Asheron's Call 2 Public Beta

[Michel]

Hi,
don't know if you know it already, but an public beta of Asheron's Call 2 has started saturday.

The beta officially only supports GF1,2 or 3, but it looks very sweet on Parhelia en runs great too. (i run it at 1024 16FAA Full details (haven't tried higher resolutions or aniso).

You can grab the file and login only from FilePlanet. (It's a long dowload (600mb))

The server is down for now, but i'll post some screenshots soon.

Does anyone know if this game will support surround gaming?

[Michel]

As promised some screenshots (sorry for size, but they look the best this way):







THe water doesn't looks excatly the way it is meant to be. See this screenshot from a gf4:

[R0M]

The water effect depends on the weather, sometimes you see ripples and sometimes you don't. As for Surround Gaming why don't you try it for yourself

Regards,

[luni]

Oh nice, the water works now. I played AC2 in closed beta and water generally wasnt rendered at all. Still cant believe they went in open beta with so many problems in closed (and i mean like shutting servers down for a week and so )

[Michel]

I haven't seen rippled water yet, but i will look for it.
The shiny water has a little bug though: It flickers. Is this a Parhelia issue ROM?

I will test the surround gaming


Luni, it isn't exactly an open beta. It was an limited public beta.
I just checked and it looks like Fileplanet is out of accounts:

THE BETA IS FULL. DO NOT DOWNLOAD. WE'VE GIVEN OUT ALL OUR KEYS AND THE AC2 BETA TEST IS NOW FULL. IF YOU DOWNLOAD THIS FILE NOW, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO GET A BETA ACCOUNT AND PLAY THE GAME. Check back later to see if we have more keys available

[R0M]

If you're seeing flashing on the water, that is already fixed so don't worry about it. If you still can't see ripples on the water then i'll investigate it for you,

Regards,

[luni]

R0M I tried running AC2 today again, and the water problems are still there. There is no ripples on water, only reflection and whole water surface flashes really bad.

My system specs:
Tbird 1.2 on MSI 6330
latest VIA 4.1
512MB SDRAM
Win2k SP3
Parhelia Retail running latest drivers
AA, FAA, GC off

Also noticed that if I chooise highest details lightning gets a bit screwed up and also there are certain areas in game (like newbiew caves of one of the races) that kinda "fall appart" or loose textures when you run thru them. I know this is still a beta and engine is probably not polished yet, but you seem to be interested in it, so those are my findings.

Besides that, game runs very smooth on 1024x768x32 with details set to medium (high details gives horrible graphics lag).

[DGhost]

ripples look fine on my box. no problem at all.

how do you take screen shots? i can take shots and post them.

[R0M]

I think i see the problem, it seems to only occur when pixel shaders are enabled in the config, play with that and let me know if you see it. The flashing doesn't occur on my side because it's already fixed so don't worry about it,

Regards,

[Michel]

You can take screenshots with ctrl-P. Files are named cap**.jpg and are placed in my documents\microsoft\asherons call2 or in the AC2 folder.

So ripples are only visible if Pixel Shaders are enabled?. I'll play with some settings tonight to test it.

[luni]

Yeah well ripples are produced by pixel shaders afaik, so disabling pixel shader in config also disables ripples . Anyway, I trust all these minor glitches will be removed before the final comes out.

BTW R0M I am also beta testing Combat Flight Simulator 3, and there are some problems with Parhelia. Are you aware of those, or should I send you some screenshots so you can see? I think that it is very importaint to make CFS3 work with Parhelia, and especially Surround Gaming mode - I know several die hard simulation freaks who would buy the card if everything worked perfect in CSF3.

[Michel]

I just tested the pixel shaders and i saw ripples!
They are a bit hard to see when the water is flashing, but i don't worry about that.
The game is still beta, so there's time enough for Matrox to release the fixed drivers

[R0M]

Hye Luni,
I assume you're talking about the latest beta. Well you don't want to break your NDA by posting screenshots here, i suggest you e-mail them to me and i'll see if i can reproduce them with the drivers i have,
Regards,

[luni]

Yes of course R0M, thats what I meant .

Anyway, I hate using the built in forum e-mail thingie, if you dont want to post your email on forums, send an empty one to luni@amadej.si and I will get back to you with shots and comments.

[R0M]

Hey Michel,
I was able to see the same problem on Radeon 9700 Pro so it's an application issue, i already contacted the developers so don't worry about it. If you see any other bugs let me know in AC2,
Thanks,