Rock, Paper, Shotgun

All Aspect Warfare Demo

Posted by Jim Rossignol on June 11th, 2009 at 8:48 am.

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3000AD’s new simulatory shooter has a demo, and you can get it here. It’s a mere 290mb. The demo includes a bunch of instant action scenarios and a taste of the various careers in the game. More info can be found over on the blog. We understand from the most recent postings that the game itself is imminent.

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263 Comments »

  1. jalf says:

    @Serondal: Even barren wastelands are not *entirely* devoid of features though. Saying “it is how he wanted it to be” is kinda missing the point. Most people would, if given the choice, prefer nice visuals over boring visuals. Given the option, then, a nice-looking barren wasteland would be preferred over a dull-looking barren wasteland, and a non-barren non-wasteland might be better still.

    While Derek Smart may disagree with me on this, I’m going to make the claim anyway: It is not that he specifically set out to make a world consisting of basically a flat plane of a single repeating brownishgrey texture. But rather that he was willing to settle for that, in order to focus on other parts of the game instead. It’s not “how Smart wanted it to be”, but “what Smart was willing to settle for, because he deemed working on the rest of the game to be a more productive use of his time”.

    Which of course is a fair enough decision. But it also means that we can still say it looks like crap if we think it looks like crap. It is not a beautiful game, and if potential customers think that this is a problem and it detracts significantly from the game as a whole, it is a valid complaint.

  2. pirate0r says:

    I’ve been to salt lake city, it is anything but flat. There are mountains everywhere.

    To give my opinion regarding the game, from what I have seen I am impressed. The game kind of reminds me of Armour-Geddon from the days of the amiga/early PC, however the ground FPS part leaves me wanting. The massive military base it seems rather sparse, sterile and empty (as in no cover at all); there is nothing on the base (aside from AA emplacements) that is of human size or scale. If there were fences, a security checkpoint or even a jet blast deflector it would greatly add to the game play by providing additional cover from ground troops, and fill the players foreground view with something they can use for depth perception. Outside the base it’s probably not as important, though a rocky outcrop or two would achieve the same effect.

  3. pirate0r says:

    I’d really like to edit that post of mine now… I messed up the quote tags.

    The salt lake quip was aimed at Serondal

  4. Howard says:

    Wow – that was… annoying tbh.

    Okay, ignoring all the stuff that has been said about logging in and DX and whatnot I have a number of issues.
    1) The performance is inexcusably bad. Running on a Dual Core £.0 gig with 4 gig of ram and a G260OC2 at 1600×1200, full detail I get 10-18 FPS when nothing is going on on screen. That is just dire.
    2) SHIFT and CTRL are none bindable. Deal breaker for me. I have to have those as bindable keys really, particularly ina game like this that demands so many inputs.
    3) It crashes after a few minutes of being in an Instant Action and I cannot see why.
    If it helps this is what windoes says:
    Problem signature:
    Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
    Application Name: AAWDEMO.bbz
    Application Version: 0.0.0.0
    Application Timestamp: 4a2ee9c6
    Fault Module Name: AAWDEMO.bbz
    Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
    Fault Module Timestamp: 4a2ee9c6
    Exception Code: c0000005
    Exception Offset: 00215347
    OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.1
    Locale ID: 2057
    Additional Information 1: fd00
    Additional Information 2: ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160
    Additional Information 3: fd00
    Additional Information 4: ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160

    It’s a fresh install of Vista Ultimate 64 (like a day old install), latest drivers all round, updated DX – all good and shiny.

    It does look very interesting – If it could be made to run and run well I would certainly be up for this game.

  5. Howard says:

    That’s “3.0″ gig – stupid dissapearding edit function….

  6. Serondal says:

    Like I say above I’ve not actaully been able to play the game itself, but if it as flat as you say it is then it would have to be on purpose. The trees may have been left out for technical reasons but the surface of the planet could have contained non-flat terrian. The same engine in UC has tons of planets with mountains lakes forrests ect, there is no reason they couldn’t have such here (minus the trees in the forest ;P ) From the screen shots I’ve not seen much of the landscape itself.

    as far as cover goes , if it is anything like previous games just laying down on your stomach is pretty good cover. Radar can’t scan you when you’re on your stomach and they have to be pretty close to visually see you, more than close enough for you to have sniped them.

    My personal belief is that 3000AD needs to be back to making Space sim games but I’m kind of biased :P

  7. dsmart says:

    OK, second build is done and only a few more items to go.

    New entries are in 1.18.16.01 and 1.18.16.02 sections. What we’re working on is at the top. The current demo version you guys are playing is 1.18.16.

  8. Serondal says:

    Wow O.o that’s quick turn around.

  9. Reverend Speed says:

    That’s a heckuva lotta changes made. Great progress, looking forward to the demo. I don’t for a second imagine you’ve sanded all the corners, but that covers a lot of our problems in the early playtest.

    People who work that fast are just sickening. =)

  10. dsmart says:

    The world is flat in areas. Thats by design. The entire world map was created a professional (Patrick Tuten) at Tuten Graphics. This is what they do for a living. Here are samples of his work.

    People are looking at the desert section of the map – a FRIGGING DESERT – and clamouring about how it is empty, flat etc. A FRIGGING DESERT.

    These are people who haven’t set a SINGLE foot in the game world to experience and explore over 400km of terrain ALL WITH DIFFERENT TOPOLOGIES. Yet, they want to talk about how flat and empty it is.

    Serondal, why do you even bother to argue about it? Just leave him alone to rant about it.

    The bases have LOTS of assets and buildings. You can only put so many things inside a 20km sq area (the size of EACH base) before you can alleviate the sparseness.

    All you have to do is spend some time with the game, explore etc and you will see how and why design decisions were made.

    Yeah, I want to add fences and a bunch of clutter to impact performance even more. This is not Crysis, Just Cause2 or the like. All of which take place in postage stamp sized LEVELS compared to our game world.

    We have a license for SpeedTree RT. I opted not to use it because it would impact performance quite a bit and will only be used in certain areas. The idea is that for a future update, we would implement it. This is not ArmaII which takes place in a single tropical island and thus NEEDS to have foliage and tons of clutter. Our game is based on a NEAR BARREN planet used by the Gammulans for testing. So, no cities, no farms, no discos. Just military bases.

  11. dsmart says:

    Well, since its just us two (Sergio and I), we don’t “develop by committee”. If it needs to get done, we just do it.

    We have a LOT riding on this game and since most of these issues are just minor things that gnaw at you, the changes are not that major. Especially since the code base is set and nothing major is going on atm.

    Anyone who knows me (e.g. Serondal) knows that this is how we do things with our games. Which is why we have such a loyal following and have been able to stay in business for that reason alone.

    We LOVE what we do. Sure we’re not going to always get it right or appeal to everyone, but at the end of the day, we do what we can as best we can and within our abilities and budget.

    You try throwing $3m of YOUR OWN MONEY at something. See how well you sleep at night.

  12. dsmart says:

    @ Howard

    If you are using a 64-Bit OS, your problem is addressed in the KB

  13. Serondal says:

    Those damn Gammulans, I’m sure before hand it had cities and farms, they just didn’t survive the testing ;P -shakes his fist- Even if it didn’t have that stuff before we’ll say it did just to make them look bad.

  14. Howard says:

    @dsmart
    It is? I can see something about that crash to do with admin accounts but searching for variations of “64″ or “bit” yields nowt.

  15. Testicular Torsion says:

    The massive military base seems rather sparse, sterile and empty (as in no cover at all); there is nothing on the base (aside from AA emplacements) that is of human size or scale.

    No kidding. There aren’t even any Coke machines in ‘em…

  16. Gabanski83 says:

    Man, I remember Armour Geddon 2: Codename Hellfire on my Amiga 1200. Good game, but a bit tricky to get the hang of, and I can see how some people might see bits of it in AAW.

  17. jonfitt says:

    So, I have a question (not having played the demo, but having watched videos before):
    If the area covered is so large, without a large number of people, how do you make sure that people actually encounter each other in multiplayer vs games?
    In the larger Battlefield maps this is done through key capture points opening which focusses people’s attention, but still sometimes you can be trying to find people for ages. Arguably these maps are tiny compared to your areas.

    Also, if I eject/get-shot-down in the middle of nowhere should I just suicide rather than walk all the way home?

    I’ve thought about massive scale games before, and these are some of my concerns.

  18. jonfitt says:

    Also, I know the game can’t look like Patrick Tuten’s example renders, but I wish it could. Those are gorgeous!

  19. pirate0r says:

    I had another play with the instant action, i’m seeing the same bug that adam was seeing in this pic

    http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/6103/aaw02.png

    It looks like its trying swim butterfly stroke…

  20. dsmart says:

    @ pirate0r

    Very funny. And that wasn’t Adam – who has never played the game. Nice try though.

  21. dsmart says:

    Anyway, 1.18.16.03 is in regression. Only two more items to go.

  22. dsmart says:

    @ jonfitt

    Also, if I eject/get-shot-down in the middle of nowhere should I just suicide rather than walk all the way home?

    I’ve thought about massive scale games before, and these are some of my concerns.

    Check out the version control file in my post above.

  23. dsmart says:

    Thats very strange. Looks like an issue with that MFB model. I haven’t come across that at all.

    What scenario were you playing? And was that single or multiplayer?

  24. Paul Moloney says:

    Tried the demo; the first thing I’ve noticed is that with the mouse I’m using (Logitech MX518), even with Mouse Sensitivity at 0, it’s still way too twitchy. Is there any way to tone that down a bit, Derek?

    P.

  25. pirate0r says:

    I was playing the first scenario in instant action, the one where your the elite force pilot.

  26. James Brophy says:

    Just catching up on this now… Bloody hell a def that TALKS to the players, this is amazing to me.

    I gotta give this game a go.

  27. Serondal says:

    Mouse sensitivity has always been one of my complaints about fPS mode it makes it next to impossible for me to snipe people because I entire aim at the ground or above their heads. Then I realized aiming above there head still hit them so . . . I guess I just let it go.

  28. Andy`` says:

    I played a little bit. I’m tired and it’s hard to grasp concepts while tired, but the demo confused me. So I’d like to share my tired, exhausted thoughts in the hope that someone can help explain them – and in the hope at least a little bit of this is useful. All I knew about the game beforehand is:
    - It’s a game.
    - It’s a game by a Mr. Derek Smart, who I know little about.
    - People keep complaining about something being flat in comments threads on RPS.
    - The Battlecruiser demo also confused me, way back when. I was also tired.
    - Tired demoage is a bad habit of mine. It will never go away.

    Now what I know?:

    It didn’t seem amazingly accessible. I couldn’t see the main menu options at first because, as I read from left to right and top to bottom and given all my previous experiences with interfaces and interface design (no, I’m not a professional nor claiming it, I just know a few things), the bottom right hand corner of the screen was the last place I expected the menu to be, and the colour of the text seemed to hide it further. Somewhat due to having seen too many splash screens lately in PC games, I initially thought the main menu was a splash screen and when I tried to go through it by clicking furiously and couldn’t, I felt lost and stuck and abandoned like a wild fox in a traffic jam. Help.

    Once I got into the game, I realised there was no tutorial (not that I expected one, given previous Battlecruiser experiences), so I checked the controls in the options: something wasn’t clear in there because it took me a few trips in and out of there to grasp some of the basic concepts (take off, how to get out of a vehicle, how to crouch and go prone). This may be purely the tired mind slowing me down, though I would like to add that some of the keyboard mappings seemed oddly placed.

    The desert (aircraft scenario) is slightly flatter than expected. Flat ground around you is fine but there’s not much detail in the horizon – there’s no world beyond the desert -, and what detail is there is quite smooth. And you don’t get to see it much because you’re high up in the air. The whole thing ends up feeling…maybe, unnatural. I’m not sure that’s the right word though.

    The other desert (ground scenario) isn’t really flat. But I only fully understand this because, trying to follow objectives I didn’t fully understand and trying to avoid constantly dying, I got in a vehicle and drove south until my vehicle broke down while jumping over a hill or bump or something. Then I got out and turned around, and was surrounded by some quite pretty terrain that was previously very, very far away. Which is a shame – why so far away? Why not set [presumably epic battle] on more varied terrain.

    Something about constantly dying. I did alot of that, for various reasons: I’ll begin with AI. Both ground and air AI seems to have impossibly good aim that seems to be directed at the player alot of the time. The ground AI appeared in front of me from nowhere a few times, and would either shoot very accurately from very far away or not realise I was there at a closer distance until I shot it. The air AI could fire what seemed like perfectly accurate rockets (I was moving, so they missed, because I didn’t want to die) from way outside visual range, and missles don’t seem to run out of fuel, ever. Maybe they do and I just died first. This could all be a big illusion, of course.

    Some of the ground AI also seemed to be shooting through walls (or around corners?) in a few spots but its hard to tell, there seem to be alot of them around. But why I’m mostly dying? I’m rubbish at shooting stuff in your game, Derek, I’m sorry. Flying with the keyboard is a hard thing to do in lots of games, but keyboard + mouse controls might have helped, though they’re more difficult to implement and still hard to get feeling right. The ground stuff, it felt like I wasn’t getting any feedback from the game when firing the weapon other than “you’ve fired your gun” and the occasional “target died” if they’re close enough to see clearly. I think its something to do with the shooting being over very long ranges and being a little blind-firish. I was also slightly perplexed by all the scopes on the weapons that I cant use, and being able to zoom in a little with my pistol but not my MG-with-a-scope-attached.

    What I saw of the orders system seemed alright, but I didn’t see much since I was experimenting with it while in the infantry scenario, and I was getting shot at alot. Orders menus disabling movement and aiming = not ideal if you need to give orders while under fire. Probably not a big issue in the grand scope of the game though, I’d hope anyway.

    Which I also don’t get – after playing I went to the AAW website and saw something about it being an open world, but the demo doesn’t seem very representative of that. I didn’t try multiplayer, but in both IA scenarios you’re limited by how far you can go – I even hit an invisible wall in my plane while being told to turn around or I’d die, Battlefield-style. While I’ve never been sure how best you can demonstrate large games properly, I’m sure there’s a better way to do it than this, especially if it’s someone like me who’s unlikely to try out MP without having gotten used to the SP game first.

    It seemed to have an odd charm though, and a potential that either isn’t revealed in the demo or I completely missed in my tired wanderings around in the game. Texturing was nice. Little confused about the polycount and other rendering things in comparison to the system specs (specs seem too high), but given that I probably only saw a small percentage of the game in the demo, it might make sense. Audio seemed fine, given the visuals. HUD was nice enough in infantry view, bit in your face in aircraft view, and a little confusing in vehicle view. It does seem to be trying to take on too many things, and yet if it didn’t do infantry AND vehicle AND air stuff all together, it probably wouldn’t make sense, right?

    But there’s still one thing I don’t know yet, based on my brief and tired messing about with the demo, and thank you to whoever explains this for me.

    What is this game trying to do?

  29. dsmart says:

    @ Andy

    Too tired to respond to everything tonight, but will do so tomorrow. Just wanted to respond to one thing

    Which I also don’t get – after playing I went to the AAW website and saw something about it being an open world, but the demo doesn’t seem very representative of that. I didn’t try multiplayer, but in both IA scenarios you’re limited by how far you can go – I even hit an invisible wall in my plane while being told to turn around or I’d die, Battlefield-style. While I’ve never been sure how best you can demonstrate large games properly, I’m sure there’s a better way to do it than this, especially if it’s someone like me who’s unlikely to try out MP without having gotten used to the SP game first.

    Even though the world is large, there is an edge limit. When you are close to that, there is nothing beyond – so you are asked to turn back.

    If you go to ALT+M map, you will see how large the world is. Then you can use the DJP (see manual) to teleport from one base to the next.

  30. dsmart says:

    Once I got into the game, I realised there was no tutorial (not that I expected one, given previous Battlecruiser experiences), so I checked the controls in the options: something wasn’t clear in there because it took me a few trips in and out of there to grasp some of the basic concepts (take off, how to get out of a vehicle, how to crouch and go prone). This may be purely the tired mind slowing me down, though I would like to add that some of the keyboard mappings seemed oddly placed.

    There is a manual, a tutorial, a keyboard sheet. All in PDF format which you can print. And also accessible from within the game using ALT+D.

    The installer even creates shortcuts to the PDF files for you. And you missed them? Seriously?

  31. dsmart says:

    OK, thats it for tonight.

    Only one more item to go (see VCF) – and possibly find whats going on with that Mobile Forward Base’s wheels as well as the fp pov in Steve’s arm (when using the Wristlaser) at high resolutions.

    This build will be out tomorrow. It is a very small update, so should be quick to download and apply.

    Version Control File

  32. Andy`` says:

    Re, PDFs: Yeah I missed them. I don’t really use my Start Menu anymore: Windows 7, search bar gets used a bunch and I forget about most of the start menu, and the game created a shortcut on the desktop – so the existence of PDF links just flew by me, and the ALT+D thing I would have easily missed in my random trips in and out of the keyboard bindings, since it wasn’t something I was looking for.

    Plus I always like to see how a game teaches you to play from within it. Reading manuals tends to be something not many people do now unless they’re stuck, and while alot of the time it just leads to lazy design (trying to cope with the lowest common denominator), sometimes it can lead to interesting tutorial methods instead.

    I’ll have a look at the docs another time when I’m not half asleep :)

  33. James Brophy says:

    This is clearly a VERRY impressive bit of kit, your buildings are spaced out and it takes a good while to walk anywhere but once your in a car it’s great.

    A couple of thoughts… Using the steam over lay means that the main menu is instantly obscured by every passing steam message.

    I played using my x box 360 controller. Please can we have some on screen prompts for the nervous flyer? Yaw pitch roll accelerate break and weapons?

    The thumb sticks have a problem in that they constantly needed recalibration while walking. because I was sliding about till I rolled both sticks, a few times… I walk somewhere else and I need to do it again.

    flying craft are are beyond under standing from a pick up and play perspective. I’m going to go to the manual and get back to you on that.

    …Jesus the manual is dense. Might want to consider putting an image of a 360 controller in the manual for a simpler/alternate explanation of flight. by the way if the use button can get me into a car or plane why cant the same button get me out?

    Steering feels a little strange, you do it with shoulder buttons. Surely binding that to the left thumb stick would make more sense. I do love the accelerator and break through the triggers, letting you pull some amazing hand break turns. Everyone try the buggies, they rock.

    Clearly there is some kick ass driving ctf to come in city maps with lots of obstacles for flying machines.

    Looking round is achieved by clicking the second hat switch and clicking through views one after another. why not give us the power to glance around by flicking into a view by leaning the second stick to the right left up or down. holding it down might give you a rear view. Letting people feel more a part of their craft.

    I encountered a bug where I tried to drive an enemy car and found I could still access my gun and weapons menu instead of driving.

    Other then that it looks nice, the detail level is acceptable for the scale of the levels. I’m going to go back tomorrow and have another go.

  34. Daniel Rivas says:

    R.A.N.D.O.M. weapon. Really? Well, okay.

    My main problem with this demo was that it took me around 10 minutes (and several crashes) before I worked out how to draw my weapon. Perhaps this means I am simply not hardcore enough? Also, the manual refers to being able to aim down the sights with the right mouse button? This does not appear to work on my machine.

    In any case, I was interested in this title, but I’m not now, mostly due to personal issues with the interface, and aforementioned crashes. Actually, that’s not fair. If those things were fixed, I’m not sure I’d like it. Perhaps it’s just not my kind of game after all.

    I found particularly annoying the lack of an option to retry a mission after dying in the first 30 seconds. I realise you “made a design decision” not to have autosaves, but perhaps just one, on loading the level?

  35. Gap Gen says:

    “There are NO crashes in the game. Not one. In fact, there aren’t any bugs left in our tracking dB. So whatever that was about, check your system.”

    I’m intrigued – can you ever be sure a piece of software is bug-free? I’m not sure “there are no reported bugs at this time” is the same as “there are no bugs in the game at all”.

    And yeah, I can dig that some crashes are down to hardware (and even ones related to a software-hardware interaction are partly the software’s fault, even though I understand they’re hell to sort out).

  36. Bobsy says:

    This thread stopped being cool when everyone became friends and hugged and learned to get along. You bloody hippy, Smart!

  37. dsmart says:

    @ James Brophy

    I encountered a bug where I tried to drive an enemy car and found I could still access my gun and weapons menu instead of driving.

    Not a bug. You probably ended up in a passenger seat instead of the driver seat. There are three types distinguished by icons when you point at the vehicle

    - driver (you get to drive)

    - gunner (you get to use mounted gun, can’t drive, can’t use your weapons)

    - passenger (can’t drive, can’t use mounted gun, can use your weapons)

    @ Daniel Rivas

    I found particularly annoying the lack of an option to retry a mission after dying in the first 30 seconds. I realise you “made a design decision” not to have autosaves, but perhaps just one, on loading the level?

    Excellent idea and very easily implemented.

    My main problem with this demo was that it took me around 10 minutes (and several crashes) before I worked out how to draw my weapon.

    Jeez dude, press the weapon key. It is standard on all fps games. 1,2,3 etc

    @ Bobsy

    This thread stopped being cool when everyone became friends and hugged and learned to get along. You bloody hippy, Smart!

    lol!!! At the end of the day, we’re all gamers. But hey, what do anti-social misfits care about that. I for one, am just going to ignore the trolls and let you guys and the RPS folks deal with them. I’m more interested in imparting knowledge about the game to those who are genuinely interested. Not trying to win everyone over – just those few who have a cursory interest and who think they like the game enough to invest in it.

  38. Davee says:

    Well, this is probably nothing I will buy. It didn’t run well on my mid-spec PC (with Windows XP as OS), and I found the gameplay to be somewhat flawed and confusing. Especially since it didn’t have a taditional step-by-step in-game tutorial as games like this could really use (and many lack). You basicly have to expect the general player to be pretty dumb for him/her not to miss things. Be over-obvious really. I also found a few bugs and had a few crashes during my playthrough. On the bright side, one of those bugs were pretty funny – I was flying a transport-aircraft and was blown up by a missle. What happens? After a few seconds my body spawns at the spot where the obliterated aircraft was, lying down. It start to fall and when it hits the ground I hear a rather loud “Oof!”. All during the stats-page.

    While I can see this beeing something a few hardcore players can enjoy, I would be suprised if it would become a hit – atleast in this state.

    But it’s fun to see a dev talking to us, more of this please, RPS ;)

    And I’m saying this as a fan of soldier-sims, Planetside and the BF-games among others.

  39. dsmart says:

    On the bright side, one of those bugs were pretty funny – I was flying a transport-aircraft and was blown up by a missle. What happens? After a few seconds my body spawns at the spot where the obliterated aircraft was, lying down. It start to fall and when it hits the ground I hear a rather loud “Oof!”. All during the stats-page.

    Thats not a bug. Your character was blown out of the craft. The transition continues while the “you’re dead” screen is being displayed in order to let you see what happened.

    And I’m saying this as a fan of soldier-sims, Planetside and the BF-games among others.

    Those are not soldier sims. They are run-of-the-mill cookie cutter fps games. One of which is an abject failure.

    Plus, you can’t compare games within this context. While others set out to roll out the same derivative bullshit over and over, we chose not to. For that, we’d be making space sims or worse, RPGs.

    So its hard to get into, thats just fine by me. Games require a level of investment and [some] gamers have been spoiled by the [best selling] crap on consoles; yet they want to scream out loud when their PC games are “consolified”.

    This is not the kind of game you should even think about, let alone consider, is you’re not willing to invest the time in it. You’re not going to get any rewards there.

    While I can see this beeing something a few hardcore players can enjoy, I would be suprised if it would become a hit – atleast in this state.

    Why does a game need to be mainstream to be a hit? It doesn’t. There are thousands of games released each year with “hit” written all over them. Yet they manage to tank and are forgotten almost immediately at release.

    For us, the hit would be enough players buying it and allowing us to recoup our investment. In that regard, I have no doubt that it will happen. One man’s million unit “hit”, is another man’s 50K unit “hit”.

    You like soldier sims? Seriously? Have you played Arma? At all? How about America’s Army?

    Calling BF games – let alone Planetside – “solder-sims” and trying to compare them to this game is just.plain.funny.

  40. James Brophy says:

    @dsmart
    I do recognize that all craft have multiple seats, but I was in the driver seat of an enimy car and I did have access to my on foot weapons menu, my machine gun was cliping through the dash board.
    Your hardline stance on not beliving people are encountering bugs clearly comes from a lot of in informed comment in the past. I’ll try and repeat it and get you a screen shot.
    I was in the drivers

  41. James Brophy says:

    Sorry, “uninformed comment”

    RPS: Where did the edit button go?

  42. Howard says:

    @dsmart
    Any chance you could elucidate a little more for me regarding my issue? Would love to give this another try.

    Also what about performance? It does seem very poor on even powerful rigs – comments? Suggestions?

  43. dsmart says:

    @ James Brophy

    Yes, a shot would help thanks!

    @ Howard

    The only 64 bit issue we are aware of results from permissions. If you go to the KB and read item #1 in that first entry entiled
    Game fails to start or crashes in AAW.BBZ / AOA.BBZ files
    it will help.

    1) The performance is inexcusably bad. Running on a Dual Core £.0 gig with 4 gig of ram and a G260OC2 at 1600×1200, full detail I get 10-18 FPS when nothing is going on on screen. That is just dire.

    uhm, try a lower resolution and setting? On your rig, the shadows and light shafts are killer. If you set everything to HIGH and probably 4x FSAA, you should be fine. Otherwise, well, thats why there are options. Find the one that fits. You don’t have to run at 1600×1200 to enjoy the game. And you certainly don’t need anything higher than 25-30 fps.

    2) SHIFT and CTRL are none bindable. Deal breaker for me. I have to have those as bindable keys really, particularly ina game like this that demands so many inputs.

    Might as well stop playing then because we can’t change it. Those are key modifiers that will cause problems if you are allowed to bind them.

    The default key bindings are just fine and you don’t need to mess with those modifiers.

    3) It crashes after a few minutes of being in an Instant Action and I cannot see why.

    No clue. I don’t know enough about your system to offer any assistance. You’re on your own, bud. Let me know how it goes.

  44. Daniel Rivas says:

    @dsmart:

    “Jeez dude, press the weapon key. It is standard on all fps games. 1,2,3 etc”

    I’m sad to say this did not cross my mind until I looked it up in the manual after the aforementioned 10 minutes. I actually tend to associate the mouse wheel more with switching weapons. Also, not starting with a weapon held out threw me somewhat, I assumed it was a strange bug, and my gun model just wasn’t being drawn.

    I think my lack of hardcoreyness has just been confirmed.

    On a sidenote, does seem to be crashing rather a lot. I’m passing no judgement, but I don’t think my setup is particularly esoteric?

  45. dsmart says:

    @ Daniel

    lol!!! We won’t hold that against you :)

    Oh!! someone (I’ll be arsed if I’m going to scroll up to find out who that was) mentioned that they couldn’t get “Aim Down Sight” to work. It works – but only for assault rifles and sniper rifles due to how they are held.

    What are the specs for your rig?

    OS (32 or 64?)
    CPU
    MEMORY
    VIDEO CARD + MEMORY
    AUDIO CARD

    And what res are you running the game at? What options do you have set for the game config?

    Having the latest video card drivers is an absolute must. We’ve had crashes in video card drivers and which were unrelated to the game. They automagically fixed themselves with new graphics drivers.

  46. Daniel Rivas says:

    @dsmart

    “mentioned that they couldn’t get “Aim Down Sight” to work.”

    That was me again. I specifically tried it with the main assault rifle, so I don’t know what’s going on there.

    Anyway, I’m running it at 1280×1024, at the default settings.

    Specs:

    GFX Card: Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT
    Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+
    Memory: 2GB DIMM DDR2
    OS: Windows XP Professional (SP3)

    My drivers are up to date. Thoughts?

  47. Howard says:

    @dsamrt

    Run at lower details or resolution? You jest, surely?

    Graphically your game is, while not bad, definitely behind the times – a long way behind the times. This in itself is not an issue but saying that I need to turn the details down on a machine that can run every PC game out there at flat-out max is just insane. O_O

  48. dsmart says:

    Your forgot to mention your audio i.e. is it on-board or add-in (e.g. Audigy etc)

    Anyway, what resolution are you running the game at?

    Before you even go in and tweak anything, delete the game_config.ini file located in the game folder. Then start the game and new one with default settings will be created.

    Now go to config and turn off music, then set audio hardware to 0 (this will force software audio instead of hardware).

    Run the game again at the defaults and see what happens.

    Here is a trick to get sandbox mode working. Go to the multiplayer screen and setup a LAN multiplayer game. Then join that same session right there in the interface.

    You will then be on the server all by yourself. Anything you can do in single player, you can do in multiplayer, so this sandbox mode allows you to check out various things.

    Let me know how it goes so that I can figure out whats going on and try to get up going.

    If all else fails – and if I have time – its time to remote debug it and see where/why its crashing. Don’t fret. I’ve done this many times before (with our testers) when researching bugs we cannot reproduce on our own. They simply open a firewall port, I send them a small app (which Visual Studio uses to connect to the remote session) for them to run as well as a new game exe with debug information. I then connect to that machine remotely, fire up the game and trace through it until the crash or bug condition occurs. You can watch. :) Then I trap it locally and see whats going on. If its on my end, I fix it. If its on Sergio’s end, I open up a Mantis report and alert him to it.

  49. dsmart says:

    @ Howard

    Graphically your game is, while not bad, definitely behind the times – a long way behind the times. This in itself is not an issue but saying that I need to turn the details down on a machine that can run every PC game out there at flat-out max is just insane. O_O

    The choice is yours to make. While comparing this to other games remember that our game is not about graphics alone, but a MASSIVE world with INSANE draw distances, NUMEROUS models (heck the terrain engine alone is worth a tear or too from your GPU and CPU). So please make contextual comparisons rather than blanket ones.

    To wit: The ENTIRE island that Crysis fits on, sits in a small football file size corner of our game world. Heck, if it were there and you were in a fighter going at Mach 1, you probably won’t even spot it. Now imagine if Crysis was as large as this game world. It will never – ever – run.

    Your call. I don’t care what choice you make.

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