Unreal Tournament 3

Try the Oblivion thing like done to GoW.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1097399&postcount=86

US

 

Is anyone else finding the retail game to be MUCH more demanding than the demo? Maybe its a driver thing but I seem to be getting about half the performance at the same settings in the retail game.

I can barely play at 1680x1050 at max with 4xAA/16xAF. By barely play I mean maintain above 30fps 100% of the time.

EDIT: Thats on an 8800GTS 640MB

 

No, comparable performance on my GTS even with the better textures.

 

You shure you dont got vsync on? and if then enable triple buffering.

 

Yes it is. I'm guessing we have different definitions of "runs flawlessly."

 

Nope, no vsync. And i'm using the 169.09 driver. Performance is playable, its just that I seem to remember hitting 60fps at these settings in the demo but now i'm averaging about 35-40.

 

Apparently so.

 

Actually a single-core could manage the demo well at ~25-30fps. even with bots, a A64 3200+ (2.0GHz). That with all on highest except res for testing back then.

 

The demo only supported Normal quality textures (even if you selected highest). I think one or two of the other settings was capped as well. that could explain the difference.

 

Yep that would be the source of divergence; I don't consider 25-30fps "well" for this gametype. On my 2.1GHz A64 I got 24-28 fps average with everything turned off (edited ini); with everything turned on high was more like 17-24 fps. That is just unacceptable for me on a twitch shooter. DM was almost tolerable, but VCTF was just too painful. Anyway, I won't be bothering with it until I update my rig.

 

That could be it. Anyway, after my initial dissapointment of not getting the framerates I was expecting I have now spent some quality time with the game (instant action only). All I have to say is....

THIS GAME ROCKS!!

Seriously, its amazing and thats just from the very limited exposure I have had so far. Despite my fraps driven dissapointment about framerate, its pretty much silky smooth in gameplay.

And then there's the graphics.... This is easily the second best looking game I have ever played by a decent margin. At some moments it even competes with Crysis IMO and its without doubt head and shoulders above Gears of War (360 version anyway, I haven't played PC). So far I think the best looking maps are Sandstorm and Necropolis.

I'm looking forward to tommorrow. Finish work, crack open a few beers and start making my way through the campaign mode

 

Here's a funny thing. The sound when you click a menu item in the UT3 menu is lifted straight out of the original Doom. Its the same sound as when you press a switch, e.g. a lift activate switch.

 

Probably a sound from a standard set of third party effects.

 

I´m thinking of buying the game but I´m not sure, I have heard that the graphics are far from the promo shots, not sure if it´s true though.
Can you please post some screenshots.
Thanks!

 

Try here. The consensus is that a lot of the pre-release shots were posed stills in the editor. There are some people who have even identified the editor cursor in some shots.

You only have to look at the first patch change log to see that the game was shipped unfinished with a "ship it broken, fix it later" mentality. There's a lot of basic stuff that doesn't work right, and a lot of stuff that is just plain missing. Epic seem to be spending most of their time locking unfavourable threads on their forums. It'll take a few patches before you can even make a good judgement of if the game works or not.

There's not many people playing online either, but a lot of it seems to be put down to initial bugs in the online system and gamespy problems.

For a company that's gone through this several times already, it's pretty poor for them to once again ship with popular gametypes missing, too few maps, problem controls, faulty bot AI, broken bot pathfinding, graphics problems, gameplay issues, weapon balance problems, losing key settings, not keeping CDkeys between sessions, etc. There's just loads of stuff that's still wonky.

If you didn't know it was already released, you'd look at it and say it was a late beta in need of several months of balancing and polishing, but I guess they wanted to get it out for Christmas regardless. Buyer beware unless you are willing to wait for fixes.

 

Thanks for the link and the information, I think I will wait and buy it when some patches have been released.

 

Yeah it's definitely a bug-ridden game. It's still a good time though if you have some LAN buddies. Apparently the dedicated server is a total pain to set up. That in itself tells you how much they cared about getting things right.

I do feel like the game is sort of hollow. Mostly because the touted single player is a crap collection of instant actions with blurry FMV in between that goes on forever. And there's no regular single player tournament mode as there was in the other UT games.

What's most curious to me is that the game was, for a while, considered to be a spring '07 title. And yet, it's hardly working today.

However, realize that the community will be making content as usual. There's basically zero chance of the game fading away. I strongly doubt that it will become any sort of "top played game" though.

 

Yep, the web interface for server admin is a "future patch" thing. It appears that Epic still haven't figured out that if they want people to play this game online, they need to provide the tools for people to run servers, and it has to be from the get-go before people lose interest and move onto something else.

Looks like they prioritised GoW for Xbox360 and everything else has suffered months of delays. Looks like a pure resourcing issue to me.

Even that's been screwed. People have been begging for a separate gametype for Assault (which should have been included anyway) so they could have some kind of common base from which to start building maps (because it was obvious too much work for Epic to port the handful of maps they provided for UT2K4).

Instead Epic have suggested workarounds like building Warfare maps and hiding nodes where you can't get to them. They completely miss the point that without a separate gametype, you can't differentiate Warfare maps from Assault maps when you browse for servers (assuming they ever get the server browser working properly that is). Who's going to code a new gametype and make maps for a new gametype when no one can play it because they can't find it? And yet if you look at previous incarnations, Epic have always been happy to pinch ideas from the community and incorporate them into their products next time around.

Like I said before, you just have to look at the changelog for the first patch, and the vast majority of it is stuff that should have been fixed before launch.

Mark Rein regularly pops up and harps about piracy killing gaming on the PC, but it's delivering this kind of buggy and unfinished product that kills gaming on the PC, and encourages people to screw over companies with piracy the same way the companies screw over the customers.

If companies don't mind stealing money from customers by selling them unfinished games that don't work properly (let alone meet the pre-release advertising or promises), customers soon learn not to mind stealing games from companies in return.

 

And now for some positive news. The game plays great online in my opinion. I mostly like team deathmatch and capture the flag, and up until now it has been great action. It plays fast and furious, and the weapons are nicely balanced. Better balanced than in previous versions in my opinion. Most of the TDM and CTF maps are gorgeous and have great gameplay. So, the actual gameplay is almost perfect in my opinion.

However, the UI has some problems which should never have been allowed to get into production:

* Doesn't remember the last search settings you have used for searching servers.
* Shows the servers from highest ping to lowest ping (which stupid came up with that idea?).
* The chat window during changes in the maps drags down the whole system (say 5 fps) for whatever reason.
* No favorite servers (or it's just damned hard to find). Is it so hard to make something decent like Valve has managed to do in HL1 and beyond?

 

Weapons are one of the major gripes. Because they are all "balanced" they've come out very samey and bland. They don't have the personality of the older weapons that were actually better at some things than others. They are already changing basic stuff like weapon damage and the ridiculous arc of the secondary flak (want to put a flak ball in at someone standing right in front of you - you have too look at your feet to do it). Just so much stuff that should have been ironed out in beta testing, rather than after launch.

Fast and furious is because there are now much more one shot kills. There is not the same chance to respond and defend as there were in the older games. It's much more kill, die, spawn, die, spawn, etc. It makes it more Quake-like and less like UT.

This was just pure laziness and consolitis. The number of buttons and menus to click just to use the basic game front end is insane. Epic knows what was needed here as all their previous games had this basic functionality, but they decided to leave it as is so they could get the game out before Christmas.

So much for "when it's done". More like "ship it broken, get the cash, patch it later".