What if the customer's computer is too slow?

[Evanstaul]

Hi all.  What if your game has too much for the customer's computer to handle making it totally unplayable?  Maybe they don't have a good video card when you have 3D graphics all over.  I mean, how do u break it to them?  Do you just flash your computer is too slow and abort the game, or do you allow them to play it anyway?  I know u can reduce the detail, but there is only so much u can take out.  I tested my 2D game engine on a 700Mhz laptop and the top speed is 20 fps, but on my 2Ghz dev computer its 200 fps.  All I need is 40 fps.

Thanks!

[Jeff]

Most professional; games at least sued to run a fast benchmark at the beginnign and, if the computer didnt meet minimum performance requriements, quit out.  If you want to be ncie you might give them soem hints on how to fix the problem, if possible.

[Eli Delventhal]

I'd just flash a warning but let it run slowly anyway. I think that's how most games work. It can still be played at 20 fps, even if it is slow.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[erikd]

700 MHz too slow for a 2d game 
Is there really no way to make this game playable on that? Even some brute force measures might work, like lowering video resolution, frameskipping...

[Orangy Tang]

I'm going to say that unless you're running some really heavy physics, or insanly complex AI then CPU speed will never be your bottleneck. Older computers (and particularly laptops) tend to have lousy graphics cards (or decent graphics cards with not nearly enough fill rate). Reducing fancy effects (particularly fancy particle systems with lots of blending) and reducing the resolution should make any game playable.

But remember that one persons 'ugly' is another persons 'playable'.

[Evanstaul]

Well with my 700Mhz laptop, tested it with Ultratron, and it gave a popup saying I need a new video card, and didn't let me play at all.  Its a 4 year old Dell Inspiron, I wonder if I should be aiming to get my game to run correctly on it.

[Jeff]

Well with my 700Mhz laptop, tested it with Ultratron, and it gave a popup saying I need a new video card, and didn't let me play at all.  Its a 4 year old Dell Inspiron, I wonder if I should be aiming to get my game to run correctly on it.

Do you have 3D acceleration on that laptop?

Cas does everything through OGL.  One opf the weaknesses of this approach is that it will suck on machiens with no hardware accelerated OGL.

[princec]

Well, it doesn't just suck, it puts up a dialog saying "Time to download new drivers!" and quits

Cas