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The response I got from Sierra about the G400 performance with Tribes

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  • #16
    I've heard that Tribes is buggy on lots of systems that are non-Matrox. ATI has an OpenGL ICD that works fairly well (slow, but fairly stable), and I hear Tribes sucks on that too. If Dynamix really wanted to reach as many gamers as possible, they would have gone Direct3d instead of this OpenGL garbage. OpenGL stinks; no one can seem to program it right and it's only advantage over D3D is portability to other OSes. D3D looks just as good, is faster, and is a helluva lot more widely supported than OpenGL. It seems that ID is (err..was) the only company that could do a good job with OpenGL, and I think that was because Brian Hook (former ID guy) helped developed the original OpenGL standard. Now that he's gone, it'll be interesting to see if ID's next OpenGL game will be solid, or will it be D3D? Sorry for the semi-off-topic rant, but I HATE OpenGL.

    ------------------
    The Rock
    "Discourage incest - ban country music NOW!"

    System:
    P2 350 /w Asus P2B /w 128 Meg PC100 SDRAM
    17.2Gig Maxtor DiamondMax HD + 6.4Gig Fujitsu HD
    Matrox G400 32Meg + SB PCI 128 Sound
    Modem Blaster 56K Modem + Panasonic 2x/4x SCSI Toaster + 32X CD-ROM

    Bart

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    • #17
      MS doesn't support OpenGL? Then how come they have been shipping OpenGL support with Win 9x and NT for years? How come they ship Win 9x and NT with OpenGL screen savers?

      Yes the G400 ICD is lacking in some areas but the reply is from someone who hasn't got a clue what he is talking about.

      "The only thing Matrox is doing is to program the "ICD" to support lightwave, 3d studio, quake, unreal and HL. Try to use an OGL screensaver..."

      I have been using OpenGL screensavers for a long time. Tribes has and always has had OpenGL problems with many cards not just the G400s.

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      • #18
        Farenheit or whatever you want to formerly call it, should've said it all there, Ant. If anything MS has been wanting to make both opengl and directx converge for the sake of easier programming. Any truly hardcore gamer could easily tell you that Carmack, 3dfx and it's minigl were the source of the gaming push for opengl. If it wasn't for that "push", I seriously doubt opengl would even be where it is today among games. And as for opengl being superior, anyone who believes this is seriously mislead. Go download the dx7 SDK and compare. Even on yesterday's hardware opengl is lacking many features (and optimizations) dx7 offers. The only thing that has saved opengl from becoming completely obsolete is it's "pluggable" extensions. That right there leaves everything beyond normal opengl functions up to the hardware guru's. The ability to do anything they want through the drivers can either make or break opengl's appeal. It may have taken MS alot of tries to get dx right, but from a programmer's perspective, dx7 is lookin' mighty pretty right now. Chris Egerter, any thoughts on this?

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        • #19
          Supporting GLide and an optimized TNT OpenGL driver covers most of the gaming bases out there, folks.

          Seriously, besides the G400, what competition is there for 3dfx or nVidia? S3's Savage4? The V2x00 series?? The Trident line??? Yeah, right.

          Face it, how many OTHER people do you know who own Matrox cards (besides us) and use them for gaming? I know none. Everyone else I know uses 3dfx or nVidia hardware. I'm the only nut in my circle of friends who is willing to drop $270 on the then-black-horse G400 MAX. Hell, it's not like you can actually BUY the cards anywhere but online, anyway. :-)

          If you wanna play Tribes, buy the hardware that's necessary for it *insert HUGE V2 plug here*. No software company HAS TO support a particular hardware platform. Look at NT - USB support? No. Plug-n-pray support? Barely. DX7 support? Not. So you think one piddly little game made by a gnat-sized company (compared to Microsoft), is going to feel any responsibility to the natterings of a few pesky Matrox G400 owners who happen to like playing games? :-)

          I agree the reply from Sierra could have used some work. Then again, tech support people aren't the most eloquent writers, from my experiences.
          The pessimist says: "The glass is half empty."
          The optimist says: "The glass is half full."
          The engineer says: "I put half of my water in a redundant glass."

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          • #20
            I would take this comment from "Arnold" of Technical Support with a grain of salt. All companies have technical support operators that are hired for that one purpose. These technical support operators many times are not involved with any of the game making process or driver implementation.

            The Matrox G400 Max is sold out everywhere and the trend continues. This individual obviously owns a Nvidia card and could care less about Matrox. He even went as far as making negative comments about a card that has the most positive reviews ever. You should send a copy of his message to the game authors and try to get a real response on this issue.

            Thanks,

            Sean

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            • #21
              Tribes in OGL is crap(aside for the TNT ogl which the game is optimized for). Even with my V2 it was crap. Glide is the only way to play tribes. As for the G400 with OGl games, I do not see as bad quality in the graphics as I do in Tribes. Hell, I use the G for kingpin and Q2&3 and it runs just fine fine fine.

              [This message has been edited by bunnymud (edited 14 October 1999).]
              "640K ought to be enough for anybody."
              [Bill Gates, 1981]

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              • #22
                The Rev, I have to agree with Sean Segel. I too suggest you to send that tech support reply DIRECTLY to the game authors and see if you get a more detailed reply. For email addresses of the Tribes-posse, look in www.bluesnews.com Dynamix plan-section.

                I myself don't care how bad the OGL support is in Tribes right now, but I want it to get better, because Tribes 2 isn't going to be ready for a long time. If it happens that Dynamix doesn't have any interest in Tribes anymore (doesn't seem to be so, look for those recent mod releases by Tribes programmers), Matrox could write a Tribes MCD in the TurboGL. And while at it, a P2 and K6 support in TurboGL would also make a LOT of people happy.

                -Tumu

                Celeron 333 (not overclocked), GigaByte 6BXE Intel 440BX AGPset (bios v3.4),
                64MB PC100 RAM, nVidia TNT2 32M (was G200 AGP 8MB SGRAM), SB Live! Value LW3.1, 3COM Fast EtherLink XL, Sony Multiscan 100ES, HP8210i
                Win98 finnish

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                • #23
                  bunnymud "Tribes in OGL is crap"

                  You do not know what what you are talking about. Tribes on a TNT looks amazing ! You have to be kidding me "is crap" Yea right..It is one of the most beautiful looking game that I have ever seen.

                  ------------------
                  PIII-450@504, 128 HDSRAM, Asus P3BF, G400/32, SBLive!, Nokia 447Xi 17", oh yea, a nice floppy drive

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                  • #24
                    I ment aside from the TNT OpenGL which I am sure the game looks fine in.
                    "640K ought to be enough for anybody."
                    [Bill Gates, 1981]

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                    • #25
                      OK man

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                      • #26
                        Sorry I wasn't able to post earlier. My mouse broke last night. I was able to make a early morning run for a dual scrolling mouse to relieve myself of the computer withdraw. I was suprised to see the new matroxusers.com layout. Very nice indeed.

                        Tumu's suggestion to search Blues News for Tribe's programmers .plan helped me find Nels Bruckner. He programs the patches for Tribes and is a Tribes2 programmer! His email address is nels.bruckner@dynamix.com. If any other G400 Tribes1 and soon-to-be Tribes2 players would like to see better OpenGL support, please give him a friendly e-mail. Maybe even a link to this thread.

                        I also took note of the suggestion to make a post to the TribesPlayer.com forums. I will try to find the words for such a post.

                        I'm not quite sure what to write Nel, or how to word such a email. I don't know too much about programming for the OpenGL API. And i'm still confused about the state of the G400's ICD.

                        Anyone have suggestions/pointers for my email ot Nel?

                        Thanks!
                        A Tribes Player

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                        • #27
                          Hi Folks,

                          Tish Beta2: Sun? Always thought OGL was
                          from SGI...

                          Well and as I've read through this thread...
                          Yeah, I played just the tribes demo and thought Wow, thats a good LAN/Net Game, (so much for my now 2nd System with a G200 and
                          V2) - but now with my new System that just
                          had a G400 (What the heck, I am not missing
                          glide as the sharpness and colour of the
                          direct3d games I am using is much better
                          with the matrox as on any 3dfx card (I always
                          used my g200 on games that would be fast enough with it)... But now, I think my first
                          interest in the game is gone and Tribes2 -
                          they better to a proper OGL or better a D3D
                          and I am with it... otherwise one more copy
                          less to be sold by them :/

                          ------------------
                          CU,
                          SHAnDRA
                          dow gon

                          System: Celeron500, AsusP2B-F (1010 Bios), 192MB
                          16,8 GB IBM HD, 10,2 GB Maxtor HD, Samsung 604F DVD
                          SBLive (LiveWare2.1), G400 32MB SH (5.20 certified)
                          Realtek SNE2000, Diamond SupraExpress 56e (V90 Bios)
                          Logitech MouseMan+ (Driver 8.4), Microsoft Sidewinder Prec.Pro

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                          • #28
                            Folks,

                            Sierra's tech support is utterly without a clue. Their operators are reading from a big book of answers, written by a REAL tech-support person.

                            My wife LOVES Lords of Magic. There are, however, some serious bugs in the game. I spent WEEKS trying to convince some of their tech support operators to at least pass on my PROFESSIONALLY PREPARED BUG LIST (I beta-test for a living!) to the programmers. They said no, categorically.

                            Well, I sent it off to the programming team directly. And while some of them didn't get fixed, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who bitched, lo and behold there gets released a "Lords of Magic Special Edition", with 90%+ of the bugfixes.

                            Basically Sierra has become a big bloated company. Inter-departmental communication would make them get off their asses, so they don't do it.

                            Sorry... 8-(

                            Didn't mean to be such a downer.

                            - Gurm

                            ------------------
                            G. U. R. M. It's not hard to spell, is it? Then don't screw it up!
                            The word "Gurm" is in no way Copyright 1999 Jorden van der Elst.
                            The Internet - where men are men, women are men, and teenage girls are FBI agents!

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                            • #29
                              Shandra, you where the one who cought my con. Just wanted to check the sharpness on other posters conserning the OGL matter.

                              SGI developed OpenGL not Sun.

                              Anyway, Ant why do you have to be so picky and profolded dumb (hey, you called me a childish mind of a troll )? I thought you knew what I meant when I said MS don't support OGL;
                              They support it just as they support Netscape. They can't stop make it working (that's against marketing laws), but they can limp it a little and make "better" stuff themselves.

                              Listen, when a programmer have to prog stuff for DX, then 80% of the job is already done. Direct X is just a bunch of FX and features that's executed directly on the CPU. In DX3 we got direct executed crop/rezise of images/textures. In DX5 we got fading in/out (variable alpha channel). Now, for a programmer to use fading effects in his game, he just need to copy/paste a special line of code and he can use it directly in the games. (that's exceravated, but not far off at all)

                              When it comes to OpenGL, MS deliberately made it impossible to make two OGL ICD's on the same system, and then forcing the Voodoo 2 cards to only be submitted a "stand alone" OGL driver. This is sort of a MiniGL which got all fetaures of an ICD. (optimized for what's currently out there)

                              I may be a little wrong on this excact subject but I know it's some kind of the usual purposed screw-ups from mickeysoft. They would rather see everything running D3D than OGL.

                              Yes the G400 ICD is lacking in some areas but the reply is from someone who hasn't got a clue what he is talking about.

                              You're the one who don't have a clue what you're talking about. The G400's ICD is not an ICD since it don't support apps/games "out of the box" but have to be "optimized" for them. It's much easier to just look at current programs/games and see what they want and give them that.

                              Try to use those OGL screensavers of yours with dualhead enabled 8-)


                              And the last issue here.
                              OpenGL is FAR MORE SUPERIOUR than D3D. That's a hard fact no matter DirectX 7.0 or not. Where testing 3D OGL vs. D3D OGL is sharper, faster and more "responsive". Just check the control lag in Q3 versus the control lage in any other D3D game with the same polygon count/FX enabled.

                              And for you who don't care about control lag, that's what gameplay is all about. (almost )


                              Thanks + Best Regards(TM)
                              Fish


                              ----------------------
                              "Welcome back from the guide to how I see things logically"

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                              • #30
                                Wow... I never thought that lame comment would have spawned all of these "TEACHINGS"

                                Maybe you should interpret the comment, coming from that of a customer service rep, that is obviously biased. people have diffrent prefrences, and this guy was willing to give his thoughts on it. I am sure SIERRA would not accept that reply as Theirs... @ any rate: Ice Storm is right- I know very very few gamers who use the G400... it just seems to be a developers card, or a CAD card (which will soon change because there considering OEM shipment) Not to say its not a great gaming card, because the numbers show it... but Alot of people have NO clue, what the G400 is... let alone some dude, answering e-mails... He may have alot of shit to do through out the day, and he may even be a nazi... The best thing to do as they said, is to direct the issue toward the developers.....I sincerly believe he is not accurate when he said (maybe within tribes2" why would starsiege have it and not Tribes2... I dont think any of the idea exchanges in here are stupid or ignorant, maybe biased, and cruel... but if you dont know ask... its sad to see people attacked like that.
                                Consider the response from Sierra, like the guy that filled your drink up half way, and gave it to you for the drive thru... you got what you requested(a response) It just wasnt the full deal.
                                a digital display of evolution
                                (G200 with aid of Diamond Monster 3D II-SLI)

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