Random Gaming Thoughts

[Hobie-wan]

I was never bonkers on them, especially since I barely play more recent console stuff. I prefer when they're interesting as opposed to "you finished the tutorial" like Ziggy is saying. In some Rougue Lites the achievements are also the things you need to do to unlock stuff, so they are tied to game things, not just an increasing number to aim for.

I was just giving you a hard time. I figured some of them were probably tied to classes, modes, or maps that you weren't interested in playing.

[KalessinDB]

Nerd Points. I remember the feeding frenzy on them when they first came out in WoW.... I never got caught up. I knew what my own goals were and reached them easily enough.

[lisalover1]

I actually really like the idea of achievements. When done right, they can entice additional implied means of play out of the user, and challenge players to take on objectives that they would have otherwise passed up. They're all optional, and they allow designers an easy means of awarding players in a meta-game context who complete these extra objectives and get more out of the game.

[Damm64]

The only reason why i leave achivements ON it's because the name's are funny or referencial to something.

Also i been obsessed with pokemon lately it's the only thing i have played for the last month or two. Battling online it's really cool.

[ZeroAX]

What I HATE about achievements is that they replaced unlockables, and unlockables became DLC.

[isiolia]

In some cases, perhaps, but some games have both, and many others never would have had unlockables in the first place.

[Opa Opa]

I think DLC replaced the unlockables (make people purchase that content!). Little text boxes that take two seconds to program didn't take anything away from overall development.

[RCBH928]

I read in the news about a new API called Vulkan coming out. Supposedly it will make your older hardware give better performance. Any one care to further explain about this new API, or will it not add anything more to what OpenGL can do already? When will it be out?

There is another one called Mantle by AMD

I am interested in this because supposedly it will make gaming on the OS X better... somehow

[isiolia]

The general idea between either is that they're lower level APIs that, by giving more direct access to the hardware, can facilitate higher performance. DX12 allows for something similar, as does Apple's Metal.

I wouldn't count on it as much for older hardware though. It's something that hardware would need to meet the spec for, and that may not stretch back too far.

[marurun]

I read in the news about a new API called Vulkan coming out. Supposedly it will make your older hardware give better performance. Any one care to further explain about this new API, or will it not add anything more to what OpenGL can do already? When will it be out?

Vulkan is the name for the next incarnation of OpenGL. The name change suggests that the Khronos Group (non-profit owners of OpenGL) will maybe deal with some of the longer-standing criticisms of OpenGL and that this new version will be a significant step forward. Also, Valve is throwing some weight behind it. Valve prefers it, of course, because it is cross-platform, unlike DirectX. But given the progress that Valve has made and inspired in video card drivers for Linux, I think this could be a very good thing for the future of OpenGL.

The difference between Vulkan and something like Mantle, is that Mantle is manufacturer-specific (AMD). AMD may put some effort into making sure competing hardware can run Mantle code, but they'd never take that task seriously. Stuff like Mantle is about a hardware company trying to push folks onto their hardware but offering "better performance" through their own proprietary API for handling low-level performance.