Dragon Age Thread(Spoilers)

[Zehn - Vhex]

Some people just can't help themselves. I have a similar issue with JRPG's. I know those fuckers put in tons of little hidden bits of content and I'll sneak a quick peek on gamefaq's and the cheats or answers section to see if there's anything I should keep an eye on like if you don't open a chest in some random dungeon you start in when you come back to it later it has a wicked awesome item in it or some shit.

But the minute I hit up gamefaqs suddenly I'm reading the walkthrough on how to build some super character or where to cheese some xp early on and it makes the rest of the game painfully easy and I know I should just stay the fuck away and plow on through. If I miss some cutscene I should know I can just find it on youtube later anyways.

[Aborath]

Journeys is an addictive little time-waster. Can anyone who's finished it comment on the length?

[Twobit Whore]

2-3 hours.

[Caliane]

Originally Posted by Manatra

You do realize that the PS3 is a dedicated architecture meaning the developers can employee many optimization tricks that they can't with the PC. This is why the PS3 and Xbox360 can get away with have not too great hardware.

Also, as already stated, the CPU isn't too great, resulting in the videocard running much slower than it should.

Basically, know what you're talking about before you open your mouth.

By optimization, you mean they reduce the visual quality of everything.
Fallout does run great on the ps3 and xbox. It also looks like shit compared to a similar PC.

I will give you Vista is a system hog and wastes resources, and you will get better performance with xp, or 7.

Even a novice can spend 5 minutes in the video options to adjust the required fields to get nearly the best performance they can with their system.
And if they want, they can always go online and check out forums to ask what setting they should use from more experienced users on the forums.

His system is as powerful as a ps3. He will not get better performance from a Ps3, then he will from the PC.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Caliane

I will give you Vista is a system hog and wastes resources, and you will get better performance with xp, or 7.

Not to derail this into another ignorance-filled OS bashfest, but Vista and Win7 performance are pretty much the same.

[Caliane]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Some people just can't help themselves. I have a similar issue with JRPG's. I know those fuckers put in tons of little hidden bits of content and I'll sneak a quick peek on gamefaq's and the cheats or answers section to see if there's anything I should keep an eye on like if you don't open a chest in some random dungeon you start in when you come back to it later it has a wicked awesome item in it or some shit.

But the minute I hit up gamefaqs suddenly I'm reading the walkthrough on how to build some super character or where to cheese some xp early on and it makes the rest of the game painfully easy and I know I should just stay the fuck away and plow on through. If I miss some cutscene I should know I can just find it on youtube later anyways.

I think its gotten worse too.
Hidden stuff used to be fairly logical. So "good playing" would let you find it. now its just plain random it seems. As thought they are trying so hard to hide stuff, you HAVE to look online to have any chance to find it.
Or, I'm just getting old, and dont have the time/patience to check every nook and cranny that I used to.

I do tend to play with gamefaqs open, next to every game I play now. I'll play. Then check the faq before I move on to the next area to see what I might have missed, to grab it before I move on. I am pretty good about not reading ahead of myself. But I do want to avoid needing to do multiple playthroughs to feel like I completed the game.

[Caliane]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

Not to derail this into another ignorance-filled OS bashfest, but Vista and Win7 performance are pretty much the same.

I heard 7 was better on resources. If you say so, it wasn't a first hand experience statement.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Caliane

I heard 7 was better on resources. If you say so, it wasn't a first hand experience statement.

Which is exactly how rumors and misinformation are perpetuated.

People 'hear' and not 'experience' and they pass it off as fact. Vista has been superior to XP for a while now, and Win 7 is basically Vista version 2.fixed with some added desktop functionality and other things that really don't effect gaming that much.

Hell, you use the exact same drivers for both Vista and 7.

I'm not saying Win 7 is bad, I really like it (best 30 bucks I've spent on an OS!) but don't expect to upgrade from Vista and see any sort of huge performance boost in your games.

[Jozu]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Some people just can't help themselves. I have a similar issue with JRPG's. I know those fuckers put in tons of little hidden bits of content and I'll sneak a quick peek on gamefaq's and the cheats or answers section to see if there's anything I should keep an eye on like if you don't open a chest in some random dungeon you start in when you come back to it later it has a wicked awesome item in it or some shit.

But the minute I hit up gamefaqs suddenly I'm reading the walkthrough on how to build some super character or where to cheese some xp early on and it makes the rest of the game painfully easy and I know I should just stay the fuck away and plow on through. If I miss some cutscene I should know I can just find it on youtube later anyways.

This is such a funny thing with games. I have a friend who is a die-hard gamer (kid is 25, no job, mom waits on him hand and foot, and he pays no bills, just chills and plays games all day, PC/console) and he has no problem at all cheating. I say he is a faggot all the time for it, but he will only do it on certain games. Like he wont cheat on a multiplayer fps or some shit, but any single-player game he will just use all of the unlock codes he can find ect.

Me personally, I never use cheat codes, and the only way I gamefaq shit up is If im stuck somewhere and get too lazy to use my brain. Everyone is different when it comes to game cheating....some fuckers take that shit to the extreme and start modding controllers and manipulating servers and shit.

[Manatra]

Originally Posted by Caliane

By optimization, you mean they reduce the visual quality of everything.
Fallout does run great on the ps3 and xbox. It also looks like shit compared to a similar PC.

I will give you Vista is a system hog and wastes resources, and you will get better performance with xp, or 7.

I'll give you that console games typically utilize smaller textures, run without AA/AF, and display at lower resolutions. However, a not so insignificant chunk of the performance gains come from the fact that on a console the hardware and operating system is the same, thus developers can employ many optimization tricks to improve performance.

A good example of this is what happens with the RAM. On a console developers can take advantage of the fact that they know the bandwidth and speed of the RAM. This lets them be more selective with what they have in the RAM because they know how fast they can load something when it's needed. On a PC, there is such a wide variety of bandwidth and speed for RAM that performing optimizations like this are impossible, and therefore developers just load as much as they reasonable can into the RAM. Thus the reason why many console ports have much higher RAM requirements than what the PS3 and Xbox 360 have. Not only that, but the operating system is designed for games and is designed to have as little overhead as possible.

Looking at Dragon Age for example, the PS3 has 256 MB of RAM, whereas the recommended requirements call for 2 GB of RAM in XP, accounting for operating system overhead, that's 1.7ish GB of RAM, or almost 7 times the the amount in the PS3. I'm ignoring the minimum requirements, because on the PC minimum requirements usually means that you can get into the menu screen and not much else.

Also, a Pentium 4 processor is not better than the Cell when it comes to running games. While there's the possibility that the P4 may be better for general computing, the Cell processor in the PS3 is designed specifically for running games and blows away the Pentium 4 in that task.

If you want to continue this conversation it's best to PM me so we don't derail this thread.

[Jozu]

Damn, I didnt know any of that shit, thanx for enlightening me.

Thats funny how little ram the PS3 has...

His system is as powerful as a ps3. He will not get better performance from a Ps3, then he will from the PC.

See, I call bullshit on this; I have first hand experience on this matter, considering the computer in question is mine, and I have played the same game on both.

IE: Prototype.

If my PC gives better performance than the PS3, why the hell did my computer run it like shit, but my ps3 ran it smooth as fuck? Yeah, maybe you will get some minimal slow down when the fireworks and shit is flying, but its an experience I can be confident with every time.

I dont go into a console gaming session after I buy a game thinking: "Fuck, this shit might not run that great." Whereas on my PC, almost every game that comes out nowadays gives me pause before buying because of my bad processor. Some shit runs fine, like Flashpoint and Aion, but some other more demanding games bring my PC to its proverbial knees.

[Dis]

Since we still have about a week and a half, derails dont really matter much.

Snippet from an article explaining how the PS3 uses RAM. And actually the PS3 has 512MB of RAM, 256 for system that is shareable, and 256 that is dedicate for vid.

Taken from Hack 5:

There has been a lot of talk about the PlayStation 3's Random Access Memory (RAM) vs Xbox 360's RAM, saying that the 360 has more RAM to work with etc. Here is an article to explain the situation of its RAM.

Just so you know, the PS3 has 512MB of RAM (256 for video and 256 for system). The Cell chip has 256MB of completely sharable RAM, the GPU has 256MB of dedicated RAM. Now the key here is what type of RAM it is.

The PlayStation 3 has 256mb of GDDR3 at 700mhz and 256Mb of XDR at 3.2ghz. So what exactly is XDR ram? Here are some of the highlights:

- XDR makes PS3 super effiecient
- XDR aids in faster cache mapping, both direct and indirect
- XDR ram works by a pointer to pointer technology and needs very small buswidth for execution
- XDR is not just faster than GDDR3 but it is much more efficient
- XDR RAM works by breaking down data into several packets which prevents data loss and exceptions

The Rambus XDR™ memory architecture is a total memory system solution that achieves an order of magnitude higher performance than today’s standard memories while utilizing the fewest ICs. Perfect for compute and consumer electronics applications.

The PS3 has two times as much cache at 2x the speed, making it way faster for direct/indirect mapping. Not only that but it has 512k of L1 cache + 1.7m of L2 cache for the 7 spes. The PS3’s GPU, RSX was made to work with the Cell processor, it is not some GPU they took and slotted in. It is made to be compatible with the Cell.

More RAM does not mean a faster system it means more data can be stored in a fast access area. Games don't always need 512mb of RAM.

The RSX can freely use as much of the 512MB total RAM that the PS3 has because the Cell doesn't need much RAM because its fast enough. And the fact that the PS3 has XDR means that it has faster access to data files.

A lot of people are saying that the RSX only has 256mb of RAM, whereas the 360's GPU has 512MB of RAM. To make it sound a bit simpler, here's the real deal. The PS3 has it's RAM in two separate parts, 256MB for the RSX and 256MB that can be used be either the Cell or RSX.

[Kidriot69]

...I think I need to get an external hard drive. Dragon Age is 20gb, fuck i need to free up some space.

[Caliane]

"A Bioware developer has said the game runs maxed out on a 8800 GT, with just a duo core cpu, so the recommended specs are completely wrong according to him"
A quote from another board. I'm going to go look for the source.
I mentioned a while back I have an old vid card. I did turn up the character creator all the way up with that old card, and had zero slow down. Granted not much on screen for the character creator. But I can't even do that in champions.

To bring up the specs again.
Recommended Specifications
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz Processor or equivalent
AMD Phenom II X3 Triple-Core 2.8 GHz or greater
RAM: 4 GB (Vista) or 2 GB (XP)
Video: ATI 3850 512 MB or greater
NVIDIA 8800GTS 512 MB or greater
DVD ROM (Physical copy)
20 GB HD space

Jozu, you meet the recommended stats for the game. Not just the minimum. So you'll be able to play the game on the PC at a level that is on par or above what the ps3 puts out. Anything above the recommended will flat out be better then anything a console can put out. Cpu could be better, sure. But its enough. Just check out the official forums after the game goes live, and ask people what specific settings they think you should have with your specs.
Twobit, you mentioned vista is better then xp. Certainly it does have tools that xp doesnt, but even the game designers agree that the game requires more resources for the same performance in vista, then xp.

Check out the dev posts in the system spec thread. login and do the view dev posts.
BioWare : Dragon Age : Dragon Age: Origins System requirements announced

[Korioni]

Anyone have a good source for info on spell mechanics? If this has the same "get out of combat and rest every time I want to cast a goddamn spell twice" bullshit, I may cut myself.