WOOT! War of the Machines Demo OUT!

[Fury161]

sorry about the caps, but i'm so psyched at this, since i haven't been able to get into beta. going to download right now. will have an initial first impression up soon.

http://www.atari.com.au/news/?action=view&id=514

[Fury161]

as promised, my first impression after playing the demo. regardless to say, i was not impressed. read on.


first impressions of THIS demo:

first of all, this demo isn't at all what i pictured this was going to be like. in fact, worse. granted, this may be a very early version demo, so therefore the game as it stands (hopefully) does NOT reflect what i experienced in this demo, so i'll reserve final judgement until a more recent demo comes out, or i get into beta testing.

that being said....the demo allows you to play on two maps, one is a ruined downtown Los Angles of the future, where man and machine fight. the second is inside the CRS building which anyone that has seen Terminator 3 will instantly recognize. while both of these maps are very nice, laid out with plenty of room to move around and plan ambushes, the bigness of the size is exactly their downfall. all the units move far too slowly to traverse these distances quickly, and i found myself doing alot more walking than shooting. terminators move FAR too slow, even while running, and the humans are barely any faster than the terminators. and when i did finally get to shoot something....

third, gameplay mechanics. from a tricky controls screen that forces you to map different keys to the same function for across the board classes (something i hate, btw), to hyper-key sensitivity when it comes to typing, to very wonky fighting mechanics, i feel that the entire control panel (and the combat system) needs to be rethought and redone. most of the keys on my mouse will not take for input commands, not even scroll wheel functionality works; this alone leads me to believe i'm playing a very early build, which is evidenced by....

fourth, the lack of vehicles. this was a major feature being toted for the human side, but i just cannot for the life of me find any of them, despite having controls inplace to use them. maybe they're buried away somewhere, or again, i'm playing a very early demo version of the game that has not yet gotten them coded in. i don't think atari would be screaming from rooftops about this, and then not put it in a demo version. again, early build.

fifth, graphics. nothing really to write home to momma about. looks like they're taking BF1942-era graphics and merely changing some textures around. again, could be related to an early demo build, (i hope) but due to alot of people that were complaining about the quality of the graphics in the game from screenshots, i fear that this may stay. on the good side, you can really crank the settings and resolutions up high with very little framerate droppage.

one thing i will applaude in this is the bots. every multiplayer game should have a bot option, and this is nice to have. thank you for that, more posted when i play around with them. however, we are missing at least a few single player levels, but easily overlooked and forgiven.

overall, from what i see, play, and feel, we have on our hands an early demo being released, since there are too many things up with this for it to be a near-final release (people are now quoting early december for a release) and expect to fly. if the publishers are rushing this out the door, expecting it to sell based on the Terminator 3 label slapped on it, please don't bother. however, if the game as it currently stands is completly different than what i experienced in the demo, with all these shortcomings and more addressed, and more content added than what i saw, then we have a potentially very ass-kicking game that i will be proud to buy, and not just for being able to play as a Terminator.

recommendation: download this demo if you want a taste of the game, but do not expect to be blown away by it. do not judge until we get a more recent demo version.

[endoskeleton]

Recommendation : Download this demo, because it will give you a sneak preview of how the most massive mplayer game will look like, and its fantastic.

[Pyros]

Since this game is scheduled for a Holiday release, I can say this is probably not an early demo. Some features may not be in, as it is a demo, but from what I know, even the devs were concerned about this game. I'm hoping they'll prove that (and me) wrong.

[Fury161]

ha. turns out that my feeling about this being an early demo version were, in fact, correct.

http://www.gametab.com/jump.php?43061

Atari: T3 Demo Not Official [November 20, 2003, 1:10 PM EST] - Viewing Comments
Atari sends word that the Terminator 3: war of the Machines demo in the story following this one is not the official demo for the game. While we cannot put the genie back in the bottle and un-post the news, here is their warning that this actually represents an early beta:

It has come to our attention that the media demo of T3 War has been placed on the Atari Australia web site for download by consumers. This is a mistake.

Please be aware that this build is NOT meant in any way to be a consumer "demo" and it will be removed from our site shortly. We will be releasing the real consumer demo in the near future, but the version that is online now will not be compatible with the official demo nor will it be compatible with the final game, both of which will have improved performance and online play.

Please do not direct your readers to this demo in Australia. If you have already posted the news, please remove it. If you feel you must mention this demo in a news item, it should be referred to as an early Beta Test for the game -- which it is -- this is NOT a "demo." It was meant for press eyes only and came with disclaimers as to what was not incorporated into the build at this time.

This demo's availability will only lead to confusion and compatibility issues, and you should wait for the official demo.


as one person said, is this putting the genie back into the bottle by trying to put this off as an incomplete media build, or was this suppose to be the real deal? only time will tell, but i think that this article is correct.

[Pyros]

They had it publically available on their servers, so I can't imagine it was a mistake. If it was, it was a large mistakes.

[hughbackov]

I have played this beta demo a little, and I like it overall. Graphically, the game makes liberal use of bump-mapping (including on character models) and uses shaders, but unlike Halo it performs better and the bumpmapping is not superfluous and does not detract from the environment and setting. For example, in Halo do you really think that the floor of a military starship would look like bathroom tiles that were just given a Futura shine? In this game, the environment looks dingy as it should even with the effects not all polished up. The textures for the human characters' faces and the playerview weapons could use a little work, but the various Terminator models and textures look terrific and spot on from the movie.

I really like the fact that the game has drivable vehicles and bots in multiplayer. It reminds me of Battlefield 1942 but with better graphics (bumpmapping and shaders) and without the tired and dated WW2 weapons and settings.

The game has some minor quirks in the user interface that need to be corrected, i.e. the buttons only activate if you click on the text on them and the control key for a function can't be set to nothing/cleared out. There also needs to be a notice to tell the player to click on his team's icon on the map to spawn into the game or better yet just spawn the player when he clicks on the "done" key.

I have yet to test the network code by playing online.

Overall I like what I see with the game so far, and I will definitely buy it.

[hughbackov]

Originally posted by Fury161
all the units move far too slowly
Yes, movement is too slow and should be a little customizable. However, the size of the maps is great. Just get in a vehicle if you don't want to walk.

fourth, the lack of vehicles. this was a major feature being toted for the human side, but i just cannot for the life of me find any of them...


LOL! Did you only play the lab map or something? The city map has plenty of vehicles.

fifth, graphics. nothing really to write home to momma about. looks like they're taking BF1942-era graphics and merely changing some textures around

What graphics card do you have and what graphics settings are you using? This game's graphics utilize things like bumpmapping and shaders which are not supported in BF1942. If you have a DirectX 8.1 or better feature compliant card, you should see these things. Yes, the effects are more subtle than in some games like Halo, but that is a good thing because they don't clash with the overall look of the environment and setting of the game.

[Fury161]

Originally posted by hughbackov
Yes, movement is too slow and should be a little customizable. However, the size of the maps is great. Just get in a vehicle if you don't want to walk.

LOL! Did you only play the lab map or something? The city map has plenty of vehicles.



no, i played the city map. i'm talking about the lack of terminator transport vehicles on the DM mode. unless i was really missing them somewhere, i did not see them. and my only complaint about the size was because of slow movement. i LOVE the big sized maps where tactical planning can come into play very heavily.


Originally posted by hughbackov
What graphics card do you have and what graphics settings are you using? This game's graphics utilize things like bumpmapping and shaders which are not supported in BF1942. If you have a DirectX 8.1 or better feature compliant card, you should see these things. Yes, the effects are more subtle than in some games like Halo, but that is a good thing because they don't clash with the overall look of the environment and setting of the game.

i have a geforce 3 ti500, with full graphics settings turned up and on.

[hughbackov]

Originally posted by Fury161
no, i played the city map. i'm talking about the lack of terminator transport vehicles on the DM mode. unless i was really missing them somewhere, i did not see them. and my only complaint about the size was because of slow movement. i LOVE the big sized maps where tactical planning can come into play very heavily.

I played against the bots on that map on the human team only, but one of them was flying the large hunter ship around which I shot down. I'll play as the Terminator side and see what gives.

i have a geforce 3 ti500, with full graphics settings turned up and on.
That card supports Pixel Shader v1.1, but I can't imagine that only v1.4 or 2.0 was used. Have you tried turning off all of the effects and then comparing what you see then with what you see with them enabled? The human player models definitely have bumpmapped vests. The walls are also bumpmapped. If you read the debug log for the engine, it will show if your card's vertex and pixel shader capabilities are being detected.

[Lender]

The only way to see the vehicles is to play in Termination mode not mission or in death match.

[Shat]

Shataan here.

I have to agree totally about your demo findings. But one has to wonder about what is there that WILL make it into the final version. Things like key bindings, will we be able to fully configure to OUR tastes?

Character movement. Will it be fixed? I mean comon, the Terminator movement was a pretty slow ass walk speed. No one wants to quake, but IMHO, a more natural movement feel would be much more desireable in MP AND the sp game. I as well wanna see Terminators who can move like I would, kneel/crouch/prone/ run at least at a slow gate etc. And these movements should look motion captured. The zoom view could be a tad more powerful too.

The visuals? They leave me wishing they had licenced the UT2003 engine to tellyas the truth. The visuals remind me of when Delta Force 2 was released. Anyone remember DF 2s voxels? Good for THAT era in gaming but dated for THIS era in gaming. The T3 PC visuals look that dated to me, and I sport a pretty rockin` rig.

I don`t mind the burned out city look as they just need to be functional and they are for the most part, but in this case, way more attention to detail and visuals delivery should be going into weapons, characters ala humans and Terminators, AND weap effects.

I could go on, but won`t bother. I really doubt we will see any night and day differences between the demo and final release. It could happen, but IMHO it is doubtful. I hope otherwise like everyone else.

Of course the PR machine from Atari is going to go into action as soon as they read the gamer responses. Most are NOT positive. If I was them after reading from the gamers, I too would send out a PR article asap... just as they did.

Have they released any new screens from the real demo? Nope. Any new footage showing the real deal? Not as far as I know. Have we seen anything to show us that this demo is what Atari says it is? Nope again. But ya can`t show what ya don`t got... right?

On the other hand, maybe Ataris is gonna come out with a Terminator PC game thats gonna take real advantage of our vid cards and upgraded systems. Maybe they WILL wow us. Maybe Terminator 3 PC release will be the 1st movie licence brought to the fps genre that finally does movie licences justice......

Maybe Atari should have canned and burned this demo to flames before it ever had a chance of creating such a bad impression? Alot of maybes...eh? ;p

[hughbackov]

Originally posted by Shat
I mean comon, the Terminator movement was a pretty slow ass walk speed. No one wants to quake, but IMHO, a more natural movement feel would be much more desireable in MP AND the sp game. I as well wanna see Terminators who can move like I would, kneel/crouch/prone/ run at least at a slow gate etc.


In the movies, the short clips of the terminators always showed them moving slowly and rigidly which is exactly like they move in the game. Even Arnold's flesh covered terminator character was never "Mr. Nimble."

The visuals? They leave me wishing they had licenced the UT2003 engine to tellyas the truth.

The UT2003 engine doesn't do anything graphically more advanced than this engine. This engine does use DirectX 8.1 shaders. You can see the shader code in "shaders" subdirectory in the game.cod archive file. The reason why the visuals may appear less stunning than UT2003 is because the textures in this demo are smaller and of lesser quality. (Then again the UT2003 demo has smaller and inferior textures to the full version of the game.) Also, the subject matter and theme of the game is dingy, so the textures are not stunning. The various Terminator models have nice textures though.

[hughbackov]

Originally posted by hughbackov
The human player models definitely have bumpmapped vests. The walls are also bumpmapped.
It looks like I was wrong about the bumpmapping part. Both the rigidity in the human player's vests and on some of the walls and streets now appears to actually be standard geometry. The shaders are still used though.