LostStraw

Sound cards can have an impact on performance in games. Many motherboards with built in sound offload most of the sound processing work onto the CPU. Depending on the game, this can impact performance quite a bit. However, some motherboards have their own seperate processor for proccessing the sounds and shouldn't negatively affect the performance much. But a word of warning, some motherboards have chips to process the sounds, but to cut back on costs they still offload a lot onto the CPU. Many soundcards are overkill, I'm still using an old SB Live card and it works well. If I had a nice speaker setup I'd consider getting a new one, but since I use headphones, any sort of fancy 6.1 "extreme accelerated surround sound" would be more then pointless. But a decent soundcard wont cost you much money if you decide to buy one.

I played through it. It seemed to be a dash of Diablo and a dash of Dungeon Siege. The levels weren't random ala DS and you didn't have a party ala Diablo. The character development could be interesting, but I'm not sure how that works (if multiclassing is possible or not). (trying to go off memory, I can't remember any of the skill names) I found the fire mage character to be the most powerful. The fire spells like the missles didn't seem very good. However, the one where you enchant your weapon with fire damage was good, as well as the one (stone form or something) where you become unable to move or attack but gain a huge healing regeneration rate and become invincible for some 30 odd seconds. With the combination of those two skills I really felt overpowered, which was a little dissapointing to me. Overall I found it to a decent hack & slash, nothing really special but something that could keep entertained for awhile none the less.

HL2 made physics popular? Ha, Pong made physics popular. Angle in equals angle out and all that jazz. Constanly tracking and changing the velocity of the block as it moves around the screen, now that's some complex stuff. Oh, you mean what made pushing around barrells in an FPS to solve mundane puzzles popular.. yea, HL2 would win that. The first FPS I saw/played with decent physics was Painkiller. Now there was a fun game. Although it didn't emphasize the physics as much as an integral part of the game, I really have a hard time believeving that HL2 was the game that made it a standard. Sure, after HL2 a lot more FPS have been supporting more complex physics, but is that really because of HL2? Or was HL2 just one of the early ones out the door to support a lot of the whiz bang features? I really don't know, but I think it's more along the lines of technology becoming available, where it wasn't before.

After playing the demo I can't say that I'm impressed. I doubt I'll be buying this game unless I can get it at a low price, and even then I'm not sure I'd get it. The changes from 2D to 3D (didn't like the new style) and other things like the new TB battle system turned me away. I wasn't very impressed with the little segment of story included in the demo either. I figure if I ever get the urge to play a game like HoMM, I'll go back to Age of Wonders or good ol Master of Magic.

That's not even a real concept of American Indian vs techies this (3drealms.com) is a real concept of American Indian vs techies. =P More on topic, I'm also dissapointed to see they decided to take the license and not really use it at all. It also looked sub par to many of the other FPS games that were shown for the 360 this E3. Dissapointing use of an interesting license and most likely a dissapointing game by itself.

I missed that, but I do remember when QFG5 was supposed to have mutliplayer. It didn't get in because Sierra closed the developer down. :frown:

I like how everything is so simple.

Hmm, they have to release it by a certain time (they want food for the family) -- what should they do.. release it buggy and broken or release it feature incomplete? I vote for feature incomplete.. it's not as good as releasing it feature complete (and not buggy), but considering the options they have, I think the way they're going is a smart move. I never said it was a good thing that the feature wasn't in the release. But to me, it's much better to get it later then to get a broken feature and have it patched later.

That's what I'm planning on, give them some time to fix up some of the inevetible bugs in the release as well. I usually buy games awhile after releases anyway for the price falloff, I'm cheap.

So it's the "you're mad they arn't working fast enough to get the game out on Atari's schechuled release date"? Whip those devs harder Hassat, I think they need it. Because if anything you should be whining over at Atari, trying to get them an extension. But I don't think the business quite works that way. If they did release the DM client early, I'd hardly call a broken -- buggy feature a complete game. They're doing the best thing they can and you're giving them flack for it?

I can understand complaining about poor support, bad bugs, and various other things. But crap like this makes me wonder why anyone would want to become a dev in the first place (damned if you do.. uh, damned if you do the other thing too). This is just needless bashing... so you're upset because what? The game isn't getting delayed along with the DM client (what.. no.. that wouldn't be selfish at all)? Or are you mad that they arn't releasing it earlier in a more buggy state? Or maybe you're mad because they arn't working fast enough to deliver the perfect flawless game. I want my pink pony, it shouldn't cost me more then 5$ .. and it better be here within the next week. Or I'll hate you forever Sawyer

I think the fact DirectX10 drivers only work on Vista might have something to do with it... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Although, it probably wouldn't be too much trouble for them to get DX10 working in 2000 or XP. I guess they want to give people a "reason" to upgrade their OS.

I don't know if the specifications have been officially anounced (haven't been keeping up with all the E3 announcements), but according to an early IGN article, they're rather underwhelming for a next gen system. It wouldn't suprise me though if the specs were rather low in order to keep the costs and formfactor of the Wii small (I wonder how much the controller setup is). So, I wouldn't expect anything really impressive graphicly from it -- but there are two other consoles for that. Link to IGN article: (revolution.ign.com)

Just don't look at the dirt >_> I didn't realize how dirty everything was until I took the picture. I sense a great amount of cleaning in my future. I have the CRT turned on just for show. It's too blury for me to use and since it's not a widescreen and doesn't support high resolutions, setting up dual moniter support between the two moniters is a royal pain and never seems to work right.

Running above 800x600 in the games I like to play usually gets quite a bit of chop on the medium detail settings. Running at the low detail settings (Quake 4) I can push it up to 1024x768, but I still get some FPS drops, not unplayable but annoying none the less. I'll try making myself more clear, my writing comprehension suffers sometimes. You stated in your quote that video cards are getting cheaper while consoles are getting more expensive. However, video cards get cheaper over time as well as consoles. See the drop in price of the Xbox as well as the drop in price of the Radeon 9800. If you meant that the new generation of consoles is more expensive then the last.. that's true, but the same applies to videocards. Over generations they both get more expensive. I'm well aware of both those things. And I don't think I'm confused (although I may be). I was using Nvidia in my example because I still have fond memories of my TNT 2, and I know it wasn't some 600 USD. Thanks.

Eh, I put a gaming rig together around 3 years ago for 1300 USD. Granted it can still play todays games, but only at rather low settings and I'm afraid that the next gen games will just mutilate it. Now if I want to upgrade to play current games at medium to high quality at decent frame rates, it's going to cost me a lot more than just 200 USD for a new video card.. a lot more. I guess if you're not into graphically intense games then your point stands, but if you are -- 200 USD wont do it. Sorry, but I have to say WTF to this. Are you saying the Xbox is more expensive now then when it was released, or are you saying that the top of the line TNT2 card was more expensive when it was released then the top of the line Geforce card today? Either way -- you're blowing chunks. As for the other stuff, I wont argue. We obviously have different perceptions of what a decent gaming rig should look like. As for me, I've only owned one console and I've hardly touched it because of my PC. But after considering all the price points for myself, I've come to the conclusion that for the next generation, it would be cheaper for me to get a console then it would be for me to upgrade my old rig. Things like game rentals and purchasing used games can really reduce the price over time.

I think it's rather nice, the webpage actually fills up a window instead of having big bars of background filler on the side. Not everyone uses 800x600.

They probably took it down because it was filled with nothing but spam.

---> ---> " *cough*Four-Page-Thread-On-This-Very-Subject-On-This-Very-Forum-That's-Still-On-The-Front-Page-Of-This-Very-Section*cough* <Edit>DAMN ME FOR TAKING TOO LONG WITH MY BASTARDIZED HTML CODE!</Edit> <Editx2>And how the hell was the original post that I read changed in my quote, you know, the "in case everyone hadn't heard about it yet" one. Grr! DAMN Invision Power board and it's crafty ways. And DAMN YOU MAX POWERS!</Editx2> <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I had realised my mistake of posting a dupe only after I had posted it, so I went back and changed it. I'm a sneaky one

Woops, I didn't see the post about Troika shutting down. (bad me) But I don't think the link to a tech demo movie of the post apocalyptic RPG they were working on was mentioned, so here it is. http://www.3ddownloads.com/nma-fallout/mis...MO_Gameplay.wmv Post apocalyptic rpg curse going around?

It's very possible as I had the same problems on my 3GHz sytem. No viruses or anything. The problem was with ATi's drivers (certain versions made the game run really slow, less then 5 FPS slow). I sure hope that KOTOR2 addresses this issue, or ATi does (if they haven't already).

Yes, I suppose Celleron isn't so much a mobile processor as it is a budget processor. However, being a budget processor it also performs like one. Also, I believe the Pentium-Ms will be coming to desktop computers.

There seems to be a some misinformation about Intels processor lineup. There is no Centrino processor. The Celeron is Intel's old mobile processor (stay away from it). I'd also stay away from Laptops with Pentium 4s in them as they produce a lot of heat and drain batteries very quickly. The Pentium-Ms are actually pretty good but they are also fairly spendy. Also make sure to note that Pentium 4-M processors are not the same as Pentium-M processors (The Pentium 4-M ones arn't as good). here are some benchmarks comparing the Pentium-M the Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.as...desktop&page=11 Here are some more gaming benchmarks comparing those same processors. http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.as...angaming&page=4 A few more benchmarks. http://www.gen-x-pc.com/review_dothan_pro.htm

It's actually not that pricy. Yes, you can. There's definitely not as much customization as you can get with desktops though. The mobo/chasis component is called a whitebook.

1. I'd recomend an AMD64. 2. A generic videocard wont cut it. 3. What kind of games will you be playing? 4. Don't buy from Alienware unless you want to pay too much.