The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Yes the Complete Mod does a lot to update the engine. The game is a bit large and confusing to begin with, but it gets a lot better as you go. I might mention that the first Stalker is ancient in comparison to the next two in both graphics and design. If you want a really good shot at enjoying the game, skip right ahead to Stalker Call of Pripyat. The design, controls, graphics, everything are all superior in every respect. There are also more NPCs and the play areas are much larger. The translation and story are also miles better. The original Stalker was largely a basement hit, so it does have a lot of translation and coding errors. The subsequent titles simply had much better funding and are much better games.

Again, check out Stalker Call of Pripyat. The learning curve is much better, as are the controls and graphics. With the Call of Pripyat Complete Mod, it is one of the prettiest games I have played and the least buggy of the three games. It also has the best weapons selection and much better gun balancing than the first game.

I'm just saying Rich that they really are that different in respect to quality and modernization. I think you could really get into it if you played the best one.

A good example of one of my favorite moments. I hear a firefight start up in the distance, a fairly large one. Hoping to help out some friendlies, I break my cover and rush headfirst towards the fight. By the time I get there, there's only one guy left, a member of a friendly faction, surrounded by his dead buddies and a whole pile of dead enemies. You can tell from the corpses that the firefight attracted a pack of wild mutants as well, so the surviving fighter's accomplishment is all the more impressive. His equipment, a military exosuit and an automatic shotgun and just for good measure, a high-powered assault rifle with armor-piercing ammo. He was the only guy in the group equipped for deep raids ie heavy armor, heavy weapon, extra ammo etc and his friends paid the price for being unprepared. 6 hours of gameplay later, I find the same guy, only this time his friends are well equipped as well! lol.

Of course, if the guy dies, he is replaced by another generic NPC who assumes his roles, duties and friendships relating to you and other factions, so the game doesn't feel disjointed or broken by such random fights and encounters that the NPCs face. ie if you help an NPC and he becomes your friend, but dies somehow later on, he is replaced by another NPC of the same faction who remains your "friend" in his place. Making the NPCs so expendable does make the game feel a bit "fake" at times but where it really shines is highlighting the survival atmosphere of the game. You'll find very often that the poorly equipped loners die quickly outside of safe areas, while the well equipped pros in large groups tend to stay alive indefinitely. This has a major effect on gameplay too as the well equipped pros tend to make camps or outposts once they get so far into a dangerous area. They then receive reinforcements every couple days depending on their losses, and as long as the group stays alive, you have a handy safe spot with friendlies in an otherwise hostile area of the game.

Stalker has several very complex relationship systems between different factions and yourself. It really helps you feel less alone and make you feel like part of a bigger picture. It's a comforting sight when you're exploring an isolated area full of baddies looking for loot, and you happen upon a well armed squad of friendlies with the same ideas in mind. They often make their way to points of interest if the area isn't too dangerous, so it pays off to follow and protect them. Of course the game keeps them from wandering into instant death zones, but the inherent danger of a given location is still enough for even experienced squads of hardened veterans.

I suppose the reason Stalker appeals to me is the attention to detail. I appreciate nothing more than attention to detail in gamemaking, and the two newer Stalker games especially have it in spades. They are very detailed, very complex, but present themselves in an accessible way.

Also, Metro 2033 is very good and very atmospheric, being a survival-horror game after all. I don't know how your 8800GTX will run it though. It's very demanding There are some cfg settings that help performance a bit though. I suggest you google them up as I cba to do it right now. Specifically forcing Vsync and fixing your FOV helps a lot if your system is struggling. The game itself is very modernly made. It is an absolutely linear corridor crawler, though in this case I think it's a good thing.

 

Following a more in-depth analysis of the game, my unified score of Rage has to be changed. Previous information took the game with default settings, which means graphical quality was automatically reduced on Radeons to keep the frame rate high. Thus, there would be significant image quality discrepancies if the cards were drawing equal frame rates.

Previous unified score
Both brands (8xAA): 120/140

New score
Rage (Nvidia) (8xAA): <95/170
Rage (AMD) (8xAA): <135/425
Rage (AMD) (4xAA): <100/170

8xAA is essentially an nvidia-only feature (and it wouldn't be the only one) due to its monumental performance impact on Radeons. The game also features an nvidia-exclusive 16xAA mode, which looks absolutely disgusting, effectively like you've put on a strong pair of glasses you don't need.
Since the game is built from the ground up using nvidia-licensed technology, it's a pretty basic affair using AMDs. Hardware accelerated texture loading (to fix the 'pop-in' problem the game still suffers, though less pronounced after a patch) uses CUDA, so is nvidia only.
The game also features a smart VSync setting which disables VSync if the frame rate falls below 60 (to prevent switches to 45/30 lowering the frame rate more than necessary) - also an nvidia feature. AMD users can take solace in the fact that this is reliant on a driver which nvidia haven't released yet, so for now they don't get it either.
Lastly, neither Crossfire or SLI are supported for the game, and may not ever be supported.
Technologically, the game is a wreck, and that's before the glitches - AMD themselves have produced at least three separate drivers incrementally repairing the mess, which contains over a dozen bugfixes for just Rage alone. Despite this, there are still graphical glitches, like this one:

and this one



Brent Justice of [H] has done a remarkable job of summing up Rage:

and likewise, Kyle Bennett, also of the same team, has spoken similarly wise words:

 

It's true. Rage has too many severe technical shortcomings. My major gripe is not being able to adjust the graphics at all and having to force a single texture resolution just to make it perform right. What about the people unaware of all the stupid little tweaks I had to do? Simply, there is no way to judge the quality or performance of the game, because there are no settings, period. That's a major fail in my book. I didn't spend untold amounts of my own money and time building and tuning this PC to have some HACK GAME DEVS TELL ME WHAT SETTINGS TO USE. id you can go **** yourselves.

Also, the auto-adjusting textures/graphics CAUSE performance drops as everything has to be re-drawn every time you dip a single FPS below 60. So you dip, the auto-adjustment kicks in, which causes more FPS drops, which causes it to kick in and so on and so forth. It creates a loop of frame drops that cause both graphics and performance to suffer for absolutely no reason. You'd think given the massive development time, amazing amounts of hype, and it being a showcase for graphics technology, there would at least be nuts in the sh*t-sandwich that is Rage.

Don't get me wrong, the actual game itself is great, but it's like what 12 hours long? It's also a 21GB install, the largest of any game I have ever seen, which is ridiculous for the anemic play time, generic, repetitive environments and severe lack of content. Carmack says it's over 1TB uncompressed. 1TB of what? Certainly not content...

 

Indeed, the chain reaction problem is well documented. Be thankful you can run it at all, it's a firmly held belief at id software that anyone who owns an AMD graphics card should not even be playing one of their games.

 

Backstabbing, single-minded developers deserve to have their games stolen. id basically gave PC gamers the middle finger, but major problem: PC gamers aren't quite the herd of sheep console gamers are. So the PC gamers are giving that middle finger back in spades. id deserves to have Rage fail. AFAIK the PC gaming community at large is pissed.

Also, an article on [H]ardOCP says that Carmack is very disappointed with how the game turned out on PC, and regrets designing it as a console game. He says when they started devving it, consoles were roughly on par with PCs, so they figured they could get away with porting it.

http://www.hardocp.com/news/2011/10/07/this_explains_rage_sucks_on_pc63/

"We should be focusing on building things efficiently on the PC and deploying on the consoles." And we didn&#8217;t make that as crisp of a distinction as we should have."

So for the record, even id acknowledges what a cluster this game is, and that they made a mistake not devving it for PC.

Also, Bulletstorm was a fairly average game, but it had miles more style, attitude, and content than Rage. So even average games are better.

 

Well, I feel uneasy buying the game now. id Software isn't getting a red cent til I've tested the game on my hardware(middle finger). And since I plan on an Ati card in the near future, that makes me even more nervous. Thanks guys for nudging me in the right direction.

 

I apologize ahead of time if this isn't the right place to post this. However, there is a lot of traffic here and thought I should post here.

Amazon is selling the HIS Radeon HD 6970 2GB (RoHS) H697F2G2M for $203.99 after rebate, $223.99 without rebate... compared to $329 at newegg. The card is Temporarily out of stock, however you can still order it. You will not be charged until, and if it ships. It's probably a price mistake, but nothing to lose for a card like this if it goes through.

http://www.amazon.com/HIS-Eyefinity...1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1319173451&sr=1-1

 

That's a serious price difference! But I must digress. The 7000 series is not far away. Not for me anyway. Time goes very quickly for me.

 

Wow.

Well thanks Griff and Omega for a little break from the lively debate that has popped up here on the forum.

That shows me what the Rage opposition is, and I went to Jeff's Hard Forum link, and took notice of the scathing criticism! Some people are so hard to please, lol!

Well, we have a strong divergence of opinion here - let it never be said that AfterDawn ever hosts a dull moment in commentary.

In view of all of that negativism, I am even more astounded and amazed that the game just ran great from the start at full 2560x1600 on my machine. That's where they set it - I tried later to add AA and it crashed. So if it works, don't fix it - I'm not touching it and I think it's better than ice cream.

I never ever hit 60 fps - I'm always a bit behind from 56 to 58 (30 in vehicles) and the game flat runs smooth, and I think the textures are absolutely lovely, just like the Eurogamer guy wrote about Crazy Joe's cabin, from his E3 writeup.

I'm not taking back one single word of my review. But I sympathize with those who have had problems running the game - like I said, frustration is a total kill-joy, and if the game has been ruined for you guys, then that's such a pity.

It's been a lark for me!

Since you, Kevin, have an nvidia card, it will probably run great for you like it has for me. Don't let the fact that you plan on getting an ati card later, at the same time that I do, stop you from enjoying it now.

Remember what Sam said. Ati is trying like crazy to fix the game. By next spring when we get our 7000 cards, Rage will probably run well also on Ati cards. In the meantime, for your 260, I guarantee your play enjoyment, or your money back.

I won't say the same for Sam - he's too down on the game already - it's been ruined for him, and for Brent. He probably doesn't even like my honey Ginny, out in front of the Wellspring outfitter. I can hear him already "She's a loose tramp not fit to wash my dishes!"


LOL

Actually that's not true at all. Ginny is a hard-working girl who hangs out all day long looking pretty in front of the store owned by the really weird-looking guy who sells just about everything.

The loose one is the one who teaches how to use wingsticks. Look at her name - that's loose if there ever was one!



But getting back to our fierce debate, Sam, your discussion of the Rage drawbacks highlights your technical prowess, which is legendary - I wish I knew 1/3rd of what you know about hardware and software - but I have to say, with a little embarrassment, that I couldn't easily spot the glitches you highlighted in your screen shots.

Are you referring to the patches of blue in the first of the automotive shots?



And what is wrong with the second picture? My eye is drawn to the colorful destination out ahead - and I am trying, but I can't see a glitch in this next shot.



Maybe because of economics, I have stretched under-powered hardware to the breaking point for so long, I am just not that sensitive to glitches appearing on the screen from time to time as long as the overall experience is positive. I took a course in digital logic in engineering school, and learned about truth tables, and nand gates. If you dive into the depths of what is going on, it's an absolute technical miracle that we today can have such a fantastic visual experience that was unheard of only 13 years ago when the hottest thing around was Half Life.

Regarding Brent's review - he may be another technical genius like yourself Sam, and if he is a personal friend I apologize for being offensive, but I was not at all impressed with the review - it sounded like a bunch of whining. Frustration will do that to a person - it brings out the whiner in all of us.

But let me just put it all out there, and show my cards. I don't find a damn thing wrong with Carmack's attitude as expressed in Brent's bad-mouthing review. If I were a game developer today, I too would put consoles first above PCs. It's a matter of being a smart businessman. Who is going to pirate your very very expensive game, that you put millions of dollars into making, and who is not going to pirate your game?

It's the honest truth. PC guys are clever and can break the copy-writing. With all the PC guys stealing every game, why wouldn't a developer put the consoles first, and then port the game over later to the PCs, with maybe a few technical upgrades? They didn't even put Treyarch's COD3 on PC. As we found out later, the game was weak, but when the Activision guy said, "They complain that we don't make games for PCs, but they pirate all the games" I couldn't blame him for that point of view.

There isn't a single thing wrong with Carmack saying that - sounds smart to me. Piracy doesn't exist on the consoles, right? Piracy is rampant on the PCs, right? Still, the game developers all have very powerful PCs that they do all the development on, and they themselves would love to play the games at a visual level beyond what a console will do.

Lucky for us!

Go back to my shock two years ago, on this forum, at sales of Modern Warfare 1, when I found out that while the PC sales were a respectable 1 million, the console sales were a whopping 10 X greater! Wow!

Everybody on xfire (shaff are you listening?) was playing Modern Warfare 1 on pirated copies - a game that to me was one of the greatest games ever - and nobody wanted to fork out $50. (Including me, I bought it on ebay for $30.) For crying out loud, guys, you think it's easy to put a game together? The financial outlay is monstrous! To go ahead and pirate everything in sight, and then complain that the console ports to PC are a bit rough around the edges, I can't call that anything other than what it is, a bunch of hypocritical whining.

LOL

Look at Jeff's description of Stalker, and how the last few installments show the improved polish of some serious money put behind the game, once the basement version took off and developed a following.

For sure I will check out Call of Pripyat, after Jeff's discussion. Why wouldn't I? If I have to, I might even buy the game

Jeff understands that if I am confused all to hell, and on top of that if I think a game is a little clunky, I'm not going to give it a chance. Yeah, the command console on OFR was a bit tricky, but right away the atmosphere was awesome.

And if as Jeff suspects, I end up loving the later Stalkers, I might go back to the first one with extra appreciation, and with a lot more patience.

Back to Rage, I just sent an email to Miles at Valve, raving about Rage, and asking him if any of the Valve guys are playing it. Let's see what he has to say back to me - it might echo what Sam or Brent just said. I doubt it, but even if it did, that wouldn't change my opinion. That's the wonderful thing about opinions - they aren't right or wrong, they just are, and everybody's entitled to have one.

What makes a game great is very subjective (but I'll say it again, frustration is a kill-joy.)

Changing subjects, for a second, I just jumped into Metro 2033, and first off, let me say I was totally wrong about that being depressing. It's really not - and there is some great scenery above ground, and even below ground there is some great lighting, as you had said, Jeff.

I will say this - Moscow is very cold in the winter. That game handles cold as well as BF:BC2 in that chapter on top of the mountain. I was torn between worrying about my gask mask cannisters running out, to being worried about freezing to death before I could kill enough Nazis to get to their camp fires. What a lovely thing to be next to a campfire, and feel my breathing calm down from the hysterical near-death gasping of mere seconds ago! Hahaha.

But you are so right, Jeff, about it being completely linear - totally so - no running off to do any exploring on that game.

But jumping into the very interesting Metro only underscored one of the things that I really appreciate about Rage - the facial models. Take this guy here, one of the random characters spread about in the Rage game. Under his goggles, the guy looks like a real person, right?



That's what the modeling in Rage looks like. By contrast, the Metro modeling is not even in the same ballpark. People looked like little doll figures in a toy shop.

But getting past the shock of the weak facial models, Metro otherwise looked pretty good, and seemed quite interesting. After the first intro, including a tutorial (so welcome after the confusion of Stalker) I looked at the video settings. They had me on High quality, 1680x1050. I moved it up to 1920x1200, and the frames of course dropped. I reduced to Normal quality, but right after that, seeing perhaps some slack in the frame rates, I wanted it to look at least as good as it had a minute before, so I went back up to High quality. Because I can live with 30 fps I kept it there. (Above high, they have Very high and then Ultra high, ala Crysis.) I looked at the flame from the lighter that Jeff had described. Very cool. You rotate, and the flame moves the other way, just like real life. A nice touch, a simple way to light up your Map.

Playing the game - I logged 18 hours straight and I haven't finished yet - I am continuing to get just barely 30fps, and only about 25 in the snow. Still, Metro didn't majorly lag until I rescued the little kid.

All of a sudden - major lag. I said "Woah, what's going on" and then I realized my frames were still okay, just the added weight of the kid on my back was making all my gestures feel as though I was pulling only 15 fps. LOL. You try moving around with a 60 pound kid on your back - it was funny and it was smart game-making. I appreciated it.

I like Metro, and I will play it again when I get my new hardware, at full 2560x1600, and hopefully maxed settings. Maybe I'll play above normal difficulty also at that time. There is hardcore, then ranger, then ranger hardcore. LOL

My main criticism of Metro, as I mentioned above, are the facial models. What I love about Rage, and about the Valve games, and I would add, all the CODs, including the Treyarch titles, is that the people look good - they look like people - especially the Treyarch Russian guy in World at War, who comes back again in Black Ops. I loved that guy, and I love the way he looks, his deeply chiseled face reflecting his hard life, and I love his wonderful Russian voice.

Hagar in Rage, the guy who saves you at the very beginning, has a strange voice - very resonant - but with an overly sincere way of speaking that worries me, like he'll stab me in the back as soon as I turn around. He's too sincere - know what I mean? I didn't really like him much. I liked the Sheriff in Wellspring much better.

On the other hand, the Mayor in Wellspring was a total character, and speaking of characters, the Monster Bash TV guy was an absolute riot



like the carnival barker that he is.

His televised carnival involved whether I could murder every single fresh northern mutant he threw at me, or would they tear me apart. All this to make a richly rewarding tv show that he said would be shown in reruns for years to come, for the wonderful little deranged denizens of the crazy Rage world.

My Ginny would never watch a brutal show like that!

Creeping into a bandit hideout, I heard them talking "Hey did you catch Monster Bash TV the other night?" I guess the baddies really love that show. Of course that particular group is now all deceased, courtesy of yours truly. I didn't catch if they caught my particular episode, since I was too busy sending them all to kingdom come.

That would have been a nice touch. "Hey have you seen the new wanker on Monster Bash - he kicked some major mutant butt - hate to ever run into that bloke!"

Getting back to Metro, by comparison with Rage, I would have to knock off 10 points on whatever final score I gave the game, because the models all look like ceramic statues. There is way too much shine on the faces, and there are way too few triangles in the facial model texture maps. Maybe that reflects a stylized Russian way of doing things - like the renderings in a fairy tale book - or maybe they just don't have any good facial artists and modelers.

By the way, here's an image I just found of Metro - see if you can spot any kids - and I found it very interesting that the comments under the image, mentioned that Metro came from the same guys who did Stalker. Jeff is that correct? It certainly has the same Chernobyl-type preoccupation with nuclear fallout.



Maybe unlike glitches, my area of pickiness is more on facial models, perhaps because family member Miles' main focus areas are modeling and animating. He had a major impact on animating all of L4D, but on L4D2, he spent more time on modeling, including major time on Nick and on the Coach. Does anybody doubt that Nick and the Coach look like real people?

So on Metro, where every character, when they remove their gas mask, looks to me like a doll, then that diminishes the impact of the game, despite whatever brilliant graphical effects are being presented, and whatever glitch-free gameplay exists.

But don't misunderstand me, I do like Metro.

So what I am saying, is that if a game like Rage just feels great, with incredibly good modeling, almost Valve quality lip-syncing, and filled with interesting character types, then when I jump in my car, with its very enjoyable engine purr and roar when I hit the throttle, and set out to move to a new adventure, if a few glitches or pops appear on the other-wise gorgeous landscape rendering in front of me, I am just not bothered that much by it.

I didn't notice any Rage glitching on my nvidia card presentation. Maybe there was some glitching going on, but we already know that I can't tell 30 fps from 40 fps, so my eyes, I guess, have a different kind of sensitivity to yours, Sam - probably not in the same ballpark.

Again, just what is wrong with the second automotive picture above - apparently I can't see the glitch when it's right in front of me in a still image. Haha.

Switching again back to Metro, I could get into other things about the game, that might have been a bit weak, but I have to hand Metro major props for original story, good monsters, having children in the game, and for adding puzzles and challenges, and even fake solutions (like planks across obstacles which don't carry your weight, and librarian monsters who keep you distracted by wanting to play with you, to the point of sometimes killing you, as you are trying to follow your map pointer) to keep things interesting.

I expended almost all my ammo to kill the first librarian, coming out from my little cubby hole to fire away, waiting for him to pop back up, wondering if my gask mask supply would hold out for this side adventure, and then he finally succumbed. I thought, "Wow, seriously, that was REALLY hard. I don't have all that many bullets left." I went through the back steel gate, around the corner, and per usual, to my absolute consternation, he popped up again through the hole in the floor. I thought, "Holy sh*t, there are two of them."

I realized then that I wasn't supposed to try to kill them, I was supposed to either calm them down by backing away, until they lose interest, or hide in the cubby hole from the first guy whose curiosity knows no bounds. I thought - "What is the game telling me to do - where am I supposed to be going by this map pointer?" It was challenging.

Later there was another librarian type, but smaller, and darker in coloration. He just wouldn't let me alone, killing me several times, so when I re-spawned, I decided to try 5 shots in the head with my new sniper pistol, switching to AK when he was right on top of me. He died very quickly.

I thought to myself, with a great deal of satisfaction, "Well okay then, it was okay to kill that SOB!"

But back to the models. Comparing Metro to Rage, the Rage models are exceptional - very close to Valve quality. They are just absolutely excellent models and not just a dozen - there must be 50 or 60 distinct personalities spread out among all those towns.

Here's that guy who likes to play that scary game of stabbing a knife into the table between your fingers. This time around, I'll be fooling around with all this kind of side stuff, including the card playing:



Of all the characters around the game, of course I know many of them are the same, with different clothing. My fave Ginny is probably also Friday, with gas mask, and probably also the girl next to the banjo player upstairs at Subway City, the girl with the pilot's flight helmet, and ultra mod beatnik poetry reciting clothing. I think she's an absolute trip in her choice of psychedelic styling. If I were the banjo player, she'd be my girlfriend too!

We're just never going to agree on this title.

Contrary to you naysayers, I personally hope Rage achieves major financial success for id. I would like nothing more than for them to develop and release their next console game called Rage 2, with another PC port, at least as good in quality as this one.

By then I certainly hope it will run on ati cards at least as well as Rage is running on my 8800. If not, I would hate to see myself turn into a Carmack hater, the new game, Rage2, running like ass on my 7000 card. If that happened, not even another appearance from Ginny would save the game for me.

So that's my rebuttal. I'm sure I won't have the last word, lol. I still say, play the game Kevin, on your nvidia card. I will guarantee the experience for you.

And while you're at it, turn up digital vibrance. I guarantee you'll see something remarkable happen on your shiny new 24" Dell. (It will explode!) And regarding your cpu, if you take the plunge, good luck with those 6 cores. More cores, and more power to you!

Rich

 

It's not that I don't trust you, but I will be trying the game before I buy it. I have to see it first. If it's entertaining enough(probably), and nearly glitch free, then I will take the plunge
The Six core is definitely first on my list. I need it for certain processes badly. Plus I'm an upgrade freak. And I believe the six core beast, will hold me over for at least 6 - 8 months. And if AM3+ has matured enough come June - July, I'll consider a small build. Maybe by then I'll have a secondary job I'd really like one before christmas. I love buying gifts for my family. Yes, it's an overrated holiday, but I can't help myself LOL!

 

Yeah, six cores should last you a while.

Hey Kevin, if you take the plunge and buy Rage, my guarantee stands. I once bought a game for Shaff, just for the fun of it - it's time I did something like that for you, as you say, in the spirit of Christmas, and to celebrate a big sale I made a while back, and for my Karma.

So I'll go past my full guarantee. If you don't like the game, you'll get all your money back from me, but if you LOVE the game, you'll still get half your money back from me.

You'll get more money by hating the game, but I trust your honest opinion. Since it's optimized for nvidia, your 260 should turn you into a Rage lover. LOL

One of the things you'll enjoy about the game, I think, are the car races.



The races are friggin' FUN FUN FUN. (Stadium radio announcers, little people spread out everywhere waving arms and cheering, very satisfying rumble of engines.)

I read one review that said, for a shooter, there was a very solid car dynamic in the game. I played only the bare minimum of races, because I'm not so great at driving with a keyboard, but this next time through I'll play every race I can.

We'll be hearing Christmas music pretty soon, that's for sure. I don't know if Christmas is an over-rated holiday or not, but if buying presents gives you pleasure, and if it gives your family and friends pleasure to receive your gifts, then for sure, take pleasure where you can find it, lol.

Rich

 

Nice screen shot! You're right about that. I'm a sucker for racing! I should probably try Dirt eh?

That's a very generous offer Rich. But I can't accept any charity I really appreciate the thought though. My WD1001FALS drive(Currently OS drive) isn't as fast as I remember it to be. I'm definitely missing my Velociraptor. It's half tempting to forget the six core for now, and go with an SSD. I'm sure I'd see performance increases across the board

 

LOL

Okay, Kevin. My blatant attempt to get at least one guy on my side, has failed miserably, haha.

Yes, I recall that Sam has at least one SSD for his O/S and can maybe give you some guidance in that area.

Jeff, I went back to some notes on Metro 2033, and you had said force the vsynch, which maybe turns off some 3d vision feature and helps fps by about 10 - sounds good. Then you mentioned FOV, and you mentioned it again in a recent post. Specifically, what about FOV. Do you adjust it down, up, or what?

 

Well the game is technically flawed but the game itself is very good. If you want to try it, I'd say definitely go for it. Don't let our elitist gripes stop you from having fun
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I agree Rich, Rage is a good game, but the technical flaws are so great on the PC it stops many players from enjoying it at all. I'm glad you enjoyed it, because I'm being just a bit harsh on id

Most consoles are pretty easily pirated Rich Of course you will always have a way larger amount of pirating on the PC, but it's only because of ease of use. Services like Steam go a long way in driving PC sales though. I don't know of any console services anywhere near that.

I'm still not entirely sure if it's your type of game Rich but I really think it's worth a try. I never liked Stalker until one of my friends showed me some later parts of the game. I now have over 40 hours in every installment XD

This is true, some of the Stalker team did indeed help with the art direction and design of Metro. It was largely a support/advisory role though. It was nice to see such an underground-ish development team recognized for their artistic talents. Stalker is extremely eerie if you've ever seen photos of the area around Chernobyl. They capture the look so perfectly, it triples the freaky of the game. So I have a strong feeling the Stalker team was also able to contribute significantly to the look and feel of Metro 2033.

Ideally for most games your FOV should be 90 degrees. Low FOVs also have a negative impact on graphics because their narrow viewing angle causes the view to be "zoomed in". When you zoom in really close to a texture, it usually gets uglier, so the same logic follows here. Even this slight amount of zoom can make a large difference.

Metro's strongest graphical asset is its lighting. True, the human models are a bit stylized/cartoony, but the differed lighting is a sight to behold. I'm not sure if differed lighting kicks in at regular high but in very high it absolutely does. Differed lighting means that the game can draw an almost infinite amount of light sources and shadows. Also, Metro has fairly nice textures

I also had the problems with the Librarians Rich. lol I think the trick is they don't attack as long as you hold their gaze. There are some similar monsters that aren't so willing to leave you alone though so you have to be careful lol.

Oh and on the shiny faces haha I've thought about that too. I figured that after 20 years underground, nobody's had a proper shower for a while That's a lot of oily skin XD

 

It's broken email notifications time! Alright, lots of posts to read

 

Rich, it doesn't run any worse on AMD cards than it does on geforces now, other than the performance dropoff at 8xAA. It's just as bad for both parties, nvidia still have lots of problems with the game.

 

As it happens, I will be playing it at some point, but with so many other games at my disposal right now, I might see if the 'no SLI or crossfire' policy is ever reversed before I take it on. At 2560x1600 a single HD6970 isn't going to be running it on highest detail.

Click the photos to zoom in. The blue splotches are obvious (and they are an nvidia-specific problem), the second picture's faults are evident at the bottom, but aren't easy to see in the tiny forum thumbnail. The terrain sections have broken edges, which are clearly evident as dotted lines.
As it happens Rich, pirating console games is even easier than it is to pirate PC games a lot of the time - every PC game uses different copy protection, whereas every Xbox 360 game, for example, within a given group, uses the same protection as its same-group counterparts. It's simply a case of, if your console is up to date with the latest modification, download the iso, burn it to DVD, and away you go.
What makes things different is that PC gamers are more technologically aware, and more discerning as buyers - for one, most console gamers wouldn't know how piracy even happens, let alone the method to pirate a game. Secondly, PC gamers are going to spot a game that's been marred with flaws before they buy it, and through word of mouth may pass up on it. If Rage had not been such a technological failure, the PC version would have sold far better, I guarantee you that. Console versions of a game are basically 'badproofing' - even if the game sucks, people will still buy it in droves.

Stop right there. First of all, piracy is not stealing. Stealing is to acquire something illegally, at the expense of its original owner no longer having it. By cloning any copyrighted material, you are not depriving the owner of it, merely acquiring it yourself without paying for it, there's a difference. You are not fundamentally stealing the value of the game, because you may not necessarily have bought the product in the first place.
Say someone with all of $100 to their name pirates some $5000 enterprise software. Have they stolen $5000? no, because the company would never have otherwise received that $5000 sale.
Just because people pirate games, does not mean that they would otherwise buy the games. If someone pirates a game, enjoys it, and could have paid for it, they should have paid for it. If a game does not meet someone's expectations and they refuse to buy it (or are unable to), but pirate it anyway, that's not really the same thing. If a game sells 200,000 copies and 100,000 people pirate it, that does not mean that if it weren't for piracy, it would have sold 300,000 copies, that's not how it works. I'd like to think it'd be 220,000 at best.

If you'll be playing Metro at max at 2560x1600 with your new hardware, I'm assuming you won't be buying your new hardware for several years to come. Nothing available now or next year will even come close to maxing the game out at 2560x1600 above about 15fps.

 

My thoughts on pirating exactly. Again, I don't entirely condone it due to its effect on game devs in general, but it has its place.

Specifically I can tell you it would be impossible to own games without pirating. At $50-60 a pop, I can only afford games I know I want. It's simply too much to pay for a game you're unsure if you'll even like. And the sheer number of games coming out this year... well lemme tell you I have about $1500-2000 in this PC, but 50 games are $2500 on their own. How could any average consumer afford video games? Even when I was a console-only gamer, I had to wait to buy games used or from the bargain-bin. If I waited to buy only the PC games that were worth the full $50, I'd own about 5-10 games, period, and would never buy any more.

If game devs had their way, only the rich and elite would be able to play video games because each one would be $150 a pop =/

 

Almost all the games I've bought lately have either been high quality indie games (e.g. Sanctum), or deal packs (e.g. all the GTA games for £5 - even though I already owned the early ones, £5 for GTA4 and EfLC was still a good deal). At £25+ for modern games, £35+ for the top titles, it isn't doable if I'm going to be playing them briefly then getting bored. I'm not sufficiently tight that if I pirate a game and enjoy it I still don't buy it. If the game devs deserve what they charge, I'll pay them. Normally this involves buying a game when the price drops a bit, but playing it beforehand.

 

Also agreed 100%. I love to support companies I like. Just for the record have the Skyrim Collectors Edition with the dragon statue pre-ordered