Age of Empires III - Anyone want to guess if current best hardware will be able to play game at max settings?

[DaveyTN]

 

[Cheesetogo]

Probably not much, rts's are never particuarly demanding. I dought you'd really need much to play at max. 6600 would probably play it.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: Cheesetogo
Probably not much, rts's are never particuarly demanding. I dought you'd really need much to play at max. 6600 would probably play it.

Yeah. Right.
That's why they are aiming to push the top end hardware.
They are going all out. Full physics (on everything, even trees).
HDR, SM3.0 support.
Hell, they had to cut dwn on some features because they required too much processing power (they have pre-defined water patterns, dynamic ones were too demanding).

So, do you still stick by your statement?


And just to back myself up:
Here

Age of Empires III also places a huge emphasis on water and how it's displayed. It's another one of those big graphical elements that players end up spending a lot of time staring at. At first the team actually had a real-time dynamic water and waves simulation built into the game, but it was too processor-intensive

Ensemble Studios licensed the Havok physics engine

There's also bump-mapping

Pottinger explained that the team built the engine so that it has a high dynamic range: it's capable of simulating very bright lighting, with nifty bloom effects. This all sounds like lip-service until you can see it in action. Pottinger showed two screenshots of a cathedral in a city, one with a low dynamic range and the other with Age III's higher dynamic range.

 

[magomago]

holy moly....this game look AMAZING..

i just hope it'll run on my comp (and i "just" upgrade afrom a g4mx420 to a g4ti4400) to a lvel of "pretty" also...

age1 i plkayed 4 yeras straight and was hooked to where every firday nights i HAD to spend 6-8 hours playing it for 2 years

age2 was more of the same but 10000x more beautiful

aom was okay and fun. i li ked single player but enver really got too much into multi player~ i still play AGE2 to this day and its an absolutely fabulous game. i've never gotten bored of playing multiplayer even against the PC. its just sooo fun

i hope age3 goes back and builds off AGE2 roots rather than AOM

but eitherway...AGE2 to me is still ridiculously beautiful

 

[imported_2x]

That looks pretty amazing. Not my favorite period of time for gaming but I love the Age series so I'm glad I just upgraded.

 

[mwmorph]

no it probably wont. think about it, you may have somewhere like 400units battling onscreen, all sm3ed, with some more battle effects(flaming rocks, arrows, water, buildings, rtl, etc.) i'd say your current harfdware wont have nearly enough power ot run it smoothly at max sttings(unles you like slide shows).

p.s. the 400units is assuming they use an reasonblel 200unit cap. per plaryer, 2 player mode.

if it's 8 palyer multiplay, just think, even at 75units a player, your pc would die under the load.

 

[magomago]

Originally posted by: mwmorph
no it probably wont. think about it, you may have somewhere like 400units battling onscreen, all sm3ed, with some more battle effects(flaming rocks, arrows, water, buildings, rtl, etc.) i'd say your current harfdware wont have nearly enough power ot run it smoothly at max sttings(unles you like slide shows).

p.s. the 400units is assuming they use an reasonblel 200unit cap. per plaryer, 2 player mode.

if it's 8 palyer multiplay, just think, even at 75units a player, your pc would die under the load.

i thought more recent cards(past 2 years?) only render what we see...similar to what kyro did back in the day~

 

[mwmorph]

yeah, but at 1600x1200(or even higher) in the heat of battle, 200vs200(at high resolutions like 20xx15xx, you could easily fit 200 units onscreen, plus a few buildings,water, a bunch of effects, fire,etc.) , your frames will drop signifigantly. reminds me of a time i tried to play warcraft 3 on my crap rig with only a rage pro and 96mb ram. it would run semi smooth until a battle, then it was a 1fps slideshow.

 

[imported_jzimo]

He said in one of the interviews that a 6600gt would be able to play it on "quality settings". I'm thinking my 6800gt will be just fine.

 

[mhillary]

Great.

 

[mindwreck]

Originally posted by: magomago
holy moly....this game look AMAZING..

i just hope it'll run on my comp (and i "just" upgrade afrom a g4mx420 to a g4ti4400) to a lvel of "pretty" also...

age1 i plkayed 4 yeras straight and was hooked to where every firday nights i HAD to spend 6-8 hours playing it for 2 years

age2 was more of the same but 10000x more beautiful

aom was okay and fun. i li ked single player but enver really got too much into multi player~ i still play AGE2 to this day and its an absolutely fabulous game. i've never gotten bored of playing multiplayer even against the PC. its just sooo fun

i hope age3 goes back and builds off AGE2 roots rather than AOM

but eitherway...AGE2 to me is still ridiculously beautiful

wow a person that loves AOE as much as me. I used to play it ALOT, like everyday 6-10 hours, game after game. I still play occasionally since i'm trying to cut back on games.
RTS games are definitely demanding. even now with 200 population cap with 4 or more teams, my computer has problems dealing with all the units.

 

[Kasper4christ]

population caps..
necessary evils...

 

[imported_sphinx]

If I have to upgrade, I will.

Whatever it takes.

 

[Googer]

Definity going to need a top end DX9 card.

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by: Cheesetogo
Probably not much, rts's are never particuarly demanding. I dought you'd really need much to play at max. 6600 would probably play it.

edit: didn't see some of the later posts... well I guess MS is loading this one up with eyecandy... either way I have a hard time believeing this will be more taxing on your video card than Doom3 or HL2 or something... what's gonna bog the game down is the number of units you have/everyone has on the map at the same time, that kinda stuff, and that really is more cpu/ram bound that graphics...correct me if i'm wrong...

 

[Regs]

The game looks a lot more CPU bound than it does GPU bound. A good A64 @ or above 2.0 GHZ looks to do the trick. A 6600GT or above will likey be needed.

 

[DanDaMan315]

Originally posted by: Regs
The game looks a lot more CPU bound than it does GPU bound. A good A64 @ or above 2.0 GHZ looks to do the trick. A 6600GT or above will likey be needed.

You may be right about that.

Although the polygon count is going to be huge. I just might have to upgrade my card to a 6800ultra for this baby (edit: although this game isn't expected to come out for some more months, with is a good thing for me, I was planning on upgrading my video card this fall anyways) Props to MS for making a hell of a beautiful game.