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We need a partial value for proprieties


Mirh
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In less than 24 hour I already found at least two cases where the usual true/false values fail to describe the actual situation

 

High-framerate here is both true, in single player (at least I suppose, I haven't play the game since a long time), and false (in multiplayer)

Instead here, controller can be remapped fairly well for helicopters, but it's absolutely false when on foot (you can't use the left/right sticks to move)

 

I would propose a partial value then, which seems the only compromise solution

Let me know what you think

Edited by Mirh
fixed the first link
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Could this partial value even be the solution for those cases where the property is always true, but player has no ability to toggle it?

In some cases vertical sync, anisotropic filtering etc. can be forced off/on through video driver or tweaking .ini files. I think in such cases "hackable" option should be used.

"Partial" option could be useful for things like high-framerate. (i.e. fps capped during cut-scenes, otherwise uncapped)

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In some cases vertical sync, anisotropic filtering etc. can be forced off/on through video driver or tweaking .ini files. I think in such cases "hackable" option should be used.

"Partial" option could be useful for things like high-framerate. (i.e. fps capped during cut-scenes, otherwise uncapped)

I personally disagree with stating "partial" high-framerate, if fps is capped during cut-scenes - it's not affecting the gameplay and it adds another layer of testing that has to be done, so I don't really like the idea. Plus, do we really need to distinguish that and dig whatever a cut-scene is rendered in-game or pre-rendered? Cause if it's prerendered, it's naturally not going to be rendered at 60fps or especially higher. Instead, I'd say we would need it for situations, where going over 60fps adds some negative effects to a game - like affects mouse acceleration etc. but still doesn't make it unplayable.

 

Other examples - there have been games, which had 2 volume sliders. One for overall volume, the other for music volume - this is what I'd mark as limited / partial. You should be able to see the problem with it - since the volume of a game in general can be set in Windows mixer (so at current point, this slider is mostly for convenience), but if you'd like louder music, you can only go to 100% and you can't lower the volume of the rest of the game, to hear that music better.

 

I'd not put limited / partial in widescreen resolution, if a game renders menu in 640x480 (or other 4:3 resolution), but renders the rest of the game in proper widescreen (just true). Nor, I'd put limited/partial in games, where setting a widescreen resolution makes the game stretched (yes, it's usually rendered at higher resolution - but stretched is stretched) - notes should be enough.

 

Also - an ability to enable windowed mode on Linux or Mac, but luck of such ability on Windows (like with Anomaly: Warzone Earth... at least that's what I got from testing) - that could also be limited / partial. (yes, Windows is after all main gaming platform).

 

That would be all that comes to mind, I guess.

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thanks suicide machine for the high-framerate cap part!

 

Anyway I see this as the only solution for cases where you don't have only 0-1, black-white, true or false but the situation is more 0.5, grey, sort of [1][2][3]

 

Or those cases where you have that feature (v-sync,mouse smoothing, those badass post-processing AA) but you can't disable it

Or we could use this even for games like half life which had some feature removed with following patches (I had to put EAX support on true to leave showcased that info)

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Pre-rendered cut-scenes are usually video files. I am talking about in-game cut-scenes. Also it is not only cut-scenes, sometimes there are multiplayer restrictions. Some games support HFR in singleplayer, but not in multiplayer. Also "playability" should not be the point. In that case we should not test AA, AF etc. as well.

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Pre-rendered cut-scenes are usually video files. I am talking about in-game cut-scenes. Also it is not only cut-scenes, sometimes there are multiplayer restrictions. Some games support HFR in singleplayer, but not in multiplayer. Also "playability" should not be the point. In that case we should not test AA, AF etc. as well.

high framerate is a playability matter as far as I think

AA, AF, etc on the other hand is more a graphical thing

Anyway, I think we all agree we need this partial value

 

In your opinion, should it be allowed on all proprieties? Which not?

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  • 1 month later...

I think it's safe to allow it for any property where it makes sense. 

 

I ran into this with Dungeon Keeper 2 - partial subtitle support.  Subtitles are there, but some of them are missed and some are overridden.  It would be nice to categorize them as such, so that people will know that it will appear ahead of time rather than being surprised in-game. 

 

The only other thing missing is a "required" property.  There's the rare game where you're required to use something (e.g. X-Wing Collector's requires joystick when X-Wing for Dos doesn't).  However, that's probably a separate issue. 

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I don't think "required" would be actually required. There are a few examples yes, but for such cases, I think what would be needed more is a separate keypoint - I was thinking about something aside from {{--}}, {{++}}, {{ii}} cause - hey, GFWL is shuting down shortly, so {{!!}} with an icon of just a typical warning sign would make sense to me. It would attract attention by standing out and warn people that "hey, if you buy this game you may have problems running it past July 1st, 2014" and "hey, this game doesn't run without a joystick".

 

As for where to use limited - I guess, you're right. Make it available for all and then, we'll figure out all the cases along the way. There is always going to be a game, which is going to feature windowed mode, that doesn't clip the mouse to its window or where AA or Anisotropic filtering causes a crash or where AA is bound to other Post-processing effects, etc. etc.

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@Sigma 7

that's more a game bug I suppose, and notes could nicely address this

 

Two effective example of why partial value is needed could be silent storm and hitman 2

The first has widescreen support only in the expansion, so it's both true and false, whilst the latter comes with always forced on v-sync, which you cannot disable (and imo, if every player's taste isn't satisfied we shouldn't be content)

 

 

btw, we had better to talk about this in a few weeks, when soeb will have finished to update the website mediawiki version

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  • 1 month later...

Now that mediawiki has been updated, i think it could be time for this

 

We are thinking about completely reworking our templates to work with VisualEditor (the WYSIWYG editor currently in beta on Wikipedia). I saw 'we' but the reality is that Soeb will be doing majority of this work :D.

 

There is space for a 'Partial' value. Also this may be a good time to clarify/add/disabiguate when something is turned on and there is no option to turn it off, not sure what to call this. We need to add icons as well.

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Guest

Wouldn't Partial still fit? Incomplete? To a certain extent? Not completely? In some measure?

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Upgrading mediawiki had something to do since it was the task were the devlopers had to spend most of the efforts

 

Anyway, I would simply say: if you can enable AND disable the feature and it is completely supported in every part of the game (singleplayer and multiplayer) then it's perfect and you should definitively put true.

If you can by no means make use of this then it would be false..

 

Every other intermediate case instead should go to "partial"

Unless we have an hack and then it would have to be hackable

 

EDIT: even though now I was thinking.. would be a problem if anisotropic filter was always on 16x ? In my opinion.. no.. so even if we couldn't disable it could be still true.. maybe..

antialising on the other hand should always be something which you can disable, since there are those crappy games where FXAA (or other post postprocessing algorithms ) just sucks

 

Last but not least.. if we couldn't disable the subtitles.. what do you think we should choose?

All these thoughts of course could be simply written in the documentations of the template to give perfect explanations

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