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Les_the_Sarge_9_1 -> Demos, Upgrades, Patches, New Versions, Hardware conflicts errrrrrr (5/2/2002 6:56:13 AM)
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Today I went looking for a PS1 copy of Allied general.
I decided to maybe settle for playing it on my son's Playstation.
"Oh but that game is no longer available for the Playstation sir".
I had a tremendous urge to beat up something or someone).:mad:
Technology is really getting to make me increasingly infuriated.
When will it end. Should it end.
10 years ago (I recall of course because I was there), computers were almost nothing (in contrast to a P4 at least). Game rentals were still a mostly untried notion too.
Have we come so far that it's automatically assumed we need or must upgrade though?
I bought an IBM PS1 which was a 386 machine. It had I think 100 megs of hard drive space and a 33 mhz processor. Back then those numbers were impressive if you can recall what was around about 1985.
I got it because it was a great improvement over a typewriter (even if the typewriter DID have an automated correcting function). I remember playing a couple of games on it. They seemed fine at the time too. I had to load them from 5.25 disks. But those disks sure could hold a lot of data (or so I thought).
Then I went online (which was required to be able to write commercially originally). I found I needed a 486 so I could run online software. Ok, no problem, I borrowed some funds from my parents for that one.
Then an irritatingly short time later, I noticed that even the 586 seemed crummy to what was being advertised. My 486 was yesterdays news and unable to run much of anything useful or new any more.
I went into considerable debt (considerable for me at any rate) to purchase a 300 porcessor system which had dare I say more than a gig of hard drive space. Now I could run aaaanything. Yeah right think again sucker (sucker, thats how you spell "consumer" in technological terms).
The 300 system, is gone largely. A buddy, fed up with altering my system all the time (he helps with my tech hassles), last christmas bought me an upgrade. Now I have a Celeron 800, a rediculous 256 megs of ram, and a 40 gig drive.
What's incredible is , it's already showing signs of not being up to the latest "thing". My "older" ram is not the new ram.
Now I can't run a stupid game that was made several years ago.
Its infuriating.
You would think a new, more powerful computer with greater speed, more versatility would actually "improve" the functionality of an older program.
This is clearly not the case.
I do have an option, but its annoying at best.
At least with Windows XP I can partition the drive and leave a portion open to have Win 98 or 95 reside there to operate older programs (I think, I haven't gotten around to finding out yet).
But what about next time. Will I be stuck lacking some way to use older software?
This is all important when talking about the "future" of wargaming.
I was fully pleased with the look of Patton Strikes Back. Just a map, and stylised arrows for units. Blue for US Red for German. You had to use a pull down menu to do anything basically.
But no one wants to settle for good enough it seems.
We just have to have fancier graphics, fancier sounds, pointless animations in secondary windows and maybe just maybe they will spend effort on the AI.
Personally I liked Steel Panthers a great deal. The graphics were enjoyable, the sounds fun.
But I have seen no small amount of games out there. And all that has been offered is progressively fancier graphics and progressively fancier sounds.
To be honest though, the games have remained just as stupid as the very first ones I ever played.
The trend may well spell the doom for computerised wargaming if nothing else.
We are a niche market now. We have always been a niche market. We will be a niche market tomorrow.
But the effort to make a program is not going to get easier.
Buyers will have to fork out lots of cash so that in a years time they can relinquish yet another game to obscurity.
This is the heart of my beef.
I have spent, hmmm I don't want to think about it really, an ungodly amount of money on bord game wargames.
But and its a very big but, I can play them today, just as well as I could play then 15 years ago.
And I will be able to play them in another 15 years regardless of what happens to the world of computers.
When asking the question, where will computer wargames be in 15 years. Who knows. Maybe in 15 years we will be back playing board games.
Combat Leader is something I am looking forward to seeing. I am sure it will please. Its also the very first computer wargame I have actually waited for.
There is absolutely no reason to assume I will ever buy another though.
In 2 years time the latest thing might require a revolution in hardware.
I will be sufficiently disgusted I think though.
I might dust off the board games and refuse to purchase those flashy new programs.
This is a very real possible future for a lot of us.
I don't know if Matrix could do it. There is no reason to assume Matrix would want to do it.
I personally would enjoy seeing a company though once, just once, intentionally make a "new" game designed, not for the latest computer, but for those people that are not about to get the latest computer.
Wouldn't it be grand if all us PS1 owners and low end computer users, still had people making games for our interests as well.
The technology used to make a PS2 game, should by logic make creating a game based on an earlier technology easy as hell.
If anyone has followed me to this point, yes I clearly hate mindless progress just for the sake of shoving it on me.
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