[LosJackal]

Now that Unreal Tournament 2003 is out, I think I'm going to have to use an external keyboard. I am deathly afraid of wearing out my "W" key on the wonderful 17" keyboard.

Think about it...keyboard isn't easily replaceable anymore. Too much gaming could compromise the feel and performance of these great Albook keyboards?

[wanderlust]

lol

[waxcrash]

Let us know how the performance is after you've played the demo for a while. Speed, framerates, etc.

[xylon]

Haha...yeah. I really can't afford to get UT for now (stoopid finals!! ) But, once I get home, gonna have to try that bad boy out. Definitely give us your first impressions.

[crouchingtiger]

well, I tried out the demo on a PB 12" with 640 MB of RAM and the results were OK. Anywhere from 10-25 fps, reasonably playable.

Performance on an iBook/800 was very similar.

[xyber233]

Any other 12" framerates?

[AssassyN]

LoL, I'm running the Demo on my 17" PB pushing all graphics to my 23" HD Display at 1280 x 960 resolution with ALL options/details maxed out, and it runs smoother than butter! It's perfectly ported to say the least...and I'm using an external mouse/keyboard setup as well to get the full experience. Amazing demo, can't wait for the real thing!

BTW, check the "Mac Games" forums for LOTS of info. concerning this.

[Eug]

Originally posted by crouchingtiger:
well, I tried out the demo on a PB 12" with 640 MB of RAM and the results were OK. Anywhere from 10-25 fps, reasonably playable.

Ouch!

[ujeni]

very happy with the 12" performance. Very playable once you tweek a few settings. Sorry, no FPS yet.

[parsec_kadets]

Originally posted by AssassyN:
LoL, I'm running the Demo on my 17" PB pushing all graphics to my 23" HD Display at 1280 x 960 resolution with ALL options/details maxed out, and it runs smoother than butter! It's perfectly ported to say the least...and I'm using an external mouse/keyboard setup as well to get the full experience. Amazing demo, can't wait for the real thing!

BTW, check the "Mac Games" forums for LOTS of info. concerning this.

BS I say. If I max out my settings at 1024x768 I get frame rates of 15-23fps. That is far from butter. That's more like oatmeal. Now, if I set just about everything to medium it's closer 35-50fps. Acceptable. Hopefully we'll see some more optimizations, but I have a feeling that as the add more items the frame rates will drop.

[crouchingtiger]

yeah, I should have clarified in my previous post that I had pretty much everything turned up on PB 12". (1024x758, high resolution everything)
I'll try to do some optimization and update the results if I get a chance.

[Rinpoche]

playing the demo on my 1ghztibook at 1024x768 is good. i'm not sure how you check framerates but regardless its running very nicely.

[DaedalusDX]

Don't worry! Applecare will cover it!

Play to your heart's content!

[AssassyN]

Originally posted by parsec_kadets:
BS I say. If I max out my settings at 1024x768 I get frame rates of 15-23fps. That is far from butter. That's more like oatmeal. Now, if I set just about everything to medium it's closer 35-50fps. Acceptable. Hopefully we'll see some more optimizations, but I have a feeling that as the add more items the frame rates will drop.

Pardon me, but I'd like to say that if you knew my reputation here at all you wouldn't post such a post. Granted I was playing on online deathmath in DM-Asbestos with 5 other people (6/6 server) but for the 20 minutes I played there, EVERYTHING was absolutely & perfectly smooth. I had NOTHING running in the background whatsoever, however, I didn't do a fresh reboot or anything.

I'd certainly appreiciate a bit more questioning before calling "BS" on me.

EDIT: And just to add to my definition of butter, I feel that the game ran smoother than SoF II at 1024x768 at times...granted, SoF II is one of the poorer ports. I also feel it ran smoother than RtCW at 1024x768, but both of these games run very well with minimal jerking under heavy action...but UT2K3 failed to even jerk once on me. I'm not saying it's not possible, but during my gameplay, it didn't.

[Eug]

I dunno, but to me 15 fps in UT2003 is quite irritating. I get irritated on my desktop when it drops below 25.

[parsec_kadets]

Originally posted by AssassyN:
Pardon me, but I'd like to say that if you knew my reputation here at all you wouldn't post such a post. Granted I was playing on online deathmath in DM-Asbestos with 5 other people (6/6 server) but for the 20 minutes I played there, EVERYTHING was absolutely & perfectly smooth. I had NOTHING running in the background whatsoever, however, I didn't do a fresh reboot or anything.

I'd certainly appreiciate a bit more questioning before calling "BS" on me.

EDIT: And just to add to my definition of butter, I feel that the game ran smoother than SoF II at 1024x768 at times...granted, SoF II is one of the poorer ports. I also feel it ran smoother than RtCW at 1024x768, but both of these games run very well with minimal jerking under heavy action...but UT2K3 failed to even jerk once on me. I'm not saying it's not possible, but during my gameplay, it didn't.

Sorry, but I think bechmark scores speak louder than "butter".

dm-asbestos flyby
20.305553 / 72.035637 / 219.273560 fps
Score = 66.451302

dm-asbestos bot match
9.962537 / 22.011293 / 51.365086 fps
Score = 22.022234

dm-antalus flyby
30.639149 / 52.907124 / 137.881973 fps
Score = 52.649086

dm-antalus bot match
3.636814 / 14.622275 / 35.105438 fps
Score = 14.626101

The fly by scores are good, but those bot scores are pitiful. That's with everything at it's default setting.

[Arch.]

Whats the URL for the demo dowmload?

[waxcrash]

Just downloaded and played the demo on a TiBook 800 w/ 32 MB Radeon 7500. The graphics are really good, but the framerates drop at times and you can really tell. I had a coworker looking over my shoulder when I was playing and his comment was that it looked choppy.

Originally posted by Arch.
Whats the URL for the demo dowmload?

You can download the demo at macgamefiles .

[AssassyN]

Originally posted by parsec_kadets:
Sorry, but I think bechmark scores speak louder than "butter".

dm-asbestos flyby
20.305553 / 72.035637 / 219.273560 fps
Score = 66.451302

dm-asbestos bot match
9.962537 / 22.011293 / 51.365086 fps
Score = 22.022234

dm-antalus flyby
30.639149 / 52.907124 / 137.881973 fps
Score = 52.649086

dm-antalus bot match
3.636814 / 14.622275 / 35.105438 fps
Score = 14.626101

The fly by scores are good, but those bot scores are pitiful. That's with everything at it's default setting.

Well, I don't play w/ bots, and as usual, everyone milage may vary, but I'm thrilled with the performance.

[Tom Rudderham]

Without bots I also get 30 - 60 fps on my TiBook 1Ghz, but with them, especially on the 1st CTF map I get 15 - 25 which does indeed feel choppy.
The AI on the bots seems to be sucking CPU power, which on the PC isn't as bad. Hopefully the AI will get a little tweaking before the final release.

[jia_zhuang]

I've set UT2003 to 1440 x 900 on 32 bit colour and I'm getting an average of 20fps with everything turned to max. When I turn down to 16bit colour the FPS goes down to 15fps. U can test this urselves. Set the res by bring up console and typing "setres 1440x900x32" and to see the fps type "stat fps"

[xyber233]

Be happy you aren't "running" this on an iMac like me .

[SuperHard]

I downloaded the demo to test on my G4 laptop, (500 mhz, 512 mb ram, new HD - fastest 2.5" avail - IBM 40gb GNX) but the biggest deficit is the VRAM, only 8mb. The game looks great, graphics similar to Halo on an Xbox, but my computer doesn't have the video power to play it. I turned the color down to 16-bit, the resolution down to 800x600 (and it still looked awesome) but play was way too slow. I could play the original UT on this computer without a problem even with many people on screen at once - but not UT2003. I wonder if anyone with the newer 15" G4PB or a 17" PB (64mb vram!) has tried the demo. I miss playing UT.

[parsec_kadets]

Originally posted by AssassyN:
Well, I don't play w/ bots, and as usual, everyone milage may vary, but I'm thrilled with the performance.

True, YMMV, but how can the game run "like butter" on your machine and border on craptacular on mine when we both have a 17" PB w/ 1024MB of RAM?! As for your comments on bots, you do understand that I used the standard benchmark scripts that are included with the game right?

[jia_zhuang]

how do u run the benchmark from with in UT2003?

[OwlBoy]

ok

1. Do a "Showpackage contents" of the UT2003 app

2. in the terminal type "cd " including that space.

3. drag and drop the benchmark folder onto the term

4. hit return

5. open that folder, pick a script to run, drag it to your terminal window, hit return.

-Owl

[BigDaddy]

I think butter for a game on a mac is not the same as a PC or X Box for that matter.

[seanyepez]

Give me a break. The GeForce4 Go can barely handle Unreal Tournament 2003 on a PC notebook with a 2-gigahertz Pentium 4.

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/show...ml?i=1692&p=10

1,280 by 960 does not run smoothly on my PC desktop equipped with a GeForce4 Titanium. Obviously, the 17-inch PowerBook cannot run that resolution smoothly.

[Eug]

Originally posted by parsec_kadets:
Sorry, but I think bechmark scores speak louder than "butter".

dm-asbestos flyby
20.305553 / 72.035637 / 219.273560 fps
Score = 66.451302

dm-asbestos bot match
9.962537 / 22.011293 / 51.365086 fps
Score = 22.022234

dm-antalus flyby
30.639149 / 52.907124 / 137.881973 fps
Score = 52.649086

dm-antalus bot match
3.636814 / 14.622275 / 35.105438 fps
Score = 14.626101

The fly by scores are good, but those bot scores are pitiful. That's with everything at it's default setting.

I've taken the liberty of posting your results in the UT2003 benchmark thread.

Here are Hornet's flyby results (default settings):

Asbestos (flyby):
26.294235 / 75.376930 / 257.924316 fps
Score = 67.044167

Antalus (flyby):
25.508516 / 56.155087 / 205.284271 fps
Score = 55.346733

It seems that the TiBook performance is similar, if not slightly better. This does not agree with the Xbench synthetic OpenGL benchmark of the 17" and 15" GPUs, but does seem to jive with PC real world tests.

I will bench my TiBook later using fresh default settings, and post them in the UT2003 benchmark thread.

[AssassyN]

Originally posted by seanyepez:
Give me a break. The GeForce4 Go can barely handle Unreal Tournament 2003 on a PC notebook with a 2-gigahertz Pentium 4.

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/show...ml?i=1692&p=10

1,280 by 960 does not run like butter on my PC desktop equipped with a GeForce4 Titanium. Obviously, the 17-inch PowerBook cannot run that resolution smoothly.

Alright, whatever man...I'm telling you, on DM-Asbestos w/ 6 players in an online DM at that res. with all options maxed, it was running perfectly smooth.

However, on that forest map (can't recall name right now...) it slows down noticeable, and I was forced to revert to 1024x768 to make it lag-free.

[PoisonTooth]

Originally posted by seanyepez:
Give me a break. The GeForce4 Go can barely handle Unreal Tournament 2003 on a PC notebook with a 2-gigahertz Pentium 4.

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/show...ml?i=1692&p=10

1,280 by 960 does not run like butter on my PC desktop equipped with a GeForce4 Titanium. Obviously, the 17-inch PowerBook cannot run that resolution smoothly.

Amen to this.

Whenever I see the Mac's speed discussed, I am both apalled and amazed by the zealotry and ignorance some Mac users exhibit. Sean, I'm glad you have an objective view on these things.

[PoisonTooth]

Originally posted by AssassyN:
Alright, whatever man...I'm telling you, on DM-Asbestos w/ 6 players in an online DM at that res. with all options maxed, it was running perfectly smooth.

However, on that forest map (can't recall name right now...) it slows down noticeable, and I was forced to revert to 1024x768 to make it lag-free.

Uh huh.

I bet your definition of "smooth" is a far cry from mine.

[AssassyN]

Originally posted by PoisonTooth:
Uh huh.

I bet your definition of "smooth" is a far cry from mine.

LoL, how about this.

Smooth = not lagging/jerky. Same definition?

[Eug]

Well, judging by the benches, a TiBook 1 GHz runs the game at a similar speed to the AluBook 1 GHz.

As soon as you throw bots into the mix it gets laggy for my TiBook, even indoors.

However, I haven't tried online gamine yet. I suspect that if you're using an indoor map, and there are only a couple of online foe in the same room at a time, then it won't be quite as laggy. Bots eat up a lot of CPU power.

[PoisonTooth]

Originally posted by AssassyN:
LoL, how about this.

Smooth = not lagging/jerky. Same definition?

Depends.

Define "lagging" and/or "jerky."

Let me put it this way: UT2003 on my P4 2.4 with a Radeon 9700 Pro is very smooth. That's pretty much my baseline, and seeing how I'm a fan of good FPS games, I expect very fluid framerates.

[AssassyN]

Originally posted by Eug:
Well, judging by the benches, a TiBook 1 GHz runs the game at a similar speed to the AluBook 1 GHz.

As soon as you throw bots into the mix it gets laggy for my TiBook, even indoors.

However, I haven't tried online gamine yet. I suspect that if you're using an indoor map, and there are only a couple of online foe in the same room at a time, then it won't be quite as laggy. Bots eat up a lot of CPU power.

Exactly. I was just saying it ran smoothly in one instance...I haven't had time to run hours of tests or anything. Plus, online matches use other people's CPU's to administer the other players, whereas bots use up more of your own CPU power. I'll just conclude by saying "I'm satisfied".

[chrisutley]

I'm throwing this in as I have an opportunity to "corner" some FPS players. A little off topic, I apologize...

Some shooters make me sick! Literally that is ... as in motion sick. Marathon man, that game would make me want to hurl! I've found that I can play MOH pretty much "motion sick free", but I'm not sure why. I played the UT2003 demo and was sweating bullets within 5 minutes.

My hunch is that MOH doesn't have many tight hallways and small rooms. That tunnel vision is part of what seems to really trigger it for me. Does anybody else have problems with this, and have you found any solutions?

I played the demo on my 667 DVI, with 20" ACD attached. I used all the default settings, except I boosted the display to 1024x768. I don't have framerates, but I would call it "a little" choppy. Very playable ... yet just a little chop. Not bad for my wimpy laptop. I forgot to close the lid to the PB, so the video card was being shared - might get a little less chop with the lid closed.

[parsec_kadets]

Originally posted by chrisutley:
I'm throwing this in as I have an opportunity to "corner" some FPS players. A little off topic, I apologize...

Some shooters make me sick! Literally that is ... as in motion sick. Marathon man, that game would make me want to hurl! I've found that I can play MOH pretty much "motion sick free", but I'm not sure why. I played the UT2003 demo and was sweating bullets within 5 minutes.

My hunch is that MOH doesn't have many tight hallways and small rooms. That tunnel vision is part of what seems to really trigger it for me. Does anybody else have problems with this, and have you found any solutions?

I played the demo on my 667 DVI, with 20" ACD attached. I used all the default settings, except I boosted the display to 1024x768. I don't have framerates, but I would call it "a little" choppy. Very playable ... yet just a little chop. Not bad for my wimpy laptop. I forgot to close the lid to the PB, so the video card was being shared - might get a little less chop with the lid closed.

Yeah, I tend to get a little sick too. Before the days of 3D excellerators I used to be really bad. I couldn't play Doom and DoomII for more than a couple minutes, and then I would feel sort of sick for the rest of the night. I found that what really does it for me is when your character bounces when he walks. I think I discovered that because I couldn't even play Duke Nukem for a whole minute. I haven't found it in UT2k3 yet, but most games today have an option to turn that off. If you can find that, I strongly suggest giving it a try.

P.S. Poor frame rates can make it worse. that's why I'm so concerned with trying to get an FPS around 50. You can't usually tell, but it does have an affect on me from time to time.

[waxcrash]

Originally posted by chrisutley:
Some shooters make me sick! Literally that is ... as in motion sick.

I'm no doctor, but it sounds like a mild form of Photosensitive Epilepsy. You can find more info here. I know there are no flashing lights in most FPS, but this is just a guess.

Anybody rememeber back in 1987 when a bunch of kids in Japan got sick after watching Pokemon? It was cause by flashing lights. Click here for the story.

The Simpsons cartoon has made a parody of this.

[Eug]

Originally posted by waxcrash:
I'm no doctor, but it sounds like a mild form of Photosensitive Epilepsy. You can find more info here. I know there are no flashing lights in most FPS, but this is just a guess.

This is a common problem and it isn't epilepsy.

Fortunately, I don't have this problem.

[JohnM15141]

Back to the 17"PB Keyboard topic...

I'm not sure how to play this on my 17"PB Keyboard?

I use the WASD keys and the trackpad for control. It's real clumsy for me using the track pad.(I use a mouse when I'm sitting at a desk.)

What keys do you find to be best for controlling the game?

So anyone who has found a good set of key combinations for the 17"PB Keyboard let me know, I'll give'em a try!

[AssassyN]

Originally posted by JohnM15141:
Back to the 17"PB Keyboard topic...

I'm not sure how to play this on my 17"PB Keyboard?

I use the WASD keys and the trackpad for control. It's real clumsy for me using the track pad.(I use a mouse when I'm sitting at a desk.)

What keys do you find to be best for controlling the game?

So anyone who has found a good set of key combinations for the 17"PB Keyboard let me know, I'll give'em a try!

Honestly, I gave up trying to play first-person shooters with the built-in keyboard/trackpad, it's just too impossible for my hands. I won't play FPS's on my notebook unless I've got at least an external mousing device.

However, if someone has found a clever way, I'd love to hear it.

[Mac Zealot]

ya know just for the heck of boredom I fired up UT2003 and set my res to my cinema's default... beautiful graphics.. I can't believe they did it so well but didn't make default wide resolutions

Tho it's not totally related my g4's gf4mx/64 took it niiiiicely. can't wait until I'm able to get a pb

Now I have no worries at all about macs being powerful enough,.. That was freaking nice

[urrl5201]

I'm afraid to download this game. 1st person games make me want to upchuck all over my 17" keyboard. Just thinking about them...excuse me one second...BLEAHHHH!!! ARGG! CHOKE! So you guys sort out the frame rate thingy. I'll stick to MAX PAYNE, Giants Citizen Kabuto, Jedi Knight Outcast and the like. 3rd person games are cooler to me anyway.

[Hornet]

Originally posted by Eug:
Well, judging by the benches, a TiBook 1 GHz runs the game at a similar speed to the AluBook 1 GHz.

As soon as you throw bots into the mix it gets laggy for my TiBook, even indoors.

However, I haven't tried online gamine yet. I suspect that if you're using an indoor map, and there are only a couple of online foe in the same room at a time, then it won't be quite as laggy. Bots eat up a lot of CPU power.

Ding ding ding! We have a winner

Spot on Eug. Bots kill the framerate, badly. As an ex-hardcore online gamer, I'll give you my definition of "smooth". "smooth" = 60+, "ok-ish" = 40+, "unplayable" =<25

Running around antalus on my own at 1280x854, with my "hornet's config" setting, the map is "ok-ish". add in bots and its unplayable (6 bots makes it really unplayable - 15fps or less when 2 bots are on screen).

As far as I am concerned, the port is average in terms of no-bots, but totally below par with regards to bot AI. Just having 2 bots makes an extremely noticable framerate hit. Bot AI shouldn't need nearly that much CPU - it certainly doesn't on the PC version. Until this is seriously enhanced, I have no plans what so ever for buying the game with ultra-dodgy bot code.





And from those flyby scores, it looks like the 15" is faster than the 17" However marginal the difference, bot speeds are rediculously low on both. 15fps because a few bots are in the game? ****. I'd be pushing it to consider 3x that acceptable.

[NightEyes]

I didn't run the benchmark, but after reading this topic last night I downloaded the demo and played it with details maxed and resolution set to 800x600. When I played the Deathmatch demo with 4 bots I didn't notice any choppiness. Game play was smooth for the entire match. Same for an online CTF match I tried after at the same resolution.

Just FYI: I'm running the UT2K3 Demo on an 17" PB with 1Gig of RAM.

[jia_zhuang]

i dont know how to run the benchmark LOL!!! Someone help please!