[anthk]

I remember UE1 being playable even software mode, such as the first Deus EX. Now, I think the Surreal Engine (UE1 reimplementation) needs damn GL 3.3 (if not 4.5 and Vulkan) to play games I used to play in an Athlon. Now I can't use surreal to Play DX on my legacy n270 netbook with GL 2.1... something that was more than enough to play the game at 800x600 with everything turned on and much more.

A good thing is that I turned myself into libre/indie gaming with games such as Cataclysm DDA:Bright Ness with far less requeriments than a UE5 game and yet being enyojable due to playability and in-game lore (and a proper ending compared to vanilla CDDA).

[keyringlight]

UE1 was in the timeframe that 3D acceleration was only starting to get adopted, and IIRC from some interview Epic continued with a software option for UT2003/2004 (licensed pixomatic?) because they found out a lot of players were still playing their games on systems where full GPUs weren't always available, such as laptops.

I know this is going back to Intel's Larrabee where they tried it, but I'd be real interested to see what the limits of a software renderer is now considering the comparative strength of modern processors and amount of multiprocessing. While I know there's DXVK or projects like dgVoodoo2 which can be an option with sometimes better backwards compatibility, just software would seem like a stable reference target than the gradually shifting landscape of GPUs/drivers/APIs

[pjmlp]

One possible way would be to revisit such ideas while using AVX-512, the surviving pieces out of Larrabee.

[anthk]

llvmpipe/lavapipe under MESA, too.

Lavapipe on Vulkan makes VKQuake playable even con Core Duo 2 systems. Just as a concept, of course. I know about software rendered Quakes since forever.

[3036e4]

Vanilla CDDA has a lot of entertaining endings, proper or not. I tend to find one within the first one or two in-game days. Great game! I like to install it now and then just to marvel at all the new things that have been added and then be killed by not knowing what I am doing.

Never got far enough to interact with most systems in the game or worry about proper endings.

[anthk]

CDDA:BN adds a true 'endgame' objective (story bound) but OFC you are free to do anything you want anytime, eve after 'finishing' the game.

[magicalhippo]

> the Surreal Engine (UE1 reimplementation)

The Unreal Engine software renderer back then had a very distinct dithering pattern. I played it after I got a proper 3D card, but it didn't feel the same, felt very flat and lifeless.

[pjmlp]

Me too, mostly indies and retro gamming, most of the AAA stuff isn't appealing when one has been playing games since the Atari golden days.