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Playing on low(est) settings

Joined
Apr 5, 2013
Messages
2,430
Guyz have you evar...?

1. ... played or even completed a game on lowest setting / with terrible framerate / definately too long load times? Or consider it unacceptable?
2. ... found some gamez looking better on low settings?


Ad 1. Yes, especially in 2000/2001 when I was pushing my Pentium 200 MMX to the limits with games like Rune, American Mgee's Alice, Q3A, Deus Ex etc. Then the emulated stuff, load something on WinKawaks having only 32 MB RAM was a torture, every rom had load time around 4-10 minutes, games were loosing half of fpses aad PSX emus was even worse - up to 10 fps, missing textures, shit like that.

Now, in the era of newgen consoles I'm at similar point, even manage to finish Witcher 2 twice... on 800x600, lowest details... and some dudes are worried of Witcher 3 downgrade :lol:

Ad 2. First example that comes in mind - Unreal. When it was released, I lacked 3dfx card so had run it on software mode. More than decade later, I gave it a go in 'proper' 3D acceleration and it felt somehow wrong. Software rendering fits better with old castles, givining them more creepy, intriguing, 'dirty' look. Another good examples would be Quake and Hexen II.

Most of modern shooterz look better with blur turned off.
 
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Cadmus

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I used to do that around 2000 too, now I might do it if the game is really good.
I think for me it was Q3, Unreal, Operation Flashpoint, maybe Morrowind, Doom 3 etc. I'm much less tolerant to that shit now.


EDIT: Ohh so it's the software rendering that makes the old games look so gritty? I thought it was just the texture art design but you seem to be onto something. Can somebody explain this to me, I don't understand shit about rendering anything on anything.
 

DraQ

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1. ... played or even completed a game on lowest setting / with terrible framerate / definately too long load times? Or consider it unacceptable?
Unreal (P133, 16MB, 2MB SVGA), Morrowind (on my old laptop, fast processor, but struggled with anything with accelerated graphics).

2. ... found some gamez looking better on low settings?
Pretty much only in regards to egregiously misused stuff, like awfully misused DoF, Bloom and all kinds of blur, at least when it comes to present games.
Old unaccelerated/3D with sprites/2D iso games typically look better at lower resolutions, around the point of detail saturation for 3D games (basically the point where textures/object sprites don't look terribly pixelized compared to the screen in general and when blockiness of in-game geometry isn't terribly apparent) and around the point where tiling isn't made readily apparent by extended view area in overhead/iso games.

For example there is no point whatsoever running a build engine game above 640x480 to 800x600 resolution, Frontier First encounters looked better in original 320x240 or at most modded 640x480 than high res allowed by GLFFE (with original assets, D3DFFE is another thing), and high res Fallout is pretty awful compared to vanilla.

Regarding your Unreal example it's not as much about looking better as looking no worse or nearly no worse. With maxed out detail it was often hard to tell the difference between both modes - both had same coloured lighting, texture filtering (SW being coarser, but still) and all kinds of special eyecandy. The only truly noticeable difference apart from coarser look was that filtering didn't apply to transparent geometry and meshes in SW (though skins were high enough resolution for it to not be problem for meshes) and meshes not being drawn correctly behind transparent geometry. And detail texturing but this required high-res to be noticeable.

Other than that there was only framerate, though, for example on my old laptop, you could run Unreal engine games much faster in software (because it had fast CPU and integrated GFX card was that bad).
 

Astral Rag

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Feb 1, 2012
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I first played Doom and Ultima Underworld on a 25 MHz 386sx :lol:

I always disable motion blur and depth of field. I wouldn't play on the lowest settings or with a resolution below my monitor's native resolution but I don't care if I can't run a game on maximum settings, I much prefer a higher framerate and high or even medium settings over max settings and sub 60fps 144fps, I hardly notice the difference between "high" and "max" anyway.
 
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Cadmus

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I first played Doom and Ultima Underworld on a 25 MHz 386sx :lol:

I always disable motion blur and depth of field. I wouldn't play on the lowest settings or with a resolution below my monitor's native resolution but I don't care if I can't run a game on maximum settings, I much prefer a higher framerate and high or even medium settings over max settings and sub 60fps, I hardly notice the difference between "high" and "max" anyway.
I don't understand this, for me lowering the resolution is always the first step to getting the game run better. It also kinda compensates for not using AA as the picture becomes blurry by itself. Yeah and AA just destroys every PC I've ever had, so I almost never use it.
 

Baron Dupek

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Jul 23, 2013
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I always play on lowest settings, but I'm from these strange kind of people that prefer gameplay over visuals so you know...

My best example? Far Cry and Painkiller on Duron 850MHz, 512MB RAM and GeForce2 MMX 440, one was suprisingly well working while PK have neat bullettime when some slowdowns or framerate drops would happen.

And yeah, I hate bloom and HDR and DoF cause they're always (over)used wrong. I don't have good sight but even playing with DoF make me feel like disabled retard with malfunctioning eyes or something...

I got first Pc pretty late (1999/2000) and would be cool (Celeron 366MHz and 64MB Ram) if not GPU - VooDoo2 - that sucked in every 3d game. Asked people on various sites they said it was decent even for that time, seems like drivers problem. But I couldn't get them cause no internet and only drivers for Nvidia and Radeons were released on CDs.

Even today every graphic setting chocke my PC, price of using economic GPUs...
 

Astral Rag

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EDIT: Ohh so it's the software rendering that makes the old games look so gritty? I thought it was just the texture art design but you seem to be onto something. Can somebody explain this to me, I don't understand shit about rendering anything on anything.

There are a few games that look a lot better in Software mode, Quake is a good example. Quake didn't have an opengl mode at release, Hexen 2 had 3dfx support out of the box, regular opengl support was also patched in later.

I don't think I ever played Hexen 2 in software mode, I should try it one of these days. I was a proud member of the Voodoo 2 Master Race when I found a free copy of Hexen 2 bundled with my favourite gaming magazine in the summer of 98

hex48guld.jpg

that art :love:
 
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Garryydde

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I played through Dragon Age Origins on the integrated graphics of a single core Celeron. Also managed to run Need for Speed Most Wanted on a GeForce FX 5200. Neither were pleasant experiences.
 

Turjan

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Mar 31, 2008
Messages
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I played Morrowind on a computer even below minimum specs when it first came out. It was still enough to get me hooked on the game.

I'm still using an ATI Radeon HD 5770 btw. Which probably tells you how much value I put into all the bells and whistles that game graphics offer.
 
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Zibniyat

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Jun 22, 2014
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I've played TES IV Oblivion on a 800 x 600 pixel resolution, most things set to low, except distant landscape, buildings and some other things. Had a weak PC then. Enjoyed it immensely.
 

potatojohn

Arcane
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Jan 2, 2012
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Played Quake 1/2 on a 486 in 320x240.

Finished Crysis on an nvidia 6600 on low settings 10-20 fps
 

Hoaxmetal

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Jul 19, 2009
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Never had high-end pc so I often had to play on low-ish settings if I wanted to play newer games. When GTA: Vice City came out I played it on a school PC and it was literally a slideshow. Dunno how I kept up with it, got quite far in the story.
 

adddeed

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Possibly Retarded
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May 27, 2012
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I played Morrowind on a computer even below minimum specs when it first came out. It was still enough to get me hooked on the game.

I'm still using an ATI Radeon HD 5770 btw. Which probably tells you how much value I put into all the bells and whistles that game graphics offer.
Im also on a 5770. Gets the job done. But then again im mostly played older games.
 

deuxhero

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I'm in the "Depth of Field/bloom/post-processing is always off" camp.

Morrowind's character shadows were really bad so I turned them off, but otherwise I can't remember ever turning down graphics for non-performance reasons.

Well outside of threads dedicated to posting screenshots at the lowest graphics options for everyone to laugh at anyways.
 

DraQ

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I've played TES IV Oblivion on a 800 x 600 pixel resolution, most things set to low, except distant landscape, buildings and some other things. Had a weak PC then.
Oblivion looks shit no matter the settings, turning distant land off at least didn't make the world size problems immediately obvious.

Enjoyed it immensely.

:what:

Unreal (...) in 800x600.

:hmmm:

When I first played Unreal 640x480 was an unplayable slideshow on my machine, 512x384 was bad and 400x300 wasn't very good either.

If you could run Unreal at 800x600 in full detail, even in SW renderer, then sure as fuck it weren't low settings.

I'm in the "Depth of Field/bloom/post-processing is always off" camp.
I made exception for Skyrim.

Morrowind's character shadows were really bad so I turned them off
Ah yes, this. They nommed the cycles like crazy too.
 

Hoaxmetal

Arcane
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Jul 19, 2009
Messages
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Heh, Oblivion. It ran like shit on my pc at launch, like 5 fps at all low settings. And then, a bit after launch some dudes made a software that made it possible to run Oblivion on low-end pcs (I got 20-25 fps) AND it looked way better that vanilla Oblivion on low settings.

Anyway, I usually only try to keep texture settings high, rest is reduced to achieve good performance. For aesthetic reasons bloom is usually turned off and also particle effects are low in competitive games (so that all the spell effects etc. give me enough information without cluttering up the screen).
 

Turjan

Arcane
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Mar 31, 2008
Messages
5,047
Heh, Oblivion. It ran like shit on my pc at launch, like 5 fps at all low settings. And then, a bit after launch some dudes made a software that made it possible to run Oblivion on low-end pcs (I got 20-25 fps) AND it looked way better that vanilla Oblivion on low settings.
I remember that my PC couldn't play it on release because they required a specific shader model on the graphics card that my PC didn't have. After the intro movie, everything went black.

With MW, my PC was exactly minimum specs, except the CPU, which had lower speed. What surprised me most was that it wouldn't run much different later when I had a much more powerful PC.
 

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