Floppy, non Floppy Dos, Windows 9x years, XP and onwards, maybe DirectX 10, non Dos/Windows games...

Dominus wrote:

Floppy, non Floppy Dos, Windows 9x years, XP and onwards, maybe DirectX 10, non Dos/Windows games...

"XP onwards" is a pretty large swatch - not necessarily a bad thing if the essential character of game technology has been relatively constant since then... and Dx10 might give this period an upper limit..

How about this?

Monochrome era.
CGA era.
16 color era.
256 color era.
Texture mapping era. => Doom and the likes.
Hi-res era.
Non-accelerated, 3D, hi-res era. => things like Jane's ATF, F-22 Lightning II, and Comanche 3. Probably retro equivalent of Crysis, where no system fast enough to play them.
Early 3D accelerator era. => 3dfx, Rendition, ATI, S3.
Direct3D/OpenGL era.
Pixel shader era.

You could also differ between strict single player only games and those with some kind of multiplayer.

A lot of ninjaing in this thread....

XP? Try pre-DX9 and post-DX9.........because pixel shader 2.0 you know. There are still some new pre-dx9 games still released today, some with bullshitting minimum requirements.

arguably, before Halo and after Halo works very well for the FPS genre.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

How about this?
Direct3D/OpenGL era.
Pixel shader era.

Is there an approximate date/OS demarcation line for these?

tincup wrote:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

How about this?
Direct3D/OpenGL era.
Pixel shader era.

Is there an approximate date/OS demarcation line for these?

Maybe a close one. Didn't pixel shader come in early 2000, where Windows XP also happened to be launched? Is there any Win9x game that uses pixel shader?

^
2000 is DX7 year (MDK2, Evolva etc).

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Is there any Win9x game that uses pixel shader?

Undying (2001), DX8?

Also DX8 (PS 1.x)... e.g.
NOLF2 (2002)
Unreal 2 (2003)
..are among the games officially supporting 9x and XP.

archsan wrote:

^ 2000 is DX7 year (MDK2, Evolva etc). […]
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^
2000 is DX7 year (MDK2, Evolva etc).

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Is there any Win9x game that uses pixel shader?

Undying (2001), DX8?

Also DX8 (PS 1.x)... e.g.
NOLF2 (2002)
Unreal 2 (2003)
..are among the games officially supporting 9x and XP.

Well there are overlaps indeed between graphics technology and O/S technology. I think hi-res games became trend when Win95 came around - especially those accursed point-and-click FMV games - but there are still 320x200 games in that era, although they're probably DOS games that run in Win95 command prompt.

Recommended CPU as a ballpark for a game's 'technological' category? Would need to group CPU performance into relevant generation bands.

486 and earlier
early Pentium [and equiv non-intel]
late Pentium
early multi-core
late multi-core

Might express this in hertz or some other spec identified with brute performance.

archsan wrote:

Undying (2001), DX8? […]
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Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Is there any Win9x game that uses pixel shader?

Undying (2001), DX8?

Also DX8 (PS 1.x)... e.g.
NOLF2 (2002)
Unreal 2 (2003)
..are among the games officially supporting 9x and XP.

Those 3 games don't use pixel shaders at all. Supporting DX8 as an API doesn't necessarily mean having to use the pixel shaders for it.

(and before you point out NOLF2's water - that's cubemap projection. Geforce256 effect at best. and UnrealEngine2 uses vertex shaders as transparently as it can just to have a speed boost on certain meshes, otherwise isn't visually different than running with DX7-class hardware)

You would have to go to 2004 if you wanted a real pixel shadery game on Win9x, FarCry could run on Win98se at the time IIRC, and so could HL2 for a while (until 2006)

^ hence the question mark, I wasn't really sure 😀

How about Morrowind?

All that had was a water effect which is optional. What about requiring pixel shaders to run at all? Deus Ucks Invisible Bore was an early rude awakening.

Alright, I def agree with requirements as criteria. Do you know of a list like this, that's more complete and up-to-date?

Unfortunately Mobygames doesn't seem to make distinction between "supported" and "required" at this point.

It's a tuff one - I have a spreadsheet too and I've settled for sorting them by year released, because there are too many odd ducks to allow for this sort of categorization to work (in my experience). Like games that were released on both floppy and CD for example.

Here's a real quick formula, with some basic parameters:

Cat
0-----Primal/early DOS; < 486
I------DOS/early W95; 486/low Pentium [<200mhz], <4mb Vram, DX 1-5
II-----Bulk of W9x/late DOS?; Pentium 2-3 [<1200mhz], 4-64mb Vram, DX 5-8
III----Late W98/early XP; late single-core[>1200mhz], 64-512mb Vram, DX 7-9
IV----Late XP/W7; early multi-core, 512+ mb Vram, DX 8-10
V-----Late W7/W8+; late multi-core, 512+ mb Vram, DX 9-12+

Pentium includes equivalent non-Intel of course. Earlier than the tail end of 486 is out of my realm so you'll have to carve your own divisions.. total Vram and CPU cycle become less relevant in upper categories.

badmojo wrote:

It's a tuff one - I have a spreadsheet too and I've settled for sorting them by year released, because there are too many odd ducks to allow for this sort of categorization to work (in my experience). Like games that were released on both floppy and CD for example.

Same here. I can sort by year/floppy/non-floppy at this point, as well a detailed genre break downs. But I can't resist this sort of time waster haha...

tincup wrote:

(...)So my question to the community is what rule of thumb might work well to sub-divide games of the post mid-90's period? Sort by year? DirectX? Resolution? Some essential CPU/GPU parameter? Whatever system it is, it needs to be simple.(...)

What works for me, very simple, but after much thought: I split the decade in two.

With the first half (1990-1995) for 2D and 2.5D ms-dos games. The second half for 3D windows games.
I account for some overlapping with early 3D aceleration and keep the 3D windows games up to DirectX 7, as I don't care for DirectX 8 and find that DirectX 9 games work much better in XP. That is it.

Nice and simple. I was expanding the range to include current games as well.