Ati and far cry

[AceTKK]

I'm not as impressed with this demo as a lot of people seem to be. I have a 1.4 Athlon, 1 gb ram, 9800pro system and it ran reasonably well (25-40 fps) at very high settings 1024x768. The foliage effects are well done, but they're not significantly better than what Morrowind had to offer two years ago. The view distance is a welcome (and necessary) upgrade so I'm pleased with that. The water effects are nice looking but, again, are not significantly better than those in Morrowind. Morrowind also didn't deliver a 10fps drop when viewing reflections in the water. The A.I. was hot and cold; when I engaged them directly they reacted impressively but when I kept my distance they broke down. One soldier turned and ran head on into a wall over and over until i came up from behind and put him out of his misery with my knife. Altogether I enjoyed the demo and am looking forward to the full release. I wouldn't go so far as to say it blew me away though. Whether or not I buy it depends on the quality of the multiplayer aspect.

-Ace-

 

[KingPariah777]

I find it impossible to hit anyone in this game...the crosshair is huge, but you have to center the enemy in the very center of the spacious crosshair, and even then after pumping rounds into them they still kill me.

Also, I have no sound coming from their guns, and when I am being shot it makes no noise either! I have played with the sound settings all I can, and I get no difference.

This games graphics are nice, but they aren't that great. When The settings are turned down so that this game will run decently on my machine, UT2k3 has better graphics and runs 100 times better on my hardware.

The only reason I gave this crusty demo a second chance was because of all the good things you guys are saying about it, but after this last try, im uninstalling.

Here is some advice to UBIsoft...don't release an alpha or beta demo that is suffering this much, it reflects terribly on the final product.

EDIT: I also had to install the 53.03 nVidia drivers, even though I prefer the 41.09's. What kind of crap is that? I have never experienced that before in my life with an nVidia card. The game won't even run if you don't have the very latest drivers, even though my card is almost 3 years old.

 

[oozish]

pARIAH, I'm sorry! Guess everyone can't like it then. I just cranked everything on very high at 1280x1024 and was still getting acceptable framerates. The game is amazing....i had fun goofing around shooting the fish in the water, lol.

Hey, VID CARD INFO: fOUND THIS on a different forum, interesting (lameness) with nvidia cards it looks like:

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Originally posted by indio
I don't think this game is using PS 2.0 at all in it's current state. I'm in the MP Beta I'm trying to get more info that I can share. I do know FC is forcing PS 1.1 on r300 however.
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The game IS using both PS2.0 and PS1.1. Look at my logs below. It specifically says that the Pixel Shader usage on my card is PS2.0 AND PS1.1. I know however that on some R3x0 based cards it will show that it's only using PS1.1.

And now to the interesting part...........

I checked it in my logs and compared it to some other cards... and guess what.... The FX is forcing PS2.0 to be replaced by PS1.1...

NV3x card
Vertex Shaders version 2.0
Pixel Shaders version 2.0
Use Hardware Shaders for NV3x GPUs
Pixel shaders usage: Replace PS.2.0 to PS.1.1
Shadow maps type: Mixed Depth/2D maps

My own R3x0 card
Vertex Shaders version 2.0
Pixel Shaders version 2.0
Use Hardware Shaders for ATI R300 GPU
Pixel shaders usage: PS.2.0 and PS.1.1
Shadow maps type: Mixed Depth/2D maps

Interesting huh? That probably also kinda explains why FX cards tend to get higher performance in Far Cry.

For comparison, this is what a GF4Ti shows:
Vertex Shaders version 1.1
Pixel Shaders version 1.3
Use Hardware Shaders for NV2x GPU
Pixel shaders usage: Replace PS.2.0 to PS.1.1
Shadow maps type: 2D shadow maps


oozish: ew, stuff like this really scares me away from nvidia. But truth be told I'm really happy with the games perfromance considering I"m only using an overclocked ti4400. I'm waiting for next gen cards before I take theplunge, hopefully they'll debut about the time this game comes out, or the TWO others we all are watiing for.

 

[HRslammR]

well if it's a demo then it's somewhat close to a release yes? i always imagined demo's to be the early pre-hype for a product. the engine and game are supposed to be predominantly finished other than some post-production going on, but the engine is supposed to be finished. i'm seeing nothing but problems for a game that's a "demo". beta or alpha i can understand all of this mess. but not a DEMO.

 

[oozish]

Originally posted by HRslammR
well if it's a demo then it's somewhat close to a release yes? i always imagined demo's to be the early pre-hype for a product. the engine and game are supposed to be predominantly finished other than some post-production going on, but the engine is supposed to be finished. i'm seeing nothing but problems for a game that's a "demo". beta or alpha i can understand all of this mess. but not a DEMO.

Have you even PLAYED IT? I have 0 problems; so if it was final as is I'd be happy. What sorts of problems are YOU seeing, not reading about?

...But I think you're just griping to gripe--what's your point? People always have problems with a game; every game; all the time; for sure. So seeing some problems with this or that in a advance demo of a game that isn't supposed to be out for 3 months is not anything to get worked up about unless you just want to.

Alot of times the best developers will use a demo to find and patch problems across the wide variety of systems out there prior to release..that's more like what I think is going on here (think Quake3; how long did we play q3dm17).
This is more what I think these developers are up to. However, some people will complain no matter what without even trying it themselves.

 

[Albuquerque]

Originally posted by KingPariah777
OK, but do you like the GAMEPLAY?

I've been playing with it now for the last two days, so now I can answer... Gameplay is excellent, within the constraints that this level places on you:

Enemies act and react well. They will yell to other groups of baddies to alert them, they will hide behind things, they strafe but not excessively. They will try to flank you, they duck, they're talkative (which I kinda like) and they're reasonably tough on medium or hard settings. I found only two exceptions:

After you battle the helicopters and the guys that come rappelling out, there's a mortar boat in the cove where the dunebuggy is. That guy is seemingly oblivious; you can drive right up to him in a gunner boat and he never looks at you. Of course, he does start to notice after you pummel him with five tons of high-speed fully automatic lead; however by the time he notices, he's already dead.

At that same point, there are other gunner boats in the water (same cove) with missle launchers. These guys can see you for miles, and it seems a bit odd... They can see exactly where you are from their little spot in the cove (about 12 pixels on my 1024x768 display) and lob rockets up your nose. Takes a few tries to whack those guys, and takes another few tries to whack their matching buddies in the cove further north...

Physics really add a lot. In the jungle where all the explosive barrels are near the elevator, one of the baddies came down the stairs to open a can of whipass on me (per his own words! ) I blew up the explosive barrel on the top of the little compound there, which didn't affect the dude at the bottom of the stairs -- but DID affect a barrel at the top that rolled down the stairs and over the dude. Hehehe...

Killing the dudes in the boats is fun, especially when you hop in the boat and drive away. The dead bodies slowly slide to the back of the boat and then fall into the water as you take off; then proceed to float around in the water! And the way they flop when shot (or fly when rocketed) is nice. Maybe not pertinent to the story, but great for gameplay.

Weapons. It's the same equipment that we're used to seeing, although I do like that you can only carry so many weapons at once and the bigger ones DO slow you down (can't go running with a RL on your shoulder). The sounds are good, the recoil is good (especially on the sniper rifle), the zoom effects are pretty damned cool (notice how the zoom lenses "work" even when you're just carrying the gun normally?).

Map is incredible. The simple fact that you can walk for three kilometers from end-to-end of this island while walking through seriously dense underbrush, grass, sand, and tropical forest is simply incredible. For a little added extra, they dropped in birds, grasshoppers, pigs (hehe!), and dragonflies. Being able to go swimming in the coral reefs, swimming with the different types of fish and sharks is also pretty damned cool. Paths are there if you want to take them, or you can take your own road through the brush, which is nice.

Vehicles are good. The boats work well, the dunebuggy is hard to get used to but that actually makes it feel a little more accurate to me. The hang glider is great fun, if maybe a little to easy (may be related to the hack itself)

We'll never know the whole story on gameplay until the actual game comes out, but within the constraints of this demo I have to give it an enthusiastic thumbs up.