Game's speed

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Markus Ramikin
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Game's speed

#1 Post by Markus Ramikin » Sun May 03, 2009 1:41 am

First of all let me say I love this remake and I'm very grateful to AGD for releasing it, and for free at that. I loved the QFG series but game 2 was easily the most unplayable, especially after all the others have been ported to VGA or better graphics. And ugh, don't get me started on the Shapeir's street system. This remake is a major improvement and it completes a very great series. I would, however, like to raise an issue.

Basically, just how fast are things supposed to be happening in the game? What's the maximum speed of things supposed to be?

What I'm saying is that I've tried running this game under various setups and resolutions (set in winsetup.exe ) and each one seems to result in a different speed. Now I have a 2.6 GHz processor with 2.5 GB RAM and a decent video card - not the best computer out there but solid, if I may say so myself, and a great deal better than what has been listed on the download page as the recommended requirements. Still, when I play in one of the HQ graphics filters, combat becomes horribly slow-motion for me (and in fact instead of helping, it interferes with timing blocks). If I play in one of the normal filter modes, combat becomes reasonably fast paced, but I can still time blocks well, as well recognize the enemy's moves in time to use the skull splitter or that low counter whose name escapes me. If I choose no filter, the game becomes faster than farking Street Fighter II Turbo Hyper Fighting.

Now all good modern games (unlike some old ones I can think of) try to match things happening in them to real time. For instance my space marines in Dawn of War will not run faster if I upgrade my processor. They may run slower or choppily or skip frames and pause due to lag if my processor or memory aren't enough, but if my computer is "good enough" for the current video settings, then any further improvements will not really do anything.

The impression I get is that this game - I could be wrong - instead of having a specific speed set for when it has "enough" processor power, relative to real time, just gets faster the faster your processor is relative to the video quality I demand of it. If I upgrade my processor at some point, will it become even more blindingly fast and unplayable?

So in short, is there an "intended" speed with which actions are executed in the game? Is the maximum speed when I'm playing in a low graphical resolution, it, and I'm just a weak player who cannot control the game at that speed? Or is there no ideal "intended" speed and the game just becomes stupid when given too much processing power...

Sorry if I could have put it in fewer words, I'm writing this near 4 am and I'm tired :p Hopefully you can understand what exactly I'm saying, and thanks in advance for good replies.

Markus Ramikin
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Posts: 106
Joined: Sun May 03, 2009 1:26 am
Location: Holy Terra

Re: Game's speed

#2 Post by Markus Ramikin » Mon May 04, 2009 3:15 pm

OK maybe that speed was intended after all, because I did manage to beat the game on it (Khaveen took like 10 tries), but it just didn't feel very... strategic. :p Instead of having time to recognize my opponent's move and adapting to it, I had to just blindly choose what had the best chance of working out well. Next time I'm just using magic to get Khaveen to leave (Markus crush puny minds ;) ). Or playing on higher video settings to bring back the reasonable reaction time.

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Re: Game's speed

#3 Post by Erpy » Mon May 04, 2009 6:12 pm

I think the normal mode speed is indeed the intended speed, though it is fast-paced. However, it isn't all that often that your life hings on recognizing the exact melee attack and acting accordingly since most melee attacks can be blocked and countered with a shield or dodged with a sidestep to the right. The long distance moves are usually easier to see coming. And if you're a thief or mage, you probably shouldn't be that close to your opponent to begin with. :p

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Markus Ramikin
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Re: Game's speed

#4 Post by Markus Ramikin » Mon May 04, 2009 10:58 pm

So you're saying the game won't suffer even greater speedup as computers get better? That's kind of what I'm wondering. It's not a problem I can't hack around, just curious.

Well yeah, my magic user can beat anything with stupid ease, all there is to it is
1. keep them down with force bolts
2. don't run out of mana

I was mostly thinking about the Fighter. Sure, other than Khaveen and maaaaaybe Rakeesh, I don't have a need for tactics, and random keyboard mashing that includes enough attacking mixed with the shield will win even on max difficulty. But it would be nice to be able to actually play it intelligently... in fact I first fell in love with this game's combat system when experiencing it as somewhat slower and so I was able to actually counter attacks intelligently and use the special moves by design rather than luck.

Oh well, I can still get that to happen by changing the video settings... just a pity knowing it's not the intended game mode. :P

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Re: Game's speed

#5 Post by Erpy » Tue May 05, 2009 9:26 am

That was the intended game mode...it just requires some faster thinking. :p Actually when you get familiar enough with the opponents, it's usually easy to see what attack is coming, since you know what attacks the enemy has in his arsenal and what's an effective defense against it.

I can't imagine Chris Jones designed AGS in such a way things go faster as CPU's go faster...not when the classics suffered from that severe flaw.

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Markus Ramikin
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Posts: 106
Joined: Sun May 03, 2009 1:26 am
Location: Holy Terra

Re: Game's speed

#6 Post by Markus Ramikin » Thu May 07, 2009 7:39 pm

In other words, I suck? ;) well I still suspect the game suffers from that flaw, but no matter, I finished it on the faster speed as well so all is well. If I ever go back to it though, I'll be sure to adjust it so it's challenging but not a blind keyboard masher.

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