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What games popularized certain mechanics? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago by ApollosArrow@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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I was trying to think of which games created certain mechanics that became popular and copied by future games in the industry.

The most famous one that comes to my mind is Assassin’s Creed, with the tower climbing for map information.

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[–] scutiger@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The first GPU card sold to the public was the GeForce 256 in 1999

3dfx cards like the Voodoo and Voodoo2 were 3d accelerators that predated nVidia's offerings.

And even from nVidia themselves, the Riva TNT was a GPU released before the GeForce models.

[–] Thaurin@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Ohhhh! I think the Riva TNT (or Riva TNT 2?) was my first 3D accelerated graphics card! What a time to be alive was that.

[–] scutiger@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The first PC that I bought myself has a TNT2 with 8mb of memory. I upgraded it some time later with a GeForce 2 and the difference was shocking.

[–] Thaurin@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I remember having a GeForce 2 as well. Yes, I was really into graphics at that time. :) Ever since Wolfenstein 3D, or DooM, to be honest.

Colored lighting in Unreal for the first time!

Did you have dreams of DooM back then? I remember opening doors in DooM with that iconic sound in my dreams, lol.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The term GPU wasn't used yet. It got applied as something of a marketing term to cards that had hardware transform and lighting, and that was indeed the GeForce 256. Before then, they were "3d accelerators".

You can see this on the Wiki page for the GeForce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_256#Architecture

GeForce 256 was marketed as "the world's first 'GPU', or Graphics Processing Unit", a term Nvidia defined at the time as "a single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and rendering engines that is capable of processing a minimum of 10 million polygons per second".

So it kinda depends on perspective. If you take Nvidia's marketing at face value, then the GeForce 256 was, indeed, the first GPU. You could retroactively apply it to earlier 3d accelerators, including the SNES Super FX chip, but none of them used the term at the time.

[–] scutiger@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

At that point, what even is the purpose of defining it? It's such a specific term that was designed to only apply to their hardware. It's like creating a new word for a car because you added air conditioning to it.

Sure, they had the first GPU because they coined a term that only applied to one specific product.