Why PC? Console gamers are not the common enemy. Modern consoles are. Psychologist: Porn and Video Game Addiction Are Leading To 'Masculinity Crisis' Gen Con Threatens To Leave Indianapolis Over Religious Freedom Bill. Complete HSK Level 4 vocabulary list to help you pass the hsk test. In summary, why should I choose a PC over a console? What can it possibly offer?"Why do you care what others buy and play games on?""Current consoles are acceptable or relevant because of the experiences previous consoles provided.""Isn't PC gaming more expensive than console gaming?"Optimization: As time goes on, consoles don't get stronger and PCs don't get weaker. In addition to increased value, the PC also has a higher performance & quality ceiling. You get more online functionality for free than a paid console user. PC games are so much cheaper that they alone can allow even a high- end PC to undercut a console within a single year. The PC is better equipped for online play than a console. PC games can be modded. Console games (legally and logically) cannot. You don't have to build a PC to fully experience PC gaming. Building a PC doesn't require extensive training or a degree. Mac OSX and Linux can be installed and configured to run perfectly on a laptop or desktop PCThe Virtual Reality revolution is being led by the PCThe ESports revolution is being led by the PC"I was told that PCs have compatibility problems"A PC is much better at making your gaming experience sharable. A PC is more family friendly than a console. A PC is better than a console for media consumption. The PC is far more socially capable than a console. PCs support couch and local multiplayer gaming. PCs come in many shapes and sizes. A Personal Computer can be used as a tax write- off, whereas a gaming console cannot. The human eye can see far beyond a measly 3. FPSAnything with a framerate below 4. FPS could strain the human eye.
Valve Reject Lan Game Problem SolvingThe human eye can see the difference between 6. FOV and 9. 0 FOVAcademic studies have proven that higher framerates increase player performance. After your PC loses its luster 3- 4 years down the road, overclocking can bring it back. You can share your Steam games with others. The games you buy on PC are yours forever. PCs are better for couch, TV, and livingroom gaming than consoles. PCs are capable of much more than gaming, such as content creation. You can put your console budget toward your existing or upcoming desktop PC. Both the PS4 and XBox One consoles are still behind mid- range gaming PCs of today. Console gaming was (at one point) far better than anything PCs had to offer. PCs can be legally opened for cleaning, upgrades, and repairs. PC parts have longer warranties and the warranties are on a per- part basis; not per- device! You can experience beautiful studio- quality voice communication for free using a PCAll platforms have their own exclusives but PC has thousands more than any other. You can use any controller with your PC, not just one single model like with consoles. PC is the king of legacy game and software support. You can turn one PC into many and multiply its value by "terminalizing" it. With a capture card, you can pull video output from another PC or console into a display or window on your main PCA PC can be used to donate spare computational power toward the betterment of mankind.. PC gaming is strong and growing, and it's not going anywhere for the foreseeable future. Consoles are no longer the industry innovation leaders. Hardware companies and game companies make more money from PCs than they do consoles. Used game sales are more destructive to the industry than piracy and sales. Piracy is actually more of a problem on consoles than it is on the PCMost of the screenshots and gameplay you see on "next- gen" advertisements are actually from a PCNotable Links. Further reading at Wikipedia. Author's Note. Sharing the guide with others. Reader Response. Other quotes. Other language translations. Translations. Statistics. To- Do List. Special Thanks. Auto. Moderator Calls. Why PC, what's the big deal? What's wrong with console gaming? Is PC gaming actually superior? Are consoles really hurting the game industry? Everything will be answered in greater detail, but yes: PC gaming is wholly and objectively superior to console gaming. It can fill absolutely any and every need that consoles can. Any and all limitations or restrictions holding the PC back are entirely artificial and fabricated by console manufacturers, console developers, and console journalists (essentially, the "console industry") to prolong their relevance and profit. Long has the PC dealt with slander, misrepresentation, console marketing lies, FUD, and hostageware from the console industry. That's partially what triggered the creation of this subreddit and formation of our ideology in the first place! Before the rise of the "PC Master Race" communities and ideology, there wasn't any unified group present to fight console industry slander, FUD, hostageware, and marketing lies. This has now changed. PC gaming is no longer a force to be messed with, and there's an army of 5. PC gaming is properly represented and no longer mistreated. The page you're about to read is the product of several years of hard work from individuals who believe in the PC, who have done all of this for no other reason than to ensure the console industry's damage is limited, and that the truth still has the ability to directly reach you regardless of how much they attempt to bury the truth in marketing lies and negative associations. Strap yourself in, little Timmy. You're about to see some crazy & %#@ - I mean stuff. Forget everything you thought you knew about PC gaming. This article has two goals: to teach readers how to get into PC gaming and take advantage of all its current offerings, and to dispel the myths about PC gaming that the console industry has been spinning up in an attempt to remain on top despite declining relevance. It's 2. 01. 6 and PC gaming has never been this inexpensive, easy to get into, free of restriction, or more widespread than it is today. Largely to thank for this massive PC growth, consoles have never been as ethically and technologically worse than they are today - and a lot of people are switching. Yes, this is the first time in gaming history where PCs have surpassed consoles in every conceivable way for less money (however, consoles continue to sell due to dishonest marketing, abuse of money and power of their creators, and traditional beliefs held by many gamers). This following page will explain (in detail) how and why the PC is the unquestionably and objectively superior choice (cheaper, faster, better, more versatile, and more compatible) compared to underpowered and industry- harming PS4 and XBox One "PC imitators". It's also non- linear and can be read in any order that you prefer. This is a very PC- oriented community, so you may be expecting unjustified or illogical fanboyism.. PC movement is because of what it offers. In other words, we chose it because it's awesome - not it's awesome because we chose it. The past seven years of surging growth, competition, and innovation in the industry have improved the PC in almost every regard, largely due to the mobile hardware and efficiency revolution, as well as things like Steam, Humble Bundle, and Good Old Games. PC gaming is now cheaper than ever, and console gaming continues to get more and more expensive as the Play. Station & XBox divisions continue to push prices (and their own business operation costs) higher every year. Reading this guide will cost you exactly $0, whereas, in comparison, buying a console and paying for all the extended costs of everything it requires could easily exceed $2,0. Honestly, what could it really hurt to read this? Bookmark this, read it thoroughly, check all the sources, share the link with your friends, and enjoy! Various sources: 1. Console gamers are not the common enemy. Modern consoles are. I feel it's important to include this information in the article as soon as possible, since a lot of people get the wrong impression going in and don't take information to heart until they realize they're being educated rather than scolded.. I should also point out that it's well- known that past consoles outperformed PCs, but that was the past. This is now. Things are different. The openness of the PC was bound to be taken advantage of eventually, and what triggered it is the stagnation of the console market. And, now that the console market has stagnated and the PC is a viable alternative, it's very possible that traditional consoles with total control under a single corporation is entirely going to vanish. Sony and Microsoft give you an inferior system, charge you a lot of extra money for it, and make you hold on to the pieces of junk for 8 years before they give you the option of (measly) upgrades. By selling you these systems, they lock you into their overpriced ecosystem, helping them further the cycle with their ill- acquired money. They don't let you play with friends unless you pay. They don't let you play with friends that bought the other systems at all. They don't let developers directly sell you the game - they charge for dev kits and include royalties, which massively decreases their profits over that of the PC version. When you take into account the business strategy of these companies, you'll find that it's all just one big greedy systematic ripoff of uneducated consumers. They're holding your favorite games hostage on their closed platforms because they know you'll buy into it. If everyone went with a PC and disregarded this disgusting behavior, these developers wouldn't be so easily convinced to support these "next- gen" consoles. So, do yourself and the industry a favor and go with a PC. PC exists because it's an excellent platform and for no other reason than that. Nobody's advertising it. Nobody's cutting deals with Frito Lay to get it stamped on Dorito bags. Nobody's running a 'PC booth' at gaming festivals. PC exists and thrives simply because it is freaking glorious. Gaffer on Games | What every programmer needs to know about game networking. Introduction. You’re a programmer. Have you ever wondered how multiplayer games work? From the outside it seems magical: two or more players sharing a consistent experience across the network like they actually exist together in the same virtual world. But as programmers we know the truth of what is actually going on underneath is quite different from what you see. It turns out that it’s all an illusion. A massive sleight- of- hand. What you perceive as a shared reality is only an approximation unique to your own point of view and place in time. Peer- to- Peer Lockstep. In the beginning games were networked peer- to- peer, with each each computer exchanging information with each other in a fully connected mesh topology. You can still see this model alive today in RTS games, and interestingly for some reason, perhaps because it was the first way – it’s still how most people think that game networking works. The basic idea is to abstract the game into a series of turns and a set of command messages when processed at the beginning of each turn direct the evolution of the game state. For example: move unit, attack unit, construct building. All that is needed to network this is to run exactly the same set of commands and turns on each player’s machine starting from a common initial state. Of course this is an overly simplistic explanation and glosses over many subtle points, but it gets across the basic idea of how networking for RTS games work. You can read more about this networking model here: 1. Archers on a 2. 8. Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond. It seems so simple and elegant, but unfortunately there are several limitations. First, it’s exceptionally difficult to ensure that a game is completely deterministic; that each turn plays out identically on each machine. For example, one unit could take slightly a different path on two machines, arriving sooner to a battle and saving the day on one machine, while arriving later on the other and erm. Like a butterfly flapping it’s wings and causing a hurricane on the other side of the world, one tiny difference results in complete desynchronization over time. The next limitation is that in order to ensure that the game plays out identically on all machines it is necessary to wait until all player’s commands for that turn are received before simulating that turn. This means that each player in the game has latency equal to the most lagged player. RTS games typically hide this by providing audio feedback immediately and/or playing cosmetic animation, but ultimately any truly game affecting action may occur only after this delay has passed. The final limitation occurs because of the way the game synchronizes by sending just the command messages which change the state. In order for this to work it is necessary for all players to start from the same initial state. Typically this means that each player must join up in a lobby before commencing play, although it is technically possible to support late join, this is not common due to the difficulty of capturing and transmitting a completely deterministic starting point in the middle of a live game. Despite these limitations this model naturally suits RTS games and it still lives on today in games like “Command and Conquer”, “Age of Empires” and “Starcraft”. The reason being that in RTS games the game state consists of many thousands of units and is simply too large to exchange between players. These games have no choice but to exchange the commands which drive the evolution of the game state. But for other genres, the state of the art has moved on. So that’s it for the deterministic peer- to- peer lockstep networking model. Now lets look at the evolution of action games starting with Doom, Quake and Unreal. Client/Server. In the era of action games, the limitations of peer- to- peer lockstep became apparent in Doom, which despite playing well over the LAN played terribly over the internet for typical users: Although it is possible to connect two DOOM machines together across the Internet using a modem link, the resulting game will be slow, ranging from the unplayable (e. Kbps PPP connection) to the marginally playable (e. Kbps modem running a Compressed SLIP driver). Since these sorts of connections are of only marginal utility, this document will focus only on direct net connections. The problem of course was that Doom was designed for networking over LAN only, and used the peer- to- peer lockstep model described previously for RTS games. Each turn player inputs (key presses etc.) were exchanged with other peers, and before any player could simulate a frame all other player’s key presses needed to be received. In other words, before you could turn, move or shoot you had to wait for the inputs from the most lagged modem player. Just imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth that this would have resulted in for the sort of folks who wrote above that “these sorts of connections are of only marginal utility”. In order to move beyond the LAN and the well connected elite at university networks and large companies, it was necessary to change the model. And in 1. 99. 6, that’s exactly what John Carmack did when he released Quake using client/server instead of peer- to- peer. Now instead of each player running the same game code and communicating directly with each other, each player was now a “client” and they all communicated with just one computer called the “server”. There was no longer any need for the game to be deterministic across all machines, because the game really only existed on the server. Each client effectively acted as a dumb terminal showing an approximation of the game as it played out on the server. In a pure client/server model you run no game code locally, instead sending your inputs such as key presses, mouse movement, clicks to the server. In response the server updates the state of your character in the world and replies with a packet containing the state of your character and other players near you. All the client has to do is interpolate between these updates to provide the illusion of smooth movement and BAM you have a networked client/server game. This was a great step forward. The quality of the game experience now depended on the connection between the client and the server instead of the most lagged peer in the game. It also became possible for players to come and go in the middle of the game, and the number of players increased as client/server reduced the bandwidth required on average per- player. But there were still problems with the pure client/server model: While I can remember and justify all of my decisions about networking from DOOM through Quake, the bottom line is that I was working with the wrong basic assumptions for doing a good internet game. My original design was targeted at < 2. People that have a digital connection to the internet through a good provider get a pretty good game experience. Unfortunately, 9. ISP. This gives 3. Client. User's modem. ISP's modem. Server. ISP's modem. User's modem. Client. God, that sucks. Ok, I made a bad call. I have a T1 to my house, so I just wasn't familliar with PPP life. I'm addressing it now. The problem was of course latency. What John did next when he released Quake. World would change the industry forever. Client- Side Prediction. In the original Quake you felt the latency between your computer and the server. Press forward and you’d wait however long it took for packets to travel to the server and back to you before you’d actually start moving. Press fire and you wait for that same delay before shooting. If you’ve played any modern FPS like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, you know this is no longer what happens. So how exactly do modern FPS games seem to remove the latency on your own actions in multiplayer? This problem was historically solved in two parts. The first part was client- side prediction of movement developed by John Carmack for Quake. World, and later incorporated as part of Unreal’s networking model by Tim Sweeney. The second part was latency compensation developed by Yahn Bernier at Valve for Counterstrike. In this section we’ll focus on that first part – hiding the latency on player movement. When writing about his plans for the soon to be released Quake. World, John Carmack said: I am now allowing the client to guess at the results of the users movement until the authoritative response from the server comes through. This is a biiiig architectural change. The client now needs to know about solidity of objects, friction, gravity, etc. I am sad to see the elegant client- as- terminal setup go away, but I am practical above idealistic. So now in order to remove the latency, the client runs more code than it previously did. It is no longer a dumb terminal sending inputs to the server and interpolating between state sent back. Instead it is able to predict the movement of your character locally and immediately in response to your input, running a subset of the game code for your player character on the client machine. Now as soon as you press forward, there is no wait for a round trip between client and server – your character start moving forward right away. The difficulty of this approach is not in the prediction, for the prediction works just as normal game code does – evolving the state of the game character forward in time according to the player’s input. The difficulty is in applying the correction back from the server to resolve cases when the client and server disagree about where the player character should be and what it is doing. Now at this point you might wonder. Hey, if you are running code on the client – why not just make the client authoritative over their player character? The client could run the simulation code for their own character and simply tell the server where they are each time they send a packet.
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