I think there's an insult there somewhere, but I'm not offended.
Good. I'm playing devil's advocate to an extent. The complex answer is that I have a tolerance for it like everyone else, especially where 3d is concerned. But ultimately it's far from ideal to rob players of visual information and, yes, dropping frames in order to convey the illusion that the game is working okay on a low spec machine *is* a bit of a con.
This isn't about how clever I feel, I am not one of those people.
Don't take it personally just because I was writing in response to your post. "You" and "your" I meant in a general sense but that's hard to convey in written text of course - unless it's excplicit, I'm not commenting on individuals.
I do think that there's a techical challenge within delta timing which predesposes geeks (geeks=good; nerds=bad, remember) to seeing it as a worthwhile pursuit without fully considering its effects on gameplay on low spec machines.
many users don't know their own specs. Secondly, many things can happen that makes a pc run out-of-spec.
This could all be covered by the provision of a demo, which is normal for indie stuff anyway.
This is about how I can deliver the most similar experience on the widest amount of machines.
That's just it - the experience you get when frames are dropped is vastly different to when they aren't. Suddenly there is (perhaps vital) visual info missing and that's unfair on the player... at least slowdown is unfair in the player's favour. BUT HANG ON...
For "Slowing down" affectionados
I'm not arguing FOR slowdown, I'm arguing AGAINST variable frame rates. Ideally I don't want to see either.
be aware this alienates you from every realtime multiplayer game there is.
Stonkingly good point.
It's simply no solution at all for games.
Bleeeh! Again.