Flashpoint Community Hardware Specs.

[hardrock 1]

wahooo something's going on! we don't know what exactly, and how long it will take, but at least we know BIS isn't dead!! . . . yet

I'm all for the application

[Pappy Boyington 0]

Application thingy sounds better since there are loads of n00bs around here who couldnt tell the difference between a motherboard and their mothers vegie chopping board   , it'd be tough for them to write up all the longass VGA card names and model number/letters and so forth.

Exact the same here  

word yo

(why make a post stating whati was thinking when it was already posted? )

i voted for application thingy

[korax 4]

33-33 After my vote, I prefer a quick survey but I think in some ways the other method would help out the people who dont know much about computers

Errr.. Quick question, Is this to collect our current system specs? Or what we are planning to have? Because I certainly wont still be using my geforce 2 MX when ofp comes out 2006'ish

[suma 8]

Quote[/b] ]I never liked the idea of applications on my computer collecting infos and sending them to 3rd parties , whatever infos they can use (there are already plenty of those things floating everywhere) and i will not contribute to that survey if BIS use such procedure.

We undestand this point of view. That is why in our design the application would collect a data, create a short text file out of them and open your e-mail client, where you would see the text file, so you have complete control over what data are sent.

[suma 8]

Quote[/b] ]Is this to collect our current system specs? Or what we are planning to have? Because I certainly wont still be using my geforce 2 MX when ofp comes out 2006'ish

This is to collect the current specs - while we understand collecting future specs could be more usefull, it is not that reliable. Many people will change their plans about future upgrades, or will change their system config quickly after the upgrade based on the experiences they have with the system performance. That is why we want to get a data on what is really used.

[Radnik 18]

...they can write a whole page about this but not to tell anything...

anyway, i`m for txt described as in Sumas first quote...  

[hellfish6 7]

Quote[/b] ]Is this to collect our current system specs? Or what we are planning to have? Because I certainly wont still be using my geforce 2 MX when ofp comes out 2006'ish

This is to collect the current specs - while we understand collecting future specs could be more usefull, it is not that reliable. Many people will change their plans about future upgrades, or will change their system config quickly after the upgrade based on the experiences they have with the system performance. That is why we want to get a data on what is really used.

Also, some developers design their software to run on the typical system of today so that a year or two down the line the people running a 2 gig PC with a 128mb vid card won't be forced to upgrade.

Granted, if you've got a 1 gig PC with 512mb of RAM in 2006 you'll have no right to complain about not being able to run OFP2.

[WhoCares 0]

Small app is fine with me. I just wonder whether I should send my data as it might drop the min. requirements for any future application dramatically

[Pappy Boyington 0]

Quote[/b] ]I never liked the idea of applications on my computer collecting infos and sending them to 3rd parties , whatever infos they can use (there are already plenty of those things floating everywhere) and i will not contribute to that survey if BIS use such procedure.

We undestand this point of view. That is why in our design the application would collect a data, create a short text file out of them and open your e-mail client, where you would see the text file, so you have complete control over what data are sent.

you lie!

you secretly want to find out what kind of porn we download so that u can use it to blackmail us later... dont think i dont see whats happenin here... ITS A CONSPIRACY, MAN!!

ok ill shutup now.

in this txt file would we be able.. or i should say: allowed to post a breif comment.

for instance say i submit my txt file with my system specs, which is most likly what ill have in 06 still, but i want to comment "i have an idea to help increase performance in OFP2... i think you should do this instead of that.. and that should help"

now of course you will prolly get 19 million "0m9 B1S you roxors!!!" but for those of us with serious ideas to contribute, could we make a comment about it at the end of that text file?

Quote[/b] ]Also, some developers design their software to run on the typical system of today so that a year or two down the line the people running a 2 gig PC with a 128mb vid card won't be forced to upgrade.

or if your like me and you have no money at all.. then you cant upgrade. if i had a better (full time) job id apply for alienware financing for a new Area 51 tonight! but last time i checked im unable to pull $50 a month out of my ass so sadly that dream is many moons off.

until then id like to see the new flashpoint playable on a 256 ram, 1.5 GHZ PC with a 128 meg gfx card.

on the other hand, ive been so used to my 7 to 10 FPS on BIS missions that its almost natural... and anything better is a miracle..

so not all of us have super computers, and not all of us can afford such. and probably wont be able to afford them in 2006 either.

so please keep "the little guy" in mind when working on the memory caching and graphics processing of OFP2. im not saying make it perfect for us... but make it good for us and everyone else just becomes "lucky" to get 90000 FPS with thier uber machines of doom

thats my story and im sticking to it

[dm 9]

in this txt file would we be able.. or i should say: allowed to post a breif comment.

for instance say i submit my txt file with my system specs, which is most likly what ill have in 06 still, but i want to comment "i have an idea to help increase performance in OFP2... i think you should do this instead of that.. and that should help"

Err.. seriously, how many people (especially casual gamers) do you think have enough in-depth knowledge about actual PROGRAMMING of software (NOT addon/mission scripting) to make such a feature even remotely useful?

I don't know how much programming knowledge you possess, but something which you think will "help improve the performance" will 99.9% of the time actually be worse for the program than not including such a feature.

Seriously, BIS know what they're doing, lets just leave them to the programming, and us to providing system specs ok?

[Pappy Boyington 0]

in this txt file would we be able.. or i should say: allowed to post a breif comment.

for instance say i submit my txt file with my system specs, which is most likly what ill have in 06 still, but i want to comment "i have an idea to help increase performance in OFP2... i think you should do this instead of that.. and that should help"

Err.. seriously, how many people (especially casual gamers) do you think have enough in-depth knowledge about actual PROGRAMMING of software (NOT addon/mission scripting) to make such a feature even remotely useful?

I don't know how much programming knowledge you possess, but something which you think will "help improve the performance" will 99.9% of the time actually be worse for the program than not including such a feature.

Seriously, BIS know what they're doing, lets just leave them to the programming, and us to providing system specs ok?

how much knowlege to i possess? enough to make it my career choice

and you forget... us "casual gamers" were practicly begged in helping to enhance VBS. how many "casual gamers" are now on the BIS payroll for VBS? hmm? we obviously know a lil something or two about this game, engine, coding, and specifics.

lets for one minute pretend kegety wasnt a BIS employee (and we all seen his OFP1 beta pictures in the secret BIS site so dont BS me now) he obviously has some incitful knowlege that could help OFP2.

plus when you creating a project your so fixated on getting it done you overlook alot of things. for example: look at how OFP1 preforms now for most users. (hence this thread being created). when i was working on Y2K3, in my mind i had to get it done. i had to do this this and that... if it wasnt for the users...the "casual gamers" there would have been alot of stuff i would have left out... there would be alot of bugs still in it... there would be alot of lag problems (IE: the Mi17 dust script) that i would have overlooked. now most of the users that caught the problems i overlooked couldnt tell the differnce between a cpp and a txt file. (no offense.. i was like that @ one point too). but yet they were still able to provid helpful, incitful, glorius knowlege to something that would have gone overlooked.

im not saying we are gonna say "well hey take the C >=2 to the second power will help stop the connectivity problems of the source code to the database libray bug". im talkin more simplistic suggestions like for instance: "currently OFP loads every single addon when you start up the game... perhaps having OFP only load the addon when it is placed in the editor, or when a mission with said addon is selected, coupled with a breif, transparent "loading" message would help improve performance by not having 5 gigs of addons in the memory banks".

we're not gonna sit here and type up dll's and c++ codes to tell them how to do this. . . but providing suggestions like that may make them stop and go "hmmm yea thats not a bad idea.." and then either branch off on that idea.. modifiy that idea.. or use it to come up with one 20 times better.

and another thing... look around you dm... look at this community. NOONE here is a "casual gamer" the "casual gamer" is off killnig brain eating crabs in half life or shooting big burly monsters in doom3... the "casual gamer" NEVER sticks with a game longer then a year. the people you see here have been with us since 1.46 at the least! we arent casual gamers, and we all have ideas, suggestions, and tips to help improve gameplay. from performance ideas, coding ideas, to scripting ideas.

that little "user comments" section of the text file could be used not only for suggestions on how to increase performance, which is what im gonna suggest if the option is there... but also for users to suggest "hey id like to see better armor values and hitpoints on tanks and APCs in OFP2". a chance to voice our opinions on the next game. even if someone makes a suggestion they implemented months ago.. or even if it is a "bad idea" BIS can ignore it and move on.. they know whats best... but they dont always know think of everything.

this is our chance to be heard.... so what could it hurt? i mean hell probably 4 out of 5 "comments" wont even be read let alone considered... but what if.. what if that one comment that was looked at... made a world of differance

[suma 8]

Quote[/b] ]in this txt file would we be able.. or i should say: allowed to post a breif comment.

Feel free to post your suggestions and comment in the OFP2 suggestions forum. It is quite likely that even if we use the text file application, no human will read the results, they will be only statistically processed.

[-ZG-BUZZARD 0]

Just ignore this if it already has been posted, but it would be good to post the selection - independantly of whichever form you want to make the survey- if people intend to upgrade by then. I for instance have a nice working system (actually more than one ) and I'm not jumping after the latest hardware everytime something new comes out, so you might as well do yourself a favour and check which kind of hardware will still be in use by 2006, what do you think, Suma?

[hardrock 1]

Well, what do we have the <span style='font-size:13pt;line-height:100%'>OFP2 - SUGGESTIONS</span> forum for?

Edit: damn I'm always late

[nephilim 0]

sth to fill out is better id say

no one knows wot BIA actually will do to us with that app ;)

instaling some spy software to check out new addons and effects eh

[Placebo 29]

instaling some spy software to check out new addons and effects eh

Quick you'd better uninstall Opf & VBS then

[BraTTy 0]

I voted the web thing,mainly because I don't actually have OFP install atm the give a .rpt file.

Whatever the Bis dev team needs tho, you wish is our command.

[dm 9]

how much knowlege to i possess? enough to make it my career choice

I'm sure you do... But thats not the issue here.

Quote[/b] ]and you forget... us "casual gamers" were practicly begged in helping to enhance VBS. how many "casual gamers" are now on the BIS payroll for VBS? hmm? we obviously know a lil something or two about this game, engine, coding, and specifics.

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but I dont recall BIA ever begging ANYONE to work on VBS. In fact, as far as I know, any work that was used in VBS was either paid for, or in the case of Earl, was given a job (i.e. put on the payroll at BIA) in order to create new content for VBS. I appreciate that there may be other members of the community creating content for VBS, but how they are being "payed" for this endavour I do not know. Again, VBS is not the "issue" here.

And yes, the phrase "we know a lil something about.." stands true. Compaired to suma and the other programmers, we know very VERY little about how the actual ENGINE works. So we can code pretty addons, and nice scripting-hacks, but that is nothing in comparison as to how the actual game engine works.

Quote[/b] ]lets for one minute pretend kegety wasnt a BIS employee (and we all seen his OFP1 beta pictures in the secret BIS site so dont BS me now) he obviously has some incitful knowlege that could help OFP2.

Just because Kegetys is/might be an employee of BIS doesn't mean that he instantly has "all-powerful" knowledge of the Real Virtuality engine. Kegetys knows what he knows, and is able to create things like dxdll because he is a computer-literate person, who understands how to PROGRAM "properly". He's not a casual gamer who simply goes "oh, this is a 'better' way to do function x, and object y doesnt look right" or "this helicopter needs rotorwash". No, that is what BETA Testing is about (and IIRC that is why there are pictures featuring Kegetys on the BIS 'secret' site - he was a beta tester for them)

Quote[/b] ]plus when you creating a project your so fixated on getting it done you overlook alot of things. for example: look at how OFP1 preforms now for most users. (hence this thread being created). when i was working on Y2K3, in my mind i had to get it done. i had to do this this and that... if it wasnt for the users...the "casual gamers" there would have been alot of stuff i would have left out... there would be alot of bugs still in it... there would be alot of lag problems (IE: the Mi17 dust script) that i would have overlooked. now most of the users that caught the problems i overlooked couldnt tell the differnce between a cpp and a txt file. (no offense.. i was like that @ one point too). but yet they were still able to provid helpful, incitful, glorius knowlege to something that would have gone overlooked.

im not saying we are gonna say "well hey take the C >=2 to the second power will help stop the connectivity problems of the source code to the database libray bug". im talkin more simplistic suggestions like for instance: "currently OFP loads every single addon when you start up the game... perhaps having OFP only load the addon when it is placed in the editor, or when a mission with said addon is selected, coupled with a breif, transparent "loading" message would help improve performance by not having 5 gigs of addons in the memory banks".

we're not gonna sit here and type up dll's and c++ codes to tell them how to do this. . . but providing suggestions like that may make them stop and go "hmmm yea thats not a bad idea.." and then either branch off on that idea.. modifiy that idea.. or use it to come up with one 20 times better.

As has been said, every reason you gave for the little text file has already been covered in the OFP2 Suggestions board, and if it hasn't, thats the place to post it. And how many times do you think the same idea would be submitted in that little text file? Then BIS would have to waste hours of time sifting throught the ideas to find any "helpful, inciteful, glorious knowledge" that might actually make it through. All of which is better handled in the OFP2 - Suggestions board, as that way users can see what has and hasn't already been suggested, thus reducing the amount of duplication that would occur with an individual report.

Quote[/b] ]and another thing... look around you dm... look at this community. NOONE here is a "casual gamer" the "casual gamer" is off killnig brain eating crabs in half life or shooting big burly monsters in doom3... the "casual gamer" NEVER sticks with a game longer then a year. the people you see here have been with us since 1.46 at the least! we arent casual gamers, and we all have ideas, suggestions, and tips to help improve gameplay. from performance ideas, coding ideas, to scripting ideas.

Erm, dunno about you, but I see new faces appearing on these (and other) boards all the time. So saying that "everyone here has been with us since 1.46" is wrong in its self. That and the fact that under the surface, there really is only a small hardcore group of say, 200 people who are active, and of that group less than half have any "real" knowledge of the actual engine its self. Also, what constitutes as a "performance enhancing" idea to you, might not actually be any better for the performance. It all depends on how it is able to be implemented in the code, it depends on how the software environment running it functions. If it means less ram usage, but longer load times, is that really an improvement?

Quote[/b] ]this is our chance to be heard.... so what could it hurt? i mean hell probably 4 out of 5 "comments" wont even be read let alone considered... but what if.. what if that one comment that was looked at... made a world of differance

As has been said, our "chance to be heard" is the OFP2 - Suggestions board, this is simply a way of gathering information about COMMON HARDWARE SETUPS amongst the remaining users of OFP. Its called market research - find out what is commonplace amongst the user, and write your new code to use that hardware to the best of its ability. Those with faster pcs will have an advantage, those with slower pcs will have to lower the settings a bit.

If you want to make a "world of difference" post away on the OFP2 - Suggestions board, as that is where the "world changing ideas" are going to be 'harvested' by BIS.

[Placebo 29]

Let's stick to the topic in hand please people

[Winters 1]

I voted "web based thingy" just because my mouse was pointed at it. I really couldnt care which way they went with it anyway, either sounds good to me

[HotShot 0]

I voted for the application as i'm not sure what exactly i have in my system, and i trust more a BIS application then i would a system looker application from another company (which i would need to fill out a webform).

Also, what Hellfish (i think) was on about with that it is easier/quicker to fill in a form i think is incorrect, as surley its quicker to just run an application, then send the result off, then it is to fill in a form?? As well if it is just collecting satistical data, wouldn't people vary the names of the same piece of hardware in a webform, and so it would come up as different hardware, when infact they are the same, which wouldn't happen with the application.

[colonel_klink 0]

I voted small application, but a web based form is ok too..

[shinRaiden 0]

What about the weirdos's? I doubt neither will adequately handle the crap I'm running OFP and VBS through.

I'm running multimon on a single gfx5600, and most of the time OFP and VBS are windowed.

For audio I have a nForce2 soundstorm passed through via SPDIF into a SB Audigy2 Platnium, and I split half the time natively in each.

So how about adding muliple monitor, video card, and sound card entries?

[Pappy Boyington 0]

I voted for the application as i'm not sure what exactly i have in my system, and i trust more a BIS application then i would a system looker application from another company (which i would need to fill out a webform).

a webform doesnt do anyone any good as most of the hardware specs that you reqire... noone would know

for instance. how many people here know the exact make and model of your mother board?

how many people here actualy know what a mother board is?

now some of us tech nuts are gonna jump up and post in big bold leters

i got me an intel zx 23 4 8 9 XLP uber-board XP! with built in deer shiner and a 20,000 gigawatt ciggeret lighter.

but most of us here know only the basic hardware information, IE: RAM, Graphic Card, Sound Card, and Hard Disk Space.

and BIS doesnt need 8 or 9 complete reports.... they need 200, 300, mabe even 500 reports.. one from every last one of us... and the only way we can affectivly "fill in the blanks" is by submiting a full complete analysis of our system

honestly what is so wrong with a little tiney 100kb exe file that u double click.. it got beep bop boop DONE u drag the txt file into your Outlook or Outlook Express, type in "BIstudios@coolwebsite.com" title: system sepcs" you press "send" and viola your done.

meanwhile others are still on question 22 of 830 on the webform.... 30 minutes later... ahh finnaly all specs filled out *click submit*... man i hope i dont have to... ahhh!!!!! *page cannot be displayed* @!#$% @#%@%!#%!^ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sounds much easier and much more effenciant to me dont you think?

you want my honest opinion? do both. do a webform for some who want to deal with that... and make an application for the rest of us that would find it much easier and much more effeciant way. this way everyone wins. we get to use our personal sense to choose which is better.. and BIS gets the reports they want.

win win situation

[shadow 6]

Here's a new one. A web-based application extracting all the HW-info needed from the computer

Would be more difficult to cheat too.

Out of the 2 I voted "small application", but like Winters, my mouse-pointer was closer to that selection