A better game idea than Just Cause 2

[GilloD]

JC2 is fun, but fucking around is  > the shitty sub-GTA story missions. I'd pay full price just to be able to fuck around, but get it on PC so you can use the BOLO patch and get shit like unlimited health and unbreakable ropes. Unbreakable Rope RULES because you can do shit like attach a car to a 747 and let it fly you around. You can also tether two 747s together and then jump between them at 10,000 feet.

Anyway, idea: Just Cause 3. $25 bucks. Comes with 1 island and like 50 vehicles. Multiplayer. Every 3-4 months, another island and vehicle pack, $10-15. Focus on making fucking around even better. Ditch all the single player shit. I would buy this.

[cool breeze]

By 1 island do you mean like the size of the JC1 map, or just a one of the three big locations?

I agree that the BOLO patch makes this game so much better.  After I finished the main missions, I turned on infinite health and ammo to take care of what I missed.  It is ridiculous how when you get to Heat lvl 4 it's just bullets and explosions that would tear you apart if you didn't have the patch running.  btw, do you know how to release ropes if you turn on multiple grapples?

also if we're just talking about things for Just Cause 3, make the grapples more elastic so you can do slingshot, bungee jumps or even just swing around instead of just grappling.  and an unlockable jetpack.  and set a bit in the future so the transition from ground to air could be changed to ocean sea to orbit.

[BobFromPikeCreek]

I hate that I'm going to have to play this on 360.

[cool breeze]

Just play it on easy if you don't care about achievements.  Even if you do, you can finish the main set of missions in around ~12 hours and they are all really easy compared to just doing random destruction.  If you finish it on the hardest difficulty, you unlock the achievements for the earlier levels too, and that is the only achievement that cares about the difficulty.

[WrikaWrek]

Does the bolo patch work with the full game?

[Bebpo]

I think I need this patch

[cool breeze]

Does the bolo patch work with the full game?

yeah, but you have to run it every time you play.  Just alt-tab out, open the tool, and select what you want.

http://m0.to/BOLOPatch/

they provide one for the demo, full purchased, and full pirated versions of the game

[GilloD]

Unbreakable rope RULES. I spent like 2 hours attaching shit to 747s and getting it to lift them into the sky. The best is getting into an enclosed vehicle and getting it to take you for a ride, then you can cut the rope and plummet thousands of miles IN THE COMFORT OF A VEHICLE. You can also stunt jump at 10,000 feet. Strapping two planes together is funny, but it tends to end in DISASTER PHYSICS

[cool breeze]

[youtube=560,345]-TvKUjgE6y8[/youtube]

where do you even find a 747? 20 hours and I haven't seen one

[Bebpo]

That's at Panaeu International Airport right outside the big capital city on a island towards the starting area.  Basically if you flew straight from your first hideout towards the big city you'd fly right over it.

And yeah, the Bolo patch makes the game more fun.  I'm thinking about using it to up my Chaos to max so I can just do all the Agency missions and finish the story because I'm GilloD's opposite:  I like the missions in the game, but the non-mission "build chaos" stuff is fun for 20-30 mins at a time, but it's way too repetitive for me and building up my meters feels draining.

[GilloD]

The missionms are fine, I guess, they're just kind of boring. They're occasionally enormously pretty (The sunrise mo-bike ride across the desert is great) and well plotted, but they're all variations of "Collect X, Shoot Y". And given that the whole island and arsenal is unlocked at the get-go, I'm not sure Ihave a reason to stagger through them.

[Bebpo]

Man, I just got to the city for the first time after doing the 3rd faction's stronghold.

City

So much fun just doing random stuff!  Parachuting from building to building, taking out roof people.  Driving FAST CARS and doing crazy stunts.  Blowing up things.  I'm enjoying causing Chaos a lot more here because there's no dead time.  Whereas on the islands it's like you do a settlement and then there's dead time as you travel to the next settlement by plane/boat/parachute/fast travel.  In the city it's just like non-stop action.  Good times.

Also

5fps gaming

 :'(

Considering how good this game looks and how much fun I'm having, I'm really tempted to order a $300 ATI 5850 or GTS275 right now just so I can keep playing this game.  Because otherwise I think I'm going to have to bail and come back later when I upgrade my videocard.  Even at 720p with no SSAO, in the city areas when driving a car it's like 5-15fps and totally unplayable :\ :\

[SantaC]

you know there is already a thread for Just Cause 2. Close this shit.

stupid OP.

[pilonv1]

Get a 5850. I'm running this at 1080p with everything on high and SSAO and Point Specular off and it's ~50-60fps minimum. It looks gorgeous, I'll post some screens in the other thread.

Anyway I like this idea - there's an endless amount of fun you can have with this game under the right circumstances. To have it's engine only used once would be terrible

[treythemovie]

you know there is already a thread for Just Cause 2. Close this shit.

stupid OP.

[cool breeze]

Get a 5850. I'm running this at 1080p with everything on high and SSAO and Point Specular off and it's ~50-60fps minimum. It looks gorgeous, I'll post some screens in the other thread.

Anyway I like this idea - there's an endless amount of fun you can have with this game under the right circumstances. To have it's engine only used once would be terrible

another trick to get the game running better is to drop shadows to medium, then turn on that high res shadow option (forgot the official name).

[Smooth Groove]

Considering how good this game looks and how much fun I'm having, I'm really tempted to order a $300 ATI 5850 or GTS275 right now just so I can keep playing this game.  Because otherwise I think I'm going to have to bail and come back later when I upgrade my videocard.  Even at 720p with no SSAO, in the city areas when driving a car it's like 5-15fps and totally unplayable :\ :\

I still have 2 factory overclocked 280 GTXes from EVGA.  That model is slightly faster than a 275 and has a larger frame buffer.  Both were used for less than 6 months as I upgraded to 295 GTXes. I'm looking for $250 each for the 280.  The 295s are on sale as well but they're probably more expensive than what you're looking for.  Let me know if you're interested.  We can find a trustworthy 3rd party to send the money to, like Drinky, if you're afraid of getting Mupeped. 

[Bebpo]

Ah, forget it.  This game really is more about fun than graphics, so I just dropped everything to the lowest settings possible and it's playable enough at 1080p that I can still have lots of fun.

Thanks for the offer though, Smooth.  When I decide to upgrade, if you're still getting rid of stuff I might hit you up on a card.

[Smooth Groove]

No problem.  Just let me know when you need an upgrade.  I'm pretty lazy about selling stuff so I might still have things lying around. 

Here are some single 280 GTX benchmarks for your info.  I took them before I got your reply. 

My CPU is only slightly faster than your 3.8 so you should pretty much get the same results from the same card.  The first benchmark is Max with 2xAA and the second one is slightly lowered settings with 2XAA. 

[Bebpo]

Your pics made me want to start messing around with the benchmarks.  The one you used "desert sunrise" is probably the one where I get the best fps.  The "concrete jungle" city benchmark is where my rig struggles since I have problems with buildings for whatever reason.

Here's my "desert sunrise" test using the same settings as your 2nd pic (although 1080p instead of 1200p)


Framerate is okish and those are still really nice looking settings.

In fact, when I drop SSAO off and the object detail down a bit, I get a solid 50fps


But then just by changing benchmarks.  World settlement -> City I lose over 20 whole frames just because there are lots of BUIILDINGS wtfffff  :'(

Note this is just the average.  A lot of the city benchmark is spent at least 5fps below the average.  So even with SSAO off I'm looking at 25fps in the city

This is basically what I have to do if I ever want 60fps in the city! 

 


So at the end of the day, going by your benchmarks and testing each bit to see how much it affects framerate (going from LOW->HIGH textures was only a 2-3fps hit and a big visual difference), I ended up going with this and capping the game at 30fps. 

As long as I'm in 90% of the game that is not city it stays 30fps and looks gorgeous.  Totally awesome, yay.

But when I do happen into the city it drops really hard and is basically unplayable:

Again, that's the average.  In a lot of the benchmark it stays consistently at 14-15fps.


So my overall decision is to stick to what I have above and basically STAY OUT OF THE CITY.  When I do decide I want to go hang out in the city, while I'm there I'll drop off AA, SSAO, and drop object detail down and at least will have 25fps+ which is at least playable for those sections.

It's kinda annoying to have to change settings depending on the location, but my rig really doesn't like the big city.

[Smooth Groove]

Bebpo, you were right about "concrete jungle" being the more intensive benchmark.  The 280 GTX fares much better than the 9800 though.  The avg. framerate is quite consistent, with the minimum just a couple of FPS below, just as long as GPU water is turned off.

Let me know if you want any more tests run on this setup because I just got back my RMA'ed 5870 and will go back to a 2 x 5870 setup pretty soon. 


Here's the 1st run with max settings.  It ain't pretty.  GPU water simulation kills the framerate and the minimum drops to as low as 15 fps. 




2nd run with everything @ max except for GPU water simulation.  Much better as the framerate never drops below 25 fps. 




Now SSAO is turned off.  Surprisingly, there's not much performance benefit to turning off SSAO.



Not much benefit to turning off 2X AA either.  2XAA is essentially free.



Finally, slightly lowered settings but still reasonably high for a more substantial framerate boost.

[Smooth Groove]

Here is the same benchmark with two 280 GTXes instead of one.  SLI works wonders in this game.  Max settings are easily playable. 

I think it's mostly due to the physics being off-loaded to a second card.  Physx has shown that physics calculations are much faster when off-loaded to another card, even a slower one.

Nvidia's dumb decision to screw over ATI users with a Nvidia card dedicated to Physx screw themselves over too.  For example, a 280 GTX + 9800 GTX (for Physx) will see no benefits at all from the Physx card. 




(I had to take this pic with a camera because fraps didn't work with SLI in this game)

[Bebpo]

Nice.

I wonder what kind of card you need to get 60fps in the city with 4x AA @ 1080p with everything maxed.

Smooth, did you get Metro 2033?  Since JC2 & Metro are the two graphical powerhouses post-Crysis, I was wondering how well it runs on your rig with dual 280s.

[Smooth Groove]

I can easily get that kind of performance in JC2 when I use two 5870s but it's not an entirely fair comparison because you can't turn on Brokeh filter and GPU water simulation on AMD cards.  I don't know how 1 5870 will fare but I'll check it out once the 5870s are put back in. 

If you want just 1 card that can do all max settings with 60 fps @1080P 4XAA, then you'll probably have to get the new 480 GTX.  I'm not entirely sure just one 480 can do it though because in most scenarios, the 480 is not quite faster than two 280 GTXes.  The review below shows the 480 pulling off 60fps in those settings but based on those numbers, I'm gonna guess they were running the less intensive benchmark just like I was. 

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-470-480-review/25 

I haven't got Metro yet but I'll check it out when I've reinstalled my 5870s.  I think it'll be close to 60fps w/max settings @1080p and no AA.

http://firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce_gtx_480_470_performance/page6.asp

[pilonv1]

Here's my 5850 benchmarks Bebpo (with i5-750). In game I'm getting 50+ minimum, with some drops to the 30s for explosions. This is using the alternate SSAO command line prompt that brain stew brought up which gives better performance. I spent the first day I owned this game playing with benchmarks and gave up because I'm not sacrificing more detail to get a perfect 60fps. If I'm out on the water it's easily averaging 80fps.

Dark Tower


Desert


City


Some pics just because I like them

[Smooth Groove]

Nice pics, Pilonv.  I wonder just how good Just Cause 2 could have looked if it had the big budgets of console exclusives.   The tech in JC2 is great but the art assets are still lacking.  It's pretty clear that many PCs now can handle Uncharted 2 graphics @1080p.  It'd be nice if they get more opportunities to do so. 

[Bebpo]

Nice pics pilonv1

What's this command line SSAO for better performance? 
Also why do you have AF at 2x?  I always thought AF is mainly free and so you might as well max it to not get blurry ground in the distance?

[Smooth Groove]

AF quality could make a difference when memory bandwidth is already being pushed to the max.  It's usually "free" because that's generally not the case with modern hardware and games. 

[pilonv1]

I put it low for benchmarks just in case. Forgot to turn it back I haven't really noticed it to be honest.

Command line options -

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=20403913&postcount=222

I'm using the ones brain stew suggests at the end and removal of the awful film grain.

[Bebpo]

Nice.  With that implementation I definitely get a few frames.  I think I'm going to end up going with this:
City:


Desert settlement:


As much as I think the tech is great, I really don't think it's a particularly well optimized game.  I mean over a 50% framerate on the same settings for being in the city?  I dunno, there had to be a better way to cut down on whatever the buildings are doing to eat up fps so badly.

[cool breeze]

yeah, I have

/edgefade=b /filmgrain=b /fovfactor=1.2

as the launch options.  I might mess around with ssao without hbao.  My game is anywhere from 60 to 75 fps so I might as well start turning on some other effects.  The regular ssao has a big dip but turning off hbao is supposed to make it a bit less taxing.

[Smooth Groove]

Swapped back to the 5870s and ran everything at max with 4xAA in 1080p.  Once again, it's not an apples to apples comparison because the Nvidia specific enhancements are not available.  Still, it looks like there's enough head room for those options to be enabled and still have the game run @60fps, max, 1080P on this setup.  AA might have to be lowered from 4x AA to 2x AA though. 

[Smooth Groove]

Did the other 2 benchmarks with the 5870s for the sake of completion.  It's really weird how performance jumps so much once the game leaves the city. 

I actually found the city to be the least impressive looking benchmark of the three.

Here's Dark Tower:




and Desert Sunrise:

[Smooth Groove]

Man gaming like this sounds annoying as fuck. Either deal with low framerate or low graphics or just upgrade. Fiddling around in game or even thinking "hmm... was this a framedrop? maybe I should turn some other setting down!" is totally killing the gaming mood. I couldn't play like that. Luckily I don't have JC2

GTFO, nub.  That's what PC gaming has always been about.   

[Bebpo]

haha, yeah.  It still beats console gaming most of the time.  IQ on most console games just doesn't compare.  And I'd rather be able to mess with all the settings and decide my own fps than be forced to 30fps or less all the time.

My Crysis playthrough on medium/high settings @ 720p with a 7600GT was filled with tons of tweaking and all sorts of fiddling and framerate drops, but it was worth it.  One of the most memorable PC game experiences I've had.

I remember tweaking Tomb Raider 1 back in the day to get it to look nice while still be at a playable framerate.  Some things never change

[dark1x]

You guys disabling v-sync just for benchmarks or do you actually play it that way?  I can't understand how anyone could obsess over getting high framerates and then proceed to disable v-sync. 

[cool breeze]

Turn off v-sync in the game, run D3DOverrider and use triple buffering.

[dark1x]

Turn off v-sync in the game, run D3DOverrider and use triple buffering.

I actually do the same thing, I suppose.  D3DOverrider is a must for this game.

The benchmarks above, however, have framerates going well over 60 fps which indicates that v-sync truly is disabled.

[cool breeze]

maybe the monitors don't max out at 60hz or something

[dark1x]

maybe the monitors don't max out at 60hz or something

I think that is a rather optimistic view point there.  Unless they are using a CRT or a dual link DVI output to a 120 Hz LCD, they'd be stuck at 60 Hz.  There are VERY few CRTs which accept 1920x1080 and 120 Hz LCDs that will actually accept 120 Hz from a PC input are rare as well.

[Bebpo]

Wait, what's the difference between D3D Overrider and in-game vsync?

I just use in-game v-sync in all my games.  I leave it off just for benchmarking.

[cool breeze]

the performance hit is much less than in-game vsync

D3Doverrider is preferable even in games that support triple buffering.  Like, L4D supports triple buffering, but it causes a lot of input lag.  D3Doverrider has a teeny tiny bit of input lag but it is worth it.  It is the best balance between visual quality and performance.

or just read this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2794/1

maybe the monitors don't max out at 60hz or something

I think that is a rather optimistic view point there.  Unless they are using a CRT or a dual link DVI output to a 120 Hz LCD, they'd be stuck at 60 Hz.  There are VERY few CRTs which accept 1920x1080 and 120 Hz LCDs that will actually accept 120 Hz from a PC input are rare as well.

I dunno.  My monitor is 1680x1050 and is 75hz.  I was choosing between this and that Samsung 120hz one, but decided I'd rather have IPS > 3D gaming.

[Bebpo]

oh wow, I should check that program out.  Does it work with every game?

[Bebpo]

Is D3DOverrider part of Rivatuner program?  I'm trying to find the program and google takes me to the Rivatuner page.

[cool breeze]

I don't think it works with OpenGL games like Doom 3.  I played Prey a few months ago and it gave me problems, but both ATI and Nvidia allow you to force triple buffering through the control panel for OpenGL.  D3Doverrider is for directx games, so pretty much everything else.

btw, it is included with Rivatuner.

[GilloD]

Is D3DOverrider part of Rivatuner program?  I'm trying to find the program and google takes me to the Rivatuner page.

Yeah. If you install Rivatuner, it installs D3Overrider. It's in the same Start Menu thing

[Smooth Groove]

the performance hit is much less than in-game vsync

D3Doverrider is preferable even in games that support triple buffering.  Like, L4D supports triple buffering, but it causes a lot of input lag.  D3Doverrider has a teeny tiny bit of input lag but it is worth it.  It is the best balance between visual quality and performance.

or just read this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2794/1

That's surprising.  I've always thought there was no performance difference between using in-game Vsync and D3Doverrider. I just use D3D when in game vsync is not available.  D3D is great but there are a couple of games that will crash if you try to force Vsync with it. 

You guys disabling v-sync just for benchmarks or do you actually play it that way?  I can't understand how anyone could obsess over getting high framerates and then proceed to disable v-sync. 

The proper way to do a benchmark is to disable v-sync.  It's impossible to know how much performance a system is capable of if the framerate is being limited to the maximum refresh rate of the monitor. 

In terms of gaming, I always play with v-synce and triple buffering as long as it's possible.

I think that is a rather optimistic view point there.  Unless they are using a CRT or a dual link DVI output to a 120 Hz LCD, they'd be stuck at 60 Hz.  There are VERY few CRTs which accept 1920x1080 and 120 Hz LCDs that will actually accept 120 Hz from a PC input are rare as well.

Actually, there are already several affordable 120HZ monitors that are pretty decent.  Acer has a 24 incher for $400.  There will probably be many more 120hz monitors as 3D gains popularity.  I will get one as soon as they start using better panels. 

[Bebpo]

I started using FRAPs for this game and the video recording kills my framerate.  I lose at least 15fps (60fps -> 45fps).  So I basically have to cap it at 30fps if I want to record.  At the same time it made me remember how much I hated video editing/compression when I used to do fansubs/home movies.

I think I'll just stick to using fraps for screenshots.

[Smooth Groove]

What settings were you using for video capturing?  I don't recall losing that much performance while capturing video. 

If you have two hard drives, try installing Fraps on a different drive from the games directory.  It's possible that hard drive performance is a bottleneck since JC2 is a continuously streaming game. 

[Great Rumbler]

A combination of Red Faction: Guerrilla and Just Cause 2 would be amazing.