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Configure THIS!

The problem has always been there, but now it’s magnified. You can no longer turn a blind eye to it. PCs have always suffered from this and now it has spread to console systems. Being able to configure your system (control options, graphic quality, etc.) is now endemic to the gaming industry. Some love the control factor but most loathe configuring their systems and games to achieve playing enjoyment.

Does everyone remember tweaking their autoexec.bat and config.sys files in DOS? If you don’t know what DOS is, let’s just say that it remains the source of my most terrifying nightmares. PCs running under Windows (95, 98, ME, etc.) have loads of features that can be tweaked but not with the same agony that DOS jammed into your eyes. And don’t forget all those different hardware options. One of the biggest double-edged swords is the fact that PCs are relatively simple to upgrade and outfit with the latest gizmos. On the plus side, you get to decide what kind of gizmos you want. On the negative side, game developers have to do a lot of work to make sure all the variations in PC setups are supported. You might find a great mid-range 3D card at your local electronics store and gleefully install it, telling family and friends what a good deal it was. Then you find out that the card supports only three games. And all of them suck. Then again, you might be able to adjust a few things with the card to support more games, but you won’t realize this until you read the manual or you’ve spent a few hours of your life sending emails to technical support. Regardless of how smoothly an upgrade goes there will always be something to configure again and again until it works correctly.

Console systems have dodged the bullet of hardware problems simply because they are standard. The guy that owns a Dreamcast in Lower Mongolia has the exact setup as the guy next door with a Dreamcast. (Coding copyrighting aside.) Developers for console platforms know exactly what they are working with, the limitations of the hardware, and tailor games to suit. However, this started to break down with the N64 RAM expansion pack. The RAM expansion enables the N64 to churn out better graphics and get rid of slow-down. But some games now require the expansion. Perfect Dark can be played without the expansion but players miss about 60% of what the game has to offer. And the latest Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask requires that N64 owners have the RAM expansion in order to play. No longer can console systems claim uniform hardware across the board. This will continue as more consoles come equipped with expansion ports and modems.

Remember the days of playing Quake on-line using a dial-up access? Finding a good server meant a 250+ ping. Then you got hardwired to the net. Finding a good server meant a 30 ping and being labeled a LPB (low ping bastard) who had the advantage over everyone using a standard modem. Anything more than 50 ping and you wouldn't even bother. The newest consoles come with modems or are equipped for planned broadband support. Unreal Tournament is being released for the Playstation 2 and Q3A is coming for the Dreamcast. Console players are about to embark on a journey into the heart of darkness that is on-line gaming. Giving consoles access to on-line gaming will put console gamers at a huge disadvantage. PC users can upgrade their systems and eclipse the power of their console brethren who are already disadvantaged in that they are using hardware that was top of the line 10 months ago. And how will the compatibility issues play out? Think about the havoc you could cause with a virus that targets console systems. "Can’t happen," you say. Console systems will soon be shipped with hard drives and as it’s been shown with the "I love you" virus (which targeted Microsoft Outlook) that widespread distribution of destructive viruses is easier than ever before. Imagine you just plunked down $300 for the latest and greatest console system only to have some malicious SOB fry your hard drive. (Not to mention that you’re getting your ass kicked all over the net by people who’ve been playing Q3A and Unreal Tournament for years and months.) You can bet that as large storage devices are added to consoles there will be more configuration possibilities. (Downloading user-made mods that cross platforms? Think of the migraines.)

Not to be outdone in the configuration conundrum, the games offer another bursting dam of options.

Jedi Knight took a long time to get the controls to feel right. Most gamers have a specific key and button configuration they like and that they stick with. Some game developers make the more popular configurations default settings on the games they design. Then there are those developers that use seemingly random keys for defaults. The jump and the crouch buttons are at opposite ends of the keyboard. This wouldn’t be a problem if one hand weren’t controlling the mouse. Jedi Knight presented so many control options that I didn’t feel comfortable until about halfway through the game. Getting the mouse control to be responsive took me a while. Too much time is wasted configuring controls. Console control options are straightforward. Change button "A" to "jump" instead of "fire." Of course, as controllers get more complex and more buttons are packed onto the control pads (not to mention keyboard and mouse peripherals), the same problem that PC gamers have now will plague console gamers.

Graphics are another area that demands time from players before they can get the best experience out of a game. Do you want super high-res which turns the game into a great slideshow? Or do you want to trade off resolution for speed? Screen size? Gamma? Texture detail? Character models? There is so much to do before you even start playing! My brother has a great gaming rig but he plays with the graphic detail turned all the way down and no extras "on" at all. The textures are blurred making for ugly games. But he likes to keep the frame rate in the triple digits. I play games with as many extras turned on as my machine can comfortably handle, usually using the default settings. I know some people that crank everything to max and have to wait a few seconds for each frame to appear. The Playstation 2 features FSAA (full-screen anti-aliasing), which smoothes out some of the jaggies found in the old Playstation titles. But it can come with a price. Frame rates can take a huge hit. Look better or move fluidly? (And then there's all that clock and timezone crap.) The choice is all a matter of preference.

So what is the average gamer to do and what can we expect from the future? The average gamer doesn’t care. They do what they have to do to make the game enjoyable. Or at the very least, get the game to work. Real control freaks will do everything they can to attain bragging rights. ("I get 553 fps playing Quake!") The future is a sad land where gamers will spend five hours preparing the ground to play the game. The Land of Punch and Kick has crumbled and has been replaced by the Land of Punch, Spin, Flip, Drop, Kick, Stab. Many options mean many configuration and compatibility headaches.

By Omni

"Anything worth knowing cannot be taught." -- Oscar Wilde

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