Sun Feb 08, 2004 7:10 am
Just so you know, I was running the european 1.2 version. and it was horrible.
I'd like to continue what I was saying above. The story sucks, the animated characters are so "1996" as well-- stiff and emotionless. The mouth movements are not synched with the text either. Its like worse than crouching tiger, hidden dragon.. but at least that movie didnt synch it perfectly on purpose!
For me, that wasnt enough to ruin it though. What destroyed it, was the fact that the cut-scenes looked so awful and RAN LIKE A SLIDE SHOW. FreeLancer's cut scenes were much more fluid, colorful, vibrant and ran silky smooth. X2's ran at about 4FPS!
And to criticize gameplay.. come on! The ships move about as FLUIDLY as Wing Commander III. FreeLancer was sooooo refined in comparison. The framerate was also OK.. up until the battles. The battles would drop the framerate from a cozy 35 at 800x600 to about 4 or 5.
HOLY CRAP, AND WHAT ABOUT THE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS?
Optimal, says the box is:
1,8 Ghz System
512mb RAM
64mb or greater graphics card
AND WHAT DO I HAVE?
Amd Athlon 2000+
512mb RAM
ATI Radeon 9000 with 128mb
OK? So my system is "optimal" right? WELL
I get an average of 18 FPS in the game at 1024x768 at 16bit colors, Particles OFF, Anti Aliasing OFF and SHADOWS OFF.
And taht 18 FPS ranges from about 35 to 4 or 5. WOW. Now, good 3d engines try to keep the framerate stable within a certain range.. this is more or less processor dependent though. STILL. Nothing sucks worse than playing nice and fine.. then getting into a busy firefight, or busy sectors and having your ship torn to pieces because of a god awful framerate.
Thats poor, really poor.
And what sucks even worse, is the feeling of the ship. It doesnt feel like a spaceship, not even with a joystick. The ship moves and turns all stiff and .. when returning to straight and foward flight.. it almost "SNAPS" into position.. which i guess is a feature? But the SNAP of the ship reaching the center deadzone is crappy.. i liked FreeLancer better.
AND NOW THE MENU SYSTEM..
NO MOUSE SUPPORT.. and this game has MENUS upon MENUS upon MENUS micromanaging the living HELL out of each and every fine aspect of the game. The manual doesnt do well enough explaining SQUAT.. SO you have to spend time in a "simulator" prior to the game just to learn the basics.
The game is so complicated.. so UN NECESSARILY complicated.. people wishing for a little more from FreeLancer get X2.. and X2 is not really a game for explorers or bounty hunters.. its target demogrpahic is 40 year old economic professors with a star trek fetish. NOT ME, NOT US.
So let me cut and paste a little bit from the posts on Egosoft's website.. the posts that are cleverly hidden behind a registered message board.. kept private from the general public. Here is a small GLIMPSE of the ice berg from what is going on.
They are actually pitying the euro customers, as we get the game later than they.. and have NO IDEA that the community is so friggin upset over X2, and the shady tactics behind egosoft to hide its problems behind closed forums.
//
Da_Junka:
I don’t think Egosoft gives very much attention to your problems while you post in technical support, they know that potential buyers of the euro version only have access to the x universe forum and thus will not be able to see the problems they are about to have when they buy X2. In this Egosoft have been very clever, open a technical section that only registered members can access, and when your registered it’s to late they have your money.
Jimmy Jazz:
Well, i use an ATI9700. Performance is fine, but as soon as a large fight takes place it becomes nearly unlplayable. I would love to see this fixed if it is possible.
Mightey Midget:
LAG! If there are no khaak in a system i get about 33 fps, if the system is really busy (still not many khaak) i get 25 fps if there are lots of khaak i get like 18 fps! I'm on the ore belt mission and the whole darn mission is laggy, its sitting pretty at like 18 fps the whole time . My system is:
Raedon 9800 Pro (clocked up to 418 core and 357 memory)
Cpu 2.4 gigahertz (pentium 4, tried overlocking to 2.8 but the game hangs... a pity cause that helped a bit).
1 gig of ddr 333 ram!
10 gig free on my 80 gig harddrive
catalyst 3.10 with smothvision on app preference as well as anisotrpic filtering, both are at 2x for open gl and direct 3d.
If that is the case then it is more than likely our problems arise as a result of bad engine design on the part of egosoft, I don't want to be a real pain in the ass customer here, but you guys have to do somthing about all this stuff the game has awsome potential as far as games go! Even as it stands i still like it better than any of my other games, but these issues need to be addressed soon please .
The engine is simply designed badly. My computer runs hardly any better with all the settings turned down on the video level as well as in game, than it does with all of them turned up on the video card as well as in game.
//
That and about 500 more of the same posts of aggravated fans.
AND TO TOP IT OFF: THE GAME INSTALLS SPYWARE THAT IS DAMN NEAR IMPOSSIBLE TO DETECt or remove! I took the game back and cleaned the registry, but I have NO IDEA if the spyware program is still there.. or if it was removed.. I have no idea why they had to do this! I know they installed it, because I had to agree to the terms and conditions to allow it. But the file name eludes me.They claimed as posted above, that it was a COPY PROTECTION "DRIVER" that will "collect information on your system to help egosoft assist with technical support."
F'ing B'sht
I hate that game, I hate the company. FreeLancer is where its at.
I'd like to continue what I was saying above. The story sucks, the animated characters are so "1996" as well-- stiff and emotionless. The mouth movements are not synched with the text either. Its like worse than crouching tiger, hidden dragon.. but at least that movie didnt synch it perfectly on purpose!
For me, that wasnt enough to ruin it though. What destroyed it, was the fact that the cut-scenes looked so awful and RAN LIKE A SLIDE SHOW. FreeLancer's cut scenes were much more fluid, colorful, vibrant and ran silky smooth. X2's ran at about 4FPS!
And to criticize gameplay.. come on! The ships move about as FLUIDLY as Wing Commander III. FreeLancer was sooooo refined in comparison. The framerate was also OK.. up until the battles. The battles would drop the framerate from a cozy 35 at 800x600 to about 4 or 5.
HOLY CRAP, AND WHAT ABOUT THE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS?
Optimal, says the box is:
1,8 Ghz System
512mb RAM
64mb or greater graphics card
AND WHAT DO I HAVE?
Amd Athlon 2000+
512mb RAM
ATI Radeon 9000 with 128mb
OK? So my system is "optimal" right? WELL
I get an average of 18 FPS in the game at 1024x768 at 16bit colors, Particles OFF, Anti Aliasing OFF and SHADOWS OFF.
And taht 18 FPS ranges from about 35 to 4 or 5. WOW. Now, good 3d engines try to keep the framerate stable within a certain range.. this is more or less processor dependent though. STILL. Nothing sucks worse than playing nice and fine.. then getting into a busy firefight, or busy sectors and having your ship torn to pieces because of a god awful framerate.
Thats poor, really poor.
And what sucks even worse, is the feeling of the ship. It doesnt feel like a spaceship, not even with a joystick. The ship moves and turns all stiff and .. when returning to straight and foward flight.. it almost "SNAPS" into position.. which i guess is a feature? But the SNAP of the ship reaching the center deadzone is crappy.. i liked FreeLancer better.
AND NOW THE MENU SYSTEM..
NO MOUSE SUPPORT.. and this game has MENUS upon MENUS upon MENUS micromanaging the living HELL out of each and every fine aspect of the game. The manual doesnt do well enough explaining SQUAT.. SO you have to spend time in a "simulator" prior to the game just to learn the basics.
The game is so complicated.. so UN NECESSARILY complicated.. people wishing for a little more from FreeLancer get X2.. and X2 is not really a game for explorers or bounty hunters.. its target demogrpahic is 40 year old economic professors with a star trek fetish. NOT ME, NOT US.
So let me cut and paste a little bit from the posts on Egosoft's website.. the posts that are cleverly hidden behind a registered message board.. kept private from the general public. Here is a small GLIMPSE of the ice berg from what is going on.
They are actually pitying the euro customers, as we get the game later than they.. and have NO IDEA that the community is so friggin upset over X2, and the shady tactics behind egosoft to hide its problems behind closed forums.
//
Da_Junka:
I don’t think Egosoft gives very much attention to your problems while you post in technical support, they know that potential buyers of the euro version only have access to the x universe forum and thus will not be able to see the problems they are about to have when they buy X2. In this Egosoft have been very clever, open a technical section that only registered members can access, and when your registered it’s to late they have your money.
Jimmy Jazz:
Well, i use an ATI9700. Performance is fine, but as soon as a large fight takes place it becomes nearly unlplayable. I would love to see this fixed if it is possible.
Mightey Midget:
LAG! If there are no khaak in a system i get about 33 fps, if the system is really busy (still not many khaak) i get 25 fps if there are lots of khaak i get like 18 fps! I'm on the ore belt mission and the whole darn mission is laggy, its sitting pretty at like 18 fps the whole time . My system is:
Raedon 9800 Pro (clocked up to 418 core and 357 memory)
Cpu 2.4 gigahertz (pentium 4, tried overlocking to 2.8 but the game hangs... a pity cause that helped a bit).
1 gig of ddr 333 ram!
10 gig free on my 80 gig harddrive
catalyst 3.10 with smothvision on app preference as well as anisotrpic filtering, both are at 2x for open gl and direct 3d.
If that is the case then it is more than likely our problems arise as a result of bad engine design on the part of egosoft, I don't want to be a real pain in the ass customer here, but you guys have to do somthing about all this stuff the game has awsome potential as far as games go! Even as it stands i still like it better than any of my other games, but these issues need to be addressed soon please .
The engine is simply designed badly. My computer runs hardly any better with all the settings turned down on the video level as well as in game, than it does with all of them turned up on the video card as well as in game.
//
That and about 500 more of the same posts of aggravated fans.
AND TO TOP IT OFF: THE GAME INSTALLS SPYWARE THAT IS DAMN NEAR IMPOSSIBLE TO DETECt or remove! I took the game back and cleaned the registry, but I have NO IDEA if the spyware program is still there.. or if it was removed.. I have no idea why they had to do this! I know they installed it, because I had to agree to the terms and conditions to allow it. But the file name eludes me.They claimed as posted above, that it was a COPY PROTECTION "DRIVER" that will "collect information on your system to help egosoft assist with technical support."
F'ing B'sht
I hate that game, I hate the company. FreeLancer is where its at.
