Demo Impressions

[Barkhorn1x]

I gotta say that CA did a VERY good job of optimization AFIAK. Not to brag or anything - but it is super smooth at 1600x1200 32bit w/ all settings at High or Very High (units at Super High), no AA (don't need it at that setting) and all goodies turned on except for "super unit shadows" or some such.

The only thing I get is a bit of "blinking" from the water graphics - anyone know what would cause that? It is minor annoyance in any case.

System specs;
AMD XP 2100+
768 Megs DDR2100 RAM
G4 Ti4600 gfx card w/ 128 Megs of RAM

Barkhorn.

[CBR]

yeah I tried 1600x1200 with all set to max including AA and worked fine but my mouse moved a bit slowish so I went down to 1280 again..maybe I could do something with windows mouse setting but who cares.

So we got super graphics and clickfest gameplay..

Edit: 2400+ AMD, and GF4 TI4800 and 1 GB ram.


CBR

[afrit]

The new minimap is a mixed bag. I am bummed that CA did not improve on it more. I like its unobtrusive location, the fact that it can be zoomed, the fact that the selected unit shows up green on it, and the general is a star. I don't like the fact that we lost the ability to select from the minimap, to wave the cursor over units and know what they are and to make it bigger.

I hate to admit the MTW minimap was more useful.

[CBR]

Ok one thing I noticed: The amount of info from a mouseover depends on range. From far away all you see is what faction the unit belongs to. Then what type of unit, then if its moving and finally what state of morale and fatigue it has.

Now that is very good and I remember we discussed it in a thread last year.

Thx LongJohn


CBR

[oblivious maximus]

Like it, its beautiful and just amazing. Good job CA !!!!!!

[Hurin_Rules]

Anyone know the exact size of the demo? I'm trying to download it of Kazaa but there are lots of files that seem like fakes.

Cheers

[CBR]

141 MB. But no need to bother with Kazaa now..IGN will have it in 2 hours and 20 minutes.


CBR

[MiniKiller]

! thats 3 am here im not leaving with my girl on vacation till like noon and hell its a 6 hour drive i could sleep then!!!!!

*drools* lmao

[discovery1]

I was impressed by the demo, until I got the Romans to work. After I pulled back into a defensive position, Hannibal and his troops just marched up and down infrom of my army. Then again, I believe that the ai for Carthage is less than optimized for the demo, so there is hope.

[The Witch-King]

Hmmmm, for those complaining about the high speed and arcade look. Didn't CA mention something about arcade battles? Maybe the demo only has arcade settings and the realistic settings will be in the main game. Just a thought. :)

[Sir Toma of Spain]

Where can i get the demo from please help me i am almost dying here

[Aelwyn]

You can get it in about 42 minutes from fileplanet, iirc.

[frogbeastegg]

Here's a few more points that struck me:

-The map. It's hard to tell what is where when all those big, fat arrows get close together. Even worse it is not accurate! It told me there was a unit of Romans in the middle of my Carthaginian army. There was most definitely not. There were no Romans within 2 miles of my army, in fact there was only one unit left unrouted and it was huddling at the map edge while I was still in the middle. This inaccuracy was really very bad and if it makes it into the full game I shall be one peed frog.

-The pause thing. Anyone found a way to hide that massive, white pause box? It really ruins the view when you pause to gawp at the units in close up.

-The interface. Ditto, any way to hide it?

-Screenshots. I can't find an in-built screenie key. Also the interface and pause blob really block of huge areas of the screen.

-Routing units flags turn white. Now on the surface this is a really great idea and I love it, as it makes it easy to identify routing enemy to ignore or run down. Problem is the effect is so badly done I thought it was a graphics glitch.

-Red 'explosions', anyone else seen them? As in you are looking around checking the battlefield with the camera fairly high up, then your view is filled with reddish, transparent lines like rays of light? It's not the sun getting in your eyes, or if it is it looks nothing like the sun getting in your eyes. I think it may be a glitch?




I had all the graphics options set to full and it was still blurry. Now I shall try messing with settings in my cards config, which will stuff it up when I want to play thief 3.

Arcade; I wonder if by 'arcade' they really meant 'must put on pause every two seconds to keep up'?. If so then I hate arcade.

I shall see if I can wring something a little better out of the normal demo, then go to modding.

[Gregoshi]

I'm too tired to play with the control settings any more, but it seems like the camera controls are goofed up. In the TW setting, left/4 and right/6 should be "camera rotate left" and "camera rotate right", but in Trebia they do "strafe" rather than rotate. I'm too tired to see if the controls labeled "strafe" actually do "rotate".

All in all, not too bad. I want to play with some of settings and try to adjust a few things that didn't feel quite right, like camera speed (too slow). It is definitely a bigger change from MTW to RTW than it was from STW to MTW, so a little more time for adaptation is in order, at least for me.

A few quick comments before I head off to bed:

1) I liked the music, but didn't care so much for it playing throughout the whole battle. At this point, I prefer the STW/MTW method of playing a short tune for first movement and battle commencing.

2) The little cut scenes that pop up, like a general dying, when you are trying to survey the battle and issue orders are rather startling when they appear.

3) Very late in the last battle I fought, I noticed that at least some of the units have a "special function". Very nice (I think) and I'll have to play around with them to see how they work and how to use them. Same with the "guard" button.

4) Still haven't figured out how to rally routed units. I guess it is a nice touch that their banner goes white, but the routing enemy units go white too. The shape of the banner must be key to identifying friend from foe.

Now off to dreamland...

Edit: Doh! Froggie posted while I was composing. Yes Miss Froglein, I saw those rays of light too, but only in the first battle now that I think of it. It appeared to coincide with the archers that were shooting the fire arrows.

[frogbeastegg]

Music plays throughout the battle? It stopped halfway through in mine...

I had forgotten about the cutscenes and popup messages on general's death etc. Hope there is a toggle to make them less....big, flash and distracting. Something like the old voice over only announcement without the square message box blocking your view down the left side.

You know so far there is more for me to complain about with this demo than to like. Damn, I still remember the euphoria of the STW demo, a demo I played over and over for days.

EDIT: d'oh, Greg replied while I was if the rays came from the archers then at some points they must have been aiming straight up and away from the enemy. Odd. I shall investigate more later.

[Leet Eriksson]

I played the demo, here are some of my impressions:

-The Poeni Infantry Spears are missing, i can't see them, they also brandished swords when the enemy closed in, might be a small graphical glitch or something.

-Cheeseball arab accent for Carthaginians.

-Cheeseball arab sorta message when a unit routs(look at the message, even the spearman has his face wrapped arabic style) are these supposed to be numidians?

-No localised languages, Romans don't talk latin, Carthaginians talk like cheeseball arabs and barbarians sound like a bunch of guys on crack PLEASE CA fix this

-Speed seemed perfectly fine the controls are a bit non-responsive though, the units required several clicks to move to the location i tell them to.

-Roman Republican Legions rock muchly, especially the triarii, they wade through units like a knife through butter.

-Are elephants useless or what? so long for my dreams for an elephant only server... ~:p

-Hannibal was a unit on its own, it beat down a unit of velites and routed a triarii engaged with the peoni.

-Battling over the bridge is nice when units fall over i hear a water splash sound, the water didn't animate sadly, nontheless it was pretty good!

-Walking over a bridge is another story though, NEVER EVER put a general unit first with an archer unit supporting it, the archers are more likely to kill the general off, while it didn't kill mine, the archers helped reduce my generals cavalry to half strength (10 men)

Ok enough nitpicking, This Demo is very good, i'll start modding it just for kicks, i need to figure a way to play the romans in trebia.

EDIT:Updated impressions.

[Lucius Lucullus]

Im kind disapointed by the demo, its to short, and it actually lessens my apetite rather then increasing it. In the MTW demo you had a full fledge tutorial and even a couple of sieges, this demo feels more or less as they hastily patched together a demo in an attempt to maintain the schedule.

Hell I almost feel cheated , anyhow, of to twiddle with the game files

[Armchair Athlete]

I thought it was very good, didn't think camera controls were too bad at all (but then again I was preparing for the worst, so no let down factor) can't wait for the full release!

[Brighdaasa]

i had that red glare too, it's actually from burning soldiers hit by flaming arrows, i got rid of it by setting all graphics options to the highest

you can rally your units through the general's special ability, which is.. Rally your troops...

[Bob the Insane]

I am going to save my real impressions until I have played this at home, but on my work PC with it's crapy graphics card the battle really did not feel all that different to playing a MTW historical battle... A bit more cinematic at the start maybe and the battle was presented more dramatically (perhapes they picked that trick up from the TV program associations..)

Got to agree with the comments on the big whit boxes appearing in the middle of the screen but it is really not that different to MTW..

Personally I didn't really like the way a units flag changed when routing, it seems a bit unnecessary, and unsubtle compared to the audio clues in MTW... It also made it hard to local the enemy units in the big battle as your banners are white anyway so when a roman unit routs in amoungst your men and their banner switched from red to white it made the routing romans hard to find...

All in all I am not disappointed so far, the battle seemed as much fun as MTW and that is with a really crappy Gfx card...

[Degtyarev14.5]

4) Still haven't figured out how to rally routed units. I guess it is a nice touch that their banner goes white, but the routing enemy units go white too. The shape of the banner must be key to identifying friend from foe.

I don't think they can be rallied, unless the general happens to be nearby.

I quite like this. I never really understood why in MTW, there was a button to rally troops. I mean, if they're gonna rally when you press the button why couldn't they just have rallied themselves, which no doubt they were gonna do anyway? To me, the MTW rally button seems reduntant, and just frustrated the player when the troops decided they weren't looking back.

I like that it is gone, and that troops now rally when they're ready. Again, the proximity of the general creates an exception to this rule, which greatly increases his value and usefulness: I think this is a great move by CA.

A.

[Husar]

Ok, now I played Trebia 3 times and it was not as bad as I expected.

- You are right that the fatigue would better be shown for all units at the same time, and valour should be a number

- the triarii in the tutorial have a lot of flags, so no wonder they kill everything

- the battles are not that fast(not too fast for me), although I had the feeling that the Poeni Infantry is close to useless without cavalry help, even from the front they get overrun.

- the sacred band cavalry is cool, they can fight well and a charge not only looks very well it´s also effective.

- the elephants are not my favourites, one time I lost nearly all in close combat(they can be stopped), another time they mowed everyone down on their own. I once let them charge into the rear of the enemy and they went on even though parts of my Poeni infantry.

- when I heard fleeing romans shout "retreat" in a forest, there was a hall-effect.

- units don´t always follow my commands like I want, no way to make them move when the enemy is close and they prepare for battle(that they prepare with shields up and so looks good, though), chasing down enemies still takes a long time sometimes, because the cav seems to miss the enemies.

- the graphics look very good, IMO

All in all I think I will buy the game and I think only in this battle the lines are so close, in normal campaign battles your general makes a speech, without a scripted intro, so I think the enemy won´t start within archery range then.

[frogbeastegg]

This is the red glow I am talking about:

It comes from any unit being hit with arrows, flaming or otherwise, on the field. As long as the target unit is somewhere on my screen I am blinded by this glare, even if the unit is so fo off in the distance I can't see it, or is hidden behind a mountain or other terrain feature. It makes it very hard to see what I am doing. I beleive it must be a glitch because it is too stupid and hampering to be a real feature. BTW I have all graphics setting to the max already.

Played the demo again, my issue with reassigning hotkeys has fixed itself. Strange but I'm not complaining as it makes life significantly easier. Once again the music cut out half way throguh the battle. I turned off speech and I still had the units gabbering away inanly in their terrible voice acting. I turned battlefield advice off and that improved the pester factor quite nicely. So overall some improvements but not many, time to get modding.

As for all these boxes being the same as MTW no it isn't, not at all. They are much bigger, and so far I have found no toggle to turn them off - a feature all other TW games have had. I really hope that toggle will be in the final game, it only really matter for screenshots and idle gawping but I like taking screenshots.

Speaking of screenshots if any of the CA guys are reading, can we have an in-built screenshot button again, please? Print screen and alt tabbing to paint shop pro is rather inelegant and slow.

Damn it - I want to love this game, it's in a great series and it's trying to do something I have wanted in a game ever since I found computer games exist over 10 years ago. I really want to love this game, but it's proving so hard.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Anyone tried modding the game to play at night yet? It's quite beautiful. All in all, I'm loving the demo (apart from a few niggly controls), and eagerly await the game.

[Leet Eriksson]

Frog whats your 3d card may i ask?

I have a GF FX 5950 ultra, and i don't get any of the ray effects you mentioned.

[frogbeastegg]

Radeon 9800 pro, driver version 6.14.10.6436. It's an older driver but I had much better performance with it; also newer drivers cause graphics glitches in thief 3 which I am slowly plodding my way throguh.

[The_Emperor]

Isn't there an option to disable the flaming arrows? (either in the demo or in the preferences.txt file) That'd probably help u out.

[Brighdaasa]

hmmm, i had those red glares again this battle, i thought i was rid of them :(

i also have a Radeon 9800pro 128MB, catalyst 4.7 drivers


and once again, you can rally routing units by moving your general close and use his special attack option, which is rally your troops

Isn't there an option to disable the flaming arrows? (either in the demo or in the preferences.txt file) That'd probably help u out.

you can disable the special attack "use flaming arrows" in-game, and they shoot normal arrows, it did seem to stop the glare

[Meneldil]

How can I mod the game so I can play during the night ??
/me didn't even know that we could play during the night

[Leet Eriksson]

You can disable the flaming arrows in the archers special abilities located near the loose/tight formation.

You might wanna update the graphics driver, or there might be a problem with the game not running well on the graphics card.hopefully CA would notice and fix this problem.

And btw.. i noticed this in the tutorial:



Legionnairy cavalry, in lorica segmentata... what are they doing in 218 BC i wonder.... ~:p