Demigod Gameplay Performance and IQ @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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Demigod Gameplay Performance and IQ - Demigod arrived ahead of schedule amid uproarious approval of its graphical splendor and downcast horror of its networking abomination. Focusing in on its graphical splendor, we will find out which video card best fits your needs in this game, testing no less than seven cards in performance and image quality.

Not very much is known about the technology engine behind Demigod. It appears to be related at least to Supreme Commander’s graphics engine, but that is based solely on the graphical appearance of the game. The graphics options in-game are slim, and there is no marking on the retail box which indicate licensing for a graphics engine. This, combined with a lack of documentation on the graphics engine leads us to believe that it is an engine developed by Gas Powered Games, which probably has its origins in Supreme Commander. We do know that AMD was at least peripherally involved in the production of Demigod, since this splash screen below appears before the game starts, after the Stardock and Gas Powered Games logos:
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Nice write up. I've been enjoying it on my GTX260.

Just a note about the "bad" networking: The custom games are working really well now. I'm back to playing the game after having taken a break to let them work things out a bit.
 
Dephcon said:
Nice write up. I've been enjoying it on my GTX260.

Just a note about the "bad" networking: The custom games are working really well now. I'm back to playing the game after having taken a break to let them work things out a bit.
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A patch might have been released since our evaluation of the game began. Such is the nature of automatic patch downloading in multiplayer games like this, unfortunately for us given the time it takes to do one of these evaluations it can be a pain to deal with. We've used several games in the past, like WoW and Conan where this happened, seems like Demigod can be added to that list. Glad to hear networking is working better for you now.
 
Nice to see that the performance is better on AMD cards, this shows that a good relation with the developers does help for performance.
 
Don't know if the price for the 4890 was changed shortly after you put this article up, or if you linked the wrong card on the egg, but on my screen its showing as 249.99 as of this posting.
 
I run this game w/ the rig in my sig, all max settings, 1920x1200 rez. I almost never see my framerates drop under 30, I usually stay at 40+. I also run the game on an old X2 3800 and a single 7800GT. There is definitely a performance difference there, where I have to knock down most settings to either low or med.

This is a great game, and I believe will run really well on most C2D or AM2 systems w/ almost any $100 - $150 GPUs.

Also, Stardock is crazy w/ updates, releasing updates a few times a week for the new code.
 
SamuraiInBlack said:
Don't know if the price for the 4890 was changed shortly after you put this article up, or if you linked the wrong card on the egg, but on my screen its showing as 249.99 as of this posting.
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It was $199.99 this weekend but apparently went back to the original price.
 
SamuraiInBlack said:
Don't know if the price for the 4890 was changed shortly after you put this article up, or if you linked the wrong card on the egg, but on my screen its showing as 249.99 as of this posting.
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As of 11PM last night, yes, it was $199.99 due to instant savings at Newegg. It seems the price changed this morning, I've updated the article with the new price.
 
This ones $179 after 15 dollar rebate:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161277

Haven't played this game in a couple weeks, been to busy with RL but for the last couple weeks I played Pantheon was working fine no issues for me. This is a really cool game. Kind of reminds me of Sacrifice when I played it way back when, something fresh and new without all the monotonous resource gathering. I really enjoy it. Going to fire it up again tonight!
 
From what I gather, they implemented full new network code that fixed the connectivity issues, in the middle of last week.

It was interesting reading the blog posts by Brad Wardall, on the issues, explaining what exactly went wrong, and how they fixed it.
 
Yea, it was really cool how 'Frogboy' kept the community up to date almost daily for a while w/ their fixes and other info. The coolest thing about it was the level of detail that he explained the problems and fixes. Sometimes he got really technical, which is almost unheard of in the gaming world. As a total tech geek I thought it was refreshing for the developer to talk in terms that were 'at my level' of understanding.
 
I find it odd that the engine appears loosely based on the Supreme Commander engine yet there is no noticeable multitasking.
 
Druneau said:
I find it odd that the engine appears loosely based on the Supreme Commander engine yet there is no noticeable multitasking.
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The CPU-intensive part of Supreme Commander had to do with the fact that every unit had to have physical simulation processing. Projectile trajectories were simulated in detail, and they would only register as a hit if it actually collided with a unit. As far as I know, Demigod, doesn't do any of this kind of simulation...and there are far fewer units on screen.

Take Warcraft III as a counter example...if an archer fired an arrow at an enemy unit and the enemy unit dodged, the arrow would "home in" and track the target and hit it anyway. This simplifies a lot of the processing, because the game logic doesn't need to keep track of the arrow mid-flight...it just checks when the arrow is fired, and at that point the game decides whether it is a hit or not.
 
Standpoint said:
Yea, it was really cool how 'Frogboy' kept the community up to date almost daily for a while w/ their fixes and other info. The coolest thing about it was the level of detail that he explained the problems and fixes. Sometimes he got really technical, which is almost unheard of in the gaming world. As a total tech geek I thought it was refreshing for the developer to talk in terms that were 'at my level' of understanding.
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It's nice to get intelligent answers and dialogue. Which is another reason why they are so much better than the average game company.
 
Yep I'm really impressed with how Stardock handled the situation and I look forward to supporting them in the future.
 
What stood out to me in this is was the CPU usage. With the Ati GPU's, the cpu core usage was drastically more spread out across the other cores. It seems that if you were using a dual core CPU, Nvidia might have an advantage since it was not using the other cores as much, relying much more on core 0 than Ati was. After reading this, maybe slower quad with a slower Ati GPU might beat out a faster Dual Core with a faster Nvidia GPU.

This whole thing kind of fits into with what I’ve read elsewhere that Nvidia GPU’s don’t use quad core CPU’s well. Has [H] noticed with other games that Nvidia GPU’s don’t use the other 3 cores much in games compared to how much Ati GPUs? You havn’t published CPU usage a lot so it’s hard to go back and get that from old reviews. Do you plan on including CPU usage with all evaluations now? (please!)
 
bigdogchris said:
What stood out to me in this is was the CPU usage. With the Ati GPU's, the cpu core usage was drastically more spread out across the other cores. It seems that if you were using a dual core CPU, Nvidia might have an advantage since it was not using the other cores as much, relying much more on core 0 than Ati was. After reading this, maybe slower quad with a slower Ati GPU might beat out a faster Dual Core with a faster Nvidia GPU.

This whole thing kind of fits into with what I’ve read elsewhere that Nvidia GPU’s don’t use quad core CPU’s well. Has [H] noticed with other games that Nvidia GPU’s don’t use the other 3 cores much in games compared to how much Ati GPUs? You havn’t published CPU usage a lot so it’s hard to go back and get that from old reviews. Do you plan on including CPU usage with all evaluations now? (please!)
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The CPU and Memory Usage page will now be standard testing for gameplay performance articles, I like what Mark was able to do there comparing AMD and NV. I think your question about which one handles multi-core CPUs better will be better answered as we sample more games and get a wider viewing of comparisons. Right now, it is hard to say. Obviously, it depends on the game.
 
Druneau said:
I find it odd that the engine appears loosely based on the Supreme Commander engine yet there is no noticeable multitasking.
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There is only a rudimentary Artificial Intelligence in Demigod, as opposed to the much more advanced system we see in Supreme Commander.

I think of Demigod as sort-of the Quake III of strategy games. It is fast paced and brutal, but very simple in its design and execution.
 
BladeVenom said:
It's nice to get intelligent answers and dialogue. Which is another reason why they are so much better than the average game company.
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Stardock's way of interacting with its customers is a nice change of pace, but also a double-edged sword. i played GC2 through both of its expansions for about 3 years. StarDock has a way of making promises publicly and not really living up to them. updates get delayed for months, and when they are finally rolled out, promised features are dropped and the game is still buggy. at times they even resurrected old, previously fixed bugs. free support and updates for 2+ years is awesome, no denying that. but OTOH it got frustrating planning my gaming around updates and features that ended up not working.

the other pitfall is that all of their forums are cross-listed. if you visit the demigod forums, you'll see posts made from not only the GC2, Sins, Elemental and other gaming forums, but also their WinCustomize forums and even their blogging site Joe Loser, er, User -- and all recent discussions tend to be lumped together. it wouldn't be so bad if it was just gaming topics, except the WinCustomize crowd tends to impose themselves on the gamers condescendingly, and the Joe Loser crowd throws in a peppering of political, religious and other asinine topics. this includes Brad Wardell/frogboy's running political commentaries, and i'd say it's an understatement that he can overreact to dissenting points of view.

i'll be picking up Demigod sooner or later; it looks like a great game, and a number of my friends are already playing it. and i'd say StarDock is definitely better than some other game publishers and developers. i still wanted to share my experiences-- getting to know StarDock for the first time is definitely a breath of fresh air, but that doesn't mean you won't get the occasional waft of sewer gas.
 
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Druneau said:
I find it odd that the engine appears loosely based on the Supreme Commander engine yet there is no noticeable multitasking.
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The graphics engine itself can't be multi-threaded in terms of actually rendering the gfx, but sound / ai / etc can be offloaded, this will change in DX11 though
 
I didn't play for a week or so. Got back in, lo and behold new patch, ok, same ole same ole.

Except now the custom game networking seems to work, it's FAST and I have yet to encounter a jerky game. Seems to me like network is g2g right now.
 
I got this game a few days after it came out and initially it was terrible. Over the past 6 weeks they have made considerable progress and I must say the network issues are for the most part gone. The real problem now is people rage-quitting games plus a few other minor issues that are being addressed in the upcoming v1.1 patch.

Overall, very impressed by Stardock and GPG and how they handled the situation. They keep a blog on the main page and regularly keep the community updated.

Finally, the graphics are awesome on my 4850 at 1680x1050 with 4X AA. Really happy about that since the game is gorgeous.

Also I've never seen a game so well balanced out of the box. All the demigods are good and I mean all of them. There were a few moves that were a little OP and they've since been fixed but overall they did an excellent job of balancing the different demigods. Much better than DotA or WoW.
 
Real interesting point on the part of demigod, Stardock was just the NA distributor, and digital download distributor of demigod, so they stepped up to pick up the slack on the garbage net code, and added thousands of there own lines to it.

I can't really blame Stardock for the games release issues, since there were so many others who might of stepped up, but didn't.

The journals are very interesting to read on how it got fooked up.
 
thats what happens when you 'support' developer amd still lacks that ability they have few games unlike nvidia
 
eric66 said:
thats what happens when you 'support' developer amd still lacks that ability they have few games unlike nvidia
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actually, this game is pretty well optimize, the only problem with this game is the Audio problem, just set it to medium will make everything smooth out...
Its been like that since Supreme Commander....

And there are a lot of game that is ATI flavor, such as CoD 4, Fallout 3, Grid, Stalker CS...etc that does not have ATI symbol on them....

nVidia just love to put their TWIMTBP on every game they support, which is pretty lame when it does not really run any better in most games :p..

anyway, Demigod itself is a good game, I really enjoy it...
It seem to be DOTA alike, but after playing more on it, It is actually more like a different game with some basic DOTA element in there...
 
Nice writeup. The cpu and memory testing was also good, and nice to see again a detailed and thoroughly made article. These cards seem to pretty easily drive the newest games.
 
I've been running this game at 1680x1050, 4x AA, 16x AF with an 8800GT and it's been running great.

I've played 150-200 rounds of Demigod in total so far and I really enjoy the game. I played it offline for a few weeks then bought it and I don't regret it. Even now I still only know 2 classes very well (Regulus and Unclean Beast) and there are lots of upgrade trees I haven't tried yet with the 6 other classes. Gameplay-wise, it's very good. Playing 1v1, you'll need a completely different strategy than playing 2v2, 4v4, etc. You have to adapt your way of playing (what items to buy, buying for yourself or the citadel, what abilities to unlock) based on the gameplay mode, the number of enemies and what their units are. There's a lot of depth as far as that goes.

They're adding a team "give up" option in the next update too, so the entire team can decide to give up if they're losing. That'll fix the game's only real problem which is people leaving after dying a couple of times (which ruins it for the rest of the team who gets outnumbered and usually loses because the bots are not as good as humans would be).

The game does crash sometimes if you alt+tab and run other stuff while a level loads, but if you stay in the game and don't multi-task, it's stable. Connection-wise it also got fixed. If you can't connect to someone, it'll try another way of connecting and if that doesn't work, it'll automatically use a Proxy server and connect to people through that. Basically, within a few seconds you'll connect to everyone in the game lobby, so no one should have problems anymore unless they have firewalls blocking everything.
 
Mark_Warner said:
There is only a rudimentary Artificial Intelligence in Demigod, as opposed to the much more advanced system we see in Supreme Commander.

I think of Demigod as sort-of the Quake III of strategy games. It is fast paced and brutal, but very simple in its design and execution.
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I dissagree, the game is fairly fast in the beginning for character development, but in the mid to late game aspect its really slow compared to its cousin DOTA.

I like this game better then DOTA, the only good thing about DOTA is the amount of characters to choose from.
 
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