The Gamer's Quarter

Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:17 pm Post subject:

I'd probably get more enjoyment killing Haitians than neck-throwing Koreans off of cliffs but only by a really slim margin. Or maybe not, I'm still undecided.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I should have known this would be a great game when I played through the demo for the third time. Initially I was just using it to tweak my videocard (setting preferences and trying to get the most out of it then playing for a bit to see quality/frame rate differences) then I was playing it for fun too. On my third play through of the demo I decided to play with stealth in mind rather than just going balls-out head forward into everything. It was a lot of fun to play in any way the player deems best, which makes the game feel very versatile.

Anyways, the game offers the player tons of liberty and some nice little cookies along the way if they go off the beaten path. Things that I found after my initial play of the demo include a whole herd of Koreans in the forest that I had previously missed, and the fact that the boat is damned awesome.

And yeah, sawing down a tree with your gun so that it falls into a group of enemies is pretty great too. It makes me want to play FarCry based on what you've said about it Dhex, but there's no easy way to get the game, I'd have to order it from amazon or something and wait.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

dhex · Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 9:31 pm Post subject:

screenshot enabling:

http://www.crysis-online.com/forum/index.php/topic,17083.0.html

dhex · Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 10:01 pm Post subject:

from the middle of the game.

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daphaknee · Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 10:26 pm Post subject:

that better be the chickens brain floating in the middle of the screen

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

sediment · Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 11:05 pm Post subject:

is there a community toolset, or any potential moddability for crysis?

because i see a lot of... potential here.
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dhex · Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 11:58 pm Post subject:

it comes with an editor. i have no idea how it works since i never use that stuff.

there's some vids on youtube of people doing crazy barrel stuff..

Six · . Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 313 Location: montreal

i really want to try this, but i get the feeling it doesn't exactly scale well to lower-spec machines. and i can hardly even get stalker running at a decent clip (though this may be more an issue with stalker than with my pc.)

here's one of the barrel videos.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

While I've seen that video I clicked on it anyways, then went to this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaHS-y_mapQ&NR=1

Not that it's anything amazing, but the comments seem to contain some interesting information about getting the game to run better/smoother.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

Holy hell, installed the demo and wow this game is amazing. I haven't felt this giddy playing a shooter for a very long time. Such attention to detail! Such fun! So much crazy crap you can pull off! So emergent!

AI is a bit rubbish, but I don't care!
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dhex · Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 10:26 am Post subject:

the ai isn't that bad, really. they're very good at hunting, it's just that you're a supersoldier.

later on you get into scraps that basically require you to be all i'm outta here motherfuckers and jumping across rooftops and whatnot.

and no it doesn't scale well. i'm playing with most settings on medium.

it has convinced me of two things

1) upgrading was worth it
and
2) holy hell motion blur is a much better flavor of the month effect than bloom ever was.
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dmauro · . Joined: 20 Jul 2006 Posts: 303 Location: Brooklyn

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

No thanks to Dhex I spent most of the afternoon optimizing my system to play Crysis better. I managed to get the benchmark program for both CPU and GPU up to about 55 fps average with spikes between 45 and 65. But it didn't look as good as I wanted it too, so I turned on anti-aliasing at X4 and it crippled the game down to about 18fps average. I was shocked, so I tried X2 and it turned out to make the game run at 25 fps on the CPU test and about 30fps on the GPU test. The benifit is that the game is now pretty much rock solid at these frame rates and looks gorgeous. It only wavered between 22 and 28 fps at the most hectic. The drastic change actually makes the game look worse to me anyways, and I really really wanted to tweak it enough to have AA because I just think it looks a hell of a lot better. Anyways, an image of my current settings and an image taken during the CPU test of nasty blur (unless you look at the very upper right).

Click on images for fullscreen version.

Also, the main reason that I wanted AA on is because after reading the tweakguide I noticed that the Post Processing Effects are affected by your AA level. (also, it looks a lot better)

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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

So, a benchmark is no source for basis on actual play. The AA actually slowed down a lot more in game. Oh well. Turning it off got me up to over 50fps solid and it still looks gorgeous:

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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

dhex · Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 7:45 pm Post subject:

just finished it.

man.

good times.
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyQTCeobZlg

interesting?
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

It's a fairly good argument, but completely ignores story telling. Not that I'm saying that Crysis has poor story telling, it's just that it's about par for the course: it's cliched Hollywood movie bullshit basically.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

dhex · Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2008 10:20 pm Post subject:

the story is not so hot.

but the way it's told...i haven't had a setpiece workout like that since hl2.

has anyone else finished this yet?
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

dhex · Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2008 10:25 pm Post subject:

crysis starts a bit slow but yeah as things go on it gets pretty nutty in a good way.

far cry is a fun game that's hampered by a very poor design choice, as you will see if you get it.

http://www.direct2drive.com/82/product/Buy-Far-Cry-Download
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

man, i don't think i could ever go back to farcry after paying crysis.
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dhex · Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2008 10:41 pm Post subject:

i thought about posting that but did not.

but it is true.

the one thing far cry had was camp. the mercenaries are hilarious to eavesdrop on.
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

yeah i was dissapointed when I found out they weren't in crysis!

dhex, did you aver play the farcry console spinoffs? I only played the wii one, but i hear the others were pretty swell. hell, i even had fun with the wii version despite it lacking two of the best bits of far cry.
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Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 4:25 am Post subject:

Was there anything bad about wiicry other than the horrible textures? I was anticipating it but I heard it does not look beautiful and so other stuff that I've forgotten so I kind of kept putting off buying it. I was eventually going to but by then I was feeling a little embarrassed and there would have been an unnecessary awkwardness between consumer and product. Should I just forget about it?
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

It was worth $20! Any more than that, pass.

It is very ugly, yeah. It's also very linear. Actually, the best way to describe it is... imagine that jungle level from goldeneye spread over an entire game, except much better.
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Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 4:44 am Post subject:

That means absolutely nothing to me as I have not played Goldeneye as of yet.
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

Oh.

I see.
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dhex · Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 12:01 pm Post subject:

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Been playing this more since I spent so much time working on my PC to make it run better. Man, this game can really bog down when tons of shit is happening. The flow of the game is improving a little too. I stopped shortly after you get the tank. Figured I'd post another screen shot anyways.

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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/12/17/hardware-geeks-fail-bump-crysis

oh snap.

i can understand ut3 not selling well, though.
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Slonie · . Joined: 28 Nov 2006 Posts: 141

I played the Xbox Far Cry Instincts, but never played the (totally different, more open-ended, etc) PC game.

That said, Far Cry Instincts was still pretty good, when it had you riding an ATV down a narrow cliffside path to a zipline which you ride down to shoot a bunch of guys and then hang-glide down into the canyon below before dropping in the water and commandeering a jetski.

I can't believe the assets for this game have been re-purposed into a turret-shooter arcade game (have you seen it? Far Cry PARADISE LOST). Talk about the actualizing the endpoint of the path the franchise has been on away from the promise of the original!
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-Slonie

Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

Oh, so the XBOX game is linear like the Wii game too? That's interesting... I'm pretty curious about it, some people call it crap while others say it made FarCry into an actualy game.

Also, I never heard of that arcade machine! Interesting?
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Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

I believe that I know somebody who worked on the arcade port. It might have been the Xbox port, I suspect it was the arcade one though.

dhex · Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 12:37 pm Post subject:

a note about patch 1.1. - it won't work unless you have all game elements installed, including punkbuster.

however, it seems to have really increased dual core support. so all in all positive thus far.
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Slonie · . Joined: 28 Nov 2006 Posts: 141

dhex · Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 5:31 pm Post subject:

i don't get the whole make an fps into an arcade game thing, but i guess it must work for someone, right?
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Slonie · . Joined: 28 Nov 2006 Posts: 141

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

dhex · Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 7:33 pm Post subject:

i seem to run a bit tighter. processing is a little less chuggy, even with the alien stuff.

also:
zero punctuation review of crysis.
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