Scared by the screenshots of RTW....

[Rhysy]

I'm scared because RTW looks too good 10,000 textured polygon models running around on my desktop ?? Yaaaarggh

Ok, what I'm really worried about is whether I'll need another new graphics card and/or RAM to play it. We got a new graphics card (TNT2 M64 32 mb) graphics card just to get Medieval Total War to run (yes, it was worth it &#33http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif, but I dread to think about the minimum system specifications needed for RTW. Does anyone have any idea what they might be ?

[Dirk]

As far as I know the new engine requires even less than the MTW engine

[youssof_Toda]

Read some other topics here they're full of all the info on system specs.

[Knight_Yellow]

not another 1

OK here it is

"if ur system runs MTW it will run RTW" "even on the lowest computers the game is very adjustable and will still run ok"



every1 happy?

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Rhysy]

Wow, cool Thanks

Sorry to post a question already asked - I looked through the topic titles and didn't see anything that looked relavent.

[Longshanks]

A good rule of thumb with any game, is that there is a 99.9% chance that it was designed to run on mid-range machines.

You have to remember, all businesses are motivated by profit. As such, games usually aren't going to be made to be playable only by those with high-end machines. It alienates too large a part of the market, as most gamers aren't going to upgrade for one game.

I've waited in anticipation for quite a few games now, and eveytime there is some hype about the graphics...the "will this run on my machine" and if "you don't have such & such forget it" threads pop up. I have yet to see that be the case though.

[Rhysy]

You're right there, Longshanks. It just seemed reasonable, given that my system couldn't run MTW without an upgrade, and that RTW's graphics and level of detail is another order of magnitude higher, that another upgrade might have been needed. But very nice indeed to see developers actually working with existing systems, rather than waiting for a while for people to upgrade.

[youssof_Toda]

Remember that when the dev state that it is possible to run the game with a minimum spec that covers the whole load: it is possible but nothing more.

Prob you wont be able to run the game with 3d setting and you will have to turn off some effects and lower sound quality or turn it off all together. Prob also the game will be very slow both in SP mode and my guess is you will get tons of lag in MP battles.

But hey we have prob over a year to go so you got all the time you need to save some money for an upgrade if you want to play the game properly.

[Swoosh So]

Lol such b/s that rome will run on the same specs as mtw, If u believe that you will believe anything, i predict even on a durun 800 gf2 low graphics settings it'll still be jerky as hell http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Tera]

Thy are men and women of no faith ... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Tera]

Thy are men and women of no faith ... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[some_totalwar_dude]

It can get even better. I read somewhere they've tested it on a 4mb voodoo1 card. AND IT WORKED http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif
Well they didn't say it was playeble but it worked http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

They also noted that using videocards that have less than 16MB memory will decrase the detail dramaticly, so they recommerd 32MB cards

[Swoosh So]

Yawn, I got conned into buying warrior kings much the same way and i hardly even moved on low detail

[youssof_Toda]

Warrior kings was a drama concerning the systems specs you had to have to run the game properly.

[Magyar Khan]

i suggest to save the context of teh postsand confront teh devs with it when it dont run as smooth as mtw. remember hyping is a part of total wars history

[Spino]

You guys really need to take a deep breath and relax...

I think many of you fail to realize that the tactical environment of RTW will be totally 3D unlike STW and MTW which basically sport 2D sprites on 3D terrain. This basically means the 3D capabilities of your video card will taken advantage of to the fullest whereas with previous TW games you were at the mercy of your card's basic DirectDraw performance and your CPU when it came to depicting battles with thousands of 2D sprites. I believe the only aspect of the tactical battles in STW and MTW that requires 3D acceleration is the terrain, artillery and low polygon birds that occasionally grace a map

The effect of too many animated 2D sprites or 2D effects on the screen at once can be profound. I have a 1Ghz Athlon cpu, 512megs PC-2100 DDR memory, 60gig 7200rpm hard drive and a 64meg Radeon VIVO and when I load up an old 2D sprite based game like Sid Meier's Gettysburg or derivative games based on the same engine like Waterloo or Austerlitz you should see how slow things get when I play the full battles and several thousand little animated 2D sprite soldiers march across the field at once. Even seemingly 'simplistic' games like Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale can also tax my system; when too many 2D spell effects are on the screen at once those games become unbearably sluggish. Now this same system can play Unreal Tournament 2003, Medal of Honor or Battlefield 1942 at 1024x768 with normal detail settings and give me decent framerates, even when the onscreen action is rather heavy. What's the difference here? Unaccelerated 2D sprites versus accelerated 3D polygons. On a side not I believe DirectX can or was able to accelerate 2D sprites (or maybe it was OpenGL) but there has been little demand for such a feature and as far as I know, no 3d cards support this in hardware.

Secondly from what we've heard RTW is also going to sport a very robust 3D engine. What this means is that given what we've seen in the screenshots and been told by the developers there is probably going to be some very aggressive level of detail (LOD) scaling going on when our little legions march across the field of battle. Meaning the engine will actively scale back the number of polygons being rendered on screen for any given scene based upon your system's ability and the limits placed on it by the developers. If any of you were lucky to catch the ultra-high resolution RTW screenshots posted at Bluesnews recently you would see that while many soldiers appeared quite detailed up close, the ones in the far distance were really nothing more than colorful stick figures. This is the effect of that LOD scaling I mentioned. This same effect would naturally apply to terrain and buildings.

A perfect example of a state of the art game that does not sport an efficient 3D engine with LOD routines is Morrowind. It runs surprisingly slow on all but the best systems and with maximum detail settings even 2Ghz+/Radeon 9700 machines rarely see framerates over 30-40fps in crowded cities The problem with Morrowind is that the game engine quite literally renders EVERYTHING out to the visible limit and does not scale down polygon counts on objects as they increase their distance from your point of view. Do not expect RTW's 3D engine to offer similarly underwhelming performance.

Later this year we should see a massive surge of system upgrading by gamers as the next big thing known as Doom 3 is going to be released sometime this Fall. While not as cutting edge as flight simulators or first person shooters the realtime strategy and wargame genres are moving forward as well and CA must move the TW series up to the next level. Failure to keep pace with the rest of the market will ultimately mean poor sales and marginalization in the eyes of reviewers and gamers. The last thing CA wants is to be considered as one of those retro wargaming companies that puts out quality games with mediocre graphics and sound. Good gameplay can only carry a game so far, eye candy must be comparable to similar games out on the market.

Lastly, many of you with sub 1Ghz Pentium II/Pentium III/early Athlon based systems, especially those of you with TNT/TNT2/GeForce1 based 3d cards, should seriously consider upgrading this year. Don't consider anything less than a 1.5Mhz+ cpu and a DirectX8 or DirectX9 compatible 3D card. The grim reality is that the gaming market is moving forward and if you want to keep playing pretty games so should you.

In light of all that I've written should you take what the developers say with a grain of salt? Of course. We have yet to see how the finished product will perform, especially when the AI and sound have been completed and fully integrated into the game. But keep in mind that CA has to give Activision a game that will maximize sales for the target audience. I imagine a strategic game that runs sluggishly even on high end systems won't go over too well with the suits at Activision.

Sorry about the lengthy response, I guess I got a little carried away... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif

[Knight_Yellow]

yeah 3d is so optimised nowdays that its easier on ur system than 2d.

example.

mtw 8 players lags a good bit and can jigger about

battlefield 1942 64 players full graphics settings massive map and no slowdowns i mean NONE

same with ut2003


and swoosh ive got warrior kings my old voodo runs it better than my geforce 4 so im gonna say that the codes a piece of worthless s*** not my specs

[youssof_Toda]

So to make a long story short: the devs can say you wont need a better machine to play rtw but if you want the game to run properly you'd better upgrade ur system if it's like mine (p667 TNT 2 128 MB RAM).

[TosaInu]

Interesting post Spino.

When a box says runs on a PII 400, it likely means that it 'runs' at the lowest settings.

My personal rule of thumb is that the recommended specs on the box are actually the min specs (that is because I 'insist' on some settings).

Youssof, how does MTW run on your system?

[Rhysy]

To summarise, then.... :

1) It'll definately run.
2) The graphics might be low quality and/or framrate might be low, but owing to the way graphics cards work, might not. It might even run better than the faked 3D MTW, because graphics cards handle polygons better than sprites.
3) It's probably a good idea to save for an upgrade just in case, because it might not work very well, and future games are likely to need a better system than 128mb RAM and TNT2 graphics card.
4) Wait and see.


Everyone agree ? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[youssof_Toda]

Tosa: I'm happy to say that with tweaking my pc a bit and mainting it the game is playable to me.

With playable I mean I don't have all the fancy high resolution settings but the graphics are still good enough and the game is not lagging due to my pc's performance when I do MP.

[Lehesu]

Good points, all. However, I would like to add an extra puzzle to the piece. A lot of the system specs are determined BEFORE advanced design is done. This is so that the programmers, graphics artists, etc. know what the boundaries of the program are. So, assuming that the specs are already set, all that needs to be determined is which demographic will the company want to sell the game to. If it is mid-level, it will have specs compatible with most mid-line machines. However, if the demographics is for advance machines....hence our problem. I personally think that they will gear it similar to M:TW, with maybe some higher graphics card requirements. However, anyone without at least 1 Ghz, 256 RAM, or a 64 MB gfx card should really consider upgrading.

[LordKhaine]

I doubt he'll be able to run it well, if at all. TNT2 m64??? those cards couldnt cope with Quake3 I dont care if its 3d, TNT2's don't have T&L, they have very little hardware functions on them. On the other hand.... a fairly speedy system now with a good card could most certainly run Rome.

I'm on an Athlon2100, with 512 DDR ram and a GF4 Ti4200. If it doesn't run on this system... something is very wrong.

[Erado San]

From what I have read so far, minimum specs are hard to produce at this moment because there's too much development still to be done.

I think it will run on reasonably low-end spec pc's, but with the introduction of full 3D environment a good graphics card will seriously improve your game. If 32 Mb RAM video cards will be recommended, that doesn't say enough. It's obvious that the Geforce256 32 Mb will perform much better than a TNT2 32 Mb card. And a Gef 2 32 Mb will perform better than a Gef256.

Minimum specs are exactly that. Normally take the minimum specs, take a one or two step better CPU, double the RAM, take a video card one generation better and you have the recommended specs.

[Lord Of Storms]

I have noticed with min. specs in most game reviews the mag that it is in will give their take like manufacturers recommended min. =(example) pentium 2 400mhz and the magazine doing the review will say Required min. and it will almost always be double what the manufacturer recommends ?https://www.clipart.com/sthm/thm5/CL/STGR007/broder3b2/children/crtch114.thm.jpg

[baz]

well i know that some ppl play mtw on pretyy low spec machines and the game is ok, unfortunately there comes a time when you just have to upgrade http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif