Be Excellent To Each Other

Did anyone play this when it came out? I got it on PC today, cost? a mere £5.50 delivered. I was kinda put off reading reviews because it only scored 7. But I really like it. The reviews said the graphics weren't all that but I found that using Nhancer allows forced FSAA all the way to 32. So I ramped it up and it is very pretty.

Really enjoying it so far. A bit too much dialogue for my liking but hey, he's been missing for a long time so it kinda makes sense

I had raw hatred running through my veins for the 90s original, so no purchase from me.

One thing I have noticed is it leaves me feeling dizzy after playing it. It's the way it bounces left and right when you run.

It's somewhere on my 'if I really want a mindless shooter and have literally nothing else to play and it's only £5' list.

You got to the platformy bit, didn't you.

Exactly. The jumping was so knacked in that game. Then they go and do the South Park atrocity using the same engine.

"I used to be a native American!" is a great line.

Turok just makes me want another, current gen Cadillacs and Dinosaurs game.

I'd also note that Ross Geller seems to be alive and on Wikipedia, adding lengthy, detailed and entirely gratuitous 'dinosaurs featured in this game' sections to the articles on both Turok and Cadillacs and Dinosaurs.

We ought to do that with crocodiles.

Did someone say dinosaurs?

We should have a discussion about games that have crocodiles in.

Perhaps some sort of death clock...

Hated the demo so much.

And the N64 games were terrible.

Never going to think about this game ever again.


BYE!

Whoah. Whoah. Firstly this has nothing AT ALL to do with Acclaim? Akklaim? whatever the fuzzle they were called. This game is made by someone else totally and uses the Unreal 3 engine. So basically it's Unreal with a facelift. TOTALLY different to any of the earlier Turoks.

So no dinosaurs, guns or native americans?

By that logic, Undertow is basically Unreal with a facelift. Or Gears of War is Unreal with a facelift. Or ...

Anything that uses the Unreal engine is going to feel like Unreal. Just in the same way that Quake 4 used the Doom 3 engine and thus the physics and motion were identical.

Okays?

Theme wise? sure. However the gameplay motion and physics are radically different.

Rainbow 6 Vegas? Gears of War? Lost Odyssey, for goodness sake? All of those use Unreal Engine 3 and feel nothing like Unreal. Lost Odyssey is a flipping JRPG!

Actually, Lost Odyssey probably only uses it for the cutscenes, but my point stands.

If I wasn't a cripple I'd go down to Blockbuster and buy this for 360 just for a larf. Because of this thread.

OK let me put it like this. If you jumped off a cliff wearing a Fila BJ tracksuit and lived, and then jumped off the same cliff wearing a pair of jeans and a Tshirt you would fall in the same way with the same terminal velocity. Why? because the physics would be the same.

I have never, ever played RV6 because I think Tom Clancy games are too anal to be fun. As for GOW? Firstly it's third person only and you can't escape that. However, this game feels incredibly similar to that in the way it moves and functions. Weapons are pretty standard fare, seen a hundred times before. Infact, all this game feels like to me is Unreal 2 (which I absolutely loved) with Turok in it as the main character, some cheesy stories and not much else.

As I said before. Doom 3 and Quake 4 were different games completely. However, they both felt identical and played very similar due to the base engine being the same. So, Turok uses the same engine, same physics and same handling as Unreal games. The only difference is the textures, maps, etc. But my point remains. Underneath the physics are exactly the same as Unreal 3. Maybe I am just incredibly sensitive at being able to tell this? who knows?

I still think this is a fantastic game though. It's quite hard because the last game I played was Fallout 3, which goes at a much slower pace than this.

And yes, I do like Turok, I do think hunting dinosaurs is cool and I didn't mind the platformy bits in the original/s because AT LEAST they were trying something new. South Park was gash because it was a quick cash in with no thought put into it at all.

Seriously, you're talking out of your arse big time.

Have you ever seen Undertow That doesn't have the same physics and motion as Unreal. It's not even an FPS.

Gears of War uses the Unreal 3 engine, and doesn't have remotely the same physics and motion as Unreal (or UTIII, for that matter). Everything in that is times more weighty.

Similary games like Frontlines (realistic FPS) Leisure suit Larry: Box Office Bust (Diarrhoea in game form) etc etc. Same engine, different designers, different feel.

Also, The engine has little effect on the game in the manner you're talking about. Twilight Princess used essentially the same engine as The wind waker. The games look entirely different because of different art direction.

The manner in which you interact with the game - this motion and physics you talk about - is down to settings & data the game designers choose to put into the engine, not a function of the engine design itself, unless the engine is incredibly poorly made.

Furthermore, it's not the Unreal engine which does the physics - it's the Physics engine, which in Turoks case is PhysX (admittedly, the same engine as UTIII). But that's irrelevant, as you can get so many different Physics models out of one engine. They're meant to be flexible. And again it's not the engine which describes motion, again, it's design set by animators and similar roles.

So in summary, the fact they share the same engine is worthless as a guide, it's what the game designers were aiming for (and whether they managed to hit what they were aiming for) that matters.

The reason Quake 4 and Doom 3 had the same feel was because (a) The engine isn't all that flexible (See: Rage thread) and (b) because the designers of Q4 liked the feel of Doom 3, and so kept it for their game.

Turok isn't Unreal with a facelift. Where's the funny gravity effects, lack of inertia and the insane speed? Where's the odd weaponry array such as goo guns, weapons which bounce off the walls, rocket launchers which launch improbable amounts of rockets? Where's the ability to launch yourself around with rockets? You know, the things which made Unreal and it's various sequels unique and worth playing?

So fundamentally different physics, design and gameplay. But because it has the same 3d graphics engine (but not the same gfx designers), it's Unreal with a facelift. Do me a lemon.

While typing that out based on a few assumptions based on what I've read, I've downloaded Turok, just to check I'm not entirely wrong. It's now done. Incidentally, rated about 1.5/5 by XBox users.

Conclusions:

Unreal didn't have cocking awful knockback every time you got hit, that left you with no idea which direction you were previously facing in a bland featureless jungle.
It didn't have a bland featureless jungle. Unreal, for it's time, had levels full of character and you didn't tend to get lost. UTIII has small levels that are by requirement easy to navigate, but still with interesting nooks and crannies.
It didn't have bland and boring ranged weapons
It didn't have an easy to use instakill close range weapon (or indeed any melee weapon in the original), as for UT, if you wanted Kills with the impact hammer, damn, you needed to know how to use it.
It rarely put you in a position where you could die within a second from full health.
I haven't yet found a rocket launcher to see if I can launch myself around the level with it, but given what I've seen, that's highly unlikely.
It wasn't constrained to what was realistic, in terms of weapons, physics and similar things.

And given I've just been sent back 10 minutes from the afore mentioned surprise 1 second death, I don't feel at all like continuing to see if such things are available in the demo.

This game plays nothing like unreal, and had I bought it on the recommendation that "It's like unreal" I'd be remarkably pissed off. Have you even played UTIII?

No, for the entire game. Bearing in mind Game engines deal with various stuff a non-games developer wouldn't think of such as file management (and indeed, Lost Odyssey has loading time problems due to the development teams lack of knowledge of the engine), and various AI hooks and enviromental triggers, if you've licensed an engine, you don't want to waste money duplicating what has already been put in the engine unless you have a good reason not to.

Did someone say dinosaurs?

I hated N64 Turok mainly because it was my first encounter with an analogue controller. A bad analogue controller at that. Ick.

Oh, and jumping puzzles in First Person perspective? You'd better believe that's a paddling.

Did lead to the awesome Jonathan Nash review though. Anyone know if that's online?

"The cows run straight at you and shoot at you, while the turkeys, ingeniously, run straight at you and shoot you."

Turok on the N64 had some wonderful guns, though. I remember playing some of the early levels with an idkfa and the overkill fun was just amazing.

"Come and get me then!"


(searching for that picture I found about a million pictures of azn girls thinking they were cosplaying by painting some stupid triangles under their eye and adopting a sour expression)

When I think about Mirror's Edge, it's like thinking about ex girlfriends. I remember all the good stuff like the stylish imagery and the smoothness and things involved for a while, then I remember the sheer frustration and little niggling things that lead me to not wanting anymore. So I put the phone/360 pad down and do something else instead.

I would like to submit that uptojump as a mini review, as it best explains my feeling towards it.

Mirror's Edge? Another Unreal Engine 3 game. That's why it plays exactly like UTIII.

I'm on the penultimate level, on my first ever playthrough, and I still haven't shot anyone. I know I'm about to have to take one shot with a sniper rifle now.

It's thrilling and infuriating at the same time. Thank goodness every cop and soldier wants to smash your teeth in if you get close.

I love it. I love it to bits.

I sent a mini review to doccyG.

I really, really like it, but only for short bursts,as I get most frustrated with it, and tehn don't want to play it anymore for a while.

I loved Mirrors edge. and UTIII too an almost unhealthy level. Both use the same engine, as does leisure suit larry, so I'll have to get that too.

*gnrk*

I'm seriously struggling not posting a diatribe concerning this 32xFSAA mentioned in the first post (and more specifically, the fact it shows that the graphics card is enormously overspecced, and so you're wasting lots of power on it doing essentially nothing. The supersampling increase from 4x to 32x leads to pretty much no difference as 4x generates enough information for one pixel, and all you're doing is pumping insignificant pixel shaders)

Like I said, struggling. (32xFSAA is a sop for people who spent stupid amounts on graphics cards to make them feel it was worth it.)

*Nngh*

£175 for a graphics card is not that much. £600? sure, a grand? absolutely. But £175 is half of what most of you paid for your 360.

£175 is more than I paid for my Xbox two years ago, and if all that £175 buys you is the ability to turn on an antialiasing mode that is indistinguishable from the one the normal cards run then it's not money well spent.

It's not money well spent for me either, BUT! It seems to be for JC, so that's all that matters.

This is true. I once spent a little more than that on a prostitute, and while I'm not especially proud of it, I'd defiantly consider it money well spent.
Especially as I ended up marrying her.

You misread: I didn't say 32xFSAA is a sop for John Coffey as he's spent too much on a graphics card, but rather 32xFSAA is a sop for people who have spent too much on a graphics card.

The fact remains, however, that 32xfsaa is pointless. Take a 1440x900 screen

The basic simplified theory behind Full scene anti aliasing. (Implementation does vary. As do the results.)

No antialiasing, it gets rendered at 1440x900.
4xFSAA, it gets rendered at 5790x3600. Each pixel on screen is taken from a 4x4 (16 pixel) block of pixels on the 5790x3600 screen.
32xFSAA, it gets rendered at 46090x26800. Each pixel is taken from a 32x32 (1024 pixel) block of pixels on the 46090x26800 screen.

So yes, 32xFSAA is overkill. You don't need to supersample a pixel that much, and you're just using and throwing away pixel shaders.

So while the graphics card may be able to do that, it's pointless. But it's a selling point for people who like upgrading the hardware. Ignoring the fact that they're not getting anything new for their hardware other than the fact they can tell their friends they've got anti aliasing TO THE MAX! The thing is, that extra power could be used for other things, but it won't be. The budget required for a game to make worthwhile use of that power will inevitably require the game to be released on consoles... So what you're getting is Console games (Turok) with a few settings which use the graphics card in ways that make little difference but for bragging rights.

I wish I was that knowledgeable about something... You impressed me with the numbers!

I'm sold!

I didn't know any of that until I tried it. And youre right, over 4x makes bugger all difference.

I have some magic beans....

Oh, for a video of me saying exactly this to you eight or so years ago about how your graphics card running Unreal Tournament in 1600x1200 (or something) didn't make it any better than mine which could 'only' manage it in 1024x768 as the game still looked and played exactly the same

Set Crysis to enthusiast (ultra high) and then set 4xfsaa. Then tell me what FPS you average on 1680x1050. I highly doubt it's over 30 on your hardware.

My card gives mid 40s. Which of course is somewhat down to having AA turned on but also because I'm running uber textures.

Your cards would have cost more than that each when they were put in your computer. Also SLI is a big waste of air most of the time unless you're trying to achieve good FPS and AA results in gaming. £175 is the most I have ever spent on a graphics card. The closest I have come to that was $100 for a Rad 9200pro and then $140 in a price cockup about 2 months later for a 5950u which should have cost me over $450.

And the only reason I have the 280GTX is because a mate of mine asked me to do him a website. I would have done it for free, being that he's a mate, but he offered to buy me a videocard for around £200. I looked about, found the GTX for £175, he bought it, it arrived a few days later. Which of course at £175 was a rock bottomed bargain because they still fetch £200 second hand on Ebay. Not only that but my computer keeps on giving. Most recently I sold the green predator (which was a complete freebie as the black one cost nothing) for £110 on Ebay after fees and shipping. None too shabby considering the computer was £270.

Infact if I added up what I had spent on the PC now (with all the fancy doodads and water cooling etc) it would be hard to make £500 total. And that incs blu ray, 280gtx, water cooling etc.

Pure and unadulterated bargainage, with mass FPS thrown in as a bonus

And you are surpised by this... Why? Do you know me at all?!

Oh and I'm really enjoying Turok

I found it all a bit hard, so I put god mode on. Oddly, you're not god and you can still die but it makes you a lot stronger. Still die from time to time, and it sucks how you have to restart a checkpoint and not right where you died but ho hum.

I love the sticky gun. It fires a sticky ball that you detonate with your next shot. Great for making meat fountains as the game calls them

It was oversimplified - do the maths and you'll spot the flaw in the naive situation fairly quickly. 1440*32*900*32 = 1,327,104,000 pixels. With a 32 bit framebuffer, 4 bytes per pixel, so 1,327,104,000*4 = 5,308,416,000 bytes... so approximately 5 gigabytes, ignoring the fact that you'll have 1 equally large depth buffer*, and also the final render target and its double buffer. No gfx card has that amount of memory, even if you ignored vertex buffers, texture buffers and shaders. So while that's the theory of what it's doing, and the desired effect, it surely doesn't render to a buffer that big and scale down - and how it does do it is graphics card dependent. (And hey, this is the kind of stuff you need to know if you write 3D engines. I'm sure you're knowledgable about whatever the hell it is you do)
* - Indeed, what you'll find is that usually, this is the only thing supersampled, transparency aside.



Aye. The power of the card isn't necessarily useless. The most obvious immediate is the ability to increase resolution for crisper visuals. Most other things will be game dependent, and unfortunately, as I said, I don't see many developers queuing up to take advantage of such things. Crysis wasn't exactly a success. Partly as it was marketed as the game you need a good graphics card for.

But I wouldn't go above 4xAA - you've got to the point of diminishing returns after that (and I've seen one case that started having a decrease in quality after 8x. By 64x it looked like someone had got a bit vaseline happy. And had about 0.01fps)
I'd imagine your card would run cooler - and so be costing less in electricity.



Just a small question, but how often do you actually play Crysis? I see it all the time mentioned as a benchmarking tool, but incredibly rarely as a game.

However long it takes to fling his string.

It's become a bit Spinal Tapesque. Which amuses me greatly.