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[News] Earth 2140 demo releasedANN.lu
Posted on 12-Oct-2000 15:54 GMT by Teemu I. Yliselä30 comments
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There's now a demo of the Amiga port of Earth 2140 available here (it's about 13MB). More info about the game can be found at the Pagan Games homepage here.

Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 1 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Henes on 11-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
The PPC version isn't very fast...
just because I don't want to say it's slow...
on a 603+040 in 640*480
:(
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 2 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Henes on 11-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
and there is no double buffer ;-)
in fact I'm not joking :-/
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 3 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Frederik on 12-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
I have noticed the same thing.
But it is only a demo, many things can change.
The demo on the PC how ever is very fast, but things may change, I know that
the ppl at Pagan are very competent.
/Frederik
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 4 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Ben Yoris on 12-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
This is maybe not very fast in 640x480 but at least it's completly playable ! Which is not the case of Napalm and Exodus in such a resolution.
I'm very happy with this demo because at least here's an RTS game that takes advantages of the PPC and the GFX card. Well in fact this is the first with good gfx (but inferior to Napalm and Exodus IMO) and a playable speed.
So maybe if they implement a double buffer the game will gain a bit of smoothness.
Anyway great job Pagan !
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 5 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Thomas Würgler on 12-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
I'd just like to add that it's the first game that's 16 bit, so no matter what it won't run as fast as the 8 bit RTS games out there. Simple fact of life. The final version WILL still be faster of course. We're not done with optimization.
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 6 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by torsten on 12-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
Will it be possible to play the game with 1024x768?
The buildings und the units are really large (compared to Napalm) and I have problems to overview an attack or greater movements.
Speed is quite good, but far behind PC-Version. There's not much difference between PPC and 68k-version.
Will that change in the final version?
I've ordered the game already! :-)
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 7 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Kay Are Ulvestad on 12-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
Just thought I'd let everybody know: I have mirrored the demo on my
site, which is located at the University in Trondheim, Norway. Some of
you will probably be able to download it faster from there. Anyway,
the site is at:
http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~kayare
and the file is at:
http://www.stud.ntnu.no~kayare/downloads/e2140amiga_demo.lha
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 8 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Steffen Haeuser on 12-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 5 (Thomas Würgler):
Hi!
The first 16 Bit game is not entirely true... Heretic II is also a 16 Bit
Game :) You probably wanted to say the first 16 Bit RTS game :)
Anyways, good job, guys at Pagan :)))
Steffen
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 9 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by raist on 12-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
The game is sure beautiful but not playable in any way ...
It's damn slow ... the firsts missions are really simple with one building at start and some troups and when there's battle there are already slowdowns .. the sound even gets interrupted ...
This is a good job for sure .. but I don't see much difference between the game on my 40/25 and the game on my 603/240 .. ;(
what could I say more ...
I just hope nightlong ppc will make use of ppc efficiently .. but for such a game it won't be the same.
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 10 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Henrik Münther on 12-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (raist):
Either you are using a Z2 graphics card, on which just the
writing of the 640x480x16 screen won't allow any more than 5 fps(!),
or it has some problems with your specific configuration. In the
latter case please write me.
:This is a good job for sure .. but I don't see much difference
:between the game on my 40/25 and the game on my 603/240 .. ;(
There should really be a HUGE difference... even on a 603/160,040/25,
BVision the speed is around 7-8 fps with lots of action going on
versus about 2 fps for the 040.
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 11 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Henrik Münther on 12-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Henes):
:and there is no double buffer
There is no double buffer because noone have noticed until now.. I'll
add one then :)
Yes, it IS visible in the fades in the beginning, but IMHO not in the
game itself - at least not when running a graphics card with a
reasonable fast bus (BVision,CVision,CV64), which is absolute crucial
because of the big amount of data, which has to be tranfered..
With a Z2 card I guess it could be annoying, but you simply can't
get a reasonable speed anyway then, no matter the cpu..
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 12 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Alkis Tsapanidis on 12-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (torsten):
Emmm Are you KIDDING ME!?
The game run nice and fast on my 603p/240 with bv on 800x600!
Only the scrolling in the title screens is slow but this is because
of the low bandwidth of the blizzppc>bv(only 13.5mb/sec on my machine)
ahem...I just tried the pc version on a pc of a friend of mine and I
didn't find a big speed difference it's a little slower.Is there any
prob with the systems of some of you maybe?It sounds very wierd...
The game IS VERY playable and the difference between ppc and 040 is
not only that on my machine... In the 68k version even moving vehicles
is painful slow..I'd say MUCH slower than napalm running on AGA dblpal
640x480...I don't know...Something could be wrong with my system for
the 68k version going too slow and with some other machines with the
ppc version gong too slow...
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 13 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Alkis Tsapanidis on 12-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (Henrik Münther):
Try to add triple buffering...I think it would make a speed
difference...And solve the pointer problems...It looks like
there are a lot of contex switches in every pointer move as
the pointer doesn't seems to have cuts in the movement in the
painfully slow 040 version.I didn't find any other speed probs
except the title screens but I don't think this can be solved...
Slow BVPPC bus...When are you planning to finish it?
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 14 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Alkis Tsapanidis on 12-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (Alkis Tsapanidis):
With title screens I mean the nice scrolling options not the slides
in the beggining:)))
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 15 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Alkis Tsapanidis on 12-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (Alkis Tsapanidis):
With title screens I mean the nice scrolling options not the slides
in the beggining:)))
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 16 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Alkis Tsapanidis on 12-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (Henrik Münther):
Try to add triple buffering...I think it would make a speed
difference...And solve the pointer problems...It looks like
there are a lot of contex switches in every pointer move as
the pointer doesn't seems to have cuts in the movement in the
painfully slow 040 version.I didn't find any other speed probs
except the title screens but I don't think this can be solved...
Slow BVPPC bus...When are you planning to finish it?
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 17 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Alkis Tsapanidis on 12-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 16 (Alkis Tsapanidis):
How the hell did this happen!?I submited once!!A bug in the ann script
maybe...
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 18 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Steffen Haeuser on 13-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (raist):
Hi!
This sounds like a problem that I had with the Beta version (I just reported it
recently, so maybe Pagan did not yet have the time to fix it). The slowdowns
when action starts on my system - and probably also yours - are related to
Sound/AHI. As soon as you disable the sound in the options it runs perfectly smooth,
no matter how much action there is on the screen. Maybe it is related to the
Drivers of specific Soundboards ? Do you also have a Prelude Soundboard, like
me ? Or maybe it is related to specific versions of AHI ? Which version do
you have installed ?
Steffen
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 19 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Henrik Münther on 13-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 18 (Steffen Haeuser):
No, the problem can't be AHI related, as we are not using AHI
anymore. The game uses with our own 8 channel mixer instead -
still mixing with the 68k, but using less than 2% cpu on 060, and only
runs (regarding contextswitching etc) about once per frame.
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 20 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Rik Sweeney on 13-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
I didn't think this was slow. Sure, it's no Command and Conquer for speed, but I didn't sit there thinking "God this is slow". I enjoyed playing the demo and if the full game's going to be faster then I'm going to buy it. I just hope ClickBOOM have played it to see that this is what Napalm should've been.
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 21 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by ehaines on 13-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
OK, this is somewhat sluggish on an 060, but I don't care since I also
happen to have a 604/233. :) It seems fast/smooth enough to me,
haven't seen the PC version to compare. Didn't notice the lack of
double-buffering, since it doesn't flicker like Napalm did a little
bit. For all of being 16-bit it doesn't really look any better than
Napalm IMO, but then Napalm was very nice-looking so that's OK. I do
like the little touches like tanks leaving tracks in the sand. The
sound effects seem a little wimpy though.
There seem to be a few small bugs yet... The stereo sound was only
stereo briefly and seemed to be mono most of the time? At least
that's what it sounded like. If I quit the PPC version and started
it again, it went slower. If I quit and started again, it went
even slower. And so on. Also the 800x600 version didn't work...well
it did, but it only ran 640x480. (Yes, I do have a 800x600 mode, in
fact I'm using it now.) I have a PicassoIV with the latest version
of P96.
But anyway, for the most part it seems like a very nice job and I'll
certainly buy it.
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 22 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by DJ on 14-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
Where can i find the PC demo?
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 23 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Thomas Würgler on 15-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
The PC demo is available at www.earth2140.com.
I'd just like to add that I've been playing the game on my 060 (as my PPC card was broken) and I don't think it's slow at all. It's not a fps monster either for sure, but I find it more playable than Napalm on my machine which is an A3060 with CV64 and 64 megs of ram. I tried it on an A2060 with PIV though, and the Z2 made a huge difference and made the game something you'd really only want to play if you're REALLY into that sort of games, but that's the limitation of the Z2 bus, so it can't be helped much.
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 24 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by grooves on 15-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
On my machine (CSPPC+VCPPC) the speed of the PPC-version is much better than the 68k-version (a huge difference). The 68k is also faster than Exodus. I cannnot say it in FPS, but is very good playable. I played it the whole Sunday. A question to Thomas Würgler: is there any FPS-counter in the Demo.
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 25 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Thomas Würgler on 15-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
No, unfortunately there is no fps counter in the demo. We only have that enabled in internal versions.
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 26 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Amifan on 15-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 25 (Thomas Würgler):
The games runs very smooth in 640x480 on my 266Mhz 603, but i noticed a slowdown when I quit the game and run it again.
Do you free all resources?
But i didn't see much differences between the 800x600 version and the 640x480 version. The buildings appear to me equal in screensize. Are they more detailed or am I doing something wrong?
Futhermore i'd like to thanks you for this great effort. RTS are really my no.1 choice of games.
Steffan, I don't like the quake genre (HereticII), but i brought (and actually play) it to support the developers. :)))
Keep up the good work and bring us some more great games!!!!
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 27 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Henrik Münther on 15-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 26 (Amifan):
:The games runs very smooth in 640x480 on my 266Mhz 603, but i noticed
:a slowdown when I quit the game and run it again.
Yes, we know there is some problem with the ppc task not being
terminated.
:But i didn't see much differences between the 800x600 version and the
:640x480 version. The buildings appear to me equal in screensize. Are
:they more detailed or am I doing something wrong?
It is just a silly bug in the release version, making even the
800x600 version run 640x480 always.. expect an update real
soon...
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 28 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Electric Head on 15-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
I think if they plan on releasing the 68k version to the general public then its going to need some work done to it first. On my A1200 060/66, Cv643d & 64mb Ram its totally unplayable. It feels like its running under pc task, not native amiga ;) In fact it was so slow I had to reboot to get out of it, since the pointer lag was so bad I had trouble clicking on anything.
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 29 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Henrik Münther on 15-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 28 (Electric Head):
One word: ZorroII
:)
Earth 2140 demo released : Comment 30 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Sinan Gurkan on 16-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 29 (Henrik Münther):
Hi,
I pre-ordered Earth2140 yesterday from Epic Interactive :)
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