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Steb Mad · Feb 22, 2004, 03:16 AM

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
Huh?

There's a flying vehicle, there's a hover vehicle, there's a tank, there's a dune-buggy type vehicle...what do you want? A train? A boat that sails on land? Some kind of groundhog vehicle that moves around under the earth? Please explain how the vehicles are similar and look the same.

He means that current vehicles in UT2k4 have a very familiar look to Halo and they should try to design an unique body shapes. I do agree with him about vehicles look and feel unoriginal. Halo got the vehicles controls just perfect. UT2k4 could have used the same controls but improve upon them instead of attempting to be "different".

dune-buggy truck control the WORST, imho. Key A and D for curves in a fast-paced game? That's so 1990-ish. They are perfect for 2D / 2D 1/2 but they simply doesn't work too well for a fast-paced 3D game.

Vash · Feb 22, 2004, 03:19 AM

The Halo vehicle controls were nice, except you couldn't aim and drive at the same time. It was one or the other. With the way UT2k4 is set up you can drive forward while shooting backwards, it takes a little getting used to, especially if you've played Halo. But it works very nicely for me.

Steb Mad · Feb 22, 2004, 06:07 AM

Originally posted by Vash:
The Halo vehicle controls were nice, except you couldn't aim and drive at the same time. It was one or the other. With the way UT2k4 is set up you can drive forward while shooting backwards, it takes a little getting used to, especially if you've played Halo. But it works very nicely for me.

You can't exactly aim and drive in real life too

jamesa · Feb 22, 2004, 06:21 AM

Originally posted by Steb Mad:
You can't exactly aim and drive in real life too

but in real life you don't only have to drive where you look, either

-- james

Judge_Fire · Feb 22, 2004, 03:14 PM

The more I play (and that's a lot

) I've come to appreciate the Hellbender as a vehicle.

Not fast, but when placed strategically, its turrets can clear up whole fields of enemies (chain-reaction gun) and destroy spesific targets (rear gun). Even by yourself, by hopping between the positions, you can do a lot of damage. Better to park in the shade, though, damn those AVRILs.

Equipping the driver with a gun would be unproductive, as it'd make more sense to just grab it without taking passengers.

I couldn't imagine driving the vehicles any other way than with independent mouselook - its a great way to keep an eye on incoming fire, for example. Replacing the keyboard controls with a joystick/wheel would be the next step - like you do in WWII Online.

Any other Hellbender fans?

J

Webscreamer · Feb 23, 2004, 07:29 PM

I got a Dual 2 G5, Radeon 9800, 1 gig ram, and all settings on high. I had MUCh worse performance in UT2004 than 2003.

I enjoyed 2003 much more...

spacefreak · Feb 25, 2004, 02:12 AM

Originally posted by dcsmrgun:
I strafe 95% of the time, and 2/3 games I played today, the strafe-right key got stuck. I'm not talking my keyboard, I'm talking that the game got stuck in strafe-right mode until I quit and rejoined. This is usually after 5 or 10 minutes of gameplay. Go figure. This was different servers, so its not a server issue.

This link may interest you: http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums...37#post4670937

lenox · Feb 25, 2004, 11:28 AM

Yay...it looks like that 4mb update fixed a lot of bugs, including the color bug I was getting.

Jaey · Feb 25, 2004, 07:36 PM

Maybe I'm just used to Halo, but it seems like you run at 100mph. It took a long time to get used to the speed, beforehand, I couldn't kill anything. The vehicles also, are really annoying. I don't care if you can't shoot in one direction and turn in another in Halo. Turning with keys is so akward I usually crash into something. I'm sort of undecided whether I want to buy the game or not....

Steb Mad · Feb 25, 2004, 08:16 PM

Originally posted by Jaey:
Maybe I'm just used to Halo, but it seems like you run at 100mph. It took a long time to get used to the speed, beforehand, I couldn't kill anything. The vehicles also, are really annoying. I don't care if you can't shoot in one direction and turn in another in Halo. Turning with keys is so akward I usually crash into something. I'm sort of undecided whether I want to buy the game or not....

Agreed 100%

I'm definitely not going to buy UT2k4. I'll stick with Halo and UT 1 (ryan, hurry up on the OS X port!)

Judge_Fire · Feb 27, 2004, 05:03 PM

The developers are quite open to suggestions and the vehicle control has had its fair share of critique. So 'Halo-style' driving might well make it into the retail version, or a point patch.

Mouse driving allows for more dynamic maneuvers, while weapon use and peripheral vision suffer.

And the opposite is true now, of course.

J

SteevAK · Feb 27, 2004, 05:04 PM

Actually, I'm quite the opposite. I'm almost wish I didn't buy Halo after playing and thoroughly enjoying UT2k4. The demo alone is awesome, the full game will be amazing. Plus it runs about twice as well as Halo.

heavyboots · Feb 27, 2004, 05:15 PM

Okay, I tend to think they did a lot of very nice stuff in 2k4... in particular, I'm really enjoying the slightly more 99'ish weapons and the fact that shield whoring doesn't pay the dividends it used to in 2k3. And imho they did a great job on vehicles vs infantry, because there is nothing quite so annoying as a game where you have to drive a vehicle to survive.

Here's a pretty good link -- UT2k4: What Went Right. I'll be purchasing when it comes out, I know that. My only question is whether I can buy a fast enough G5 to get decent framerates or not. It's pretty sad when a G5/2x2000 with a 9600 only returns about 40fps average. Apple needs to pay ATI to release an openGL on hardware card or something. (Is that even possible?)

To be fair, I should mention I *loathe* online Halo (sold my copy the second I finished the single-player once because it was so bad). Mostly it was incredibly laggy, but I didn't like the vehicles much either. (The single player Halo rocked, on the other hand!)

Just my $0.02...

unimaxium · Feb 28, 2004, 10:07 PM

So far I'm REALLY disappointed with UT2k4. On my 1.6ghz G5 it is so slow on most maps it's practically unplayable for me. I'm going to try it some more later and see what fps I get. And in general the game is so chaotic and messy it's hard to understand what's going on. I still can't figure out what I'm supposed to be doing in onslaught. Halo runs so much better then ut2k4.

unimaxium · 11:35 PM

Edit -- double post

xe0 · Feb 29, 2004, 04:29 AM

I just came back from a LAN with some PC users, and one of the games on the agenda was UT 2004 demo.

imo its quite a nice update to the UT series.
It was quite cool Hosting all the games on my dualie 1.8 with all the PC users around. a few of the pc systems reset and crashed most of the night; while the G5 hummed away modestly all night. The G5 made good conversation with these guys- they were quite impressed

Getting back to UT 2004. It plays well. The vehicles take some time to control right but once you have gotten used to it, its quite pleasant.

better than 2003 imo

Horsepoo!!! · Feb 29, 2004, 08:13 AM

Originally posted by xe0:

Getting back to UT 2004. It plays well. The vehicles take some time to control right but once you have gotten used to it, its quite pleasant.

better than 2003 imo

I agree...some people don't like the controls but how else are you supposed to drive the damn things and shoot at the same time.

Controlling vehicles with the mouse in Halo was unnatural to me. UT2k4, I think, gets it right. I've never seen any racing sims that used the mouse...an indication that a mouse isn't the best device to use for steering a vehicle.

I've been playing lots of onslaught lately and it's really fun. I've gotten pretty good crushing people with the Mantra, slicing people with the Scorpion, causing mass destruction with the tank.

This is one game I'll be buying...looks better and is more fun than Halo, IMO.

emark · Feb 29, 2004, 11:33 AM

Originally posted by Petter:
I have the same problem as I do with UT2003 - after a few minutes the the firgure starts to strafe to the right and can not be fixed unless you restart the game...

any one else with this problem?

HOLY COW!!!

I Actually switched keyboards....played for a few days and didn't notice, then, it wouldn't stop last night.

logged out, logged back in, after a while in the game it happened again...thought my "A" key was broken....

Glad to here someone else report this and I'm not crazy and my keyboard isn't broken....

I restarted my machine and switched keyboard and played a few rounds with no problem....after the above....but still, this is probably a bug to be addressed...I will look for a means to report it, please do the same to corroborate.

unimaxium · Feb 29, 2004, 12:38 PM

I tested the FPS of UT2K4 on my G5 by spectating on an onslaught server with 16 players and could not get anything better than 15fps. I don't remember the settings exactly, but I think the resolution was set to 800*500 on my 20" cinema display and I know that all of the settings were set BELOW high. Some of them were low and some of them were "normal", but nothing was set to max. And even at that it generally tended to hover between 10-15fps. That's just miserable. For a G5 it should be able to get something relatively decent and at least playable. Albeit it's not the fastest G5, but it should at least get something like 25 or 30. I'm really disappointed with this game. A game shouldn't only be playable on the fastest system you can buy. Halo is so much better and gets great framerates (although I don't know how to find out the actual fps number in halo). So at least for now I'm going to keep to playing Halo.

Vash · Feb 29, 2004, 04:20 PM

unimaxium, there is a bug with the demo and sound. On some Macintosh's the sound causes the framerates to be cut in half. The retail version will most definetly fix this. Open your UT2k4Demo ini file and change the EnableSound lines to False, then look at your framerates.

unimaxium · Feb 29, 2004, 08:42 PM

Originally posted by Vash:
unimaxium, there is a bug with the demo and sound. On some Macintosh's the sound causes the framerates to be cut in half. The retail version will most definetly fix this. Open your UT2k4Demo ini file and change the EnableSound lines to False, then look at your framerates.

Wow thank you very much. I turned off sound and my FPS is incredible. It's actually a really good game when the fps is good. I have the resolution up to something I can't remember (above 1024x768) and am now getting about 30fps I think. Although now it's not as much playing without sound. But if they can fix the processor usage of the sound in the final version it will be incredible. I'm sorry if that was explained in an earlier post on this thread but I didn't want to read through all the posts. After all there are a lot of posts to read through. But anyway the game's a lot better now but the fact that I don't have sound still makes it not 100%.

Horsepoo!!! · Mar 1, 2004, 05:00 PM

After playing UT2k4 for a bit, I'd say it's almost as fun as the original UT. I like the new elements the vehicles bring to the game. The play is a bit faster but I've grown used to it. 2k4 has really rekindled my gaming spirit.

Now if the Soundstick issue can be fixed, I'll be happy.

Thinine · Mar 1, 2004, 05:29 PM

unimaximum, what video card and G5 do you have? A 1.6 G5 with a GeForce FX 5200 will get much different rates than a dual 2GHz with a Radeon 9800.

Frumpy · Mar 1, 2004, 05:35 PM

Well native resolution definitely helps A LOT. Tried a deathmatch instead of the Onslaught mode, and it's runs a lot better. But then i go back to the original UT, and i can't pry myself away. It's soooooo beeeeautiful.

unimaxium · Mar 1, 2004, 05:57 PM

Originally posted by Thinine:
unimaximum, what video card and G5 do you have? A 1.6 G5 with a GeForce FX 5200 will get much different rates than a dual 2GHz with a Radeon 9800.

I have the 1.6 with GeForce FX 5200. Although it's not the fastest G5 there is, it's the 3rd fastest mac you can buy (not counting the xserves) and should get a decent fps at the least. I'm not saying that a dual 2.0 with a radeon 9800 won't go faster, but the problem was that on my machine the game wasn't even playable. Fortunately it turns out that my G5 can run the game well and that the problem was that the sound bug was bringing it down.

spacefreak · Mar 3, 2004, 11:41 AM

Originally posted by emark:
...Glad to here someone else report this and I'm not crazy and my keyboard isn't broken....

I restarted my machine and switched keyboard and played a few rounds with no problem....after the above....but still, this is probably a bug to be addressed...I will look for a means to report it, please do the same to corroborate.

I posted this above: http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums...37#post4670937

Also, here's the bug report. Scroll down to see that the bug has been fixed in local builds.