Stardock and Ironclad have been looking at what's next for Sins of a Solar Empire. One of the big things on our list is to implement a new memory model for the game. The reason this matters is that right now, it's hard to add more ships or structures into the game because of the infamous 2GB memory limit on 32-bit systems.
So in the coming couple of months, we're going to be working on a new update to Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity that implements this. After that, we can evaluate new opportunities in the Sins of a Solar Empire universe.
Thanks, Myfist0.
Personally, i would prefer Sins 2 to boosting actual game. Its going to be 3 years old after all. I play it on the third computer now and already the first one of them (Athlon 64 3200+ 2GHz single core with 1Gig of RAM) played the game fine. So i really would like new engine with new graphics and possibilities. Does not need to be nothing ballripping, so many people still can play it without upgrade, but still...its time to admit that quadcore, 4gigs of RAM and geforce gtx460/radeon 6850 dx11 card is becoming standard these days... I live in small town in central Europe in former Eastern Block country, i am not rich in any possible way and i still could afford computer way beyond those specs (thogh for work, not gaming ofc)...so dont tell me most people living in West Europe/America cant afford that (as they are target audience who will most likely buy the game instead of pirating it).
IMHO its time for new game, which will not only improve on the eye candy aspect, but will make the game bit more multiplayer friendly while keeping the epicness and grand-scale feeling (as this is perhaps my biggest grip with it, sometimes it was too slow, so i felt like playing it once in a half year), reevaluates the diplomatic aspect (as it was IMHO most confusing and least funny part) and finally gives us more of that sci-fi stuff we all love and thrive for (races, ships, weapons, shields, planets and planetkillers, battlestations, starbases, stargates, etc. etc. etc....)
You are correct in that quad core 64 bit, and 4+ gigs of ram is the standard as of now. However there will be some "die hards" that will refuse to upgrade, because they are ether unable to. or unwilling to, or are afraid to, or all of the above. If IC wanted to make Sins 2 i think they would have already announced it by now. However they did not. They announced that they wanted to upgrade the existing Iron engine one final time. Then see where things go from there. Let us let them do that, and then we will see where things go from there. There is still potential in this engine, and there are still many who are new to this game as you can see from all of the noob posts that are still happening to this day.
It is obvious that Sins 2, or any other game made from this point in time forward "must" be 64 bit compatible. With all of the bells, and whistles that go with it. Trying to convince IC to go that route prematurely before they are ready for it is not wise.
Word has it that microsoft is messing around with 128 bit tech already (unconfirmed. heard from a 3rd party, take with a grain of salt.) We all know the drill. A computer is obsolete the moment you buy it.
sorry, major stress, but the computers ARE obsolete when the design is completed, NOT the much later point of purchase.
harpo
Agreed. Though, in the end its their decision and i all i can do, is voice my opinion here. Theyre still going to stick to their plan, no matter what i say
Regarding "seeing where things go from there"...i think its apparent by now. Sins 2 is inevitable, as long as they want to do it. Its a niche game, there is really no competition (apart the Gemini Wars i posted about in the PC Gaming Forum), so they have guaranteed audience. I am pretty sure, everyone here wants Sins 2 at some point, its the nature of the player. Old things are old, they start to bore, no matter how good they are. People stick to old games, only when there is no other game like that/ all other sequels or competitors are not good enough for some reason. I used to play Star Command Revolution until recently (it does not work anymore under Win7 64bit), because it was special game, one of its kind. And i do prefer Homeworld 1 to 2, at least singleplayer wise. But then i dumped Modern Warfare 2 for Black Ops the moment it came out.
So make Sins 2 better than first one and the success is guaranteed.
Imagine someone who is not rich or who may be unemployed or underemployed or struggling financially for whatever reason. Suppose that he likes Sins and is otherwise perfectly happy with the performance of his current computer (say an older dual core). The question is, would you want to spend $400 for a CPU-mobo-RAM upgrade in order to play a single game? Would you buy Sins for $400?
I suppose that space invaders is still sold for people that run windows 3.1 as well.
Get with the times or get left behind. If you cant afford to upgrade stick with games that are old but dont make a new game a piece of crap because some die hard wants to keep their 10 year old computer. If you have a 5 year old computer stick to 5 year old games that are in the 99 cent bin.
Bit harshly said, but yes. I am sorry for those, who really are out of luck and do not have those 400 bucks to splash on new HW. Not so long ago, during my school years, i was in their situation, so i know how it feels, when the next iteration of your fav game does not want to run on your hw. But i really do not think there will be many people having this problem, given Sins relatively small community/audience. More likely are those die hards, who refuse to upgrade, but if they really love the game and want to play it, they will do it.
I was actually describing myself there. I am always behind and cant play a lot of the new games now but I will not try to halt progress because I am a cheapy .
I will never pay $50 - $80 for a game when I wait a year or 2 and get it for $10. I just went through my games pile and found 3 or 4 that I bought and could not play because of the min requirements were simply to bad to play. But now I am playing them and they are loads of fun even if 2 years old.
online games typically only last about 1 1/2 hours. a rare game last 2 1/2 sometimes 3. i havent played any games that were 4 hours long that werentcomp stomps(and ive played atleast 1000 games)
{SB}=>Warfleet
i think im in love with stardock and ironclad as well. cant wait for Sins 2.
@myfist
It's good when games try to support 1 or two generations prior, but not a 6 year old machine! How should we ever unleash the power of modern graphics cards if we have to be backwards compatible to DX9 ?? DX9 is too many years old.
Now in part, I'm very sympathetic to you all who have really good computers...but seriously, I mean seriously, I think your understanding of what "most" people have as a PC is a little biased...
The people who are really into games and bother to even post anything on the forums are on average going to have systems better for gaming....the typical specs we forum posters have are higher than what the typical person who plays sins or any RTS has...
Now, there is a difference between having an average modern graphics card and a crappy 6 year old graphics card...and I am completely understanding of the push to not limit games just so they are compatible with old cards and what not...but making use of modern graphics and forcing people to have the latest and greatest are two very different things...it might be nice for some of you people to have a game lthat pushes the current limits...but for a great many of us, those games don't work on our systems or are really slow...and guess what happens? We don't buy them....
With all your criticism against cheapskate gamers you are also missing a huge audience...laptops...
I don't know what you all use in Europe or the eastern block but in America, a large portion of your high school and college students are using lap tops (hell, even some kids get their own laptop)...and in America, that is a massive audience for computer games...in fact, the only other large group of gamers that would play something like Sins are young adults who were high schoolers and college students that grew up with computer games (a booming market since the 1990s, arguably a little earlier)...
You claim that post-Soviets can afford a nice desktop...well that's great, but I bet there's no way you'd pay for a comparable laptop (assuming you could find one) unless you are really being modest about you're financial situation...the gaming laptop I have now is about as best a gaming laptop you can get short of Alienware, and I easily could have gotten a better desktop for half the price...
Sure, a lot of gamers here in America have hella nice computers that they built themselves...but a lot don't, because financing a desktop and a laptop is expensive, even if one of them isn't designed for gaming...
The even bigger issue with laptops is that they are rarely upgradeable...depending on the model you might be able to change the hard drive, but that is usually about it....you can criticize desktop users for not willing to upgrade their ram or graphics card or whatever, but that argument does not work for people who depend on lap tops...
The university I go to is almost entirely engineering and science and pools heavily from nearby suburban areas...I can say with near certainty that the quality of desktops and laptops you will find there is much higher than the average PC most sins people are using...of the six friends of mine that have played sins with me in the past and go to that university, only one uses a desktop for gaming...the other five depend entirely on a laptop if they want to play sins...
Now I know that is anecdotal evidence, which usually I think is crap...but as far as I'm concerned, pushing the limits of processors and graphics card is not what makes a good game anyway, and is not the best business model to go with...
I would very much like to see Sins 2 have the potential to make the most of the latest graphics cards and quad-cores....but if the game is incapable of running well on an average system, then that will be a huge detriment to sales...creating a game that requires a top of the line quad-core to even run well is not a good idea...a game that requires a really good dual core even is severely pushing it...
On the bright side, writing games that support dual-cores will be a huge improvement for people with moderate dual cores that have only average processing power...graphics could be an issue unless the game is flexible...I swear if Ironclad tries to pull a Crysis with Sins 2 I most certainly won't be buying the game...
@SeleuceiaI understand that particular concern, but when related to a game like sins, that would mean you should be limited to playing small and medium maps on a laptop. There is no reason to not support larger maps on a desktop computer with a modern graphics card, especially since the game does not run well on huge maps even now using a top of the line desktop PC. We need support for better machines to make sins(2) run well.
And to be honest, PC gaming should see laptops (most of the more standard ones) as the lower end of the supported spectrum. I'm happy when games support older machines, but you should not make it a requirement at all times, or no progress would occur.
Just look at the modern console ports, they all use the same engine features when ported or developed on the PC because the consoles can't do better. I don't think thats a good way of making games for the PC. Now if that metric would also be applied to laptops vs. desktops, games would look the same for years. You might argue that the developers could implement many different rendering path to suit all different generations, but to do that, development costs rise manifold as you have to make sure the content looks good enough on all settings, test on many more different hardware setups and so forth. I suspect 3 rendering path would be best (DX9, DX11, OpenGL) and support for multicore for 8 cores (quad core with HT), or better yet, make use of OpenCL for AI calculations and pathfinding.
Oh, and 64Bit is really a requirement for new games, as most (even laptop) CPUs support it now. And I'd say most of us can afford a 64Bit Windows.
Here's something to consider. Let's suppose that someone is perfectly happy with the computer that they have right now (a couple years old) and it pretty much does everything they want. Such a person plays only a small number of games and is very very selective, playing only the best games for years. A single game that he wants is released which requires him to upgrade. So, basically, the price of playing that game is $500. That's a lot of money to spend for the specific purpose of playing one single game.
Here's a better thing to consider. Spending that $500 would be the choice of the person to make that upgrade and play. Back in the day when GTA 3 came out, my video card needed to be upgraded for me to play it. It was a cost I had to add to the price of the game in determining if I wanted to be able to enjoy it or not. My PC played everything else I had perfectly fine. Ultimately I decided to get the new video card. Yes it added $150 to the cost of getting GTA3, but what one also needs to consider is every single game I purchased after that. Easily a few dozen that I would otherwise would not have been able to purchase and enjoy. That PC lasted me 10 additional years before I upgraded again. If I spread out that $150 over the cost of all the games I purchased over that decade, the price of that new piece of hardware becomes a non issue. It's chump change, like under $1 per game... Not that big of a deal.
When GTA4 came out, I spent over a grand replacing my 10 year old computer. I could technically add $1000 to the cost of buying GTA4 since it was a necessary upgrade for me to get the game, however, games I purchased since, such as C&C 3 and it's expansion, C&C 3 Red Alert and it's expansion, C&C 4, Supreme Commander 2, TRON Evolution, and down the road I'll be buying StarCraft 2 and it's expansions when they're finished, plus games I don't even know about yet, those games are games I would have also needed to upgrade my PC in order to enjoy, otherwise I would not be playing them. The cost of my upgrading can be all blamed on my want to be able to play GTA4 since that's the game that originally forced me to do it, however, it MUST actually be a cost associated with ALL of the new games, not just the one that finally made me go out and do it. Adding in both Sins expansions, I've purchased 10 games, meaning my upgrade thus far has added a little over $100 to the cost of all of those games. And that doesn't include the business software I bought for my last job before the company folded, opting for the 64bit versions of instead of the 32bit versions so I could work from home should I need to catch up or get ahead of things.
The reality of the situation is, you can blame a single game for forcing you to upgrade, but that upgrade is your choice to make. After you make that upgrade, your ability to play games is expanded into a large group you would otherwise not be able to play, and giving you the opportunity to play more down the road... Eventually, everyone must upgrade. The only difference is why you finally upgrade. For me, apparently it's the GTA franchise that ultimately makes me cave. For someone else, it might be Sins 2. For another person, it might be nothing other then their PC is 5 years old and they just want a new one... But that cost cannot be blamed on one single piece of software unless that's the last piece of software you buy, which won't happen. Let's face reality kids, we're all gamers here. We'll buy more. Eventually that $500 added cost to enjoy this game becomes insignificant and goes away pro rated across all of your future games.
I play large maps all the time on my laptop under the highest graphic systems, and I only have problems at 2x + speed or if there is lag in an MP game....
Yes, they should be seen as the lower end of the spectrum...but it doesn't take much to knock them completely off the spectrum...there is difference between old machines and average machines...I ain't talking about old computers, I'm talking about new computers that just aren't top of the line...they'll have a decent 256 graphics card with a 2.0 dual-core and what, 4GB of RAM? If you are paying for two computers, unless one is a cheap notebook you won't be able to go all out on either of them, even if the desktop is the designated gaming computer...
The game that comes to mind in discussions like these is Crysis...even really good computers could not play that game on anything other than the lowest settings, and Internet MP was a mess given the quality PC a lot of the players were trying to use...
I don't want Sins 2 to turn into that...I don't think it will, but if the only intel Ironclad bothers to gather on consumer specs is from these forums, most people are screwed...
Dear god if they continue making 32 bit games by the time sins 2 comes out I may throw a serious hissy fit...one of these days Microsoft just won't offer a 32 bit system anymore...
This is an important point...the specs of games do help to drive consumer purchases of newer and better computers, though only up to a point...the thing is, if your game ain't the one to cause a gamer to cave, then you're hosed until some game does...
@SeleuceiaI might be proven wrong, but I don't see a 256 MB Video Card as average these days. How should we have good textures on 256MB?
As for Crysis, many things were said, but I could run that game on my Core2Duo 2,4 GHz on an ASRock VSTA with a NVidia GTS 880 640MB with 2 GB Ram under XP without problems - on all settings High (except Antialiasing, but with Anisotropic filtering). It sometimes went to 18 FPS, but even then the single player was perfectly playable.
@Seleuceia
Nobody is asking Sins2 to be new Crysis. Let me put this way: I have a Intel sixcore CPU, which cost me alone 960 EUR. This is cca 10x more expensive than AMD Athlon x4 quadcore. I do not expect new Sins to be made for my CPU. In the end i did not bought it for gaming, i bought it for doing architectural visualisations. However i do not think its too much to ask to Sins 2 be made for that 100 EUR quadcore. Its really a standard now. Its becoming to be standard on notebooks these days. Just look for the new Intel SandyBridge laptops.
It would be easier to want to build a new PC if I were looking forward to several games. However, the state of PC gaming is awful right now and I don't have anything to look forward to other than a Sins-2 perhaps. Arena style FPS? My favorite genre was killed by consolization and Epic Games.
Raw processing power is not an issue if the game is multi-threaded...which, if it is not, then we have far bigger problems to worry about...
The main issue is graphics, where graphic cards can get very expensive...another thing to consider is bus speed and the like for CPUs and RAM...sure, you can get a cheap processor with good clock speed, but for running games, that bus speed can matter if the game pushes your CPU to the limit...and it is things like that which can really start skyrocketing your price...
256 graphics card are not at all standard purchases for gaming computers bought today...but go back 2 or 3 years, and they are, and most people are buying computers less often that 2 or 3 years...what people have and what is available for purchase are two very different things...just because most computers sold today have specs ABC does not mean most computers being used have similar specs...
Crysis came out in what, 2006? 2007? A 2.4 Dual core may not be much today but that was pretty damn good 4 years ago as is a 640 graphics card, especially Nvidia...I had a 256 Nvidia and a 2.0 Hyperthreaded Dual Core with 1 GB of RAM, and that cost me a hella lot...
I'd be wary on a quad core that costs only 100 euros...there are other stats to consider aside from having X Ghz on each core, and while those may not matter for architecture or engineering design, they can matter for video games...
Again, I'm going to stress the selection bias we see here on these forums...the group of people on here is not very representative of casual gamers or sins players...some people may get a better computer when they realize they're behind the times...but some won't, and from a business perspective of a game fitting a very small niche, you better try to tap into as much of your audience as possible...
I don't think anyone wants a game limited by "lesser" technology...but I think it would be very unwise for Sins 2 or any future game to not be playable on a wide range of systems, which means it's lowest settings need to work on the mid-low end of the spectrum.....
Yes, but since sins 2 is not even in development, the mid range to consider now is todays midrange, starting at 512MB ram + DX 11 for graphics and 64 bit 4GB Ram Quad core (possibly more bc of hyperthreading) for the rest. if you start to develop a game today for what was an average system 2 years ago, your game will be hopelessly outdated by the time it comes out.
I understand what you're getting at, and I agree...my fear is that they'll overshoot or overestimate what will be average...some things, like multi-threading and hopefully 64 bit will be safe bets...but other things, particularly graphics, could easily be overshot...processing could also be an issue if the game starts hitting bus speed limits...you hit those, and it really doesn't matter how many cores or GHz you have...not an issue for most applications, but very possible for games running a lot of real time input/output...
I don't know if or when sins 2 hits development, but lets say it is in 2 years, and then it takes another two years to make the game...Ironclad looks at the PC market in 2013, and decides "well, good PCs are like this, and if we expect them to get that much better in the next 2 years, then there's what our game should be made for"...if their expectations are set too high, then we'll start having problems...
As evidenced by this thread, a lot of games are held back because companies error on the safe side of these expectations...companies may continue this trend, or they may decide from past experiences that they can get away with higher expectations..
Given the current methods of making CPUs and graphics cards, it is very possible that we are approaching the limit of silicon chip technology...if the growth in that technology slows down at the same time PC game companies decide to no longer pad their numbers, that could spell some trouble for a lot of consumers...
I don't think that will happen...but it could happen, and if consumers start demanding the best then that only increases the odds of it happening...
The squeaky wheel gets the grease...we can all make sure our voices are heard and our opinions posted on these forums, and Ironclad can get some great information from us, but what about the rest of their audience? Gathering intel on your market can be rather difficult for a game like sins...how many sins players actually use Impulse? How many play their game from the CD and never have made any contact with these forums or impulse or Ironclad? I honestly don't know...maybe it's hardly anyone, but maybe it is a fair amount and if that's the case then Ironclad's expectations could be way off...
@SeleuceiaAgreed. Thats always difficult. Lets hope they make a good estimation or some of us will be disappointed (well, some always are).
One statement: The market will drive and determine what the scope and profitability of a project will be, not one sub-atomic particle of anything else.
I wonder why are you so afraid of the "hitting the bus speed"? I am not hardware engineer, but as far i know, there is no problem with this, the connection between CPU and the rest fo the system keeps constantly evolving, so nothing gets bottlenecked. AFAIK Intel i7 CPUs had their QPI bus quite overpowered to what was actually needed, cause they were primarily designed as server processors for multiCPU systems. And if you have only one GPU - as most people have - one quadcore CPU will not bottleneck your GPU, even the latest and most powerful one.
BTW they are indeed approaching the limits of silicon, but i am sure they already have something up their sleeves, so when the time comes, they just bypass it somehow and keep pushing or simply replace silicon with something else (i read somewhere the graphene has some superb properties important for the semiconductor industry).
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