Anyone toy with UT3 demo?

Surprised it even runs on my 256mb GF6800 GT......, game seems to mix the feelings I got from both UT Classic and 2K4, so that can only be a good thing from initial impressions.

Have yet to play it online since I just wanted to see how it even ran, got about 10-12fps with everything max'd at 1024x768 in DX9 mode, which was really more than what I was expecting given' a game of this graphical level, guess it shows how powerful the Unreal3 engine is? Kinda gives me hopes of being able to run Gears of War when the PC version hits the store.




[EDIT] Ah, much better, very steady 30fps at 800x600, actually had a match online, and this is looking to be a very solid shooter long as the mod community keeps at it like they did in UT2K4. My main worry is the increased bandwidth requirements due to the detail of everything being much higher, the two maps in the demo are 35mb each, compared to the ones in 2K4 being 2-7mb average....

Whelp, going to play it some more, see how it compares, liking the fact they add an accented glow based upon the team the players are on to make them easily visible amongst the stupidly detailed maps.
(compared to just coloured outfits with a little lamp glow in previous titles)

I must say though, I'm really missing the kill-cam from TF2, as well as its nemesis system, made the matches more interesting when you know someone is specifically killing you and will mark him down for you, rather than just a text blurb saying XXXX killed you.

Played with it for a while, got kind of bored of it after a while, even with the tripod of lasery doom (which I admit is so cool I peed myself). Beautiful game, runs surprisingly well on my barely-functioning desktop (crashtastic), but it's pretty much a generic shooter with awesome graphics -- not to say that's a bad thing, but I personally haven't gotten along well with a lot of generic shooters these days. Hopefully it'll prove me wrong somehow when I play some more, but I'm not sure.

And I really need to comment on this bit...
Sorry to inform you of this, but the chance of modifications being produced with the quality that they have been in the past with older games, such as Half-life, UT2004, Quake 3, etc. -- and this applies to pretty much any modifiable game now -- is incredibly low. I'll leave it up to you to deduce the reason as to why, but that screenshot you've got should give you a good start.

Its a stunning looking game, runs fine almost maxed at 1400x900 on my 8800GTS, screenshots dont do it justice, the sense of scale realy blows you away and your too busy looking at the scenery than playing the game for the first 10 minutes.

I also noticed the trees, they kind of wave about, like a shader effect" which I thought was a nice way of putting life into foliage.

It looks amazing, and it runs silky smooth on my (now aging) X1900XT at 1600x1050.

However, I've struggled to connect to a multiplayer game so far...

It looks almost just like UT2004. I didn't see any shadows at all from point light sources. Directional lights used a lightmap at same resolution as the last engine. Very few surfaces use bumpmapping at all. I was a huge fan when UT2003 came out, even though many people were not excited about it, but this one doesn't seem to add anything new except some post-processing effects and a few miscellaneous shader effects. The indoor lighting actually looks worse, and doesn't appear to have any shadows at all. I remember Epic specifically saying they were using a base texture size of 2048x2048, but this uses the exact same resolution as UT2004. Everything looks very blurry. They are still using detail textures.

I thought the guns looked really strange...almost unrecognizable as weapons. Then I realized that the deferred renderer was implemented just for model shadows, and that the effect would not be noticeable on most normal-looking guns. So somewhere along the line, a design decision was made to attach a bunch of umbrella-looking things to the weapons, just to cast shadows on itself. That's kind of funny. That's also probably why the dude below has umbrellas on his shoulders.

Far Cry 2 is much more interesting to me now.

Meet the next gen, same as the last gen:


I'm disappointed because this is what we were told it would look like. It's not even hype, it's just total lies. The environment in UT3 doesn't cast any dynamic shadows, or hardly any shadows at all.

The graphics are improved over the last UT game I played (2004, I think). The game dynamic is a lot wider, but not in a good way, in my opinion.

The thing about FPS online gaming is that it's fast, forcing swift intelligent decisions in order to win. Start adding a load of stuff into the mix and you detract from the simplicity of the game. Keeping it simple is a good thing. Quake was simple and it's still excellent fun online.

Maybe I'm just not keeping up with the zeitgeist ;)

I'm not impressed by the screenshots. Not in my league.

I'll take a look at it - crank it up to full.

It runs smoothly enough to play at 960x600 on my system, which is what I expect of most current generation games (Bioshock, Lost Planet, DiRT).

It just doesn't add enough, gameplay wise, to make me want it.

I'd love to know which enhanced version of UT2004 Leadworks is playing. I play UT2004 weekly (at the office), and it looks absolutely nothing like UT3!

Well, I wasn't blown away with it. I wacked the visuals right up. Not as graphically advanced as I was expecting - unless the final version let's you wack the candy up higher.

It's nice-looking - but it is pretty much UT2004.

I agree that gameplay hasn't advance much, but UT2004 was pretty much bang on anyway imho. They've definitely refined and polished it though. I'm not convinced by the UI, and I think it still needs work. The missing "Warfare" game mode sounds great - Can't wait to try that.

Apparently (read in the UT3 forums), the highest quality textures aren't included in the demo.