[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Factor of 16

[Mike Rozak]

Here's a subject that has been mentioned a lot recently, such as in the WoW talk in AGDC, but I don't think the issue has been fully explored. I thought I'd post about it to spur some discussion...

A few months ago, I read that Windows Vista had a penetration rate of around 6% after 6 months. Assuming that all new Windows PCs come with Vista (which isn't quite true) and that only people with new PCs would actually use Vista (which isn't quite true), I guestimated that the turnover rate for PCs was around 14% per year (since Windows is 6% per half year x 2 half years / 90% Win penetration = 14%), or that the average PC lives around 7 years. A few years ago I heard that the average lifespan was 5 years. Either PCs' life spans have lengthened to 7 years, or I got my guestimates wrong. Either way...

7 years, in terms of Moore's law, is 4.6 generations. 5 years is 3.33. To round off numbers, I'll claim that computers live for 4 generations, which means:

- A new computer is around 16 times faster than a computer ready for retirement.

- It has around 16 times the memory.

- Around 16 times the hard drive.

- Around 16 times the pixels (4x width, 4x height, sometimes helped along by two monitors).

- And around 16 times the network bandwidth. (Probably more.)


This "16x" difference is exacerbated by the "PC's" form factors: From a standard desktop (fastest), to a 17" notebook (1 Moore's law generation behing the desktop), to a 12" sub-notebook (2 generations behind), 7" ultra-mobile PC (3 generations), 3" PDA phones and handheld games (4 generations), 2" cell phones (5 generations), and 1" digital watches (6 generations). PDA phones, mobile phones, and digital watches run special mobile OS's, so I've decided to ignore them. SOE and Raph Koster don't seem to be doing this though.

Ideally, I want my game to run well on all operating PCs (from 4x4 to UMPCs) to maximize my market size.


The obvious solution is to do what Runescape did and create a game that relies on 7-year old technology.

Or WoW, which produced a game that ran on 3-year old technology, half way in-between.

As opposed to EQII and Vanguard, which required bleeding edge technology.

While Runescape's and WoW's choice of technology seems to have served them well, I don't think their solutions were particularly elegant: To use WoW as an example, players with retirement-age systems couldn't play WoW at all, and people with bleeding-edge systems didn't get any extra eye candy. 2/3 of the player base was unhappy, either because they couldn't play the game, or because they had just bought a Ferrari and were forced to drive it at 40 kmph.

As a player, I want the game to tailor its graphics (and other eye candy) to use my system to the fullest of its ability. If I have a 4x4 (8 cores) with dual 1680x1080 screens, then I want to see spectacular visuals. But if I then run the game on my 1 gHz UMPC with a 800x480 screen and no keyboard, I want it to work there too.

How can we do this? (One solution is procedural graphics, making higher polygon counts and texture resolutions easy to create. Toggles for swaying trees and footprints in the sand also help. Are there other ways?)

Is this design goal worth aspiring too? (Personally, I expect the average lifespan of "PCs" to creep up over the years, as well as less-powerful form factors, like UMPCs, to become more common.)