Verdict on current status of JKII?

[Darrett]

This is what I'm running on, and I've got absolutely no issues at 1280X1024 res, max graphical settings on everything.

 

AMD Athlon Thunderbird 800

GeForce 4 MX 420

512 Mbs DDR RAM

SBLive X-gamer

4.3 GB/40GB Maxtor 7200 RPM HDDs

Acer 36X CD-Rom

Asus K7V Motherboard

Win 98 SE

 

It's A+ pow-pow-powa.

[Inglo]

Nowadays, I buy a new game and expect there to be problems. That's just the way it is. Widely varying system configurations, pressure from the higher ups on the developers, etc... just lead to initial releases being buggy.

JK2, has been a lot better than other games, as far as its stability goes for me.

[No1zLegacy]

I personally haven't had any major errors, and my fps never drops below 50 either. It's usually at a steady 100.

I do have that nasty little CL_ParsePacketEntites error in multiplayer though.

 

For anyone who remembers, just think of a game release like Tribes 2, and tell me with a straight face that JKII's release is worse, heheh.

[Proverb252]

Ok, I have Windows XP, 256MB RAM, GeForce 2 MX200, and plenty of hard drive space. Every time I try to go into Jedi Outcast, I get: COULD NOT LOAD OPENGL SUBSYSTEM. I checked for drivers and I think I have the top drivers out right now. This is what comes up:

 

JK2: v1.02a win-x86 Mar 4 2002

Initialising zone memory .....

----- FS_Startup -----

Current search path:

C:\Program Files\LucasArts\Star Wars JK II Jedi Outcast\GameData\base\assets1.pk3 (8011 files)

C:\Program Files\LucasArts\Star Wars JK II Jedi Outcast\GameData\base\assets0.pk3 (6674 files)

C:\Program Files\LucasArts\Star Wars JK II Jedi Outcast\GameData/base

 

----------------------

14685 files in pk3 files

execing default.cfg

couldn't exec autoexec.cfg

...detecting CPU, found AMD w/ 3DNow!

 

------- Input Initialization -------

Skipping check for DirectInput

Joystick is not active.

------------------------------------

 

------- Force Feedback Initialization -------

...inhibited, not initializing

 

----- Client Initialization -----

----- Initializing Renderer ----

-------------------------------

----- Client Initialization Complete -----

--- Common Initialization Complete ---

Working directory: C:\Program Files\LucasArts\Star Wars JK II Jedi Outcast\GameData

----- R_Init -----

Initializing OpenGL subsystem

...initializing QGL

...calling LoadLibrary( 'C:\WINDOWS\System32\opengl32.dll' ): succeeded

...setting mode 3: 640 480 FS

...using desktop display depth of 32

...calling CDS: ok

...registered window class

...created window@0,0 (640x480)

Initializing OpenGL driver

...getting DC: succeeded

...GLW_ChoosePFD( 32, 24, 8 )

...35 PFDs found

...GLW_ChoosePFD failed

...GLW_ChoosePFD( 32, 24, 0 )

...35 PFDs found

...GLW_ChoosePFD failed

...failed to find an appropriate PIXELFORMAT

...restoring display settings

...WARNING: could not set the given mode (3)

...setting mode 3: 640 480 FS

...using colorsbits of 16

...calling CDS: ok

...created window@0,0 (640x480)

Initializing OpenGL driver

...getting DC: succeeded

...GLW_ChoosePFD( 16, 16, 0 )

...35 PFDs found

...GLW_ChoosePFD failed

...GLW_ChoosePFD( 16, 16, 0 )

...35 PFDs found

...GLW_ChoosePFD failed

...failed to find an appropriate PIXELFORMAT

...restoring display settings

...WARNING: could not set the given mode (3)

...shutting down QGL

...unloading OpenGL DLL

----- CL_Shutdown -----

RE_Shutdown( 1 )

-----------------------

GLW_StartOpenGL() - could not load OpenGL subsystem

 

Could someone please help? I've been trying to play Outcast for weeks.

[Phobos]

As for most games this one runs like a charm. I have no problems at all and in my opinion this is the first game since almost 2 years that hasn't been buggy as hell!!! I'm getting nice FPS of 85+ on my Geforece 2 GTS 32 MB's DDR with the details set to high. The resolution could be higher (currently playing on 800X600X32) but what could I expect from this graphicscard.

 

I'm not getting any lockup's, crahses to desktop, etc. The only thing that I would like to see is a first person view when using the lightsaber in MP (maybe I'm overlooking something.....if that is the case please humiliate me for the dumb-ass I am).

 

The last thing that I don't like in this game is the MP games. Most of them are choatic and boring. I like the team-aspects the best like in RTCW where people can choose a different class. Only in that way you have a real team-multiplayer where everyone needs to defeat the enemy but still has to fullfill (strange word ???) his role in combat, it just gives so much more dept to the game.

 

This is only my opinion, please feel free to share yours.

 

Greets from the Netherlands!!!

[MinusBlindfold]

I fully agree with your ideas on MP teamwork. But the multiplayer in JO is great when theres not all these idiots that don't know what no saber means in duel servers. (If you don't know, it means they want to duel, not fight) But then again, in RtCW you sometimes get idiots that only med or give ammo to themselves. Thats why I always play as a luet. and if someone asks for ammo. You can bet your ass that I'll be there giving you ammo in less than 30 seconds (unless its a huge map and your icon doesn't even show up on my compass or you keep going "I need ammo! I need ammo! I need ammo! I need ammo! I need ammo!" ) It gets tiresome playing as a soldier, then be like "I need ammo!" and the idiot just keeps running not giving anyone but himself ammo, then when he gets full ammo your like "He'll give me some now!" then he just turns off and runs away. But I think JKII is just going with Quake's style of multiplayer. Fast paced, simple multiplayer games. Red or Blue teams in team games. And all that stuff. But I'm more of a melee combat person, so I normally only play in saber only servers.

[renz0r]

I am actually pretty surprised reading some of these posts.. I haven't had any problems with JKII (aside from that X-Wing cheat not working . The only time my system really broke a sweat was in the swamp level, which knocked my fps down to around 30 or 40 for many sections of the map.

 

 

Specs:

WinXP Pro

Asus A7V266-E

Athlon 1700+

Visiontek GF3 Ti200

256MB (Micron) DDR

SBLive 5.1

[Threetall]

I cannot get over Raven saying that Gforce owners should use drivers released last year. That you should downgrade your system.

I can't accept that.

[BrainStorm]

I think that many peoples problems stem from cobbled together systems that have been tweaked and patched way too many times. I bet a fresh OS install would help about half of the peeps that are having all these probs.

 

The game runs lik $#|+ through a goose for me and I dont have a fab system.

 

KT7A w/ 1Ghz

256MB of cheap 100Mhz memory

Win2K

G3 Ti200 with Detonator drivers. Are you supposed to be able to see people through the ceiling above you or is that just a manifestation of my strong connection to the force?

[Chiles4]

Anybody seeing a pattern of XP users having more problems than Win98 users? Or is it just that so many more people are using XP these days?

[Demolisher]

I vote for "all of the above". I love this game, but this issue of the game freezing on high end systems is completely ridiculous!!

[Vypr]

I just hpe they fix that damn annoying random freeze/black screen/sound loop problem that I seem to be not alone in having. I've had to comletely scrub and reinstall my OS when one crash completely hosed the system files on my machine.

 

It's bloody annoying to be just getting into the game when the whole thing locks up and a cold reboot is the only option.

 

Specs :

 

Dual PIII 800EB

256 Mb Ram

40 Gb HD

ATI Radeon VE

SBLive! Value.

[Thrawn05]

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

 

Raven has produced a game which, instead of supporting a variety of platforms, is only supported by a limited number of systems. This is not entirely their fault, but of the video card makers as well. The increasing speed in which new technology is released is making it impossible to keep up (unless you're some rich kid who can shell out $200 every 18 months).

 

JK2 is ahead of it's time, literally. The graphics that are in the game are not widely available, perhaps only to those reviewers at Gamespot, Gamespy, etc... .

 

With two major competing standards (ATi and nVidia), it makes it hard to build a highly graphic game and still be able to support everyone.

 

But Raven is still at large fault due to their faulty coding. Excuses such as "get more RAM" is revolting and unethical to me as a programmer.

 

Most people will just fall for anything that has flashy graphics, and it's sad when it effects the stability of the game, as well as gameplay. The last game this happened to was AvP2. Comparing the first to the second showed IMHO, that AvP2 lacked a lot of the good qualities that were in the first, most of which couldn't be supported by the Lith-tech engine. But, the fans loved the graphics, and so the game was good the first time you played it, then it got boring.

 

The same has happened to JK2 IMHO. Graphically it's a killer game, but it's just unstable and all the scripted bots become annoying the second time around. I guess people are just not into unpredictability and randomness found in some other games. Of course if you want to be cheap, just decrease the player's health on the more difficult levels then to actually make the bots more of a challenge. And Multiplayer is cheap way of saying "Replay Value". At least they inserted some sort of Multiplayer bots, but then, they do dumber things then the ones in Q3 (a big disappointment, although it is funny watching bots trying to rocket jump off a mine).

 

The Quake engine is a good engine, but somehow something went wrong over at Raven HQ that caused the engine to be just plain unstable and buggy. It makes the Lith-Tech engine look more appealing to me, which is a first.

 

I'm glad I got by $50 bucks back from EB. I'll use that money to get more RAM, I guess 256 is not good enough anymore, but then, I don't have a quad CPU system with 4GB of RAM like the Raven programmers.

[Triger Hapie]

FOOL! Don't you get it!? Just get 256MB RAM. That will solve everything. Because when you have that much RAM the game should run fine. How stupid could we be, this is our fault.

[Thrawn05]

You're right, I was a fool to buy my computer three years ago that has a 550Mhz P3 and 256MB of 100MHz SDRAM. I should have gotten that $10,000 system with a 10GHz P4 with 10GB of RDRAM witha 256MB video card. How stupid could I have been not to see this coming!

[Hurin]

Originally posted by BrainStorm

I think that many peoples problems stem from cobbled together systems that have been tweaked and patched way too many times. I bet a fresh OS install would help about half of the peeps that are having all these probs.

 

Uh. . . sorry, but you're wrong.

 

I'm suffering from the "loading quicksaves causes FPS/performance to degrade by half (or worse)" problem detailed in the following two threads:

 

http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=426425#post426425

 

http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35985

 

The problem first manifested itself on an install of Windows XP Pro that was only a month or two old. Just to rule out a gummed-up system, I formatted and installed Windows 2000, being careful to install only the OS, and required drivers (including motherboard/agp). The bug is definitely real, and it is definitely not a problem "caused" by a user.

 

And. . . please don't use the term "cobbled" together. I take great pride in my cobbling!

 

Here's my system (there are many more details in the posts above):

 

P4 2Ghz (Northwood)

Asus P4B266-C Motherboard (newest Intel Chipset Drivers)

512 MB DDR RAM (Corsair 2400)

GF3 ti500 (Detonator Driver v23.11. Hercules Brand.)

SB Live X-Gamer (non-5.1) (Driver v3509.2.0.0 --Newest--)

Adaptec 29160N SCSI Controller

Quantum Atlas 10K III 18GB

Plextor UltraPlex 40

Yamaha 4x2x16x CDRW

3Com 3C905C-TX Network Card

DirectX 8.1 freshly downloaded from WindowsUpdate.

 

As others have said, the most irritating part is the silence of Raven and LucasArts. When Civ3 was first released, it had problems, but Jeff Morris was on the popular message boards the first day promising patches and generally explaining things. We got very little attention from Raven, and that attention generally took the form of: "turn down your settings" or "buy more ram".

 

In the case of this particular game. . . I know it's not my settings, or my RAM, or my system. . . it is a bug in the game. The game runs great at 70-90fps until I load a quicksave. Then, about 30% of the time, when the quicksave is quick-loaded, my fps suddenly drops (and stays) at 15-30fps. If it were a problem with my system, why would I have the *good* performance to begin with?

 

There has been no response from Raven or LucasArts except for a brief: "Thanks, I'll pass this along, but in order to lower load times, change your graphics settings". Ugh, load times aren't the problem!

 

It's enough to make you weep. . .

 

Hurin

 

P.S. I've been very nice and gracious up to this point. . . but the silence is becoming intolerable. Just say there is a problem, that it has been verified. . . and that there is a fix coming and all will be well!

[Triger Hapie]

All Raven told us is that 256MB RAM or more "should" make the game work. Yeah it should, but it doesn't! But screw us! That's our fault. The game should work, and it works for their computers. Gee, I would like to know what they are running.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Triger Hapie

Gee, I would like to know what they are running.

 

Star Trek Bridge Commander.

[No1zLegacy]

LOL

[Erdrick]

I usually wait awhile on buying games for 2 reasons...price drop and to get a 'finished' product...but i'm a star wars fan and i paid the price...50 bucks for betaware...it may work good on some systems...but its just not fully tested on everything else...just gotta wait for the patches now.

[Fatal-x]

The last time i saw a game this buggy... was tribes 2.It took 2 weeks before the game was playable.Out of the box most people couldnt get past the launcher without a unhandled exception error.

However,Dynamix was on top of it from the start.They addressed every issue,most of the team practically lived in the forums.Even the head of the team,Dave Georgeson,would respond to not only forum threads,but also email,i.m.,and i even talked to him personally in the chat rooms.He even joined a server with me to test some issues.

Now thats SUPPORT!!!

 

We...and i think i speak for all of us who have tried all kinds of possible fixes ,from installing different drivers to reformatting and reinstalling windows.We would just like to know that Raven hasnt abandoned us now that we bought the game and have tried everything we can think of doing on our part.

 

Let us know what,if anything,you are intending to do about the obvious compatibility issues with so many different systems.

The sound loop bug seems to be the most common followed by the crash to the desktop/gamma problem.

 

The game really is an awesome piece of work(im a big starwars fan)and i cant wait to start learning how to play it.So far i havent been able to play long enough to even get a handle on the controls.

Anyway...we need help.

 

Please respond.....

[BrainStorm]

Hurin, you will notice that my post says "half" and not all. You are obviously not in that group.

 

And I use the term "cobbled" with great affection. As a matter of fact, I am going to put a little sticker on my PC at home that says "cobbled".

 

And about the "rich kids that can afford 200 bucks every 18 months" comment. GAFB! Thats only a little over eleven bucks a month. Skip the drive thru once in a while and *boom* Hey! Look! Now I can afford new PC parts!

 

Software manufacturers don't have the time and resources to make sure that every piece of software works on every possible combination of hardware, not to mention the other software that may be on all these PCs.

 

I hope you figure out that PC gaming for the most part is for tinkerers!

 

If you want games that always work right out of the box, you had better switch back to the console games. But nooooooooo, you want to customize this, and customize that, and play this MOD, add this, change that, and etc. which is probably why you started playing PC games in the first place.

 

That is why you don't hear me complain when I usually end up buying some new piece of hardware every time I buy a new game. And to end that note, this is the first game in a long time that I did not have to buy any new hardware for!

 

And for all of those trying to play current generation games with basically next generation equipment, you should have seen it coming.

 

I understand that there are definately bugs. I will not bother debating this point with anyone. So your options are to wait for a bugfix or replace the part that the bug affects. EOS.

[Hurin]

BrainStorm, you are quite correct that you did not say all the problems were self-inflicted. My tone was overly harsh. . . I apolgize.

 

You seem to start addressing other people's posts after the first paragraph or two. . . so I'll bypass those.

 

However, just for the record, I've actually been pro-developer in most cases where games are released bug-ridden. Heck, I even cut OSI some slack with UO and U9. Civ3, also, was bug-ridden upon first release. Why did I not sream bloody murder about these sub-par offerings? Because the devlopers communicated with us.

 

Nobody expects flawless releases in such a complex development environment. What we *do* expect is for the developers to at least *acknowledge* a problem. . . or possibly. . . (for Pete's sake!) acknowledge the *possiblility* that a problem exists.

 

We are getting absolutely freakin' nothing from Raven. . . and it's getting ridiculous. They had a sterling reputation in my book up until this point. . . now they're no better than so many other publishers/developers. . . just covering their ass.

 

Just a quick note: I read that some Raven people may be on vacation after the release of JKII. . . but they should have at least someone there who can confirm a bug and promise a patch. That's really all we ask. . .

 

Best Regards,

 

Hurin

[CaptainRAVE]

Its quite simply that the Quake III engine was never designed with the intention of running such an intense game as this.

[Hurin]

Originally posted by CaptainRAVE

Its quite simply that the Quake III engine was never designed with the intention of running such an intense game as this.

 

Oh! In that case. . . Nevermind! I guess we should be happy with whatever Raven was able to cobble together from such a horrible engine.

 

RTCW and Medal of Honor are pretty complex. . . they seem to run just fine.

 

That's not to knock Raven or JKII. The game is amazing. . . which is why I just want it to work right!

 

Best Regards,

 

Hurin