> Cyberpunk barely hits 16 FPS average on the Pi 5.
This is a lot better than my memories of forcing a Pentium MMX 200 MHz PC with 32 MB SDRAM and an ATI All-in-Wonder Pro of running games from the early 2000s.
This is a lot better than my memories of forcing a Pentium MMX 200 MHz PC with 32 MB SDRAM and an ATI All-in-Wonder Pro of running games from the early 2000s.
Single-digit FPS can _absolutely_ be playable if you're a desperate enough ten-year-old...
This would have been on some kind of Pentium 4 with integrated graphics. Not my earliest PC, but the first one I played any games on more advanced than the Microsoft Entertainment Packs.
I had to look at the ground and get the camera as close as possible to cross between the AH and the bank in IF. Otherwise I’d get about 0.1 fps and had to close the game, which meant waiting in line to get back. Those were the days.
> So with the right UI layout made from addons I could still be a pretty effective healer.
I got pretty good with the timings and could almost play without looking at the screen. But I was DD and it was vanilla so nobody cared if I sucked as long as I got far away with the bombs.
> I don't even remember what the dungeons looked like, just a giant grid of health bars, buttons and threat-meter graphs.
I was talking a couple of weeks ago with a mate who was MT at the time and told me he knew the feet and legs of all the bosses but never saw the animations or the faces before coming back with an alt a couple of years later. I was happy as a warlock, enjoying the scenery. With a refresh rate that gave me ample time to admire it before the next frame :D
Absolutely, sweet memories playing at less than 10fps using zsnes on a 486 dx2 by 1999...
Wasn't AoE1 released for PPC Mac natively? AoE2 was probably the best Mac game ever.
I have fond memories of playing Diablo II at 16 fps on an old (even at the time) PowerMac. I am not sure I could do it now.
And somehow, more mesmerizing than games feels like playing now. To be a kid again.
Countless kids played Morrowind below par spec on family computers all across America.
Doom3? Missing textures. Half Life2? Maybe at 640x480. F.E.A.R? More like L.A.U.G.H. Times changed so fast (and on top of that, shitty console ports) that PCs didn't achieve great numbers at home until 2009 with a new machine.
Altough I began to play games like Angband, Nethack and the like in that era and in opened an amazing libre/indie world until today.
And, yes, I replayed Deus Ex because it had tons of secrets and it ran on a potato. Perfectly playable at 800x600 at max settings.
Was a bit faster than software (but hey I suppose if you weren't doing any transparency that makes it easier lol).
I remember what a huge difference it was having a dedicated 3D card capable of fast 2D and 3D vs the software rasterizer. Yes, NovaLogic games ran better. Yes, you can play Doom at decent FPS. Yes, SpecOps ran at full monitor resolution. They had a LOT to brag about.
As a developer, I'm sure Glide was great.
But as a kid that really wanted a 3dfx Voodoo card for Christmas so I could play all the sweet 3D games that only supported Glide, I was upset when my dad got me a Rendition Verite 2200. But I didn't want to seem ungrateful, so my frustration was pointed to 3dfx for releasing a proprietary API.
I was glad that Direct3D and OpenGL quickly surpassed Glide's popularity.
But yeah, then 3dfx failed to innovate. IIRC, they lagged behind in 32-bit color rendering support as well as letting themselves get caught with their pants down when NVIDIA released the GeForce and introduced hardware transform which allowed the GPU to be more than just a texturing engine. I think that was the nail in 3dfx's coffin.
Thanks for the laugh about your disappointment with your dad. I had a similar thing happen with mine when I asked for Doom and him being a Mac guy, he came back with Bungie’s Marathon. I was upset until I played Marathon… I then realized how wise my father was.
The DGX Spark and Mac Studio are currently the two best Arm-based platforms for running that game, it seems to like a lot of CPU to feed a decent GPU.