carls wrote:
Relais wouldn't even run on my computer because I have a GF 4 MX 440 (so much for hardware abstraction, eh?). This is a card that without problems can run UT2003 in 640x480 and Quake 3 in 1024x768.
This is copied directly from the "Relais" readme file:
. why does it require a geforce 3?
the bump mapping requires vertex shaders, and those are only
supported in hardware on geforce 3 or later cards. also
we use 4 pass multitexturing, n*m textures, 8 stage
register combiners and other extensions only available on those
cards. it does not run on a geforce 4 mx or go because nvidia
screwed up the naming of those cards and they are
actually just gef 2 cards when looking at the specs.Summary: Quake and the like don't use programmable shaders. "Relais" does.
Protozoa started but I couldn't stand watching it because it was too slow, it felt like maybe 5 fps or something - and this was with an effect that runs smoothly in many Amiga AGA demos.
"Protozoa's" code *is* slow, but even still, there are insane amounts of transluceny in every scene. In fact, the whold damn thing is see-through! This really takes a massive toll on any graphics card, especially an MX card. Games are primarily opaque, with a bit of translucent fire or smoke or similar.
There are demos that will run decent speed on your card, but anything from 2002 or beyond will chug like a fat kid climbing stairs.
Incidently, there were a tonne of cool demos released at Assembly 2003 this past weekend. Thanks to all sorts of nifty things like post-render effects, some even brought my Ti4200 to it's knees...
