One of those games where you need to have a top-end machine OF the time?
The first time I played it on PC was on my old Dell Inspiron E1505, which I bought in late 2006. A very laggy experience on a Core 2 Duo 1.6Ghz, and a Radeon Mobility X1400. That seems like it was spec'd too low to play well. Maybe it was the dual core?
It is probably not the CPU. Fillrate limited games will be strongly GPU dependant.
Yeah this game is incredibly fillrate dependent for a 2003 release. Any Core 2 is enough CPU for it but that X1400 is similar to a Radeon 8500/9600. It would probably run ok at 800x600.
The best GPU in 2003 was Radeon 9800 XT and I think that would realistically limit you to 1280x1024. 1024x768 would be more enjoyable though. I tried a 9800 Pro with it.
Huh. I remember it playing fine on an FX 5500 PCI. Then again I've always had good tolerance for framerates in the high teens and low twenties.
Korea Beat -- my cool translation blog.
wrote:Huh. I remember it playing fine on an FX 5500 PCI. Then again I've always had good tolerance for framerates in the high teens and low twenties.
We were more tolerant back in those days too. A 5500 would do fairly well at 640x480 or 800x600.
I'm always trying to get my friend to play N64 games with me. He complains about framerate a LOT. I don't remember it chugging so bad, but all I had to compare it to in the 90s was a family computer built for spreadsheet processing.
Nowadays it's all 60 FPS this, and V-sync that.
I played through all of Quake 2 N64 a couple of months ago. Probably averages 20fps and the controls are terrible. But whatever it was interesting. I don't think I would necessarily refer to it as fun though haha. It took me maybe 20 tries to scrape through some of the levels.
N64 certainly isn't the console to go to for games with high frame rate. 😀
Yeah, the N64 can feel terrible these days. 60 fps has spoiled us 😈
wrote:Yeah, the N64 can feel terrible these days. 60 fps has spoiled us 😈
There's no better way to shake your interest in the actual N64 console than to play some Perfect Dark and then switch to the Xbox 360 port of the game. It's entirely authentic except that it's so much easier to play at 60fps than at 15fps, with the higher resolution allowing you to actually see the details, and the 360 pad's superior sticks helping you control the game with some finesse.
Or you know, try some Ocarina of Time on a TV with a composite cable. I absolutely hate the fog and murky image quality...
wrote:Or you know, try some Ocarina of Time on a TV with a composite cable. I absolutely hate the fog and murky image quality...
Yeah. I have it on S-Video on a plasma TV. SVideo just lets you see the blocky dithering and funky low-precision bilinear filtering better. 😀 My N64's TV encoder also puts out signal interference (diagonal lines). I tried different cables and monitors.
I honestly think both the SNES and N64 (at least here in Europe) have awful output quality at least with a composite cable. I think the SNES can do RGB, but that certainly isn't an option on the N64, at least not without modding. I used to have a Commodore 1084 monitor, which I thought had amazing output quality, made the PS2 look fantastic on composite and my Megadrive and Amiga totally shined on it with a SCART RGB connector.
When I tried either of Nintendo's consoles though, I was majorly disappointed. It's a shame really, especially on the N64's part, because the hardware is quite impressive for the time.
Anyway, sorry for the offtopic!
On the subject of Unreal Engine 2 games, Unreal 2 also performs like a dog, not as bad as Deus Ex 2 though. I played through the game on a Prescott 3.2GHz, 2GB RAM and a 6600GT a few years ago and the loading times were still atrocious. Not to mention occasional freezing and hanging which basically meant I had to restart the whole system. Also, there were some FPS drops here and there, even though I was only doing 1280x1024!
wrote:On the subject of Unreal Engine 2 games, Unreal 2 also performs like a dog, not as bad as Deus Ex 2 though. I played through the game on a Prescott 3.2GHz, 2GB RAM and a 6600GT a few years ago and the loading times were still atrocious. Not to mention occasional freezing and hanging which basically meant I had to restart the whole system. Also, there were some FPS drops here and there, even though I was only doing 1280x1024!
Unreal 2 is certainly quirky and those load times are a mystery indeed.
wrote:wrote:Or you know, try some Ocarina of Time on a TV with a composite cable. I absolutely hate the fog and murky image quality...
Yeah. I have it on S-Video on a plasma TV. SVideo just lets you see the blocky dithering and funky low-precision bilinear filtering better. 😀 My N64's TV encoder also puts out signal interference (diagonal lines). I tried different cables and monitors.
I had that with one of my cables. It was a multi-out cable, and had that awful diagonal lines pattern (REALLY noticeable on flat gouraud shaded polys). I ordered a new one on Amazon that ONLY has S-video and stereo audio. No composite option. The diagonal dithering crap went away immediately. Worth a shot, the cable was only like $8 USD.
wrote:wrote:Yeah, the N64 can feel terrible these days. 60 fps has spoiled us 😈
There's no better way to shake your interest in the actual N64 console than to play some Perfect Dark and then switch to the Xbox 360 port of the game. It's entirely authentic except that it's so much easier to play at 60fps than at 15fps, with the higher resolution allowing you to actually see the details, and the 360 pad's superior sticks helping you control the game with some finesse.
Agh, I want to like it, but I just don't. The weapons look ever so slightly different in a way I don't like, and I don't like HD versions of old blocky games. It's like using an HD texture pack in Minecraft, it just has a crummy "cheap" feel to it.
wrote:I had that with one of my cables. It was a multi-out cable, and had that awful diagonal lines pattern (REALLY noticeable on flat gouraud shaded polys). I ordered a new one on Amazon that ONLY has S-video and stereo audio. No composite option. The diagonal dithering crap went away immediately. Worth a shot, the cable was only like $8 USD.
Yeah as I said I've tried different cables. I have a SVideo-only cable now. It did get rid of the S-Video grid pattern I was seeing with other cables. The interference with diagonal, scrolling lines is something else though and I think it's either the AC adapter or the internal hardware. I've seen the same problem with some VGA cards and it wasn't caused by the cable there.
Forcing VSync off is a workaround for slow loading times in Unreal 2.
11 1 111 11 1 1 1 1 1 11 1 1 111 1 111 1 1 1 1 111
I always wondered what the possibly had to do with it.
But when playing Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood the load times were literally SEVERAL minutes, until I turned off V-sync and they dropped to about 10 seconds. What the heck?
I dug out my old saves the other day and finally beat DXIW yesterday.
What a cheesy recreation of Liberty Island they had at the end. I think it was visually superior in the original game, and certainly physically superior because the cute mini version in DXIW is just ridiculous. 🤣 And in this diorama mini Liberty Island each faction was about 500 Ft away from each other, ready for me to discover in seconds, but for some reason just there to wait for me to walk by and chat to tell them whether to shoot everyone else or to shoot me. It was so laughable.
Maybe I'm just being mean.
Why on earth would the military design mech suits that explode and wipe out their own troops? Brilliant. It saves me ammo though!
I was a god while bearing my silenced, EMP equipped rail gun. Which I had by the middle of the game btw. And I also had about 30 extra biomod and weapon upgrade canisters. Bizarre how much excess stuff they had put everywhere. I don't think I ever ran out of ammo, which makes the unified ammo fear thing a bit moot.
I decided the Illuminati should run the world. 🤣 The rest of the factions whining at me were unworthy.
The game makes it easy to max out your biomods early on. I think the reason you find so many canisters is to encourage you to change it up every once in a while as you want to do new things, or want new abilities.
wrote:The game makes it easy to max out your biomods early on. I think the reason you find so many canisters is to encourage you to change it up every once in a while as you want to do new things, or want new abilities.
The big theme of DXIW is lack of consequences with your actions. In the gameplay and in the story. You never want for ammo, weapons, or biomods. The stuff is everywhere. When it comes to the story you can essentially do whatever you want to the very end. The factions continue to want you to join even if you go against them at times. It's silly. Then you basically get to pick an ending from the Liberty Island Multiple Choice Experience.
It feels like the game was designed by focus groups. Minimize player frustration and confusion. There's certainly nothing complex about it.
