System Requirements

Written by Hot wire

Read this:

   Recommended:
     - PentiumII 300MHz
     - 128 megs of RAM
     - Win95
     - Fast PCI VGA with VESA VBE 2.0 truecolor low-resolution support.
       (possibly via Scitech Display Doctor)
     - SoundBlaster AWE64

What's wrong with this picture?

Well let us put it into context, if this has come from the technical documentation for the latest version of 3DSMax, maybe it would be fine. If it had come from the outside box for the newest release of AutoCad, that would be manageable, after all it's a high-end piece of CAD software. If it had come from the readme for the newest release of CuBase VST it would be entirely acceptable. But no, this came from the readme.txt for "Gateways", the winner of the dos demo competition at Asm98. What's going on...

Read this:

    .. this demo needs a p2/300, 3dfx, and windows 95 to run ..

Where's this from?

The winner of the win95 demo competition at Asm98. What's going on!??

What kind of display of coder skill is it if all the coder has to do when his new flash routine does not work on a P120 is for him to say "that's okay, it's a P166 demo", so when it doesn't work on a P166 he says it's PII 233 only and so on. How long before I require a Dual Pentium 2 300MHz and a 3dfx card to run a new 64k intro.

"This is progress" they may say, but in fact it isn't, it's laziness. What's more many of today's top demos require Univbe or similar to run. Why have coders not done their own versions of this, why is it that nearly every Pulse demo I have run in the last year has worked first time, no univbe, no soundcard problems? Is it because they are properly coded? Some effort has been put into them? What a concept, maybe putting in some effort to make demos.

How about this, how about we stop increasing the power of machines used for competitions and make coders code properly, optimise routines, optimise algorithms and increase systems compatibility, it would be a nice thought. Guess I'll see you at The Party 98 to see what Dual P2 400MHz, 256Meg, 3Dfx demos look like, probably more 3D...

- Hot wire / Tesko