system requirements

[kevin[be]]

When you develop a game, how do you know the system requirements of it? Is there any software to measure it?

[Lonesome Ducky]

One way is to go into task manager and look out how much memory and cpu power it is using. And also, irrlicht can tell you how much video memory it using so you could use that too.

[skumar]

hi,
System requirements is a variable thing and it depends upon the app you make and its capabilities. Simple mesh loading and standard rendering can be achieved by irrlicht on normal motherboards with on board graphics.

When comes to advanced rendering techniques like shaders, the target machine should have a graphics card with appropriate specs. There are functions in Irrlicht API to query whether a specific feature is available on a system.

Next comes the memory, it depends upon the amount of textures you use in your 3d app. Memory used by textures can be approximated on paper using simple computer knowledge.

You can use the perfomance explorer in windows to check how much memory is taken by your app.(or simply use task manager)

[DtD]

I belive that companies usually determine the minimum requirments by simply testing the game with multiple setups and see which one it preforms decently on, etc. (Of course, some things can be aproximated using things like the task manager...)

~DtD