Thu Apr 10, 2003 4:41 pm by WapCaplet
I can sympathize with you, Tact. I HATE it when I buy software only to have it not work properly when I get it home. I had a problem with the MP portion of FL, which I think many people did, and although I did manage to get it working after about a day, it was still frustrating as hell to get home with the goods, only to find that it wasn't working fully from the get-go.
That being said, I think we have to appreciate the enormous task that is upon programmer's shoulders. Computer systems are not like video gaming consoles. With an X-Box or PS2, you have no fear when writing a game because you know that virtually all your customers have identical systems. So play-testing and bug-testing are fairly straighforward. Fix the bug on one console and it should be fixed on all of them. But with computers, you have almost as many different hardware/software configurations as there are users. When there are several dozen different manufacturers of sound cards, video cards, motherboards, memory, processors, hard drives, cd-roms, monitors, etc, etc, and then several dozen different TYPES of hardware for each manufacturer, you are looking at an incredible number of combinations. And that's just hardware. Software is even more tricky because people have different versions of OS, drivers, TSRs, patches, configurations on routers, firewalls, virus scanners. The list goes on and on and on.
So I can appreciate the monumental task of trying to get a game to work perfectly on every single computer configuration in the world. It's pretty much impossible.
Anyway, I guess I'm just trying to say that there are two sides to the coin, both equally valid. However, it is the diversity and configurability of PCs that makes them so popular and ensures that they will always be better than consoles (hehe, probably starting another flame-fest with that comment).
As always...
Those are my thoughts, not yours, I'm WapCaplet[!
Edited by - WapCaplet on 10-04-2003 17:43:14