I was just wondering what’s the actual percentage of people here who have GLSL enabled. Is it wiser to develop for lower-end graphics cards, which don’t have GLSL enabled, or should those who have it press on towards developing a more graphically-intense game (in other words, are there more who have GLSL, or not)?
Very good question…
Good question, here is an honest answer:
If you are making a game for Blender Artists, (or dedicated gaming freaks,) to admire, use GLSL. If you want ordinary people to play and enjoy your game, then keep the hardware requirements to a minimum.
The reason I started my current noob project, was frustration with the FPS games available in the Ubuntu repositories. They are either so out of date that I need to run an SVGA console, or they require advanced graphics cards.
I honestly suspect that if your average computer user has an advanced GPU, then it is purely serendipitous luck. And as far as a normal computer user setting up an SVGA console… ???
That is my honest and humble opinion for what it is worth.
There’s also the fact that there are some GLSL shaders (better said: shader and texture setup) that will look just fine on a video card that doesn’t support it (it will discard the GLSL stuff and look as good old multitexture mode), if you keep things simple of course, this way you can make a game that will look good on an older computer, and better on a newer. The drawback of this is that you are halfway restricted to use not so amazing glsl stuff tough.
The main problem with this is that you will need 2 computers to see the differences manually, there is no way to predict how the old pc is gonna behave.
I have two computers and both have glsl suport and a spare graphic card with glsl suport, for me multitextures is very outdated, we are almost going to the open cl universe, i think that if you want one day work on the game industry is better to star using glsl to learn it, I dont recomend the multitextures or the texture faces, but i work very few with those two, so i m suspicious to tell!
But about your question, I live on brazil, and i think that about 60% of the computers here have glsl suport, All the guys that i know have computers with glsl suport even my girl friend have one
( and she doesnt play nothing), so around here there are a lot of people with it.
Hmm, I see. According to redmondmag.com, 296 million PCs were sold last year (2009). It would seem that with each year, the number of people that don’t have GLSL-enabled PCs will dwindle. I think that GLSL-enabled games should work.
While I was surfing the web, I found a program, NVEmulate, which may allow us to control our graphics cards’ GLSL usage (i.e. turn it off, as though it were not enabled).
My computer is probably like a 2004, 2005 Sony VAIO Media Center PC, and it has GLSL support, so I’d think that most people (gotta be at least 60%, according to my non-researched made-up data, ha ha ha) nowadays have GLSL support.
I am reading these replies with interest and in principle I agree. What with the latest Windows builds and the delayed Gnome desktop that was due out some time last month, the pressure is on manufacturers to ensure GLSL capabilities.
However, if you directly ask an average PC user: “Are you GLSL capable?”
They will reply: "Quoi… quest-qu-cest GLSL?
There are a lot of old PC’s out there that are not GLSL capable, mine for example. It is a four year old freebie cast off that I got from a local bank and baring in mind that I normally use it for some light-ish number crunching and writing software, it is perfect. It is fast, has scads of memory and running Linux these resources are available for my apps, not tied up running the OS.
The only real problem I have had was trying to find an low profile AGP or a standard PCI graphics card, it was a disaster!
I toured most of the hardware shops in Edinburgh and the usual reply was: “What, I didn’t think those things still existed.”
Look at the family PC’s life history, Daddy gets a nice new modern laptop, (kiddie, who is not yet sophisticated enough to know the difference,) is initially very happy with daddies cast-off. This contented state of affairs last right up until kiddie tries to play a GLSL game.!!!
I am sure any parents here will tell you what happens next.
@Irvine Hmm, I suppose you’re right. There are a lot of older PCs still out there… However, the current question is, “If I went out and bought a PC today, last year, or anytime recently, would I have GLSL capability on my stock graphics card?” Also, if I asked most people what games they played on their PC, most gamers would probably say more graphically impressive games, like the Sims 3, rather than games like RollerCoaster Tycoon 1, so I’m back to wondering if most people have GLSL capability.
Joeman16 You say:
if I asked most people what games they played on their PC, most gamers would probably say more graphically impressive games,
and that answers your question, as I already said:
If you are making a game for Blender Artists, (or dedicated gaming freaks,) to admire, use GLSL. If you want ordinary people to play and enjoy your game, then keep the hardware requirements to a minimum.
Although, I must admit I also am really impressed with the graphics capabilities of modern gaming. Even the graphics output of properly textured models using standard “multi-texture” in the BGE has a WOW factor as far as I am concerned.
Ps:
In addition, maybe it is my age but considering expensive consumer goods that are in perfect working order and only four years old as only fit for the scrapheap is terrible: My Dell came from the bank with a 1.5ghz cpu, 4 gigabytes of memory and an integrated graphics card at zero cost to me. I have no intentions of throwing it out, (unless of course I win the Lotto!)
PPs:
I got the rant in the email notification, it’s nothing, you should here me sometimes. Though you deleted an important point: For clarification, the PC is a 2005/2006 Dell Optiplex and I got it late last year.
@Irvine I see. You’re correct, especially about certain games being really good-looking, even without GLSL (like some old PS1 games were). In some very short research, I found that there were capable graphics cards for as little as $50-$60 (ATI’s Radeon HD 4650), so perhaps those who don’t have GLSL can upgrade as well (I assume that card has GLSL capability).
Cloud_GL made a great point, that for some, if GLSL shaders are used and they don’t have the capability, the game will automatically scale it back to the simplest mode, and will draw the game as though it were made for MultiTexture mode. That is good, since that wouldn’t require any extra work from the developers (us).
EDIT: Looks like there’s around 90% of the artists around here who have GLSL.
90% of the artists around here having GLSL is not really a surprise, as we say in the trade, the sample is heavily biased. Believe me, I want very badly to have GLSL and would have had it if not for a very sad story:
About a month ago, in anticipation of the new Gnome desktop and my desire to master the BGE, I went to the Dell support site and bought a Nvidea graphics card that was directly linked. Imagine my horror after the card arrived when I found out that that card was an AGP “full profile” and I needed a “low profile”
After sulking for a few day’s, I did a tour of local hardware shops hoping to get a price for them fitting a graphics card… I was laughed at.
After expressing shock that that type of card still existed, they said that if they could find a re-conditioned card then it would not be a problem, but I would be better off buying a new computer.
Apparently, the story with my bog standard PCI bus is even worse.
The thing that gets me is that, (graphics card excepted,) the performance of my box is comparable to a lot of PC’s currently on the market. There is nothing wrong with it, a friend of mine, (business man,) buys new laptops regularly, and I reckon that my PC running Linux outperforms his laptops running Windows 7. (not scientiffic, just a heavily biased opinion.)
But, don’t let my sorrows and prejudices stop you from enjoying the BGE using GLSL graphics, I am just pointing out that older graphics cards will be around for quite a while.
I wouldn’t base the decision of using or not GLSL for your game based on this poll…
…unless your targeted costumers are mainly other game developers 
although I presume that most hardcore gamers do have a computer able enough to support GLSL.
I agree, it really depends on who your target audience is and the purpose of the game you’re making.
In my opinion good graphics help the player get into the game world and increase enjoyment. But there is too much focus in the gaming world on graphics to cover up unoriginal game play and plot - particularly with FPS games. If your game play is good and original and the story draws the player in I don’t think it’ll make a huge difference if you use GLSL or multitexture the game will still be enjoyable.
Those are actually some good points. I think you all are correct that it’s up to the developer to decide what his target audience is.
I was thinking that you could use GLSL mode and just disable all of the advanced features (shaders, lights, nodes, etc.) to make a game in ‘compatability mode’ and still have the option to use advanced things (just enable that part, and create whatever it is; as long as it isn’t a major piece of the game, it should look good on a GLSL card, and perhaps appear as a minor graphical glitch on a non-GLSL card). I forget a lot of how to make a game in texture face mode, so maybe this is the route for me.
Joeman 16:
I think you are looking for an excuse to use GLSL and the honest truth is that you already have one. You have more or less implied that your target audience is hardcore gamers and they will most likely have, (and expect,) full power graphics capability.
The only point that the rest of us are making is that if your target audience is outside of this specialist area, then for the next few years at least, you should design a version of your game with minimal hardware requirements.
@Irvine You are correct that I want to use GLSL, but honestly, what would happen if I made a game in Blender that used GLSL but turned off all of the advanced features? I would get the ability to make the game as though it were GLSL (because, as I mentioned earlier, I don’t recall many of the necessary steps to create good-looking levels in Texture Face or Multitexture mode), and it would look fine on lower-end computers, correct?
Joeman 16:
You are asking questions that only you can answer, its a conundrum like:
“Is there a God and if so should I obey the priest/minister to get the heavenly rewards, or is it just some kind of trick by a sneaky megalomaniac who is trying to control me?”
If you let other people answer questions like this for you, then you are going to have a miserable life that is one long litany of regrets.
Me, when I was a little kid I wanted to be a “quelle qu un de la roue” and after University, I spent over 20 years as itinerant vagabond. Based in Marseilles, I traveled all over the Caribbean, Africa…wherever fancy took me and, in the words of the song “Non, [I]Je Ne Regrette Rien”
[/I]But that is me, what I am saying is that some choices you should make yourself and this is one of them.
I believe that if a video card doesn’t support GLSL,
it won’t render properly any game using the GLSL rendering mode.
Disabling the various GLSL options would just slightly improve the
performance of the game on a computer already compatible with GLSL.