Farcry (from being happy)
 

So I recently built myself a new computer. I didn't really need it (the last one was fine), but I wanted something beefy to run HL2.

Athlong-64
Gig of memory
RAID 0 120Mb HDD
And a 6800GT

I won't go into the details, but you get the idea. It was, more or less, at the top range of PCs available at the time (about 3 months ago).

So after finishing HL2 (which I enjoyed) and stopping Doom3 (which I did not), I wanted something else to put this puppy through its paces. I had heard that FarCry was a very pretty game and required a high-spec computer to play.

Yesterday I bought a copy and installed it. Looks nice (but nothing amazing) and I'm very disappointed in the AI, but that's another story. What bugs me is that when I go through the Graphics Options and select Auto-Detect, it configures all the settings at LOW.

LOW? WTF?

I bought the second most powerful graphics card available and it's configuring my system at LOW?

When I changed the settings to Very High, High, or (FFS) Medium, I still got black textures on the beaches (instead of the correct "sandy" look).

Surely something's not right? Am I missing something or is a 6800GT on a AMD64 with a Gig of RAM considered LOW spec for this game?


Mr Mephisto

PS - Any other good games out there people can recommend for fun?

I have to admit that HL2 DeathMatch is not half as fun as the original. It just seems an awful lot slower. There's no hectic urgency about the whole thing; that rabid frenticism that was so appealing about HL1 DM.

CS is as fun (kinda) and frustrating (defintely) as ever.


Mr Mephisto

FarCry also set my default settings to low. I upped them to medium across the board (I think, this was in early 2004) and it ran fine. I had a P4 2.4Ghz with a Radeon 9700 AIW and 512 MB RAM. I experienced no problems except when there were about 20+ units on the screen and everyone was shooting at each other. But that wasn't more than once or maybe twice in the game. And then it only chugged a little bit.

So... I guess that doesn't help much, does it?

Try playing around with different settings. Anti-Aliasing can make a huge difference. Try turning that off and everything else at max and work your way down until it feels right.

Farcry doesn't scale very well and has a tendency to kick every machine I've seen in the nuts. Coppertop played it with an ATI and seemed to have less problems. I personally had problems with the game, even though it's a beauty to behold.

Changing the lighting settings make a huge difference.

HL2 deathmatch was more of an afterthought, and the maps reflect that. CS was supposed to be the official multiplayer mode, which isn't a bad choice, it's just that good old fashioned DM is still fun from time to time.

You got the latest drivers for your video card (check guru3d.com for NVIDIA drivers, NVIDIA's website sucks, they hardly update, most of guru3d's drivers are official betas but they have final versions too that they get off NVIDIA's FTP site, I have a 6800GT also and I'm using Forceware 71.20 and its great) and/or patch(es) for the game (I think FarCry's latest patch is v1.3), right?

Drivers, yes. Well, three months ago. I guess I could check again.

I'm embarassed to say that I forgot to check for a FarCry patch. Once I finish the "list of things to do" my wife gave me before going out to work this morning, I'll give it another whirl.

And no, she doesn't know I'm wasting time on TFP at the moment!


Mr Mephisto

It's definitly the patch. I personally like FarCry much better than Half Life 2. HL2 was too linear and predictable. It was almost like playing Time Crisis II with a little more freedom. FarCry allowed you to be more sneaky if you wanted to or go balls to the wall against an enemy encampment. I can't wait to see some more games based on the FarCry engine.

Let me know what happens with the patch... I too had very bright blinding colors in the caves (beginning) and black beaches running on very high....

Wasting time! Blasphme! You are educating fellow internetites about the cautions of computer software/hardware configurations!

FYI, there's another patch, the v1.3 -> v1.31 patch. I saw it on filefront.com

I play with my Athlon64 3400+, Gig O Ram, and a Radeon 9500. Everything scaled to Max, and thats how I run it.

I love you. But that's another story.



I have to agree with FngKestrel... FarCry doesn't scale too well, and it doesn't seem nearly as compatible as it should be. I've had more friends complain about graphics problems with FarCry than any other game I can remember in the last hundred million years. I had to turn off most of the graphics options to get it to look nice. It ran fast enough with them all turned on, but the number of graphics glitches in it was simply unacceptable. I had such high hopes for this game, too.

I will say it DOES look nice... when you can get it to work. Hope you can get it worked out.