Yeah, this demo so far has been a huge let down. Matchmaking is said to be removed in retail for PC (so we get to actually choose a dedicated server, yay!).
There is also a huge different in DX9 and DX11. The demo only runs DX9 which was released in 2004.
AVP is one of the first games to use DX11, here is a screenshot of what it WILL look like:
The controls in general are still pretty awful for a PC game.
Of course it looks better than "the game". Its a staged screenshot with everything just right that never moves. The demo is set in a closed off, low detail pitch black map, plus its multiplayer which means everything is off/missing anyway to make it run better than SP.
Justin: It's definitely not Secret of the Magic Crystals. The game we're all talking about has unicorns, not weird alien creatures.
As for movement:
It is WASD + Mouse, and the marine is okay to play, but when it came to Alien and Predator, it took several games to practice how to best play them.
Aliens felt slow to me the first several times playing, until I found out that the cooldown on their sprint is ridiculously fast... meaning you should be sprinting 90% of the time. It also felt awkward to just run up and spam left or right click to attack, until I found out about "Focus" and it would kind of leap you towards your target and attack, including when you're on a ceiling or wall. Doesn't leap you when you "Focus Strong Attack."
Predator wasn't that bad, but learning which spots you could jump to took some time to figure out. Some areas you think you'd be able to jump to no problem are not possible, or other spots you must hop up on a little box before actually being able to hop up on the ledge.
Apparently holding the Focus button and jumping will also attack anything near your landing point. If a green circle aura thing appears around an enemy when you're an alien, you will aim and leap at them with a lot more ease. Same thing for Predator.
I think it just takes several games to get accustomed to.
Really the worst thing about this demo is the UI, not finding games, and the suckiest MP mode for AvP.
Meh, played it, only as marine this round and controls for that was perfectly fine. Everybody here at work who played Alien or Predator got totally savaged tho and in general the game was really laggy, couple of dudes got stuck outside work on spawn etc. dodgy shit... and the Predator dude was damn easy to take down, abouta seconds worth of burst with start weapon for marine and bam..dude is aced...meh..back to MW2 on lunchbreaks
It definitely takes practice to learn the Alien or Predator. Marine is the easiest to pick up and use because we're all so used to using guns in games. I've managed to hit 1st for 2nd place consistently now playing as either Alien or Predator. Had an amazing game last night with a lot of really skilled players, wish I could find a game like that every time.
Thankfully the real game will have a sever list for you to choose from, so lag won't be an issue.
Heh, weird, there are hugely mixed responses to playing in here.
We did the same thing as Sectaurs, got 8 people in the office and played a local game immediately.
One thing I can say is that a lot of the players were laughing while playing it, although I'm not entirely sure how much of that was down to them having fun, or just how crazy it was to play DM with 8 people on a small level in a game you've never played before...
I definitely think it gets better when you learn more about how to control the characters. Oddly while some people here said the Marines fared better in their games, we found that the Aliens totally dominated, literally having about 5x the kill count on average - for example I got 7 kills in a row as an Alien without dying on my very first play, while the best Marine score was about 5 kills in total!
The predator didn't do well either - ended up close to bottom of the scoreboard, I was expecting him to kick ass... I guess it takes a fair bit of learning (plus finding the weapon pickups) before you can really compete with the alien, who is awesome from the outset. Not having to worry about weapon pickups really makes it easier to focus on killing everyone
Yeah, this demo so far has been a huge let down. Matchmaking is said to be removed in retail for PC (so we get to actually choose a dedicated server, yay!).
There is also a huge different in DX9 and DX11. The demo only runs DX9 which was released in 2004.
AVP is one of the first games to use DX11, here is a screenshot of what it WILL look like:
The controls in general are still pretty awful for a PC game.
Whats the point of tessellation if you're not using the new verts? Silhouette is exactly the same. There's literally no benefit (in that screenshot) over the low res with a pixel shader.
Probably the lighting on the surface. Not the Silhouette. Instead of relying so much on normal and displacement with are pixel based. Should give a smoother/organic feel to the surface alah the screenshot.
If you wanna dominate as Predator you need to pick up your laser cannon and throwing disc. In that map there are narrow corridors and using the disc in them will show you how OP the Predator can be
The disc travels through enemies and is a 1 hit kill. If there's like 4 people fighting in a corridor, just throw your disc and you'll kill everything.
And yes, just spam weak attack as Predator and you'll dominate. Don't rely on your stealth too much, because it's pretty easy to see predators when you're a marine, and aliens can ALWAYS see you.
I checked the multiplayer options and "Racial balancing" is on by default for the demo. I believe that means that all three races have been adjusted so that they have a more even fight 1 on 1.
Can anyone throw out their PSN profile names? I downloaded the PS3 version of the demo, but it looks like it expects to use the Friends List for matchmaking. And I've never been a social butterfly on the consoles.
I have been playing msotly as a marine and its pretty awesome. remmebering to block when a pred or alien is spamming light attack saves you a ton. then just mele to stun them and unload in their face.
a couple times ive been the only marine in a game with 5 aliens and 2 preds and backing into a corner just balsting everythign while watchign the dots closing in created some really heart pounding moments.
having played the demo on both 360 and pc, im gonna say it plays better on the console and the framerate on both is pretty great. I really dont understand why people are saying its ugly to look at, it looks pretty ncie to me and thats the multiplayer where shits probably toned down, singleplayer footage looks pretty lovely. sound design is really nice too.
Well, I didn't have any problems with the PC demo's controls, but that's only because I really couldn't tell if they were off or not since everything was lagging due to the fact that the game defaults everything to high and doesn't even give you the option to turn the motion blur off. Well fine, I'm sure there's a way to turn it off in the console, sure it might be a bit much for a good portion of the public but I know how to enter console comm-oh wait...there's no way to open up the console.
Well at this point I'd spent about five minutes sitting still providing an easy kill for those who had the broadband necessary to smoothly send back and forth the information needed to render lens flare coming through smoke and the sort of future-proof PCs built for running Crysis instead of rendering in batches. So I go to leave, knowing that in doing so everybody playing also has to leave because I was the "leader".
Awesome game Rebellion, way to update an old Lithitech engine game. Perhaps in the future you can just save me the time and mail me a box of scorpions labeled "Die Hard Arcade 2" or tell me you're going to do a proper MMO for The Matrix franchise and then when I buy it you just kick me in the balls over and over again.
Whats the point of tessellation if you're not using the new verts? Silhouette is exactly the same. There's literally no benefit (in that screenshot) over the low res with a pixel shader.
Marketing gimmick IMO.
It supposedly makes it look smoother, adds another level of subdiv.
Sorry but this is one of the worst multilayer games I played in a long time, it is simply not fun at all; I'm having much more fun replaying the SP campaign from AvP Classic. The controls are completely non intuitive, the movements and motions seem extremely jerky and frustrating, the game is not scary at all; there is no satisfaction from getting a kill simply because each combat encounter is a disorientating "Batman Begins fightscene-esque" mess that you have no idea what is going on. I was really looking forward to this, and was about to preorder it, but after playing this demo it seems like I'm still going to be getting my multiplayer fix from TF2 and L4D2. At least some of the environments and lighting looked nice.
Can anyone throw out their PSN profile names? I downloaded the PS3 version of the demo, but it looks like it expects to use the Friends List for matchmaking. And I've never been a social butterfly on the consoles.
ImSlightlyBored
couldn't get the demo working at all on PS3. Bad idea, relying on external forces when trying to promote a game imo
Yeah its just ATI TruForm all over again... Which is pointless...
Truform from what little I saw in games (Serious Sam SE). Was never implemented correctly. It just sub-d the mesh... as is. Without following say a vector displacement map.
Yeah I know, but without proper mesh support, the DX11 hardware tesselation thing is just as pointless.
In other words, it wont make a bad model good, but it can make a good model bad. Its good for dropping detail over X distance, granted, but IMO that should be standard with a predifined mesh thats already at max quality (i.e. MADE to be high detail, not changed on the fly).
So, for dropping the detail of a mesh over X distance, its nice. But for ADDING detail, I can see issues at seam edges where this will cock up, just like TruForm did.
BTW, i played it, yesterday, and its pretty fun x), FFa isnt the best mode to have an idea of the entire game, i'm pretty sure this game is awsome in coop and solo
None of this changes the fact that they defaulted run to Q,don't allow you to crouch and offer no way to turn off resource draining effects that add nothing to the gameplay besides a general sense of nausea. The worst part is that there's clearly a good game in there, it just happens to be wrapped in turds like the world's worst burrito.
So you say that DX11 barely effects the silhouette, yet the video link there shows some pretty sever changes at the end at the edge of the tower and the dragon.
So you say that DX11 barely effects the silhouette, yet the video link there shows some pretty sever changes at the end at the edge of the tower and the dragon.
I think he was referring to the actual game that says it is using the technology rather than the probably faked video that was just posted in the thread
Is it faked? I see the same tech in Secondlife right now, it's not as impressive because you are displacing the vertices on one of SL's base primitives instead of a actual modeled low poly.
Haiasi, D11 is no magic trick. If you see a silhouette change, it means that there is a displacement map associated with the model, driving the tesselation offset. If the silhouette doesnt seem to change much, then it's just a simple tesselation. Both can be good if used right and if the assets are built with them in mind. Both are bound to look terrible if they are just switched on as a 'magic d11 feature'.
Pior: I was just a bit confused, because I had seen that video before and it amazed me what DX11 is capable of. However, when I posted that image a page back of the news link saying that it was displaying DX11, I noticed that the silhouettes were almost unchanged.
It leads me to believe that the image they showed for that post may not be DX11. If it was, their silhouettes would have been smoother, correct?
So I played this yesterday, and it wasn't as bad as everyone said it was. Or actually, it would be more precise to say that the presentation was not good at all but hte gameplay was still fun - which is the whole point of the game, after all.
Cons:
-horrible jerky mouse movement. I don't know why, maybe it was lag, but holy shit your mouse would go all over the place sometimes, and sometimes it wouldn't move at all.
-terrible slow mouse. I know this can be adjusted, but usually I am fairly satisfied with default settings in shooters. Here it's WAY too slow. I ended up setting my sensitivity hgher on my mouse (G5) and it was till largely not enough. But as I've said, this can be adjusted so it's not that much of a problem.
-terrible menus. I tried changing controls in game, there are like 4 or 5 submenus when you try to change controls. Not very user friendly. Coupled with the slow mouse (and this was not just slow mouse, this was that slow acceleration problem) it's a pain to navigate them all. It is probably faster to use keyboard.
Not only the controls menus was bad, however, when you are in lobby the species and skin thing is full of redundancy, make the lobby a list of properties you can set like L4D.
-terrible matchmaking. L4D wasn't great eitehr, but at least it was straightforward. I am still not sure what I am supposed to click, it seems the buttons imply you hosting a server but you end up joining one - it's probably only me, but it is still annoying. I just kept clicking whatever button I saw until I joined the game.
-this is a double edged sword, but honestly - I'd like to see hints during the game. Like "press this to do that". I know all the pr0s wil find it annoying, but when I tried predator, frankly I had no clue what to do. I spent a few minutes studying the keyboard mapping (took me longer to find it, didn't realise you could select between species' controls on the top of the mapping page) but the only things I can confidently do now is switch vision modes and turn on cloak. I've picked up some pred gear in game, but I have no freaking clue what I am supposed to do with it, they tried to make the weapon selection menu Predator-authentic but I just had no idea what it was showing.
-strange grabbing. I guess this will come in time as I play more, but I am not really sure how the grabbing works. I was able to grab an alien as pred from quite a large distance (and it seems the window for grabbing is very small) but then when I am really close I can't seem to be able to grab. Sometimes during meleeing the button flashes once in a while, but it's so fast it's impossible to get it.
But despite such drawbacks, there are some really great things about it:
-it's fun. Yeah, it definitely is when you know how to play. The alien requires the less tactic, I think at least, it's the "simplest" but a very deadly species. I am glad there is auto-transition, but then it's kinda motion-sickness-inducing when you climb EVERYTHING in your way, and especially annoying when you are chasing someone and then accidentally running up a wall and losing orientation. But still, it's enormous fun. The best is when you have this lone marine running not knowing what to do (there will be less and less of such people after a while, though, which is a shame) and you hop down behind him and BAM BAM. It's not as fun against more knowledgeable people since they see you from afar and are extremely trigger happy.
There's lots more I can say, good and bad things, but overall I am fairly pelase with the experience.
It's probably just badly implemented. The tessellation should be displacing vertices to conform to a displacement map (it doesn't 'round out' the silhouette like subD would do). So that leads me to believe the hardware tessellation is working, but there are no displacement maps to offset the vertices included in the demo, or at all, applied to the meshes.
They should have just stuck with the blocky aliens in the first film, they were perfectly adequate as you only ever saw them for a second anway.
This video worries me a bit though, the aliens are slow and faff about like a women in a shoe shop. I'm hoping thats just on console and their faster and deadlier on the pc.
This video worries me a bit though, the aliens are slow and faff about like a women in a shoe shop. I'm hoping thats just on console and their faster and deadlier on the pc.
Don't count on it.
DX11 - As disappointing as DX10?
No I don't think so. We've hardly seen the potential of 10, yet alone 11 in our games, and we only ever will when we have dx10+11 mainstream consoles.
-this is a double edged sword, but honestly - I'd like to see hints during the game. Like "press this to do that". I know all the pr0s wil find it annoying, but when I tried predator, frankly I had no clue what to do. I spent a few minutes studying the keyboard mapping (took me longer to find it, didn't realise you could select between species' controls on the top of the mapping page) but the only things I can confidently do now is switch vision modes and turn on cloak. I've picked up some pred gear in game, but I have no freaking clue what I am supposed to do with it, they tried to make the weapon selection menu Predator-authentic but I just had no idea what it was showing.
This. I studied the control mapping before I first tried it out as an Alien. Then found out I changed nothing but the general keys. Finally found out the 2nd time I tried, played as Marine had a blast. Thought the marine was still slow though. Been playing AvP2 recently, kinda wish it had same speed.
Either way, if the single player can live up to the first ones and the UI changes a bit, still going to get this. Don't have the link, but can't wait to play the stripper hologram level they just released a trailer for yesterday.
I saw that image, SupRore. That's also what caused me to wonder what the purpose of DX11 would be in this game because the verts in the silhouette is very noticeable still.
And having seen that video, I wanted to know why AVP doesn't do the same because the bricks at the edge of the building in that video very clearly adjust to create an amazing visual.
Replies
There is also a huge different in DX9 and DX11. The demo only runs DX9 which was released in 2004.
AVP is one of the first games to use DX11, here is a screenshot of what it WILL look like:
The controls in general are still pretty awful for a PC game.
great fun. don't know what the hell everyone is bitching about. will def buy.
can you elaborate ? as in it's not the default wsad + mouse controls? or bad handling inverted etc? i'm interested...
As for movement:
It is WASD + Mouse, and the marine is okay to play, but when it came to Alien and Predator, it took several games to practice how to best play them.
Aliens felt slow to me the first several times playing, until I found out that the cooldown on their sprint is ridiculously fast... meaning you should be sprinting 90% of the time. It also felt awkward to just run up and spam left or right click to attack, until I found out about "Focus" and it would kind of leap you towards your target and attack, including when you're on a ceiling or wall. Doesn't leap you when you "Focus Strong Attack."
Predator wasn't that bad, but learning which spots you could jump to took some time to figure out. Some areas you think you'd be able to jump to no problem are not possible, or other spots you must hop up on a little box before actually being able to hop up on the ledge.
Apparently holding the Focus button and jumping will also attack anything near your landing point. If a green circle aura thing appears around an enemy when you're an alien, you will aim and leap at them with a lot more ease. Same thing for Predator.
I think it just takes several games to get accustomed to.
Really the worst thing about this demo is the UI, not finding games, and the suckiest MP mode for AvP.
Which I had, so I experience none of what is causing so much heartache.
Haiasi - definitely some learning to do, but after a few games i got the rhythm of the alien as well. really fun stalking panicky marines.
Also seems like it could be a really awesome mp game, but deathmatch is the worst possible mode they could have chosen.
Thankfully the real game will have a sever list for you to choose from, so lag won't be an issue.
We did the same thing as Sectaurs, got 8 people in the office and played a local game immediately.
One thing I can say is that a lot of the players were laughing while playing it, although I'm not entirely sure how much of that was down to them having fun, or just how crazy it was to play DM with 8 people on a small level in a game you've never played before...
I definitely think it gets better when you learn more about how to control the characters. Oddly while some people here said the Marines fared better in their games, we found that the Aliens totally dominated, literally having about 5x the kill count on average - for example I got 7 kills in a row as an Alien without dying on my very first play, while the best Marine score was about 5 kills in total!
The predator didn't do well either - ended up close to bottom of the scoreboard, I was expecting him to kick ass... I guess it takes a fair bit of learning (plus finding the weapon pickups) before you can really compete with the alien, who is awesome from the outset. Not having to worry about weapon pickups really makes it easier to focus on killing everyone
Yeah I don't see any tessellation going on...
Marketing gimmick IMO.
The disc travels through enemies and is a 1 hit kill. If there's like 4 people fighting in a corridor, just throw your disc and you'll kill everything.
And yes, just spam weak attack as Predator and you'll dominate. Don't rely on your stealth too much, because it's pretty easy to see predators when you're a marine, and aliens can ALWAYS see you.
I checked the multiplayer options and "Racial balancing" is on by default for the demo. I believe that means that all three races have been adjusted so that they have a more even fight 1 on 1.
a couple times ive been the only marine in a game with 5 aliens and 2 preds and backing into a corner just balsting everythign while watchign the dots closing in created some really heart pounding moments.
having played the demo on both 360 and pc, im gonna say it plays better on the console and the framerate on both is pretty great. I really dont understand why people are saying its ugly to look at, it looks pretty ncie to me and thats the multiplayer where shits probably toned down, singleplayer footage looks pretty lovely. sound design is really nice too.
Well at this point I'd spent about five minutes sitting still providing an easy kill for those who had the broadband necessary to smoothly send back and forth the information needed to render lens flare coming through smoke and the sort of future-proof PCs built for running Crysis instead of rendering in batches. So I go to leave, knowing that in doing so everybody playing also has to leave because I was the "leader".
Awesome game Rebellion, way to update an old Lithitech engine game. Perhaps in the future you can just save me the time and mail me a box of scorpions labeled "Die Hard Arcade 2" or tell me you're going to do a proper MMO for The Matrix franchise and then when I buy it you just kick me in the balls over and over again.
I'm sure it's better on a console.
It supposedly makes it look smoother, adds another level of subdiv.
couldn't get the demo working at all on PS3. Bad idea, relying on external forces when trying to promote a game imo
Truform from what little I saw in games (Serious Sam SE). Was never implemented correctly. It just sub-d the mesh... as is. Without following say a vector displacement map.
Samples:
More pics.
http://www.ixbt.com/video/any-r200-3.shtml
In other words, it wont make a bad model good, but it can make a good model bad. Its good for dropping detail over X distance, granted, but IMO that should be standard with a predifined mesh thats already at max quality (i.e. MADE to be high detail, not changed on the fly).
So, for dropping the detail of a mesh over X distance, its nice. But for ADDING detail, I can see issues at seam edges where this will cock up, just like TruForm did.
AVP picture:
directx11 demo
[ame]
BTW, i played it, yesterday, and its pretty fun x), FFa isnt the best mode to have an idea of the entire game, i'm pretty sure this game is awsome in coop and solo
I think he was referring to the actual game that says it is using the technology rather than the probably faked video that was just posted in the thread
It leads me to believe that the image they showed for that post may not be DX11. If it was, their silhouettes would have been smoother, correct?
It's very apparent on the front alien's back tentacle thing right smack in the foreground has not had this subdivision applied. Or am I still missing the point?
http://media.bestofmicro.com/8/X/232305/original/screen1_large.jpg
Cons:
-horrible jerky mouse movement. I don't know why, maybe it was lag, but holy shit your mouse would go all over the place sometimes, and sometimes it wouldn't move at all.
-terrible slow mouse. I know this can be adjusted, but usually I am fairly satisfied with default settings in shooters. Here it's WAY too slow. I ended up setting my sensitivity hgher on my mouse (G5) and it was till largely not enough. But as I've said, this can be adjusted so it's not that much of a problem.
-terrible menus. I tried changing controls in game, there are like 4 or 5 submenus when you try to change controls. Not very user friendly. Coupled with the slow mouse (and this was not just slow mouse, this was that slow acceleration problem) it's a pain to navigate them all. It is probably faster to use keyboard.
Not only the controls menus was bad, however, when you are in lobby the species and skin thing is full of redundancy, make the lobby a list of properties you can set like L4D.
-terrible matchmaking. L4D wasn't great eitehr, but at least it was straightforward. I am still not sure what I am supposed to click, it seems the buttons imply you hosting a server but you end up joining one - it's probably only me, but it is still annoying. I just kept clicking whatever button I saw until I joined the game.
-this is a double edged sword, but honestly - I'd like to see hints during the game. Like "press this to do that". I know all the pr0s wil find it annoying, but when I tried predator, frankly I had no clue what to do. I spent a few minutes studying the keyboard mapping (took me longer to find it, didn't realise you could select between species' controls on the top of the mapping page) but the only things I can confidently do now is switch vision modes and turn on cloak. I've picked up some pred gear in game, but I have no freaking clue what I am supposed to do with it, they tried to make the weapon selection menu Predator-authentic but I just had no idea what it was showing.
-strange grabbing. I guess this will come in time as I play more, but I am not really sure how the grabbing works. I was able to grab an alien as pred from quite a large distance (and it seems the window for grabbing is very small) but then when I am really close I can't seem to be able to grab. Sometimes during meleeing the button flashes once in a while, but it's so fast it's impossible to get it.
But despite such drawbacks, there are some really great things about it:
-it's fun. Yeah, it definitely is when you know how to play. The alien requires the less tactic, I think at least, it's the "simplest" but a very deadly species. I am glad there is auto-transition, but then it's kinda motion-sickness-inducing when you climb EVERYTHING in your way, and especially annoying when you are chasing someone and then accidentally running up a wall and losing orientation. But still, it's enormous fun. The best is when you have this lone marine running not knowing what to do (there will be less and less of such people after a while, though, which is a shame) and you hop down behind him and BAM BAM. It's not as fun against more knowledgeable people since they see you from afar and are extremely trigger happy.
There's lots more I can say, good and bad things, but overall I am fairly pelase with the experience.
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/ATI/5870/AlienBig.jpg
check the silhouette. It doesnt smooth it. I have no idea what purpose this serves.
you can see a little bit on the tail but is all this worth it?
Who's going to notice a little more detail in what's killing you in a split second?
useless
This video worries me a bit though, the aliens are slow and faff about like a women in a shoe shop. I'm hoping thats just on console and their faster and deadlier on the pc.
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/uk-marines-aliens-vs/61639
Don't count on it.
No I don't think so. We've hardly seen the potential of 10, yet alone 11 in our games, and we only ever will when we have dx10+11 mainstream consoles.
This. I studied the control mapping before I first tried it out as an Alien. Then found out I changed nothing but the general keys. Finally found out the 2nd time I tried, played as Marine had a blast. Thought the marine was still slow though. Been playing AvP2 recently, kinda wish it had same speed.
Either way, if the single player can live up to the first ones and the UI changes a bit, still going to get this. Don't have the link, but can't wait to play the stripper hologram level they just released a trailer for yesterday.
And having seen that video, I wanted to know why AVP doesn't do the same because the bricks at the edge of the building in that video very clearly adjust to create an amazing visual.