Shane Martin

Tron 2.0

If you have seen the movie Tron and like it as much as I did, you will be in gamer geek heaven with Tron 2.0. I just recently downloaded the demo to play and the game looks and plays incredibly. The release date is 8/26 it says. I'm so all over this. I expect this to be a hit at the lan parties with my friends.

Todd Terwilliger

I haven't played the demo but I wasn't thrilled with the First Person view in the Discs of Tron game. How does it play?

This message ends with Todd.

Hey kid you got no class. Hit the bums, kid. Run like the devil. Get a tin can and take up mooching. Knock on back doors for a nickel.
Tell them your story. Make \'em weep. You could have been a meat-eater, kid. But you didn\'t listen to me when I laid it down.
Stay off the tracks. Forget it. Its a bum\'s world for a bum. You\'ll never be Emperor of the North Pole, kid. You had the juice, kid, but not the heart and they go together.
You\'re all gas and no feel, and nobody can teach you that, not even A-No.1. So stay off the train, she\'ll throw you under for sure. Remember me for that. So long, kid. -A-No.1

Chris Bardon

I just tried the full version of this game on my PC, and it's slow as hell-even on the lowest detail it's choppy. For a 2.1 GHz processor with 512 Mb of memory and a Radeon 7500 it should at least run reasonably well. Can't find any information on performance issues (remembering the problems with GTA3 and ATI cards), but so far it's a big thumbs down for unplayability.

Jeremy Anderson

Wow, Chris... You must have some sort of bizarre issue, because mine runs silky smooth! I'm running the full version on an Athlon XP 2200+, 512mb, Geforce 4 Ti4200 64mb and Sound Blaster Audigy system... and I have all details turned to their maximum. Runs like BUTTAH and looks GORGEOUS!

The single player game is one of the most intriguing since Half-Life and through hidden video clips and e-mails gives a nice flow to the story. And unlike most games in this genre, there actually IS a story and it's actually a pretty good one! Plus, Bruce Boxleitner does the voice of Alan Bradley, which I thought was cool. Speaking of the audio, the use of 5.1 surround in this game is very nice if you have it on your system. Some of the cutscenes sound as good as DVD's I own, which is impressive since most video games are a bit too gimmicky with their surround usage IMHO.

The multiplayer takes a little getting used to for those of us used to playing UT2003 or Q3, but after a while it really becomes a fast-paced arena-style experience. There is a learning curve, but so long as you can strafe and jump at the same time you ought to pick it up pretty quickly. It does take some memorization of the disc locations for each arena, since sometimes you have to jump to a disc outside of your field of vision in order to keep your disc flying at your opponent. Still, after a little adaptation to this style of game, this is a damn exciting multiplayer experience! And hey, LIGHTCYCLES! Need I say more?

Overall, Tron 2.0 is one of the best games I've played in a long time... and I play just about every game that looks remotely interesting.

Mike_G

I'm running it on an 2.53 GHz Intel P4 w/1 GB RAM and an ATI Radeon 9700. Runs very smooth.

Mike

Chris Bardon

Was just wading through the BV interactive message boards, and there's a hint that there might be a patch coming soon that addresses problems with lower end Radeon cards. I have to say though that this is incredibly sloppy, but I suppose not surprising given the slipshod nature of game releases these days. Many games are being rushed out without sufficient testing, and it's even starting to percolate over to console games. Let's put it this way-if your PC game needs a patch within the first week of release-you released it too soon.

We'll see if they actually answer their support email though.

Joshua Moran

Chris the reason it is running slow on your machine is that the 7500 does not support hardware T&L which is required by the game. The 7500 can do T&L through software but takes a performance hit. If you are on a budget I would get the ATI 9600 (not the PRO version) its about $130 online. Also the 7500 is more than likely bottle necking your Processor.

Chris Bardon

That's a definite possibility, but the specs say that it should support the 7500. Just got this reply from BVI:


Like I said-rushed out...

Jeremy Anderson

Chris, in all fairness... they can't test for every combination of hardware out there. They HAVE to release the game and deal with problems as they appear. With consoles, they have a known set of hardware to design for and test with, so I'm a lot less forgiving of problems with console games... but the PC has so many variables that they just can't account for. Take into account all the different motherboard chipsets, processors, types and brands of RAM, video cards, sound cards, network adapters, hard drives, CD-ROM drives, etc. and you end up with an incredibly large number of possible configurations for any given computer.

I mean, I'm sorry that you ran into a problem, but I'm sure the company will address it as soon as they're able. Trust me, the game is worth it.

Chris Bardon

I understand that you can't test for EVERY conbination of hardware, but wasn't DirectX supposed to adddress that issue? I haven't written a lot of software that uses DirectX, but from what I understand the application calls commands from the DirectX layer, which then translates these for the hardware. This was supposed to solve the old problem of everyone needing to write their own drivers like back in the DOS days. Now, sound, input, and 3d could just be handled the same way for each chipset-life was supposed to be good! Does this mean that companies are circumventing directx in order to tweak performance?

As for dealing with different configurations, I can understand if there's something in a particular MB, BIOS, or drive controller that for some reason impairs performance, but this is a graphics card issue. There are what-maybe a dozen different major chipsets that you have to test? Surely a company like BVI can afford a dozen test machines?

And in all fairness, I don't really blame the developer-odds are that it's not their fault. It's much more likely that the publisher said that they had to ship whatever they had ready or else. Look at what happened with Ultima Ascension-a virtually unplayable game was released. From what I played the game was great, but it was impossible to actually get it to run at the time. Given another six months, it could have been finished (as is evident from the patches that came out), but the publisher intervened and said that the game had to ship.