[casual_games] Same Vista- new thread

[Tim Turner]

Just to be clear- we are supporting pre-3d machines.  Our marching orders
re: min-spec, from several publishers, have been to support a P2 class
machines.

 

  _____  

From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of James C. Smith
Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 6:27 PM
To: 'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [casual_games] Same Vista- new thread

 


>> I find it vaguely comic that we are worrying 



>> about losing customers with computers that 



>> don't support 3d while also worrying about Vista.


 

It may be somewhat comical, but I think it is absolutely logical.

 

Just to put this into the proper perspective, I want to explain that I have
always been very cautions about using 3D hardware acceleration due to the
compatibility problems it has always caused every time I have attempted to
use it. I have seen many similar reports from other casual games developers.

 

However, none of us are worried about running on computers that don't have
3D acceleration hardware. We are not talking about compatibility with 5 or
10 year old computers with no 3D hardware.  We are talking about
compatibility with 1 year old computers that have very expensive (or
inexpensive) 3D hardware acceleration.  All our target customers have 3D
acceleration hardware.  I just don't want to use it because it has buggy
drivers, or no drivers, or inconsistent interpretations of the 3D API
standards.

 

My goal is to make games that will work on the average computer that was
purchased within the last 4 years.  That includes 4 year old computers and 4
day old computers.  This means that 1 year from now, 25% of my target
customers will have Windows Vista so I will make sure to support them.  I
also suspect that at that same time, about 25% of my customers will still
have buggy 3D drivers in a non-Vista system.  (About a third of those 75%
who still don't have Vista).   So it is very likely that I will be making
special effort to be Vista compatible, and at the same time, avoiding using
3D hardware unless it adds real value to my game.

 

The good news is that I believe Vista will guarantee a certain level of
stable 3D hardware acceleration support. This is partially because the
default Vista UI uses 3D hardware acceleration which will draw more
attention to compatibility. But this is also more stable partially because
of the new abstraction layer that MS has added between the API the
applications use and the API used by hardware vendor's drivers. My
understanding is that the hardware vendors write Vista drivers that support
DirectX10, and then Microsoft provides a layer of emulation for application
that use other APIs such as Open GL and older version of Direct X.  This has
many positive and negative affects. I believe one of the positive affect
will be a stable API applications can use and better compatibility with many
different hardware/driver configurations.

 

So 3 years from now, when most of the target customers have Vista, I will no
longer be worried about the use of 3D APIs causing extra compatibility
problems.

 

My assumptions are:

 

*	Nearly 100% of my customers have a computer that is 4 years old or
younger.
*	Nearly 100% of the customers running Windows Vista will have working
3D drivers.
*	Nearly 100% of the computers purchased in the next year will have
Vista installed.
*	Only 66% of the customers running older version of Windows have
working 3D drivers. They all have 3D hardware, but for 33% of them, the
software for it is broken in a way that stops 3D games from working but
allows the rest of Windows to function. 

 

James C. Smith

Producer / Lead Programmer

Reflexive Entertainment

-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of Tim Turner
Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 1:05 PM
To: 'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'
Subject: [casual_games] Same Vista- new thread

This is in reply to Dave's posting but I changed the subject to create a new
thread.  I am going off on a (wild) tangent and don't want to derail the
dialog he is starting.

 

I've seen a lot of concern about preparing for Vista and I agree this is
important to support as broad a spectrum of software/hardware configurations
as possible to maximize potential sales.  But even before the Vista
questions started circulating it was my position that the low-end of the
range was pretty extreme.  Any thoughts on when, if ever, we are going to
re-evaluate the minimum side?

 

I find it vaguely comic that we are worrying about losing customers with
computers that don't support 3d while also worrying about Vista.  And before
anyone starts flaming me- this is not a position but an observation.  Refer
again to the sentence about importance of broad spectrum to maximize sales.

 

Does anyone have a breakdown of how many of what level machines are out
there and in use?

 

Thanks,

T

 


  _____  


From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of Dave Selle
Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 12:52 PM
To: casual_games at igda.org
Subject: [casual_games] Slow death for the current generation of
casualgames? (Bugs, Parental Controls & Game Explorer)

 

 

Hi Everyone, 

 

Just dropping you a bit of cheer before the holidays.

 

But seriously I want to raise some issues with our game community that we
are seeing currently in our network which will become acute in the very near
future for many developers. 

 

Overall I also am very interested to hear in general what is happening with
Vista preparedness across the industry and what issues you may be
encountering. Here are some of the things that *we* have learned: 

 

==Casual Games Vista Bugs==

 

About 80% of the games we get from third party developers have some kind of
issue with Vista. 

 

Just under half of that number are "severe" issues that will significantly
impact a user's ability to play the game. In our network, these will have to
be pulled once our OEM partners start shipping Vista on new consumer
machines. Outside our network, these will die a slow but equally inevitable
death (if nothing is done to fix them) as consumer adoption of Vista marches
forward. 

 

The issues are mainly in two areas: 

 

*	Installation/save games 
*	Sleep/Hibernate resume 

 

In terms of Installation, many games write config files or save game data
into the program files area. In Vista this are gets virtualized per user.
Depending on what data is written users can lose save games or in some cases
will not be able to run at all as a non-elevated user after the initial
install. One thing that you can do now in XP to check is to run in a limited
user mode on XP. If your game installs and runs fine in that mode, 90% it
will work in Vista also.

 

The other big one is sleep/resume. Sleep behavior is turned ON by default in
Vista, so everyone with a new PC will be experiencing this. Furthermore,
Notebooks are the fastest growing segment of the PC market and there it's
not just a nice to have feature. Many games do not recover well, or at all,
when coming out of sleep mode. 

 

==Parental Controls & Vista==

 

And finally, even if you fix your bugs there is one other issue looming
which could significantly limit accessibility to your games under Vista:
Parental Controls. 

 

Vista comes with a robust set of Parental controls based on games' ESRB
ratings. And as we all know, relatively few casual games currently are ESRB
rated because few developers have seen the ROI for the cost and effort of
going through the submission process. Vista will certainly change this
equation, especially for new games. 

 

Under Vista, as soon as *any* level of parental controls are set for games
all unrated games will be hidden from the game explorer and require a lot of
extra steps to access them. That's right: your games can just go "poof" and
effectively disappear in Vista. 

 

The best defense against this particular threat is to get out in front of it
and get your games ESRB rated. After the New Year comes and the Royalty
checks start coming in I would strongly encourage all developers to consider
this investment in the future of their games. 

 

Any other big Vista issues that folks are seeing out there? 

 

Here is wishing everyone a happy and successful holiday season! 

 

Best,

 

--Dave 

 

 


WildTangent
David Selle
VP, Content Acquisition & Developer Relations
 <mailto:dselle at wildtangent.com> dselle at wildtangent.com
 
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www.wildtangent.com 

 


 


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