"Can I run this?" feature

[シ]

I just thought of something that I'm surprised doesn't already exist on Steam. I think that Steam should add a hardware scanner that allows you to test the specs of your machine to see how well you'd be able to run any game in your library. I know a lot of people rely on the "Can I run it?" feature in GameDebate to do this, but it would be so much easier if this were integrated into Steam itself. I think it would save people a lot of time if they know they can't run a game before they spend hours waiting for it to download. Anyway what does everyone think?

[Narcoleptic Marshmallow]

Publicado originalmente por Start_Running:

If you don't know what any specs mean. you can take 10-20 mins to educate yourself. It's not rocket science. You're just lazy.

I agree with this. Knowing your specs is the bare minimum for pc gaming. If you can't be bothered, you should just stick to consoles.

[lued123]

Perhaps, as an alternative, just try to encourage devs to put up demos more often?
Testing in a demo is far more helpful than Steam's (already existant, by the way, they use it for the hardware survey) hardware scanner would be.
Really, the only way to account for every possible pc is to enable experimentation.

[Gwarsbane]

Publicado originalmente por lued123:

Perhaps, as an alternative, just try to encourage devs to put up demos more often?
Testing in a demo is far more helpful than Steam's (already existant, by the way, they use it for the hardware survey) hardware scanner would be.
Really, the only way to account for every possible pc is to enable experimentation.

Demos are expensive to make and usually cost them sales as people play the demo, get their fill and don't bother with the actual game. this has all been covered before, using the search feature usually helps....

[Start_Running]

Publicado originalmente por Narcoleptic Marshmallow:

Publicado originalmente por Start_Running:

If you don't know what any specs mean. you can take 10-20 mins to educate yourself. It's not rocket science. You're just lazy.

I agree with this. Knowing your specs is the bare minimum for pc gaming. If you can't be bothered, you should just stick to consoles.

It's not even rocket science. The only confusing part is figuring out where your gpu stacks up against the ones listed. and there are tons of sites that have benchmarking charts..

As for Demos. Demos are stripped down versions of the game. I.e they don exert nearly the amount of load that the game will actually put on your rig.

I mean come on it's not any different than taking the time to make sure you're not putting your PS4 disk into your xbox.

[lued123]

Demos are not expensive to make, though I see your point on the "get their fill" thing.
A dev can simply upload the game, but with a different exe file that cuts the player off after the first level, or X minutes after the game starts, and doesn't generate save files. In most game engines, this is trivial work. Hell, they could publish it as a 5 dollar game with a 55 dollar dlc, as long as they spun it in a positive "get to know the game" kind of way.
At any rate, I was just providing an alternative to the even more ridiculous suggestion that Steam just know how games will run in advance.

[Start_Running]

Publicado originalmente por lued123:

Demos are not expensive to make,

Actually they are. Or rather a 'good demo is expnsive to make. It's basically a game design process in of itself. Gone are the days when you could just stick the first stage of a game and call it a demo. Nope. as mechanices and play styles have evoilved, games have become increasingly complex. So develoipers must craft what are known as vertical slice demos. Demos that generally give the player a feel for all aspects of the game they might encounter., parcelled in a significantly short play package.

This means you have to have a set team of people working on your demo as the game itself is being developed. meaning you're either hiriung additional staff or you're splitting your team and thereby increasing the development time for your game. THis development must also be done in parallel with the main development. New fewature being added to the game, the demo has to be adjusted to work that in. Feature being dropped? Well needs to be cut from the demo level.

DOing a good demo is quite a bit more involved than most players will ever realize.

though I see your point on the "get their fill" thing.

That's only one of 9 potential outcomes for producing a demo. Now here's the thing. Out of those 9 outcomes, only 3 actually show a positive influence and only 2 of those do so in a good way.

A dev can simply upload the game, but with a different exe file that cuts the player off after the first level, or X minutes after the game starts, and doesn't generate save files.

That doesn't work very well. For games like skyrim, or even Doom, because again, mechanics and gameplay elements are not available at the start of the game. So you could have a fun actiony part in the demo and then be appalled that the game switches to mostly stealth after.

In most game engines, this is trivial work. Hell, they could publish it as a 5 dollar game with a 55 dollar dlc, as long as they spun it in a positive "get to know the game" kind of way.

WHat game engines have you worked with?

[lued123]

I'm actually animating for a game *right now*. I can't say what engine it's in though, because that would be a fantastic way to get fired. Suffice it to say I'm more than passingly familiar with them.
Fair enough on the "might not show you the whole experience" thing, but that's not necessarily what the goal is. You can use a demo for that, but the bare minimum for a demo is to assure the player that the game actually launches on their system, and to give at least a shaky idea of how it will perform. I think the "cut the player off" method works wonders for that, and I'd be more than willing to drop 5 bucks for the ability to test it just in case I should save the other 55.
Smart customers would supplement that assurance that the game is compatible with their machine by looking at reviews and gameplay videos to determine whether they'll enjoy the gameplay.

[cinedine]

Publicado originalmente por lued123:

I'm actually animating for a game *right now*. I can't say what engine it's in though, because that would be a fantastic way to get fired. Suffice it to say I'm more than passingly familiar with them.

Unknown guy on the internet working on an unknown game ... can't say something completely irrelevant about the game.

You know you could have just say Unity, Unreal Engine 4, CryEngine, Ogre, GameMaker, Construct 2, Irrlicht, jMonkey, Lightfeather, idTech 3, Source ...

[lued123]

Publicado originalmente por cinedine:

Unknown guy on the internet working on an unknown game ... can't say something completely irrelevant about the game.

Start_Running asked me what engines I've worked with. I can't say because announcing it early would be breaching an NDA I signed, a good way to get fired. Did I not just say that?

[cinedine]

I use Java for the bulk of my work. Feel free to deduct from that useless information what I'm working on, who I'm working for and who I even am.

Bonus: I used to work with C# and have knowledge of C, C++, Pascal and PHP. Guess what I did with them.

[Start_Running]

Publicado originalmente por lued123:

Publicado originalmente por cinedine:

Unknown guy on the internet working on an unknown game ... can't say something completely irrelevant about the game.

Start_Running asked me what engines I've worked with. I can't say because announcing it early would be breaching an NDA I signed, a good way to get fired. Did I not just say that?

Uhm...yeah. And they would know which game you're talking about because they totally know your steam handle. Also I asked what engines have you worked with. Note the past tense. You are free to mention any engine you'd worked with in your professional history.

As is, you're one 'overseas girl-friend' away from scoring the random stranger on the internet trifecta.

Oi vey. I mean saying that you're animating has actually given more information about the game than disclosing the engine.

[lued123]

You're not supposed to know what game I'm talking about. Again, NDA. Telling you exactly what engine I'm working in or for what game would put my job on the line, and potentially get me sued. What exactly I'm doing with my life right now isn't relevant to the original conversation anyway. I merely brought it up because you asked me about my experience.

We were discussing whether it would be a good idea for Steam to intelligently guess whether you can run a game. We settled on no, so I offered something that I interpret as a more worthwhile alternative, increased use of very basic demos, purely for performance testing purposes. Now you're insisting that, in defense of my argument, I answer a question that could have serious negative impacts on my life. I'm not going to do that, so at this point the only healthy conclusion to the conversation would be to agree to disagree.

[Start_Running]

Publicado originalmente por lued123:

You're not supposed to know what game I'm talking about.Again, NDA.

But we know it has animation. So much for that.

Telling you exactly what engine I'm working in or for what game would put my job on the line, and potentially get me sued.

This implies two possibilities:

1.) This is the first and only time you've worked with a game engine. This would mean that your comment about it being simple would be rather uninformed. Just as the words of someone who has only run 100m sprints saying marathons are easy.

2.) You have worked on multiple projects, All within the same engine. Quite plausible. Specialization is a thing. But that then brings to mind an additional wringle. Same issues as number 1 , but now it seems odd that saying the engine would somehow giveaway the specific project you're working on, since it can just as easily apply to any project you have worked on in your careeer.


Add to both of tghese that no NDA would prevent you from mentioning past projects you had worked on, or previous engines you'd worked with. I mean seriously, you'd have to put that on your resume.

Good sir. The story. She does not add up.

What exactly I'm doing with my life right now isn't relevant to the original conversation anyway. I merely brought it up because you asked me about my experience.

You made a calim that time limiting demoing is easy to achieve with most game engines. Thereby prompting the question of 'which game engines you have noted this with. Quite relevant I'd say. If you say that you know dogs to be ill temnpered killing machines, the first question would be what breed of dogs have you encountered.

We were discussing whether it would be a good idea for Steam to intelligently guess whether you can run a game. We settled on no, so I offered something that I interpret as a more worthwhile alternative, increased use of very basic demos, purely for performance testing purposes. Now you're insisting that, in defense of my argument, I answer a question that could have serious negative impacts on my life. I'm not going to do that, so at this point the only healthy conclusion to the conversation would be to agree to disagree.

Anad again. this is unlikely to be very useful since no such demo could adequately stress the system as much as a full play experience. So will inherently be useless. There are many games that have had optimally performing demos but sub optimal gameplay.

Hence why Demos are done less as a benchmark tool and more as a promotional tool to introduce players to the game.

[LowJack_VA1]

Publicado originalmente por Start_Running:

Publicado originalmente por lued123:

You're not supposed to know what game I'm talking about.Again, NDA.

But we know it has animation. So much for that.

Telling you exactly what engine I'm working in or for what game would put my job on the line, and potentially get me sued.

This implies two possibilities:

1.) This is the first and only time you've worked with a game engine. This would mean that your comment about it being simple would be rather uninformed. Just as the words of someone who has only run 100m sprints saying marathons are easy.

2.) You have worked on multiple projects, All within the same engine. Quite plausible. Specialization is a thing. But that then brings to mind an additional wringle. Same issues as number 1 , but now it seems odd that saying the engine would somehow giveaway the specific project you're working on, since it can just as easily apply to any project you have worked on in your careeer.


Add to both of tghese that no NDA would prevent you from mentioning past projects you had worked on, or previous engines you'd worked with. I mean seriously, you'd have to put that on your resume.

Good sir. The story. She does not add up.

What exactly I'm doing with my life right now isn't relevant to the original conversation anyway. I merely brought it up because you asked me about my experience.

You made a calim that time limiting demoing is easy to achieve with most game engines. Thereby prompting the question of 'which game engines you have noted this with. Quite relevant I'd say. If you say that you know dogs to be ill temnpered killing machines, the first question would be what breed of dogs have you encountered.

We were discussing whether it would be a good idea for Steam to intelligently guess whether you can run a game. We settled on no, so I offered something that I interpret as a more worthwhile alternative, increased use of very basic demos, purely for performance testing purposes. Now you're insisting that, in defense of my argument, I answer a question that could have serious negative impacts on my life. I'm not going to do that, so at this point the only healthy conclusion to the conversation would be to agree to disagree.

Anad again. this is unlikely to be very useful since no such demo could adequately stress the system as much as a full play experience. So will inherently be useless. There are many games that have had optimally performing demos but sub optimal gameplay.

Hence why Demos are done less as a benchmark tool and more as a promotional tool to introduce players to the game.

I don't see why you're trying to rip him apart about this. I've signed NDAs all the time and I've been in the business for 25 years.

[Start_Running]

Publicado originalmente por LowJack_VA1:

I don't see why you're trying to rip him apart about this. I've signed NDAs all the time and I've been in the business for 25 years.

I have a fairly low tolerance for BS. If he's going to make such a big deal about it. It's rather nice to point out the holes in his story. Or rather the parts that don't match.

As said. NDA's are plausible. but asking what engines one has worked doesn't have to include the current active project.