IGN: Sins unusually low hardware requirements

The importance of supporting both high end AND low end

http://blogs.ign.com/Stardock_Games/2008/02/01/79094/
from Sins Forums

This week's IGN blog on Sins of a Solar Empire focuses on an issue that is rarely discussed in the game industry - the problem of high system requirements for new PC games.

Increasingly, new PC games will be released with extremely high hardware requirements and when they don't sell as well as hoped, it's used as a blunt instrument to say that "PC games are d0med".  The reality is much more complicated.  When you sell a product or service, only those who are capable of making use of it can become customers in the first place.  Too often, game companies assume that people will upgrade their systems just for their game. 

Sins of a Solar Empire is designed to work on both older machines and newer machines. The graphics, of course, look better on the latest machines but the experience on older machines isn't just marginal, it's good.

This morning, we played a game on a 4 year old Dell machine with an ATI 9800 graphics card on it. It didn't just run okay. It ran very well (i.e. extremely smooth). It doesn't look nearly as pretty as it does on say Geforce 8800GTX but it certainly looks pretty good still.

At the end of the day, as much as we want our games to look awesome, we also want as many people as possible to be able to buy our game.

Check out the full blog here to learn some of the technical details involved and other thoughts on the matter.

View: IGN Upgrades

19,817 views 15 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Well even saying the game looks pretty on the lowest gfx settings is PUSHING IT , but medium on up is very nice :CONGRAT:
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I should say, lowest setting will look as pretty as a pretty game did on that older machine when it was a state of the art box. :)
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
how will that work, better code optimization? I'm curious, because without some improvement, the more detailed models and more complex calculations should hurt performance.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

I should say, lowest setting will look as pretty as a pretty game did on that older machine when it was a state of the art box.


THAT I can agree with! :CONGRAT:
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Someone should IGN know that the community has got near 30k ships going in game on a high-end system already to further illustrate the power of Sins!

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Spartan, reply 7
Someone should IGN know that the community has got near 30k ships going in game on a high-end system already to further illustrate the power of Sins!

Yeah, with 1-2 FPS :P

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Annatar11, reply 8

Yeah, with 1-2 FPS

On the test I ran back in summer I had 20k going with near 30 FPS at a vry high res but then as you know my rig is a Godbox. However I think Multi has one with 24k on and it was standard res and I think the FPS was reported as not bad.

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

speaking of the ATI 9800 i used to run that card. I liked it it got the job dun.  I will say that i think the CPU makes more difference to the way games play then do the videocard. but mabey thats just my experiance.

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Kaltes, reply 10
speaking of the ATI 9800 i used to run that card. I liked it it got the job dun.  I will say that i think the CPU makes more difference to the way games play then do the videocard. but mabey thats just my experiance.

It depends on the game. Something like Crysis is very video card dependant, it has a lot to draw plus I believe physics calculations are moving away from CPU to the GPU these days and relatively few objects to keep track of.

Sins, on the other hand, is much easier on the graphics card, but each ship has its own AI routine, each AI builds lots of ships, and each planet on the map combined with all of that adds many, many extra calculations for the CPU to do.

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

And I just realized we necro'd this thread after a spam post in it.. it's almost a year old now :(

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Kaltes, reply 9
speaking of the ATI 9800 i used to run that card. I liked it it got the job dun.  I will say that i think the CPU makes more difference to the way games play then do the videocard. but mabey thats just my experiance.

Hey, I still use it. Imho it was one of the best cards for it's time.

Quoting Annatar11, reply 11
And I just realized we necro'd this thread after a spam post in it.. it's almost a year old now

Necromancy is a fun and educational pastime for old and young (and dead).

 

:p

Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top

Necromancy + eets = oh god, my eyes!

Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Annatar11, reply 13
Necromancy + eets = oh god, my eyes!

Speaking of the devil, what happened to eets?

Haven't seen him flaming Yarlen for a long time (ok I wasn't here for a long time too).

Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top

He's around, just not on the Sins forums. Busy plaguing Stardockians on #stardock I believe, and Demigod. But to Sins: he's dead, Jim.