darksheer wrote:

Just remembered that Hitman and Mafia were some serious ressource hungry games at their time. […]
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Just remembered that Hitman and Mafia were some serious ressource hungry games at their time.

Hitman minimal specs :

-PII 266 Mhz
-64 MB RAM
-12 MB Video Card with DX 7 support (12 MB? what a joke)

Damn my poor K6-2 350 with 192 MB of RAM and a Kyro 3D Prophet 4000 XT 32 MB was crawling to death with it 🤣

Hitman, per its user manual, will run on Voodoo2 (via Glide) - that's probably why it says 12MB. 😊

obobskivich wrote:

darksheer wrote:

Just remembered that Hitman and Mafia were some serious ressource hungry games at their time. […]
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Just remembered that Hitman and Mafia were some serious ressource hungry games at their time.

Hitman minimal specs :

-PII 266 Mhz
-64 MB RAM
-12 MB Video Card with DX 7 support (12 MB? what a joke)

Damn my poor K6-2 350 with 192 MB of RAM and a Kyro 3D Prophet 4000 XT 32 MB was crawling to death with it 🤣

Hitman, per its user manual, will run on Voodoo2 (via Glide) - that's probably why it says 12MB. 😊

Yeah I should have stated that in my post... Tried for fun to play it with a V2 SLI (12 MB ones) years ago on a pIII 800 and it was not that smooth 🤣
A only one 12 MB V2 and a PII 266, if it's not a joke I don't know what it is 😵

darksheer wrote:

obobskivich wrote:

darksheer wrote:

Just remembered that Hitman and Mafia were some serious ressource hungry games at their time. […]
Show full quote

Just remembered that Hitman and Mafia were some serious ressource hungry games at their time.

Hitman minimal specs :

-PII 266 Mhz
-64 MB RAM
-12 MB Video Card with DX 7 support (12 MB? what a joke)

Damn my poor K6-2 350 with 192 MB of RAM and a Kyro 3D Prophet 4000 XT 32 MB was crawling to death with it 🤣

Hitman, per its user manual, will run on Voodoo2 (via Glide) - that's probably why it says 12MB. 😊

Yeah I should have stated that in my post... Tried for fun to play it with a V2 SLI (12 MB ones) years ago on a pIII 800 and it was not that smooth 🤣
A only one 12 MB V2 and a PII 266, if it's not a joke I don't know what it is 😵

when they say it will run , they never said it will run well 😜 .

the game has its slowdown moments even on a V5500 , although at that point its fairly smooth (thats in D3D mode, 1024X768 at the recommended settings)

its interesting because Hitman2 which I think uses the same engine is much better optimized, maybe because they felt the need to optimize the engine for the console ports.

But isn't that's the point of this thread? Highlighting the worst offenders of games that chug on stated 'minimum' specs?

Yeah, like Trespasser needs a Pentium 166?

exactly...

tincup wrote:

But isn't that's the point of this thread? Highlighting the worst offenders of games that chug on stated 'minimum' specs?

But what they mean by "Minimum Requirements" is what it takes to run the program... not to actually play the game! 😈

So what's this thread about? "Crazy" but honest requirements, or "acceptable" but deceptive, deceitful, fraudulent, treacherous, um, misleading requirements?

archsan wrote:

tincup wrote:

But isn't that's the point of this thread? Highlighting the worst offenders of games that chug on stated 'minimum' specs?

But what they mean by "Minimum Requirements" is what it takes to run the program... not to actually play the game! 😈

So what's this thread about? "Crazy" but honest requirements, or "acceptable" but deceptive, deceitful, fraudulent, treacherous, um, misleading requirements?

For me it was the first, "Crazy" but honest requirements. Though misleading requirements also has a part to play, but that is more subjective to every person player. Remember people did not require to play in 1600x1200 and 60fps back in the days.

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

F2bnp wrote:

Unreal II - Released February 2003

Minimum Requirements: PIII or Athlon 733, 256MB RAM, 32MB GeForce 2MX
Recommended Requirements: PIII or Athlon 1.2GHz, 384MB, 64MB GeForce3/Radeon 8500

I ran this game on my Athlon XP 2000+, a friend brought it over to try it since he only had a PIII 700 at the time. At 640x480 it was ok for the most part, some slowdowns on outside areas and during heavy fights; at 800x600 it began to struggle quite a bit (around 28fps average); didn't bother trying out 1024x768. Gameplay was just so-so, but I might just get it from GOG and give it a second chance.

Interesting you mention this as i'm replaying the game 12 years later (?) on a i3 4150 and a geforce 8800GTS 512mb. The game obviously flies on this machine with everything set to high at 1440x900. I get over 150 fps but still with heavy fight scenes on some maps i get a few drops to 60fps.
I also played the game at the time of it's release on a AthlonXP 2000+ with a geforce3 ti200 128mb and as far as i remember it wasn't such a great experience. Also the game was a major disappointment..it had nothing to do with Unreal 1998 apart from some tattooed skaarjs.

I never beat Unreal2... I should go replay it sometime.
I remember getting halfway through it and stopping because of the low fps on some bridge you had to cross.

rick6 wrote:

I also played the game at the time of it's release on a AthlonXP 2000+ with a geforce3 ti200 128mb and as far as i remember it wasn't such a great experience. Also the game was a major disappointment..it had nothing to do with Unreal 1998 apart from some tattooed skaarjs.

That's why I said it was ok; not buttery smooth, but not a slideshow either (and playing at 640x480 with low settings did actually help in my case). As for the storyline I agree, it was a major letdown to see a so-called Unreal sequel that had almost nothing in common with the original 😒 . Still, I wouldn't mind giving it another try since it's been over 10 years from the last time I played it.

Surprised no one has mentioned original Unreal. From the jewel case:

System Requirements:
P166 (200MMX recommended)
16MB RAM (32MB recommended)
Video: PCI local bus video card

I bought it thinking it would be fine on my P233MMX with 64 MB of RAM if I recall correctly. No 3d accelerator. Chugged horribly. Not fun at all to play. When I upgraded to a K62-400 (still with no 3d card) I thought I would give it a go again. Still no good. I considered it the game with "unreal" system requirements....

^Actually, by 1998, P200MMX had fallen into the "mid-range", as the newer P2 chips are coming. But yeah, they could've just say that you actually REQUIRE a decent 3d accelerator to play at vga+ res. Basically that's the case with every other game I really wanted to play back then.

Sigh, the first time I saw real smooth (60+fps) 3D acceleration was at a 1998 comp expo. In a glamorous Creative booth, showcasing, yes the glamorous Voodoo2, running Forsaken. If I had to describe my awestruck-ness at that exact moment in words, I'd be saying something like: "Dammit, that's not even the same game I'm playing at home!".

I think the problem with Unreal was the software renderer wasn't very optimized. Compared to say, Quake II, which wasn't too bad if you met the recommended system requirements. Quake II played fine on my P200MMX in software mode.

One might say, that by 1999-2000, 3d accelerators weren't so optional anymore regardless of what the box said. To be sure, the Unreal engine graphically kicked the shit out of most other FPS games. Even today it looks gorgeous with high res texture packs grafted on.

It would be interesting to hear examples of crazy in the opposite. That is to say, games that ran well on systems that had no business being on. Wolfenstein 3D ran remarkably well on my 282 12Mhz, for example.

F2bnp wrote:

Morrowind released mid 2002: […]
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Morrowind released mid 2002:

Ultima IX released late 1999

Minimum : Pentium II 266, 64MB RAM, 8MB VRAM (Voodoo 2/Riva 128/G200)
Recommended : Pentium II 400, 128MB RAM, 16MB VRAM (Voodoo3/TNT2/G400)

The game was super buggy upon release and only worked properly with Glide. D3D was still a mess after a few patches and the game remains sluggish.

If you want to be amused, watch Noah "Spoony" Antwiler's video retrospective of this game. The 3d acceleration was rushed because of EA. The game is a tragedy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQUVfo_kBMU

On the contrary I think Unreal's software rendering driver is very optimized. It's putting out 24-bit color and only 24-bit color and it's fast for it - it's 16-bit output is just its 24-bit dithered down.

However Unreal, unlike Quake, didn't have a surfacecache system.

Kensuke_Aida wrote:

It would be interesting to hear examples of crazy in the opposite. That is to say, games that ran well on systems that had no business being on. Wolfenstein 3D ran remarkably well on my 282 12Mhz, for example.

Someone has a video on YT showing how he managed to get Wolf3D to run on an 8088/8086 system by removing any 286 specific instructions that he found and replaced them with code that a 8088/8086 could understand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f7gW5X24ao

leileilol wrote:

On the contrary I think Unreal's software rendering driver is very optimized. It's putting out 24-bit color and only 24-bit color and it's fast for it - it's 16-bit output is just its 24-bit dithered down.

However Unreal, unlike Quake, didn't have a surfacecache system.

But compare it to Quake IIs though. And indeed, that 24-bit color might have been the problem since it has often been said (criticized?) that Quake II's optimization came from its dithered palette.

I dunno, it's been a long time. I just know it was easier to get Quake II playing on a marginal system than Unreal. That, plus my Wolfenstein story, has always made me respect John Carmack as a coder.

- John

sliderider wrote:

Kensuke_Aida wrote:

It would be interesting to hear examples of crazy in the opposite. That is to say, games that ran well on systems that had no business being on. Wolfenstein 3D ran remarkably well on my 282 12Mhz, for example.

Someone has a video on YT showing how he managed to get Wolf3D to run on an 8088/8086 system by removing any 286 specific instructions that he found and replaced them with code that a 8088/8086 could understand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f7gW5X24ao

I saw that, but it is a hack. I'm wondering about software that ran really well on minimum specs, or even below minimum specs... out of the box.

- John

^You know, you can edit & add into your post, rather than making a new one right after the other. 😉

Anyway, iirc from unreal engine's readme.txt, CPU speed has always been emphasized.

And I want to fast forward a little bit. MotoGP 14 has these as "recommended":
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 / AMD Radeon R9 290X or better
Already I'm reading a lot of WTH comments on forums. Poor kids, they don't know (yet) that they could just play it the "vogons way" someday. 😀

599th for the GTO!