Steam Summer Sale 2014! Is everyone ready?

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Yup.

More and more games, even small ones that are 2D, are needing actual, proper video cards now rather than the blasted integrated ones, which are usually terrible. And simply because a game is 2D, doesnt mean there isnt alot of stuff going on in the background that has nothing to do with simple display issues. I can think of a few games that have pretty simple 2D art, but that just EAT weaker systems for breakfast because of the complexity of everything that's actually going on within the gameplay itself. Varies greatly from one game to the next.

And as for games that I've bought so far, well.... yeah, I shouldnt have said "well, probably not going to buy many this year". Yeah. That idea fell apart fast.

Let's see....

Spintires
Probability 0 (omigod I love this one)
Planetary Annihilation (Buggy, though main problem probably fixed at next patch. Has the AI from Hell. There will be much dying while you're trying to learn the game)
Creeper World 3: Arc Eternal (this one is an addiction waiting to happen)
Witcher 2 (aaaaaaaaaaaargh controls from hell)
Noir Syndrome
Banished
Bastion
Starforge

There'll be more before this is over.

I'll admit that I haven't played many games on an integrated graphics card, and I wasn't trying to imply that older Intel integrated would be able to run those games. Most of the complex stuff that isn't graphics would be handled by the CPU and I'd guess that's where a game like Banner Saga might be more demanding; even then it's turn-based so any bottlenecking would present itself more in the AI trying to figure out its moves. From what I see in a quick search though, Intel 3000 integrated graphics with a low-end CPU such as a cheap AMD and a couple gigs of RAM would run the game fine

I just bought the Pinball Arcade launch pack for 1p - that is, three pinball tables on top of the free one to play. Not bad if I ever feel like playing pinball, it's a very good emulation of real pinball physics and the tables and sounds are recreated very well.

Yeah, typically what I meant is weaker systems in general, not just the integrated card.

At least in my experience, those machines that have a bad graphics card type often are cheaper machines, and end up being pretty low in terms of CPU power and such as well. Typically that's what I see pretty often when I have to deal with / fix the accursed things, because of course nobody around here can just manage it themselves....

Particularly with laptops. Some of those things are just amazingly awful at running games as a whole. Desktop PCs encounter this issue a good bit less, it seems.

And of course if both the GPU and CPU are weak at the same time, well.... that's when the fun begins. And by "fun" I mean "no".

Luckily, they are facing out XNA. I like XNA for its simplicity. But it's not native, and very Microsoft specific. And with the arise of more and more libraries for making games and open source game engines, there's really no use for XNA.

So far the only purchase I've made is Torchlight 2, which is a little easy on the difficulty but brings about a lot of Diablo nostalgia.

Man...

I just bought Assassin's Creed IV Gold Edition and Space Engineers.

Now, if only I could buy some time to play them!

I bought Strike Suit Zero a couple of nights back and totally forgot about it until now. Also I just bought Asscreed 4 because I heard it's better than 3 was and I want something that will at least look pretty on my ~sick rig~

e: okay I should have checked before I bought it cause the optimisation is terrible. I can get 36fps constant with a couple settings turned down but that looks real bad to me, I've been spoiled on high frame rates - got my monitor refresh rate clocked up from 60 to 72Hz atm and even 60 feels kinda bad when using a mouse.

Last edited by Almajo88 on 28 Jun 2014, 11:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

About to beat Rome Total War II, so I bought Empire: Total War in the summer sale along with Dishonored. Cought dishonoered 75% off with 2 hours left, phew.

Borderlands 2 and Space Engineers.

Sometimes, but usually it's just a case of poor programming. A lot of computers have huge limits these days, so most coders don't care how sloppy and un-optimized their code is, as long as it's running (especially with indie games). Also, by default, XNA requires a card with...I think it was pixel shaders 2.0? There's a way to get around it, but the game has to be programmed that way.

On the opposite side, we have games like Retro City Rampage, which was originally going to be on the NES, until he got tired of struggling with limitations. I can only imagine how clean and concise the final game's code is.

I wish this dumb trend of bloated, un-optimized, resource-intensive programming would come to an end. I mean, it's one thing to code a resource-demanding program if the final output is something impressive (like I dunno, Crysis 3), but it's a whole other thing to make something that should be relatively simple fairly computationally intensive (like Minecraft). I mean, what happened to the demoscene, and its programming ethic? Demoscene programmers write really cool graphical demonstrations, often with really strict size and/or hardware limitations, and as a result their code has to be efficient and concise. Back when the demoscene was a bigger thing, mainly in the 80s and 90s, demoscene programmers would actually sometimes join game development teams, and bring their style of coding into the programming of various games. This lead to some really impressive titles, such as Zero Tolerance on the Sega Genesis/Megadrive, a surprisingly decent FPS for a 16-bit system with a 7MHz CPU and 64k of ram!

It still exists in the retro community. A lot of coders enjoy the challenge of programming for systems like the VIC-20 (3.5 kb unexpanded) and the ZX-81 (1 kb unexpanded) and there is plenty of software out there to demonstrate that enthusiasm:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKj6TaADFWo

I don't think it's a question of coders not caring about inefficient code, it's a question of not having the technical expertise to do a better job. Most indie developers aren't MIT graduates, they're people with an idea and a few programming tutorials.

On the whole, I think it's good that people can make it in the computer industry through the School of Hard Knocks; the alternative is an industry dominated by big corporations and an educated elite.

I bought:

1. Papers, Please.
2. Goat Simulator
3. Sniper Elite V2
4. The Stanley Parable.

Unfortunately my computer's hard-drive crashed and I need to get it repaired. ;_; But I briefly played the games before the crash and they are all pretty fun; I like them. However Goat Simulator and Sniper Elite are quite resource-heavy and lag too much to play!

Any way to fix this? Get a new graphics card?

I've been thinking about Goat Simulator. It looks like a lot of fun, but at the same time there is something about that game which seems a bit creepy which is probably why I haven't bought it yet. Plus, I think there are still a few question marks over how stable it is on Linux.

I brought,

Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
Commander Keen
Deus Ex: Invisible War
Dishonored - Game of the Year Edition
Metro Last Light Complete
QUAKE Collection
System Shock 2
Terraria (For a friend)

Currently playing through Dishonored, brought Commander Keen and System Shock 2 for the heck of it. Plan on playing Baldur's Gate II and Metro Last Light some day and I brought the Quake collection because it was only a few dollars more than Quake III which I wanted. I wanted Quake III mostly to steal the files from the steam directory and run it on my Raspberry Pi. Deus Ex: Invisible War on the other hand I doubt I will ever play so buyers regret on that one even though I might. I loved Deus Ex and Deus Ex Human Revolution but I have a long list of games to play and I don't see Deus Ex: Invisible War being on that list any time soon.