I recommend adding a "System Requirements" category to when making/editing games.
Example:
Minimum: Intel Core i5-10900k, 4 GB RAM, NVIDIA Geforce 640M. Windows 7/8/10.
Recommended: Intel Core i7-10900k, 12 GB RAM, NVIDIA RTX 2080 SUPER, Windows 7/8/10.
I kinda need this because I only have a low-end Intel Core i3-2370M laptop.
Agree completely. Some form of minimum requirements filtering is really needed. In my games I write “minimum year 20XX” but that sort of thing never pops up in searches (neither does “OpenGL 2.1” or something like that).
There’s a lot of tiny details, though, like games that have a minimum OpenGL version or enter software rendering mode, requirements that don’t correspond to any particular machine builds. Will there be a predefined list of allowed tags, or can people write in their own?
In practice, if you type the minimum processor is Blarg, and you have a Blorg, your average user will not know if the Blorg is faster than the Blarg.
I use CPU score and GPU score when I post my minimum requirements, because a user with 1500 CPU score will probably know that it is better than 1000. But most people here probably don't know their CPU / GPU score either....
Well, here’s a concrete proposal to start with: allow developers to apply predefined minimum requirement tags (MRTs) such as OpenGL, AMD64, storage, RAM, etc. Each tag has an associated slider with it that corresponds to the minimum version/volume of that feature. MRTs may also have a checkmark for marking as optional, and/or a checkmark for marking additional notes.
For example, the OpenGL tag may have one of 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6 be associated with it. Forget extensions, since they’re called extensions for a reason. If a game requires an extension to run, then the minimum version should be the earliest where the extension became a core feature. EDIT: after thinking about this part I’m not so keen on it.
The AMD64 tag may be processor codenames, or years of release, but something recognizable.
This ignores features that were added then removed like 3DNow machine instructions, or maxima like the 2GB RAM limit in Lego Racers 2, but those are pathological cases.
