What is Your Story?

My gaming experience started when I had just started elementary school in the very late 80's, when I got caught up in all those cheap, handheld LCD games. Over the months, I pestered my parents and eventually they got me an Atari 2600, along with some cheap games. While I enjoyed playing around with it, I found the limitations of those games too narrow to entice me even as a kid. A classmate of mine had a C64, and I envied him for the better graphics and arguably more engaging gameplay of Pirates!, Last Ninja etc. , but I found it "hard to use" ;) (it's only over the last ~8 years that I've started to be interested in the technological aspect of our hobby).

Soon I also added a Gameboy to my collection, which was again trumped by someone's NES and SNES systems. Shucks.

But not long after, and my dad brought home a 486DX/33. While I was not initially impressed (at that point I thought consoles to be vastly superior for gaming ;) ), I was at least pleased that none of my acquaintances had a similar machine. I played some mildly amusing games, like Commander Keen, and took a liking to the "grown up" machine.
But it was only when I picked up an inconspicuous black box from a bargain bin that my passion for gaming really started taking off: that black box came contained a *gasp* sort-of-realistic cloth map. The game was Ultima VII.

I remember it was a bitch for me to get it to run back then, and I had to pester an IT guy acquaintance of my father for quite a bit until it worked. But I wasn't prepared for the virtual world that awaited me; I remember taking the first steps into Britannia, being awed by the subdued music, ambient sounds, and hand-crafted world, the pretty portraits that, for the first time, made NPC's more than faceless pawns to me. That's how I fell in love with RPG's; all other games I had played before seemed shallow, simplistic, immature (through the eyes of a 12 year old ;) ). Loading times were pretty abysmal, and getting anywhere could take a lot of time, but I didn't care. The more time I spent in Britannia, the better. I was living in a very small rural town, and there wasn't anything going on around me that could take a hold of me like this game did. It's single-handedly responsible that during my youth, the PC was - for better or worse - the biggest time-sink in my life.
It might be an indication of my naivety, but I couldn't find any fault with UVII. It takes forever to load when taking three steps? Well sure, it's a complex world, so it takes long. I also never patched that game so I strongly suspect I must have fallen victim to the "disappearing keys" bug; I remember never being able to finish that game. But back then, I thought that "bugs" (didn't know that term yet) would always manifest themselves in the game crashing completely, not in something subtle like keys disappearing from your backpack. I thought I'd just messed up. Oh well.

To cut a long story short, I have stayed with PC gaming over all these years, the only exception being a PS3 I got ~2 years ago. I started gaming during the heyday of great RPG's like Ultima, Dark Sun, Lands of Lore, and it's only now that I'm as excited as I used to be with the RPG making such a refined comeback.
The only thing I "miss", in certain ways, is reading the old print gaming magazines. Sure, I could simply buy them nowadays, but it's just not the same, due to 1) games journalism not being the same and 2) the internet providing all the information, and then some, that you could ask for.

:)
 
I remember it was a bitch for me to get it [Ultima VII] to run back then, and I had to pester an IT guy acquaintance of my father for quite a bit until it worked.

Ah yes, Ultima VII - that game remains my all time favorite.

At the time that game came out, I was living in a disgusting apartment. The bathroom was so bad I had to wear sandals in the shower. The more I tried to clean that bathroom, the faster and more fiercely the mold came right back. Ugh.

At the time I had an Epson 386/16. I could get U7 to run on that machine but it was a slide show. But at my work, we had a brand new 'beast' of a computer, a 386/32. One day after work I installed U7 on that machine and it was sooooo much better.

I worked up the courage to ask my boss if I could take the work computer home each night to, 'better learn how to use it.' I promised I wouldn't break it and that it would be right back at the work desk each morning before anyone got in - like it had never left.

He took the bait and every night after work, I disconnected that gigantic computer, loaded it up in my car, drove it home, walked it up two flights of stairs, set it all up, played U7 - in the morning disconnected it, back down the stairs, back into the car, back to work, and re-assemble. I did this probably for at least a month it was exhausting - but worth it. Good times.
 
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Yeah, that sounds like pure gaming love to me ;)

I remember a similar time in my life - where I would do almost anything to get access to a new computer with all the latest games.

I wish for that kind of enthusiasm again.
 
Wow! A great set of stories!
Hmm, well I first tinkered with programming on a Honeywell timeshare system (that was connected from Melbourne, Australia all the way back to Texas!) in 1973. First game was Hunt the Wumpus, then followed by colossal cave/adventure on a PDP11 in cut-down Fortran, but previously played with graphics (PDP with vector graphics hand-toggling in hundreds of instructions, crossing fingers and pressing run, debugging was, to say the least challenging) as played pong when first came out and my CS school had working spaceware variant on PDP hardware in mid 70s so clocked up many hours battling a friend on that.
Ported adventures of differing minor changes (remember finding he last 1 point by entering the maze anyone on RSX-11m version?) to different machines, operating systems etc. ranging from CYBERs to PDP-11/70 to IBM 370s. Played & wrote various small games of Sinclair ZX and HP-67 (writable magnetic cards for a calculator!). Then got an apple II+ when first available in Australia and played zork and other infocom text adventures (hint books and special pens). Ordered direct from USA and got (as far as I know) one of first 2 copies of zork 2 in Australia. Drifted away from gaming as had access to major mainframe for ‘work’ even on weekends also busy playing field hockey pretty seriously.
Got back into games with Civ, then Civ II (pesky Zulus!), sim city etc. for several years then drifted away again as main PC ran OS/2 although I was one of the original beta testers for the original galactic civilizations and killed many hours in hotel rooms & on places playing that (ever tried downloading a new version across a flaky phone line in a hotel 1000s of miles from a city of more than 1million people?) in both beta and the released version . Drifted a bit away again and got back into it when BG1, etc. BG1 was suggested by friends and totally, totally re-hooked! Since then lots and lots, recently? Witcher 1 & 2, Mass Effect, Dishonoured, DX:HR, CIV V, Dragon Age I, Skyrim, Bioshock Infinite. What I play depends on how much thought I want to put in.
 
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I was born in '78 and have been a gamer since the mid-80's. My parents got divorced when I was around four years old. Since then I've had very little contact with my father. I guess he felt a little bad about it so he would always spoil me at Christmas and birthdays.
The first computer I got was the C-64, albeit not the classic 'breadbin' model. I can't recall if this actually was a birthday or a Christmas gift but my father definitely gave it to me. Some of my first gaming related memories are from Arcades and the C-64. I specifically remember being awestruck by a Star Wars X-Wing simulator in all its vector graphics glory. On the C-64 I remember Commando, Bruce Lee, Green Beret, and Exploding Fist II as some of the first games I played. I would later move on to the Amiga 500. The Amiga 500 was a fantastic machine. I loved playing adventure games from Sierra on-line and LucasArts and occasionally some Speedball 2 on that thing. Around the late 80s a friend introduced me to D&D and naturally my interest in cRPG grew as a consequence. I remember playing the Gold Box games and the Eye of the Beholder series. To be honest I don't think I was a all that die-hard as I can't recall ever finishing any of them.
Back then piracy was completely dominant and you would either get new games through friends or buy them cheaply from one of the hundreds of people listed in a bi-weekly paper. However, at some point the pressure for ending this public trading of pirated games became too big. I remember it as being a terrible time as you no longer had easy access to cheap games and there were very few actual brick n' mortar shops around and the price for a legit game was at least 20 times higher than what you were used to paying for illegal copies.
As time went by the PC became more popular. I remember an uncle telling me 20 years ago that I would soon abandon the Amiga and switch to PC. I remember telling him no change and I was right until I saw Wing Commander II at a friends house. I had to get a PC. Unfortunately I had to wait 6 months for a shining 33Mhz 486. It probably was the most agonizing wait in my entire life :)
From the early days of PC gaming I fondly remember games like Alone in the Dark, Syndicate, Darklands, and Wing Commander. Later my gaming interest would take a backseat to social life and I basically only played the yearly editions of Championship Manager (today re-branded as Football Manager). It wasn't until the day I played a demo of an upcoming game called Fallout that my interest in cRPGs would be rekindled. At that time there still weren't many stores carrying computer games and usually it would take a couple of weeks after US release before there was a European release. So I couldn't believe my luck when I went into a store which also carried used games and found the American release of Fallout sitting on a shelf a full three weeks before it entered normal retail.
Afterwards I found a shop that would import games from the US. I think I bought all of the Black Isle / Bioware games from them. These carried a premium price of course but it usually was worth it to get the game a week or more in advanced. I even paid close to $90 (in today's currency) for Heart of Winter. I have fond memories of that store so it was a bit heartbreaking to see it shutdown last year.
In recent years I've somehow managed to get married and have two daughters so that naturally pushed back gaming a bit. However, it has taught me to be more focused on how I spend my spare time and I believe I actually manage to complete more games now than I ever did in the past.
 
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Stealth

Let me guess:

The store in question was Betafon? ;)

I have some very fond memories of buying games in that store - from the time it was located on Istedgade and all the way up until they closed down :)

Also, Ramsoft was the first store I came upon that imported US games to Denmark - but it shut down many years ago.

Those were the days :)
 
Stealth

Let me guess:

The store in question was Betafon? ;)

I have some very fond memories of buying games in tLeanderre - from the time it was located on Istedgade and all the way up until they closed down :)

Also, Ramsoft was the first store I came upon that imported US games to Denmark - but it shut down many years ago.

Those were the days :)

Spot on, it was Betafon. I completly forgot they started out in Istedgade. I remember being there once looking for an Amiga platformer called Leander.
I don't think I ever visited Ramsoft but the name sounds familiar. Perhaps I remember the name from a magazine ad.
 
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My gaming experience started with an Atari 2600, with classics like H.E.R.O. and Seaquest, later I buyed an Mega Drive (Sega Genesis in the USA) where my preference was platformers/runners like Sonic and beat’em ups like Golden Axe. I remember seeing some games in the MSX and TK-80 platforms, but my first real computer experience was in a old 486 which belonged to my brother, playing especially platformers (the classic sharewares from Apogee and Epic) and FPSs (Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Heretic). Later I buyed my first PC (a Pentium 100) and started my collection of games (my first purchased game was just Diablo 1), where my favorite genres are RPG, RTS and FPS.
 
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Oh great, I first notice this topic 10 minutes past bedtime?? That's just cruel!

My first computer gaming… I think that would be when I started using the money that I was supposed to be spending on my 5th grade bowling league to play pinball games and a video game that came out just a bit after Pong - some kind of jet fighter thing. (There was something a lot like it on the Atari 2600 Combat cartridge.) We also got some sort of Pong-like console game with about 4 variations of Pong built in. That would have been 1976, give or take a year.

We did eventually get an Atari 2600 (which I still have down in the basement) and that got played a lot. Dungeons & Dragons came along, though, and started pushing the gaming off.

Then came the Apple ][+. I still remember when my dad announced we would get one, I laid awake that night thinking of the possibilities. I mean, that computer had FORTY EIGHT KB! B as in BYTES not bits! My God, you could put an entire WORLD in that thing! Well, maybe not the world, but certainly something like Australia. I was in 10th grade by then.

As I've mentioned maaany times, the first "PC" (well, Apple, but it wasn't a console so it must have been a PC, right?) game I bought was Ultima 2. I had to save up for months to get it but wow, what a game! It DID have the whole world in it, several copies of it in fact in different eras of time, and also had other planets in the solar system as well! 48K rules. My friend and I played that game to death. Let me tell you, it was way way better than those games you type in yourself out of a magazine. The Eamon Adventures were really fun. Oh, and Planetfall made it so I now cry and apologize to anyone named Floyd.

When I went off to college, I got an Atari 800XL for my graduation present. By that time, I was really hooked. So many games… "War in Russia" got played a lot, and M.U.L.E, and Alternate Reality: The City (ooo, 3D!), and I don't know how many others. Me and a few friends would also wake up at 2am occasionally and go into the campus computer center to play Empire and Hack on their mainframe computers.

The Atari 800XL eventually became an Atari ST. The big game there was Air Warrior on GEnie. Paying $6/hr for an online game was WAY WAY too much but it was incredibly fun.

But eventually the Atari computers (and Amigas) died out. One of the guys at Kesmai actually phoned me up to tell me that they were going to discontinue support for Atari. {For the record, Electronic Arts never did that for me.} I did finally get one of those eeeeevil IBM Clones… but I made sure it also had OS/2 Warp on it so I wouldn't be totally consumed by Gates' evil empire. I even used it. A little.

OK, now VERY late for bed. I'll probably fall asleep at work tomorrow and dream of the Temple of Apshai, which a friend of mine had on his old Atari. Sheesh, it didn't even give room descriptions, it just gave a number and you had to look the description up in the manual. Not a good dream. Friggin' MadGamer. ;)
 
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Spot on, it was Betafon. I completly forgot they started out in Istedgade. I remember being there once looking for an Amiga platformer called Leander.
I don't think I ever visited Ramsoft but the name sounds familiar. Perhaps I remember the name from a magazine ad.

It was located near "Trianglen" - and was a fantastic little shop run by gamers who always knew when games were supposed to come out.

It was back before the Internet was common and we had limited sources of information.

Hehe, I remember I used to buy gaming magazines all the time. I bought 3-4 each month - and ended up with hundreds that I reluctantly threw out because I had no room for them. Amiga Format was my favorite and it was a HUGE magazine :)

Then I discovered Usenet back in 1992 or something - and that became my primary source of information until the Internet "broke through" with the public.
 
Yeah - I remember when it was time to get a new computer, I would buy one or two copies of Byte magazine and go through allllll the advertisements. Then buy from Micron.
 
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Short answer: Pong to Atari 2600 then TRS-80 CoCo. Then Doom II made me an FPS addict for anything from ID Software and Epic Games (Unreal). Finally Dungeon Siege got me to try Baldurs. Since then RPG love.
 
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Some great stories. I would have to say none of my enthusiasm has left. I am currently resisting the urge to by a GTX Tritan just so I can continue to max out settings in Skyrim. I still take days off from work when a new game comes that I am excited about and always look forward to those rainy days when I can play guilt free :) I expect I will have some long weekends when Project Eternity and DD:Original Sin come out as well.
 
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My story (short version)

born 1968

First contact with computers: Sinclair ZX Spectrum and C64 in 1982
Unlike today I programmed these things before I started gaming.

First game: Choplifter

First crpg: Temple of Apshai

Later in 1988: Amiga 2000

Later in 1993: Pentium 60

Since the mid 80's I'm a crpg fan, played most western crpgs (>150), countless NWN mods and a few eastern ones. I like Shooter as well since Wolfenstein.

Nowadays I'm working as a System Analyst and DB Developer.
 
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Some great stories. I would have to say none of my enthusiasm has left. I am currently resisting the urge to by a GTX Tritan just so I can continue to max out settings in Skyrim. I still take days off from work when a new game comes that I am excited about and always look forward to those rainy days when I can play guilt free :) I expect I will have some long weekends when Project Eternity and DD:Original Sin come out as well.

Skyrim is mostly limited by CPU - not GPU. That said, if you're using the ENB mods/wrappers - then GPU does matter a lot more.

But I can run it pretty "maxed out" with ENB on my Nvidia 670 - and I very much doubt you need a Titan unless you're going crazy with resolution or whatever.

I'm using ambient occlusion, godrays, depth of field, and so on - and I'm getting 30+ FPS in pretty much all areas, except when I'm in the middle of heavy wilderness/wooden areas - where it can bog down some during combat.
 
A guy over at ENB has two tritans in an SLI set up but aye his resolution is insanely high. He indicated, with his custom ENB that he gets around 25-30 fps. I know some of them have 6Gigs of HR textures as well.

I found that with a ton of HR textures (I have lot) and many grass/foliage mods (especially Vurts one), slightly tweaked INI, and full graphic quality ENB settings my average FPS indoors is about 45-60+ depending on lighting and other variables.

Outdoors I average about 30-33 in non grassy areas and about 20-30 in grassy/high foliage areas. That is with shadows on high (versus ultra) and my AA set to 4. If I set the AA to 8 then my fps outside in grass drops to about 5-15 fps.

There are numerous other tweaks I could make to my INI files and a few to my ENB settings that would increase visual beauty but then my FPS comes to a halt. I suspect a Tritan would resolve that.

Do I need one? Course not :) The point was more that I love maxing out my games and tweaking them. Just knowing the wall is there tends to be this little itch that makes me want to climb over it.

Just a sample of some things that can be done, as shown on the ENB site: http://enbseries.enbdev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=17&start=10210

I blame it on modding which I always avoided in the past. Skyrim was my first big plunge into it. So now I am interested in modding DD:OS and looking at some other games. Mainly using mods but I have also started to dabble a little in making my own. I would say this is part of the reason I still have so much enthusiasm. I am always eager to see the next wall over come. What will developers make or do? What will players make or do? I also just really enjoy playing computer games. Especially sandbox or RP style ones where I get to be a character in a movie (with more or less freedom depending on the game) or a book brought to life.
 

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A guy over at ENB has two tritans in an SLI set up but aye his resolution is insanely high. He indicated, with his custom ENB that he gets around 25-30 fps. I know some of them have 6Gigs of HR textures as well.

I found that with a ton of HR textures (I have lot) and many grass/foliage mods (especially Vurts one), slightly tweaked INI, and full graphic quality ENB settings my average FPS indoors is about 45-60+ depending on lighting and other variables.

Outdoors I average about 30-33 in non grassy areas and about 20-30 in grassy/high foliage areas. That is with shadows on high (versus ultra) and my AA set to 4. If I set the AA to 8 then my fps outside in grass drops to about 5-15 fps.

There are numerous other tweaks I could make to my INI files and a few to my ENB settings that would increase visual beauty but then my FPS comes to a halt. I suspect a Tritan would resolve that.

Do I need one? Course not :) The point was more that I love maxing out my games and tweaking them. Just knowing the wall is there tends to be this little itch that makes me want to climb over it.

Just a sample of some things that can be done, as shown on the ENB site: http://enbseries.enbdev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=17&start=10210

I blame it on modding which I always avoided in the past. Skyrim was my first big plunge into it. So now I am interested in modding DD:OS and looking at some other games. Mainly using mods but I have also started to dabble a little in making my own.

Sure and I get that.

But there's a huge difference between larger numbers and tangible differences in visual quality.

Much of that is subjective - but I'd say a lot of the subjective is based on fantasy perceptions rather than actual significant differences.

You could potentially take a 10-year old game and tweak numbers in a way that would bring down a Titan SLI setup no problem.

But it wouldn't actually look much better than if you tweaked it with the knowledge of what each tweak actually does.

Now, I'm not claiming you don't know what tweaks do - but something like high resolution textures are often extremely expensive for very little visual benefit. Which is why I usually pick "light" versions of high-resolution textures.

Then again, I have a monitor with 1920x1080 native resolution and I've always valued performance over very high resolution. This is without higher-res textures to compensate. Basically, I think very high resolutions = shooting yourself in the foot.

For every step up in resolution above a certain point - you get diminishing returns in visual upgrade versus performance.

However, as I said, much of that is subjective - and if the guy in question really believes his game looks that much better and he needs two Titans to make it happen - I won't stand in his way.

All I can say is that I'm a very obsessive guy when it comes to performance and high quality visuals (I've yet to meet a single person as obsessive) - but I'm also a very pragmatic person. Meaning, I don't think higher numbers are interesting. I measure everything visual in terms of tangible differences to the naked eye.

Anyway, I guess that's enough of a side-track for now :)
 
Children, you are off-topic ;)
 
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Now that I can log in again, I have to say:
Very much so. :p
 
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