Attention.

I have the ability to play the great and noble 1680x1050 resolution. It is not the card that makes the resolution, it is the monitor.

Also, they're right. CC doesn't use the graphics card enough to make a difference, and even if it did, it's always going to be the exact same 256 colors and the exact same pixel size.

Well that explains it. That High resolution mode sounds exactly like what I was thinking of...
But you really should have mentioned it in your original post. It set the thread up for a swift derailing.


While we're on the topic, I've always wondered if anyone ever considered making CC take advantage of a GPU or PPU. Admittedly, they're focused more on 3d physics rather than 2d... But every bit helps, right? And if it's going to run on consoles...

http://www.gpgpu.org/

You can't "force" an application to run on GPU, it has to be designed to.

Nobody said anything about forcing the game to run on the GPU.

"While we're on the topic, I've always wondered if anyone ever considered making CC take advantage of a GPU or PPU. Admittedly, they're focused more on 3d physics rather than 2d... But every bit helps, right? And if it's going to run on consoles..."

"Anyone" can be construed to mean all users, seeing as Data is the only programmer with the actual ability to get CC to run off GPU.

And if it's referring to all users, it can mean that you're asking whether someone has done any quick and dirty work to make CC run off GPU.

At least, that's the impression I gathered off your statement. Apologies for obvious confusion.

Actually, I'm just used to development teams, where the coder seems to get all the attention while all the other members are ignored. 'Course, people in the community love to think up stuff even if they can't actually implement it, so there's always that too... Though, playing around with an Ageia SDK to see if it can be translated to 2d is probably beyond expectation.

I wouldn't see any of it as forced, though. Designed is essential. You can force hardware... Software not so much.

In my experience, the artistic section of a design team tends to get the most limelight. You don't hear people saying "Damn, that heuristic algorithm on this such-and-such CS mod is beast." You hear about how good the graphics are, and at what framerate the game runs.

Actually, it's the project leads that get the most fame, probably because they talk the most.
When you hear about Unreal, you hear about Cliff Bleszinski. When you hear about Quake, you hear about John Romero. (Actually, I get them mixed up...) I've just found in non-commercial games that the coders are often project leads. Far as I know, haven't seen an art director that was project lead... yet.

This opinion of mine might be incorrect. If Data Realms try to get it to use a PPU, the game is using a custom physics engine espicially made for pixel physics, making it run with the PhysX Ageia PPU would mean doing alot of conversion time and also a huge delay in release.


This is what I thought about;
CPU: Loads levels (codes and other), for saving progress and AI.
GPU: Due to GPUs being used to render 3D Games, rendering sprites in CC should be an absolute breeze and the GPU should also have physics calculating support (everyone knows that physics can also be done on a CPU).

Also it should benifit greatly if the CPU calculates physics for the terrain (for example) and the GPU calculates physics for the more advanced, but I am not very sure this is possible.

CC doesn't really need a GPU. Because it's all sprites, and all done in 2D, fancy advanced stuff provided by high-end video cards arn't needed. Sure, it could be made to use the video card, but it wouldn't really matter between a 6600 and a 8800. Also, a PPU would not be good at all. Despite the fact that CC works perfectly fine without one, it would alienate all but about 3 of the audience who actually have one.

Well, in theory, video cards work as child processors, with up to 700 or so mhz speeds, which is a sizable chunk, considering how much CC takes to run properly.

Actually, come to think of it, once you've got all four cores of your Q6600 working on CC, who needs anything more? (Ah, if only I had one.)

I can only imagine the GPU support being useful for screen capturing at a steady rate, once you're at that level of hardware. Well, that and playing around on 8000x8000 maps with a screen resolution of 2560x1600.

We are not thinking about real time fluids, many people are asking for real time fluids in CC. This might not be possible to have with a steady frame-rate only on a single CPU.

But Data can't actually depend on the user having a high-end card. He's going to make it as available to as many people as possible.

well all modern games assume people who but the game have a graphics card that could run something a lot better than CC, so why not.

I'm sure anyone who calls them self a gamer has a graphics card that is geforce 5200 or better (can be picked up for £20) which could probably run this easily*.

*just a guess seeing as I used to have one, which could run Black and White 2, but I'm not sure about the physics side of it