Possible Good news about Demo

[Ad-Aware]

Okay well ive been scoureing the internet for all avialable info, pictures, movies, etc about this game. I gota say i found a substantial ammount of Screenshots that arnt on the Offical website.

Anyway among my reading i found somehting very interesting regarding single player campaign.
The main programmer, in an interview, mentioned that the thing they're most proud of is that maps can have upto 5 million polygons on them. Meaning that they can fit upto 4 missions on one map (he elaborated on this, im not doing guesswork) , wihtout any extra load times.

Meaning, that we COULD theoretically be in for a real treat in regard to ammount of missions that will be playable in the Demo.

Ofcourse i would love the demo to be multiuplayer as well..but i highly doubt it.
Im also presuming a few missions, perhaps skirmish with one faction, and maybe a cinematic or 2 for the missions. However as AGM has said on numerous occasions, it should be more then enogh to get a feel for the game.

Personaly the thing im looking to most, is the whole Taking prisoners thing, and Evacing wounded units so they dont get taken hostage, i cant wait to see how it works..and ofcourse i dont need to mention the increeidible graphics...time to get a new vid card + 512 more ram.
Anyway, wat are your thoughts?

[Ithaca]

That's very nice... I hope that this game will give all the eye-candy that i'm hoping for. :P

Screenshots look great!

BTW, yesterday de countdown for de demo release had to go for about 6 hours...

Now it is set on 29 (!) days. I must say that this was quit a disappointment for me when i woke up and checked the site :(

[Ad-Aware]

Ok not to worry the count down is back to 3 days 16 hours atm.

Anyway in resone to your comment about eye candy, let me give u a picture, UNreal Tournament 3 Engine, generates levels from about 200 million polygons, now the engine on this, if u download it, looks insane, google it.
Now With the uneal 3 engine, they were extactic about the way they manged to get 2 million polygon models down to about 200,000 polygons. ANd they still look like the 2 million polygon models.
Now lets look at Act of war Engine, a map wth 5 million polygons, using super compression, meaning hundreds if not thousanbds of models, im preety sure theyre gona have more eye candy then you can handle..you mgiht go blind from the shaders they used for the lighting :)
Btw to date, no other RTS evne touches on shaders, short of pixel shader for water.
So Ladies and Gentlmen, this is gona be one amazing engine..and their systemr requirments...i just dont belive them, in my mind your gona need atleast (to run at max detail at 1024 by 768):

2.4 gig + cpu (AMD 64 obvisouly diff clock speeds)
1 gig + DDR (I think 400 + will be better, and dual channel would be beautiful)
9800 pro (judging fromt he graphics...id say 9600 +, but to run it smooth at max detials 9800 pro +)
A few gigs of HD
And the better ur sound card + the more speakers the better :)

[Ithaca]

My specs. I already posted this at the system requirements topic.

AMD Athlon 64 3400 @ 2.4Ghz
1024 DDR 400 Mhz RAM
Ati X800 Pro 256 MB GDDR3 Ram
200 GB SATA HDD

I don't think that the game will run slow.

screen res. 1280x1024.

[Achilleus]

@Dark Mace how u know are u a "b*ta t*st*r "^^? u know what i mean :)

[BOMBLORD]

Originally posted by Dark_Mace
Ok not to worry the count down is back to 3 days 16 hours atm.

Anyway in resone to your comment about eye candy, let me give u a picture, UNreal Tournament 3 Engine, generates levels from about 200 million polygons, now the engine on this, if u download it, looks insane, google it.
Now With the uneal 3 engine, they were extactic about the way they manged to get 2 million polygon models down to about 200,000 polygons. ANd they still look like the 2 million polygon models.
Now lets look at Act of war Engine, a map wth 5 million polygons, using super compression, meaning hundreds if not thousanbds of models, im preety sure theyre gona have more eye candy then you can handle..you mgiht go blind from the shaders they used for the lighting :)
Btw to date, no other RTS evne touches on shaders, short of pixel shader for water.
So Ladies and Gentlmen, this is gona be one amazing engine..and their systemr requirments...i just dont belive them, in my mind your gona need atleast (to run at max detail at 1024 by 768):

2.4 gig + cpu (AMD 64 obvisouly diff clock speeds)
1 gig + DDR (I think 400 + will be better, and dual channel would be beautiful)
9800 pro (judging fromt he graphics...id say 9600 +, but to run it smooth at max detials 9800 pro +)
A few gigs of HD
And the better ur sound card + the more speakers the better :)
there was such game.codname:panzers phase one.
there ware shaders there.that game is just not too known...http://www.panzers.com/index.php?page=forum.en.panzers
I don't have any cash for a new upgrade...the computer parts in isreal are quite expensive compare to the prices at the USaI shuld pray that P4 2400 mghz 512@400 ram,and a 9600 pro 128 will do.....

[Ad-Aware]

@Achillies no im not a beta tester, but i did a lot of scouring on the internet, and i did alll the reading i could, and thats wat i found. The specs im basing on my own presumption, but its quite an educated guess.

@Bobmlord im not in US im IN australia, and parts arnt cheap here either, my system is very close to yours:

p4 2.6 @ 800fsb
512 pc2700 :( (they ripped me of when i bought it, promised 3200)
128 9600 pro

[I3ag_OF_I3ones]

computer geeks :weirdblue

[KingsRevenge]

I think multiple missions just means multiple objectives within a mission which will be nice.

I figure it'll be like you'll complete one objective but another one will appear and will keep you in the game element instead of having you have to reload a new level. Similar to mech commander.

My rig is basic but I plan on getting an upgrade this summer.

[Ad-Aware]

no im not an idiot, i know the difference between objectives and missions.
I mean missions like different sets, maybe a mission in moscow, then a mission in Syria and then a mission in Washinghton, on one map. 3 missions, not 3 objectives.

[BOMBLORD]

they did promised huge maps.... I just want to destroy the pentagon all over again (just like in red alert 2) but this time,in ultra good grafics......

[KingsRevenge]

Originally posted by Dark_Mace
no im not an idiot, i know the difference between objectives and missions.
I mean missions like different sets, maybe a mission in moscow, then a mission in Syria and then a mission in Washinghton, on one map. 3 missions, not 3 objectives.

I don't see how that will be possible with the visual load of the game and holding different texture sets for Syria,Washington, and Moscow. Just with me thinking about it here I don't know what kinda crazy optimization level they could make to have a mission set like that possible on a wide range of systems. I hereby stand by my idea of multiple objectives :)

[Ad-Aware]

I direct your attention to unreal engine 3, they otpimzed 200 millio polygon levels into a few million.
It is pssible, and it will be done.

[KingsRevenge]

THe level themselves can have that many polys in them, but its the TEXTURES(MEMORY) that is the main limitation when you consider something like that. You can have all kinds of various LOD levels on objects, but they won't look like much without the proper texturing.

And if you wonder how the LOD works in regards to polygon levels. Visit the ROAM implementation that was used in the Tribes 1 engine. Yes ROAM allowed for great distances to be displayed on the screen, but it couldn't do nothing with making the textures span over different tilesets.

BTW Sweeney owns!

[Ad-Aware]

Textures alone dont add to model complexity, textures are the paint for the model. The more polygons the better defenition of a model, and thus the more "room" for textures. And i do agree with you about the LOD, but im assuming this will be like any other RTS, in that the LOd will increase as you zooom in, and decrease as you zoom out, meaning realisticaly it shouldnt be the problem.

Where as polygons, are visible even if something is zoomed out, becasue polygons are the so called "3d" elemnt that "sticks out" and wat make it different to a 2d cardboard cut out

And i think we see from the screenshots that both the level of the polygons and the level of textures is unbelievable.

[bomber666]

i think my comp can handle this game. To make my detail short a P4 3ghz and Radeon 9800 128mb.

[KingsRevenge]

Originally posted by Dark_Mace
Textures alone dont add to model complexity, textures are the paint for the model. The more polygons the better defenition of a model, and thus the more "room" for textures. And i do agree with you about the LOD, but im assuming this will be like any other RTS, in that the LOd will increase as you zooom in, and decrease as you zoom out, meaning realisticaly it shouldnt be the problem.

Where as polygons, are visible even if something is zoomed out, becasue polygons are the so called "3d" elemnt that "sticks out" and wat make it different to a 2d cardboard cut out

And i think we see from the screenshots that both the level of the polygons and the level of textures is unbelievable.

What I am saying is textures are the limitation when you consider a map that is suppose to span multiple game worlds due to size constraints. You cannot load all those textures into the memory and keep them there if a player is to be scrolling all over the map. One thing for sure if your gonna need a big system to run everything at the max with all the loading and popping. On act-of-war.com he has IGN videos on there that show you the LOD popping of zooming in and out and black space around the map where things weren't being rendered in, limitations of the engine I guess we'll have to see.

[Ad-Aware]

Im gueessing they dont load the textrues all in at once..like u said..the black is there for a reason..either way i stand by my conviction of several missions per map.
And yes i guess will have too wait and see.

[BOMBLORD]

people people.don't forget that they probbly took the screen shots while runing the game on some deul fx6800 ultra.probbly with 4 gigs of ram,and deul opteron/xeon CPU.
so just hope that the game will run on most peoples ***-broken rigs....

[Ad-Aware]

rofl too true.
ANd woot, only 9 hours to go to demo..when i wake up i shall begin the donwload..all u can wait dont hog my bandwidth, k? :)

[BOMBLORD]

lol,you sleep 9 houres ? the good side is that I am sick.so I will have a pretty much free day :D

[Tiberian]

Originally posted by BOMBLORD
people people.don't forget that they probbly took the screen shots while runing the game on some deul fx6800 ultra.probbly with 4 gigs of ram,and deul opteron/xeon CPU.
so just hope that the game will run on most peoples ***-broken rigs....

WooT that's my rig, so no worries for me :p:
I can't control my self much longer......must have muste have the demo :D
argg 1 day 8 hours and counting........

[AgmLauncher]

Originally posted by Dark_Mace
rofl too true.
ANd woot, only 9 hours to go to demo..when i wake up i shall begin the donwload..all u can wait dont hog my bandwidth, k? :)

What? I still have 2 days and 3 hours left. Wtf?

[Auxarius]

There's definately something wrong with this countdown - 17hrs here, at my friends it was 1 day 22 hrs ! I'm just gonna be sooo ****ed off it it'll come-out in like a month..

[KingsRevenge]

Heheh I dont bother looking at that countdown, I will just come on here tommorow to see if the demo is out I'm sure one of you will say when it is.

ANother thing about the multi mission thingy, after looking at some of the new screenshots, I think it may end up being like this. You have a map that has a certain section viewed and you know how in some missions after you compelted an objective they would then open up the whole map for you to take on a huge base.

I think they may have taken the idae from Chris at GPG. THe technique he used for DS was to have the world have very quick load times so that you could keep playing as you went from dungeon to dungeon to not detract you from the experience.

To sum what I'm saying, I believe it'll basicly be a level and within that level you have a vareity of missions to complete, with the resource pool you acquired and the amount of base development you have done. This will be different from Generals in the fact that in Generals they had 5 levels for each side and each different level you had to select the next one to get to it.

[STCAB]

1 day, and 10 hours. I'd say in about 2 days from this post.

Or... specifically, the 14th.

[Ad-Aware]

It was 9 hours to go, 10 hours ago, now it says 8 hours.
IM getting really ****ed off..as i was relaly looking forward to donwloading.

[Ad-Aware]

OK in regards to the engine, this is wat i was talking about how many missios can be on one map, this is a quote from an interview with the head developer:

"HS: We use a proprietary engine custom-developed by Eugen for Act of War: Direct Action, and it relies heavily on shaders and other technologies you normally mostly see in shooters. Various texture-compression techniques also allow us to have more, bigger, and more-defined textures than most other games, which makes a huge difference. But what makes the game so impressive is the sheer amount of polygons we can throw at it--up to 5 million per level, which lets us build massive yet highly detailed levels. This is why we can have two to four missions on the same huge map without any interruptions for loading."

- Gamespot.