Difference between revisions of "PC"
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| − | The first Tomb Raider game was release for several platforms, one of which was the PC. | + | The first Tomb Raider game was release for several platforms, one of which was the PC. To run you needed at least a Pentium 60 PC running DOS 5, so says the packaging. But it's more fun on faster PCs with an accelleration card installed (3Dfx Voodoo, Diamond Monster, Matrox Mystique, Rendition, and S3 chips are supported). Today the best way to play the first Tomb Raider is to use [[Glidos]] which emulates the glide api of the Voodoo card. |
| + | All following Tomb Raider games used [[DirctX]] and therefore only run under Windows. [[Tomb Raider II]] needed a Pentium 100, 16MB and DirectX 5.0. [[Tomb Raider III]] needed a Pentuim 166, [[Tomb Raider IV]] and [[Tomb Raider V]] a Pentium 233. | ||
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| + | [[Tomb Raider VI]] uses a new graphics engine and therefore has much higher demands on hardware. You need at least a 500 MHz CPU and a DirectX 9 compatible card, but it is best to have a 1500 MHz CPU, 512 MB of RAM, and 128 MB graphics card. | ||
== History == | == History == | ||
Revision as of 22:06, 4 October 2004
The first Tomb Raider game was release for several platforms, one of which was the PC. To run you needed at least a Pentium 60 PC running DOS 5, so says the packaging. But it's more fun on faster PCs with an accelleration card installed (3Dfx Voodoo, Diamond Monster, Matrox Mystique, Rendition, and S3 chips are supported). Today the best way to play the first Tomb Raider is to use Glidos which emulates the glide api of the Voodoo card.
All following Tomb Raider games used DirctX and therefore only run under Windows. Tomb Raider II needed a Pentium 100, 16MB and DirectX 5.0. Tomb Raider III needed a Pentuim 166, Tomb Raider IV and Tomb Raider V a Pentium 233.
Tomb Raider VI uses a new graphics engine and therefore has much higher demands on hardware. You need at least a 500 MHz CPU and a DirectX 9 compatible card, but it is best to have a 1500 MHz CPU, 512 MB of RAM, and 128 MB graphics card.
History
Today the abreviatin "PC" is mostly used as a synonyme for the IBM compatible comouter. The history of that began in the early 1980s. The first IBM PC XT was sold in 1981 for over 1.000 $. Back than it was nothing more than a better typewriter and it was mostly used in business. The application that was one of the reasons for the big success was a spread sheet calculation called VisiCalc.
The original IBM PC XT was based on a Intel 8086 processor.
The success of the IBM compatible PC is based on the fact that it has always been a more or less open system. It was possible for other manufacturers to build "compatible" computers for less.
Games
The first games on the PC were nothing more than moving blocks in text mode. There was not much one could do with 80x40 text blocks. So adventures mainly consisted of text. After that came CGA (color graphics adaptor) which could display 4 coulors at 320x200 pixels. The first 2D adventures were written for this graphics card. Everything was very blocky but even though a huge success. Still you had to interact with by typing text. After that came EGA and VGA, adding more coulor and higher resolutions, and adventure games started to use the mouse.
Around the early 1990s the first acceleration cards appeard. At first these were seperate cards that had to be plugged in to the computer in addition to the VGA card (Voodoo), but soon the 3D accelleration was added to the VGA cards.
