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Temptress
Purely Innocent
Joined: 05 Jul 2002
Posts: 793
Location: Back in the saddle in leather and chaps! |
So, I only speak english and yet I am tickled pink about playing this German version demo. I killed a few things and met up with long lost friend Lester. I can't wait for the English version. At least then I will understand what I'm supposed to do. LOL. For now I will just go around and pick things up and kill things.
Interesting game play so far though. I think I like the new status screens. I like that the entire screen isn't blocked off. Also, I think I like the way you gather items from chests, too. The grphics are a bit murky, but I think it's supposed to be that way. The only objection I have is the items you can pick up aren't highlighted enough at this point. IMO. Mebbe this'll change?
What the heck! I'm still happy as a clam and can't wait for the English version.
~T |
Sun Dec 08, 2002 7:51 am |
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DzD
Unknown
Joined: 12 Mar 2002
Posts: 7140
Location: Sweden |
I don't like that you can't move in north-east, north-west, soth-east and south-west direction.
_________________
There once was a youngster, DzD
Whose avatars numbered infinity
But I must admit
His latest, a hit
Cuz the Little One's a mystery to me
Written by - dteowner |
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Sun Dec 08, 2002 8:17 am |
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Ceka
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 12 Mar 2002
Posts: 35
Location: Oklahoma |
Hello there 
If people are wondering what Gothic II is like on lower end systems, I can kind of give you my perspective.
Right now I have a 700mhz computer, 192 ram, a 10 gb harddrive, Geforce 2 (I forgot what kind, it's early and my brain isn't functioning fully) video card, and a REALLY bad sound card. Now this isn't really the lowest specs for a computer, but it's about the medium compared to what most people have posted.
I've downloaded the demo (it only took me about 12 hours,  darn 56k) and, to my surprise, it worked perfectly. I had no framerate drops, sound glitches, or anything. Though this IS just the demo, the full game could be worse, but then again when I think about it, I also thought Gothic I would run horribly on my computer and it didn't. So I doubt Gothic II will. Either way, the demo works fine, and I'm sure the full game will also. So if anyone who has those specs, or lower ones, were wondering, then there you go. If I get some blank CDs soon I'll burn the demo to one and try to run it on my mothers computer. She has a 500 mhz, really bad sound and video cards, and I think around 128 bytes of ram if I am correct. Until then, I hope someone will lower specs can post what Gothic II did on their systems.
... I'll tell you what I think about the full game on its release in March, seeing as I only speak English .
-Ceka
_________________
Knock Knock.
Who's there?
This is my.
This is my who?
This is my profile.
.... HAHAHAHAHA *Heartattack* |
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Tue Dec 10, 2002 4:38 pm |
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ghola
City Guard
Joined: 08 Oct 2002
Posts: 146
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Well here's the bad news... The full game runs MUCH slower than the demo. 
The demo ran surprisingly smooth on my old system (P3-600 w/133 MHz FSB, 256MB RAM, G400MAX, Win2K), at 800x600x32 resolution, detail just above medium, and most stuff enabled. And it was good. Even better... it was great, it was woohoo!
Today the full game came in (German version, ganz toll!). Installed it, defragged my (Atlas 10K-II SCSI) harddisk for good measure and got going. Well... almost. At startup there's a new splashscreen saying that Gothic is loading. I beg to differ: there's no harddisk or CDROM activity, so I suspect PB are using my rig for SETI@home stuff for well over 30 seconds.  It's annoying like hell, but it's no biggie.
After the splashscreen we get to the loading screen. Since Gothic Zwei was already loading at the splash screen, this can only be the re-loading screen. :p It's the screen we know from the demo. Jadda jadda, another 15 seconds and if all goes well the menu will appear. Yay! Let's play!
Yes. Right. But... At the same settings I used for the demo (I triple checked) the full game runs at a crawl. At best it's a fast crawl, but still a crawl.
Roaming the country is notably slower, at the farm it got really bad and I started to worry. Rightfully so, because the icky perfomance at the farm was nothing compared to life in the city... it was a slide show... maybe two or three whole frames per second. :p Yes, it's really that bad. Performance is not even close to what I got in the demo.
Im not sure what's going on there. There's very little harddisk activity and changing the graphics to absolute worst detail/feature settings doesn't make *any* difference at all. It looks like there's a VERY high demand on the CPU. I certainly hope that this is not the wonderful copy protection wreaking havoc.
So... I was already in the process of shopping for my PC upgrade, but I may have to lift my plans to an even higher plane of ambition. From what I observe it looks like G2 city life could even trash a 3 GHz CPU. 
On the bright side, the water looked quite a lot better than it did in the demo and the full blown version of the city seems really alive and interesting. |
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Tue Dec 10, 2002 7:16 pm |
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goshuto
Wanderer
Joined: 29 May 2002
Posts: 1142
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Usually the splash screen is used for copy protection schemes -- the game itself is probably only loaded after it's gone (at the "re-loading" screen).
I suppose the increased demand on CPU is due not to graphics settings, but the increased number of NPCs in the game world. Keeping track of all of them (their movements, AI, etc) can be costly in terms of performance. It seems the demo has much fewer NPCs walking about.
_________________
"Tree stuck in cat. Firemen baffled."--Simcity 3K
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."--Soren Aabye Kierkegaard |
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Tue Dec 10, 2002 9:45 pm |
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hwfanatic
Average Fanatic
Joined: 28 Oct 2002
Posts: 2850
Location: Belgrade, Serbia |
quote:
Originally posted by goshuto
I suppose the increased demand on CPU is due not to graphics settings, but the increased number of NPCs in the game world. Keeping track of all of them (their movements, AI, etc) can be costly in terms of performance.
Number of NPCs processed at the same time isn't that big.. All NPCs 'follow' their routine while you're not in their vicinity. Actually cpu is used only to check what is the default action for the time you show up.. CPU power is mostly drained by the memory_controler/hdd_controler(for texture loading into memory) |
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Tue Dec 10, 2002 11:15 pm |
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goshuto
Wanderer
Joined: 29 May 2002
Posts: 1142
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quote:
Originally posted by HWFanatiC
quote:
Originally posted by goshuto
I suppose the increased demand on CPU is due not to graphics settings, but the increased number of NPCs in the game world. Keeping track of all of them (their movements, AI, etc) can be costly in terms of performance.
Number of NPCs processed at the same time isn't that big.. All NPCs 'follow' their routine while you're not in their vicinity. Actually cpu is used only to check what is the default action for the time you show up.. CPU power is mostly drained by the memory_controler/hdd_controler(for texture loading into memory)
Actually, loading textures into video memory uses bandwidth, not CPU (after they're loaded onto memory, which uses the HD bandwith). After the program determines that a certain texture needs to be used (and that it's not already in video memory) it simply sends it through the AGP bus to the video card. There isn't a lot of processing in this stage. AI, on the other hand, can take a substantial amount of CPU time -- following a script is not trivial, and the NPCs must also react to your actions. Furthermore, there's also the "drawing" of the NPCs. Drawing static objects, like houses and the like, can be much faster than drawing moving ones, like NPCs (although I won't get into the technical details here). This can explain why lowering the details of the retail game did not result in a substantial speed improvement.
_________________
"Tree stuck in cat. Firemen baffled."--Simcity 3K
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."--Soren Aabye Kierkegaard |
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Wed Dec 11, 2002 12:25 am |
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hwfanatic
Average Fanatic
Joined: 28 Oct 2002
Posts: 2850
Location: Belgrade, Serbia |
quote:
Originally posted by goshuto
Actually, loading textures into video memory uses bandwidth, not CPU (after they're loaded onto memory, which uses the HD bandwith). After the program determines that a certain texture needs to be used (and that it's not already in video memory) it simply sends it through the AGP bus to the video card. There isn't a lot of processing in this stage. AI, on the other hand, can take a substantial amount of CPU time -- following a script is not trivial, and the NPCs must also react to your actions. Furthermore, there's also the "drawing" of the NPCs. Drawing static objects, like houses and the like, can be much faster than drawing moving ones, like NPCs (although I won't get into the technical details here). This can explain why lowering the details of the retail game did not result in a substantial speed improvement.
Very true. But constant caching(filling and trashing swap on the slowest part of any pc - the hdd) leaves little time for a cpu to run through scripts, wouldn' t you agree? |
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Wed Dec 11, 2002 12:35 am |
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goshuto
Wanderer
Joined: 29 May 2002
Posts: 1142
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quote:
Originally posted by HWFanatiC
Very true. But constant caching(filling and trashing swap on the slowest part of any pc - the hdd) leaves little time for a cpu to run through scripts, wouldn' t you agree?
Trashing RAM or trashing video memory? Both obviously reduce perfomance. The first happens when one hasn't enough memory -- but then, everything slows down, not just G2, because of virtual memory swapping; it's not Gothic 2's engine fault. The second usually happens either because the designers got too ambitious or because the engine sucks. I think, in G2's case, neither are true, since reducing texture detail -- which would then reduce the amount of bytes going to and fro in the bus -- does little to solve performance issues, as people said before (I personally don't know because I haven't played the demo yet). Now that graphic processors contribute substantially to a game, one of the potential CPU bottlenecks of recent games is the AI. But don't take my word for it!  Read this interview with Chris Taylor. There he says about upcoming games: "Traditionally, whenever we look at AI that is substantially smarter than the simple stuff we did years ago, we see that the amount of processing power required is far beyond what we imagined."
_________________
"Tree stuck in cat. Firemen baffled."--Simcity 3K
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."--Soren Aabye Kierkegaard |
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Wed Dec 11, 2002 1:19 am |
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Xerxes712
High Emperor
Joined: 01 Nov 2002
Posts: 605
Location: Uber die Welt |
Here is my system spec. P3 733 Mhz. FSB 133, 398 Meg RAM, Geforce3 128Meg video card. Slow 66 M/s huge huge 80 Gig HDD.
It seems the more RAM you have and a really good Video card makes alot of difference. As for the demo, I have it at 1024*720 resolution in 32 bit color. I have ALL high details maxes out and demo runs very smooth.
Of course, my computer is getting old and I overclocked it and squeezed the last drop out of it, since I hate to major upgrade it. I built it myself, making sure everything it logical to fit together (it could use 512 Meg RAM to completely max out). I can buty a chip for it to go 1.1 Mhz but not worth it.
It seems Computer RAM memory and FSB AGP transfer to Video RAM in card plays a major part? It seems to be loading stuff into memeory when it first starts up a reloaded game. CPU can manipulate RAM memory data faster, than having to keep swapping out to the HDD disk. Video card is a must to process the texture data quickly with the fast bandwith AGP port overclocked....
Anyway Gothic I played perfect with view distance at 300% beyond default.
G2 probably keep the default fog distance and reduce the object detail back to medium. It may be slower, but not that much. I probably will get 80% experience.
If your from rate is that slow, I had that happen to me, I had to manually turn on graphic acceleration hardware since it was using software only by default for some odd reason. also, G2 video card is missing alot of compared to the legenary Geforce3 ti 200 cards...
_________________
Wo ist mein Sumpfkraut? |
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Wed Dec 11, 2002 2:12 am |
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Xerxes712
High Emperor
Joined: 01 Nov 2002
Posts: 605
Location: Uber die Welt |
It is similar in feel to Gothic about the quest. Graphics are better. Combat the camera looks and stays focus on the enemy making combat much easier.
Sneaking actually works great! If you learn the skill, you can sneak in the rooms even if they are sleeping (will not work if they are staring at you) at the apprentence level skill and pick open the trunk locks.
The gothic2.ini file allows you to set the lockpick combination to how much from 0 to the full combination length to be random on reloads so it can stop the temptation of cheating by just reloading a saved game. Makes getting the skill worth it. It is turned off by default in the gothic2.ini file, but I think it should default on. Means no skill, good luck breaking all your lockpicks -if even skilled at all.
No more instant 100,000 gold. There is infinite money in demo but you work for it. Hilda wants you to get a pan from Canther the dealer -do not wait! Time limited quest (remember Fisk's sword?) She will give you free food beat soup -if you worked on the farm by picking them beats, which is worth a whole 2 gold once per day, kind of related to Snarf -she is. Bon appetiete.
AI is smarter in knowledge, only bad thing I seen yet is in combat the enemy want to jump through the roof and get stuck on tables...
I should not be able to spank Mateo so easy, then again if you do, ends your quest for good. Wait until after (full game) then go back and pay the greedy dude back after he played his plot part. If you learned sneak and lockpick and pickpocket, just rob his arsche blind.
Peoples stuff regenerate on them to pickpocket. You can beat them down also without killing them, but arrows and magic will. If you do smack someone -they will tell on you if you do not finish them off. The one person owed money to Mateo and I "collected" the bad way for fun, later I find out that now I will answer to Aldur the Judge (he is not in demo) to make it right....interesting. No more Whack and Run! Lest not so easy.
Pretty good. If you do get stuck or the NPC kills you, hit CNTR+ ALT + F8 will bounce you right up on your feet! Spring up from the dead! This worked in Gothic 1 also. Rather funny. You must hit and enable the hot keys in the gothic.ini to instant use a health potion or mana by the H or G key (default is off). Hot keys to me are not cheat since they are only good for potions and for me impossible to use when in battle...but it can be too easy since effect is instant, I would have it gradually increase health to power of potion. Food I would make you must eat so often as in Arx Fatalis or lose attributes first then start to finially die of hunger life points.
Verbose I am, pretty good for a squeal. If you like the first, you will love this. Sequels can sometimes be hard act to follow. 
_________________
Wo ist mein Sumpfkraut? |
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Wed Dec 11, 2002 6:18 am |
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Ceka
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 12 Mar 2002
Posts: 35
Location: Oklahoma |
In the English version of Gothic I, all I remember doing to revive is hit F8. I never used ALT and CTRL. Maybe it was because I only started using it after I started using Marvin Mode. Which was after I had beaten the game.
_________________
Knock Knock.
Who's there?
This is my.
This is my who?
This is my profile.
.... HAHAHAHAHA *Heartattack* |
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Wed Dec 11, 2002 8:55 pm |
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Srikandi
Noble Knight
Joined: 04 Dec 2001
Posts: 222
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| Demo impressions: graphics |
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Played through the G2 demo (with HornOx's machine-translated subtitles) yesterday, fresh from completing a replay of G1... so the improvements are very vivid to me. Just wanted to offer some comments on the graphics, and those little "realism" touches: where things have been improved and where there's still room for more improvement. Incidentally, I was playing on highest graphics settings on a 1280x1024 monitor.
The initial response is "wow". G2 does some things visually better than any other computer game I've seen (in fact better than lots of "still" 3D computer art). What distinguishes G2's graphics is realism: unlike the visual style of a game like Morrowind, for instance, where you're clearly in a fantasy world, in G2 you could easily be in the real world -- northern Europe or New England -- with the exception of course of some of the fauna (though even here, we have very believable sheep and wolves as well as more exotic species).
What really stands out is the forests. The combination of beautiful textures and realistic amounts of vision-obscuring foliage, including ferns, sticks and brush as well as trees of various species, makes for an incredibly "real-life" forest feeling. The price we pay for this is the fact that everything except rocks and tree-trunks is a 2D surface with no collision properties, so it looks odd from some angles, and your character will happily clip right through it all. Obviously this is desirable, in the sense that we certainly wouldn't want to have to navigate around all that visual splendor. Perhaps the next generation of computer games will allow branches and leaves to "bend" and "snap back" like their real-world counterparts. (Dungeon Siege, a game with tedious gameplay but some nice graphical touches, had foliage that would quiver just before a wolf jumped out from ambush... so presumably this kind of thing is possible.)
The clipping problem is less apparent if you play in first-person mode, which is a real possibility here, unlike in G1 (through an .ini file setting). The .ini file says this mode isn't fully supported, and this is most apparent during combat, where you will see your weapon dancing, but not your hand wielding it -- and when you die, when you get a nice first-person view of the beasts devouring you I like this mode, though, especially because it eliminates certain visual anomolies, like seeing your character sliced in half by an evergreen branch.
Since I've only been in the "official" demo area, the only water I've seen is the pond near Xardas's tower. The water is very pretty -- blotchy, but that's appropriate for a murky pond -- and one of the layers is evidently some kind of reflection map, which creates a nice illusion. The waterfall, well, isn't great... but I have to say I have yet to see a really good waterfall in a game. More problematic is the fact that the pond water is completely still; the waterfall doesn't disturb it, nor does your character wading through it. To compare some other games here, in Morrowind the water will display surface ripples from objects passing through and from rain, but it doesn't move at the edges (no lapping waves). I understand that Sea Dogs II will have real ocean billows, which should be interesting. So it seems that there is some room for improvement here even with current technology. Maybe in G3.
Weather: the rain looks exactly like the G1 rain, and I have to say I'm not crazy about it... white streaks and little "splashes" that look drawn-on. Clouds are beautiful, more realistic than Morrowind clouds for instance (more diverse in shape, multiple cloud planes that move at different speeds). But the sky itself is lacking in my opinion... I think the problem is that it's the same color all over, even at sunset and dawn, when we would expect dramatic transitions from one part of the sky to another. And the area around the moon and the sun should be different too. (The odd "lens flare" effect from G1 is gone, but you do still get a noticeable visual effect when you face the sun directly, which is nice.) Haven't played long enough to see if there are moon phases... in G1 the moon was always full, and it certainly starts out full in G2 as well. And the stars should be points instead of little disks; they shouldn't show perspective effects, but they do... yes, I know, picky picky picky.
Models: G2 has more detail than G1 (barrels are now octagonal rather than hexagonal, for instance), but it is still very low-poly compared to e.g. Morrowind. Of course the motivation for this is clear: it allows longer view distances, and permits interiors to be continuous with exteriors (which is a very desirable feature, well worth the tradeoff: no loading on going through a door, real windows you can look out of). There are a few places though where I thought a few more polys could have been used to good effect. Fingers, or at least hands with thumbs: everybody still has permanently clenched fists. Bookshelves: Xardas's library still has "painted-on" books, with the exception of the few readable books on stands and some non-interactive book models on tables. Especially because of the contrast with the "real" books, it just doesn't look right: better to omit those huge bookshelves. The foodstall right inside Khorinis: here too the food is painted on, and looks it (moreover the painted food is in no correspondence to what the merchant has for sale, so why not just put a few food models on a table?)
Speaking of barrels, by the way, I've never understood why every computer game has to have so many of them... even futuristic sci-fi games have lots of "round" metal kegs. To me they're one of the places where the absence of real roundness in 3D graphics technology becomes most painfully apparent. In Gothic in particular, you can't even open a barrel, so why not just leave them out? Wouldn't we believe in a fantasy world where everybody just used crates and chests, and barrel-making had never been invented? Oh well... just a pet peeve.
Cooking: like everybody else I've learned to live with the RPG convention that the hero keeps lots of large and pointy objects in his pants... but I have to say I was surprised when he whipped out a pan to cook meat on a stove... and then put it back in his pants, red-hot and greasy! I would have been happier to leave the pan on the stove, as in G1. Yes, a tiny, tiny point.
Very pleased so far with the rest of the gameplay... interesting characterization, interesting quests, smarter monsters and NPCs. Looking forward to the full game with much anticipation! And overall, I'd say G2 sets a new high-water mark for game graphics in several areas. |
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Wed Dec 11, 2002 11:40 pm |
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Jung
Most Exalted Highlord
Joined: 19 Jun 2002
Posts: 411
Location: Texas |
| Re: Demo impressions: graphics |
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quote:
Originally posted by Srikandi
Weather: the rain looks exactly like the G1 rain, and I have to say I'm not crazy about it... white streaks and little "splashes" that look drawn-on. Clouds are beautiful, more realistic than Morrowind clouds for instance (more diverse in shape, multiple cloud planes that move at different speeds). But the sky itself is lacking in my opinion... I think the problem is that it's the same color all over, even at sunset and dawn, when we would expect dramatic transitions from one part of the sky to another. And the area around the moon and the sun should be different too. (The odd "lens flare" effect from G1 is gone, but you do still get a noticeable visual effect when you face the sun directly, which is nice.) Haven't played long enough to see if there are moon phases... in G1 the moon was always full, and it certainly starts out full in G2 as well. And the stars should be points instead of little disks; they shouldn't show perspective effects, but they do... yes, I know, picky picky picky.
Good summary! I will have to go back and look at some of the things you mentioned.
I have only one comment about G2's graphics. It doesn't seem bright enough outside in G2. I don't recall this problem in G1, and it may just be my settings, but it feels like I am indoors somehow. I will have to see if I can fix it. Anyone else have this problem?
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"You two are a regular ol' Three Musketeers." |
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Thu Dec 12, 2002 12:42 am |
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Srikandi
Noble Knight
Joined: 04 Dec 2001
Posts: 222
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Yes -- that was exactly my feeling when I first started playing actually, though I got used to it and it stopped bothering me. I upped the gamma a lot and was somewhat happier, but I still think the sky should be brighter relative to everything else. Didn't have this feeling with G1, so something has changed; G1 also had better sunsets. (Of course with the barrier I never really expected the sky in G1 to look quite natural anyway.) |
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Thu Dec 12, 2002 12:49 am |
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