for a healthy and growing indie games industry which I'm proud to be a part of.

Support the indie developers. They deserve the money. Screw these big publishers. The ruination of many a good software house.

Danger781

Anyone have any experiences with CS:GO and the new 13.8 beta drivers for AMD?

Can't get above 30 FPS on Crossfire 7950..

It's one of two things..

1. The new drivers just don't play nice with CS:GO

2. The more likely options - The new drivers have changed something in my system. When I first got the cards I had GPU-Z telling me that one of them was running at 24.0 GB/s and 32-bit bandwidth. Took me a while to figure it out but once I disabled ULPS and AMD Overdrive this issue disappeared.. Now the problem is back again and I have a feeling this is to blame. Except both are currently disabled as far as I can see.. Went into the registry and found two instances of enableULPS set to 0. This is where it gets weird. Trixx settings says it also disabled, however it won't let me overclock it as apparently it is enabled. I am using afterburner but knew trixx had this option so opened that as well.

I don't know what to do!

BloodBath wrote: »

Thank god for a healthy and growing indie games industry which I'm proud to be a part of.

Support the indie developers. They deserve the money. Screw these big publishers. The ruination of many a good software house.

I don't know, I'm pretty happy with Sony. They've done well with Creative Assembly. EA and Activision are, on the other hand, carefully crafted plots by the American Religious Right to drive people away from gaming.

Aye well that was directed at EA and Activision really.

Anyone have any experiences with CS:GO and the new 13.8 beta drivers for AMD?

You should be getting 100+ fps with even a single card surely. CS-GO isn't exactly intensive. Maybe your fps max setting has changed. Enable the developer console and type

fps_max 60

or whatever you want to set the max frame rate to match your monitor. The default is 300. You have to change this in the config file to get it to stay at what you want.

nesf wrote: »

I don't know, I'm pretty happy with Sony. They've done well with Creative Assembly. EA and Activision are, on the other hand, carefully crafted plots by the American Religious Right to drive people away from gaming.

You mean Sega? as they own CA.

tbf to EA they've just completely mismanaged everything. they're capable of publishing great original ip like DS and mirrors edge but they just seem to **** it up. so of the studios the seem to look to drive into the ground were just managed so badly. They paid no attention to pandemic who collapse of their own accord as they overspent an produced little to nothing. they overstepped their mark with Westwood and Seemingly are attempting to do it with DICE

the CnC f2p is going to be woeful most likely down to management/design decisions

Activision went from on of the biggest publishers of original ip to milking COD (although now that they are no longer vivendi this might improve along with blizzard pulling their finger out) which was a huge shame

On a lighter note **** XCOM:(

On a lighter note **** XCOM

As a fan of the original I enjoyed the new one. It didn't have the depth, replayability or atmosphere of the original but it was still a great game. You were never going to get the same level of micromanagement or detail with it getting console ports. A lot of what they trimmed off improves the game but they trimmed a bit too much I think. The difficulty curve is stupid as well. It starts incredibly hard and gets easier as you go in. The original had this flaw as well though.

The combat and movement system is way better though.

Danger781

BloodBath wrote: »

Aye well that was directed at EA and Activision really.

You should be getting 100+ fps with even a single card surely. CS-GO isn't exactly intensive. Maybe your fps max setting has changed. Enable the developer console and type

fps_max 60

or whatever you want to set the max frame rate to match your monitor. The default is 300. You have to change this in the config file to get it to stay at what you want.

I decided to reboot again, because, why not.. Whatever was wrong seems to have been fixed after 4 reboots total..

Back up 60 FPS and GPU-Z displaying normally.. sigh..

NTMK wrote: »

You mean Sega? as they own CA.

Yes, sorry, I really should be sleeping.

NTMK wrote: »

On a lighter note **** XCOM:(

I agree with the creator of the original. The new XCOM is a decent game, it's not the original with modern graphics and other bells and whistles and some of the things it lacks are painful for me (base building and base invasions!!) but it's far from a travesty. There is however a modern version of the original being made, though it's not an official sequel and that has the approval and blessing of the original's creator so I'm looking forward to that: http://www.xenonauts.com/

What I don't get is how the old 2d game had better object detection than the new 3d game. Line of sight and objects worked better in the old one.

nesf wrote: »

Yes, sorry, I really should be sleeping.

I agree with the creator of the original. The new XCOM is a decent game, it's not the original with modern graphics and other bells and whistles and some of the things it lacks are painful for me (base building and base invasions!!) but it's far from a travesty. There is however a modern version of the original being made, though it's not an official sequel and that has the approval and blessing of the original's creator so I'm looking forward to that: http://www.xenonauts.com/

Sega's relationship with its devs is a strange one. on one hand they seem to know what their doing and the rest of the time they seem to be ****ing insane

they're seem to be allowing CA and hopefully relic do their thing and now theyre looking to buy atlus but no one knows how sega will manage them.

I never played the originals but my god are the dice roll mechanics infuriating (missing a 100% chance shot):mad: and not to mention getting shot though walls. i was delighted to see 2K do a decent reboot it and give it to Firaxis to do whiles its not the same as the originals its not like syndicate. but i hate dice rolls

BloodBath wrote: »

What I don't get is how the old 2d game had better object detection than the new 3d game. Line of sight and objects worked better in the old one.

Yeah but in the old game the aliens just started at random points around the map and walked around until they saw a human...

Somehow though this actually worked better in some ways than how aliens work in the reboot where they're smarter!

NTMK wrote: »

Sega's relationship with its devs is a strange one. on one hand they seem to know what their doing and the rest of the time they seem to be ****ing insane

they're seem to be allowing CA and hopefully relic do their thing and now theyre looking to buy atlus but no one knows how sega will manage them.

I never played the originals but my god are the dice roll mechanics infuriating (missing a 100% chance shot):mad: and not to mention getting shot though walls. i was delighted to see 2K do a decent reboot it and give it to Firaxis to do whiles its not the same as the originals its not like syndicate. but i hate dice rolls

Sega are definitely like that. They do seem however to take the view that the best way to handle a successful developer is just to give them money and let them do their work. As opposed to EA/Activision who like to get involved in the creative process (if you've read some of the interview transcripts with senior Activision people it's quite scary).

On XCOM I can assure you the originals were just as infuriating as the new one, though for different reasons.

The very first terror mission I did in the new 1 ended in disaster when I found out the hard way that they combined the reaper and chryssalid into 1 race. The first terror mission. WTF? Needless to say I lost my entire crew.

I finally managed to nail it then sold the corpses only to discover that I needed it for armor later and never encountered them again. Nice work.

Gumbi

Has anybody got experience with Phenom II x4s? I have rebuilt my old system with the intention to sell it on, and am overclocking it via the FSB for the first time.

I am using a Hyper 212+ cooler. Now I know the temps will be lower as the max temp is 70 deg.

I haven't tested this hardcore on Prime yet, but it seems I have it stable at stock volts (1.265, 1.280 as reported in CPUz) at 3.4ghz up from 2.8. I have adjusted the RAM thingy to keep it around 1333mhz so it doesn't become unstable. That's all I should worry about AFAIK.

Anyways, as far as temps go, my CPU fan idles at 12.5% until it kils into best at 45 degrees (as set in my BIOS). When I stress the CPU in Prime it seems to settle below 40 degrees after 5 mins, without the fan even moving from its low speed. I should mention I am using arctic mx4 paste. If these temps are what they seem to be, I don't think 4ghz is too far fetched. The temps just seem surprisingly low to me and I'm wondering if anyone can commen on that?

Thanks.

Lu Tze

have you tried a different program to monitor the temps to see if they are consistent?

Gumbi

I have, yes. In any case, like I said, the fan didn't even kick in (which is in line with the fact that I set it to kick it at 45 deg via the BIOS).

Jacovs

Now that my pc is built (with the help of the good people on here) I would like some recommendations for fan speed and temperature monitoring desktop gadgets. Not even sure if this is in the right place.

Gbear

BloodBath wrote: »

Thank god for a healthy and growing indie games industry which I'm proud to be a part of.

Support the indie developers. They deserve the money. Screw these big publishers. The ruination of many a good software house.

As someone who's currently learning programming and loves games would you recommend getting into the industry?

game4it70

Jacovs wrote: »

Now that my pc is built (with the help of the good people on here) I would like some recommendations for fan speed and temperature monitoring desktop gadgets. Not even sure if this is in the right place.

Hwinfo is very good for temps and voltages.Not sure about fan speeds as i use a fan controller.
http://www.hwinfo.com/download.php

Hwmoniter does have fan speed.
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

Coretemp or realtemp are good for temps and use very little resources.

Gbear wrote: »

As someone who's currently learning programming and loves games would you recommend getting into the industry?

I'm probably the wrong person to be asking. I'm only learning myself but I'm working on a game with a friend who's finished his course. I originally went with the web design route because I'd thought I'd have more freedom to do freelance work.

I was put off going the games route because I didn't want to end up trying to compete for very limited places in big games software companies with tight deadlines and a very specific role. I definitely didn't want to be stuck coding all day. I want some sort of involvement in the design.

Seeing the indie games market explode over the last few years has made me realise you don't have to be with a big software company.

The Unity game engine is a great free tool for indie developers to get started. There are tutorials for everything you need on their site and on youtube. You don't even need to have to have an artist to get started as there are thousands of free models and textures online with an even a bigger selection of high quality stuff for a fee. Likewise for sound assets.

You can always recruit aspiring 2d and 3d artists online anyway. It's not hard to get people onboard. If you have any sort of artistic talent you can make your own artwork.

It's easier to publish now with the likes of Steam greenlight, kickstarter, Sony pubfund and Ouya. If you can get a good game concept to a reasonably polished state you can get it greenlighted. If you make a good game you will get it published.

You definitely have to have a passion for it though. It's still going to be a long tedious process making even a relatively simple game but seeing it all come together I'd imagine is pretty rewarding.

There's nothing stopping you doing other work on the side anyway. You are your own boss.

There's lot's of articles online by successful developers who would give far better insight and advice than I could anyway.

http://makegames.tumblr.com/post/44181247500/making-it-in-indie-games-starter-guide

Lu Tze

Serephucus wrote: »

The NCase M1 production campaign has just gone live.

€180 ($240) shipped to Ireland. Get 'em while they're hot.

Sold out, but looks like they are planning to do another production run based on their latest announcement.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ncase-m1-mini-itx-pc-case?c=activity

If not im sure lian li will eventually putout something similar (cant imagine you can patent internal case layouts etc!)

Jonny7

Very nice roundup of older vs newer AMD processors on Tom's - with a decent amount of gaming benchmarks + a comparison to the Intel chips (overclocking included)

Very good to see comparisons of the 640, 740K and X4 965 with the newer gen

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/piledriver-k10-cpu-overclocking,3584.html

game4it70

Amd 2nd beta release of the frame pacing drivers.

http://www2.ati.com/drivers/beta/amd_catalyst_13.8_beta2.exe

I've no idea what extra fixes they have added since beta1 but the first showed good improvement in crossfire setups.

Gumbi

I think it's suppose to be the frame pacing support for multi monitor setups.

game4it70

Gumbi wrote: »

I think it's suppose to be the frame pacing support for multi monitor setups.

Found the release Notes

Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 13.8 Beta2 Driver for Windows:

Saints Row 4: Performance improves up to 25% at 1920x1280 with Ultra settings enabled
Splinter Cell Blacklist: Performance improves up to 9% at 2560x1600 with Ultra settings enabled
Final Fantasy XIV: Improves single GPU and CrossFire performance
Van Helsing: Fixes image quality issues when enabling Anti-Aliasing through the AMD Catalyst Control Center
Far Cry 3 / Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon: Resolve corruption when enabling Anti-Aliasing through the Catalyst Control Center
RIPD: Improves single GPU performance
Minimum: Improves CrossFire performance
Castlevania Lords of Shadow: Improves CrossFire performance
CrossFire: Frame Pacing feature – includes improved performance in World of Warcraft, Sniper Elite, Watch Dogs, and Tomb Raider
Doom 3 BFG: Corruption issues have been resolved

Known Issues of The AMD Catalyst 13.8 Beta2 Driver for Windows:

CrossFire configurations (when used in combination with Overdrive) can result in the secondary GPU usage running at 99%
Enabling CrossFire can result in the PCI-e bus speed for the secondary GPU being reported as x1
Bioshock Infinite: New DLC can cause system hangs with Frame Pacing enabled – disable frame pacing for this title to resolve.