Empire: Total War to be released March 4, 2009 (March 2, 2009 for Steam orders)

[dr. hfn]

Have you played the sudden strike series of games?

I played Sudden Strike demos, I never bought them tho. I didn't like it enough

 

[dr. hfn]

Only 9% done downloading via Steam....!!



I went to download a demo and receive a "page load error"

I'm not even at 1%! Is this going to take all day?!

 

[torchbearer]

I'm not even at 1%! Is this going to take all day?!

yes, everyone is pulling from the same servers.

 

[Kludge]

I'm not even at 1%! Is this going to take all day?!

31% now.

 

[torchbearer]

Keep an eye on the torrents, someone may put the demo up and it would be a faster download.

 

[werdd]

downloading right now

at 180ks

 

[Kludge]

Fully downloaded!


Now there's an update.....

 

[torchbearer]

Did you notice this half-life 2 youtube on the steam updates?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1UPMEmCqZo

 

[dr. hfn]

Did you notice this half-life 2 youtube on the steam updates?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1UPMEmCqZo

yes, it was awesome. That will be us fighting the Federals in a few years.

 

[dr. hfn]

I'm only at 4%! I had to restart it a few times, it's not working. The download speed is only 70 KB/s!!! WTF!

 

[torchbearer]

yes, it was awesome. That will be us fighting the Federals in a few years.

what's the story behind the G-man that helps out Gordon?
Is gordon really a government project?

 

[torchbearer]

I just started my DL at 4:50, its at 8%, moving at about 150KB/s

 

[torchbearer]

I remember the days when I was rocking at 2.4KB/s with my dial-up.

 

[Kludge]

Did you notice this half-life 2 youtube on the steam updates?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1UPMEmCqZo

Wow! That looks fantastic.



Load times in ETW are insane... Definitely going to need to upgrade video card, and possibly RAM too, for acceptable FPS while looking good-enough in 1280x1024.

Found it difficult to use the UI and didn't care for the new camera system, but the game looks fantastic! Combat is far more fast-paced than previous TW games (I guess that happens with 500+ years of technological advancements). I'm thinking the demo was rushed, since there wasn't much of an intro to the battles, and the music was just kind of.... there. Too bad they didn't include a type of tutorial campaign mode to give combat a bit more depth and realism.

Edit: They included a quote by Nietzsche in one of the load screens

Edit2: Hmmm... Can't seem to change resolutions as the screen blacks out if changed via main menu, or hangs on a load screen if in combat. The UI appears to be made for widescreen proportions.

 

[Kludge]

Lol, twcenter.net's server(s) is overloaded...

Edit: BTW, I still dislike the UI color scheme, but the statistics provided are amazing, and I initially downplayed the depth they add. I like the UI overall.

I have also encountered another graphical annoyance in which hovering over something provides the last "tooltip". There appear to be two tooltips per item -- one which defines what the tool does, and one which gives insight (a recommendation regarding the tool or option). Unfortunately, within miliseconds, it skips over the definition of what I'm hovering over, instead giving me relatively useless information.

 

[werdd]

The game scales really well, i have just finished playing my first game.

I used no strategy and just went up the gut with all of my troops just to see the chaos.

Here is how it ended.

 

[Perry]

84% 350k/sec. I'll be trying this out in windows 7.

 

[werdd]

You guys should realy be downloading off of steam, i was getting like 700ks.

 

[Kludge]

Okay. Naval battles are incredibly cool. I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing, but I didn't have any ships sink. The sinking/fire mechanisms are really cool.

 

[Kludge]

Ordered 4 gb of DDR2 1066 memory (to replace 3 gb of DDR2 5300/6400 memory), and a 9800GT (G92) to replace a 7950 GT, and will be downloading a 64-bit OS to hold me over. Should get me past the ETW/SC2 hump.

I'll post the old parts for free OBO when I remove them next week.