http://features.moddb.com/232/Nexuiz-an ... d-to-Head/

Pretty unfair comparison actually, and it's a crap article :\

He's sure right about the framerate... the only thing he didn't know, that it's becouse of the very high poly models... low poly models would realy make a big boost to fps.

Oh, and "spending hours playing both", and Nexuiz didn't show up anything new in gamplay... wtf, are we talking about the same game?

I'm not a bloody-eyed soldier for nexuiz, but I haven't seen so much idea in a game like in this one. Sure it has big performance troubles, but what about:

bloom, realtime lights, 5.1 sound, gloss, and the so much game-mode and the fully configurable weapons and game settings?

Well, with effects cranked up framerate really can be a problem. That's why we ship with a much faster default. He doesn't really have to care for the reasons (high poly count etc.) why rtlights are slow.

What freaks me out most - however - is the "the engine is outdated, so it shall be fast" attitude. Our engine is *not* outdated. We're NOT using Quake 1, we're using Darkplaces which has little to do with Quake 1 rendering wise. He assumes it's possible to add all those nice little effects with zero performance loss. It's not.

A lame article. What sort of things is he looking for in gameplay? Did he even look at the options for creating a server? I begin to wonder how many people do. There is more to Nexuiz than just joining the first game you see online and standing around with a shotgun wondering why people are shooting you and accusing them of cheating.

I have played a bit of Alien Arena, and Nexuiz is far better. The only two things Alien Arena has that Nexuiz doesn't is a gamemode with vehicles and a single player component.

That, being said, the vehicle gamemode doesn't seem terribly good (I only played against bots since their playerbase is actually smaller than ours), and the singleplayer component is the standard room-corridor type stuff with one broken level.

However, Nexuiz kicks Alien Arena's ass in all other categories. The music is infinitely better, gameplay is actually balanced, it is more configurable, it runs better (pre 1.5, anyways), the movement is much more interesting, the player animations are better, it has more players, and the gamemodes are generally better.

With Nexuiz, the main gamemode seems to be deathmatch. In Alien Arena, the main gamemodes are deathmatch and CTF.

The difference is that there are also bots set on super-mega-SOB-aimbot hard, and you actually have to score higher than them for the map to advance. So, in essence, you will have to play the same map about three times in a row, with someone who has been playing it from the beginning, if you want to play the next map.

CTF is poorly implemented, and it is exceptionally difficult to tell what team you are on, where the bases are, and who has what flag, let alone reclaiming and capping the goddamn flags.

Alt-fire also seems to be a very recent mod to the game, and when I played, most servers didn't have it.

the truth is, if it had a gravity gun and the game had barrel/ragdoll he'd hail it as the greatest game of all time

sad, makes me wonder if he's actually played anything but hl2

he just replied

apparently, he turned EVERYTHING on, with his low end system. omg! He also apparently is valve-biased

haha

Steven Ziegler wrote:the main focus of these titles is to prove that a great percentage of games have only tipped the iceburg in engine capabilities.

iceburg
iceberg = mountain of ice (the word he intended)
iceburg = a fortified town of ice (the word he used)

I considered pointing out the other funny things, but that was the best.
Instead, I'd like to give credit to the boy, he did spend "a few hours on each title", and did write over 700 words for the article, all at the age of 16.
Perhaps "Gothax?" has a future in video game reviewing; there is certainly nothing to do but improve.


our beloved author, seriously

What are the ugly texture on the other game?

Nexuiz is quite a bit different from the original Quake in gameplay, IMHO., and I've played both games. There's a laser that you can trickjump with, and has significantly different weapons that each have a useful alt-fire. And FYI, in both Nexuiz and CodeRED, there are acutally a bunch of gamemodes that are unique and not in any of the original Quake games! I prefer Nexuiz myself because I like the gameplay better and I don't like the "Alien" theme, but Alien Arena certainly is significantly different from the original Quake. There are vehicles, for crying out loud! It makes me wonder how much time the reviewer actually spent playing these games.

RTlights is a very high-end feature that only a handful of game engines support. Even Half Life 2 doesn't have RTLights! If you have a lower-end system (and I think the author certainly has one), of course turning them on will lower framerates a lot! I do agree that Nexuiz could use some optimizations, and the complaints would be justififed if Nexuiz was running on a high-end system. However, it's a fact that a graphical feature as advanced as RTLights WILL cause very low framerates on a low-end system.

I expected a comprehensive review weighing the pros and cons of both games, but instead this is a very biased article that basically states that both games suck, and appears to be based on a very short and incomplete examination of both games.

CheapAlert wrote:apparently, he turned EVERYTHING on, with his low end system.

What are the specs of his system exactly? Just wondering.

AMD Athlon XP 2800+
Chaintech GeForce 6600 GT ( 500/900 mhz )
Standard On-Board sound
doesn't mention ram though, but that is a slower system than mine heh

Runs great on my system, well, everywhere but a few parts of DSI get 50fps+ maxed out at 1280x1024:

Athlon 64 3000+
1Gb of DDR400 mem
ATI X800 based card

Hey Cheapy, fancy seeing you here... (The Wolf)

Apparently they don't know about Zymotic.

I'm surprised that the reviewer got 10-20 fps on a 6600 GT. The 6600 isn't a high-end card, but I have several friends that have Nexuiz, and it runs at a smooth 30-40 fps (at least) on their 6600 cards with all effects on. Nexuiz could definitely use optimizations (especially on the playermodels), but it should run quite smoothly on a 6600 GT. In the comments after the review, I was also surprised that he "quadrupled [his] fps on the CS:S stress test". With all effects on in Nexuiz, I usually get 25-30 fps. (Except on two maps which for some reason have a much lower framerate than the others). On the Doom 3 benchmark with all effects on, running at high quality, (same resolution) I get 31 fps.

In the readme or perhaps even on the Nexuiz website (considering that quite a few people don't read the readme), there should be something explaining that even though Nexuiz is based on Quake 1, it is far more advanced graphically, and there should also be somethin explaining that RTLights is a very high-end feature that will cause slowdowns on lower-end systems.

KillerKitty wrote:I'm surprised that the reviewer got 10-20 fps on a 6600 GT. The 6600 isn't a high-end card, but I have several friends that have Nexuiz, and it runs at a smooth 30-40 fps (at least) on their 6600 cards with all effects on. Nexuiz could definitely use optimizations (especially on the playermodels), but it should run quite smoothly on a 6600 GT.

I use a 6600 non-GT and with everything bur RTshadows on i get 30-50 FPS. without bllom adn particles I play at ~120.

Maybe we were just lucky enough that he is one of those with FPS problems.. like kozak or urmel...

tChr wrote:

KillerKitty wrote:I'm surprised that the reviewer got 10-20 fps on a 6600 GT. The 6600 isn't a high-end card, but I have several friends that have Nexuiz, and it runs at a smooth 30-40 fps (at least) on their 6600 cards with all effects on. Nexuiz could definitely use optimizations (especially on the playermodels), but it should run quite smoothly on a 6600 GT.

I use a 6600 non-GT and with everything bur RTshadows on i get 30-50 FPS. without bllom adn particles I play at ~120.

Maybe we were just lucky enough that he is one of those with FPS problems.. like kozak or urmel...

erm, Ye........

http://features.moddb.com/232/Nexuiz-an ... ad/?page=3

lol

Lol this review actually insults the intelligence of the reader several times...

The debate continues on the comments page of the review.

http://features.moddb.com/232/Nexuiz-and-Alien-Arena-Head-to-Head/?page=2

The author happens to be posting comments there, too...

Yikes, my comments got long

Maybe I should have just done my own article

Good comment, Willis

Willis wrote:Yikes, my comments got long
Maybe I should have just done my own article

Did you have to splitit into two because the field would not allow any firther letters?

yeah, the limit was 13,200 characters

Nice comment. Long, but very good. You summed up all my feelings about the article. I'm printing it out and reading it in detail.

If the author posts again, I'd be very interested in what he says.

My comp is not very good and I think a big "low / high /medium" settings for Nexuiz can be good.

The gameplay i think is fine, If you like this type of gameplay. And I guest is a very good implementation. The weapons dont feel impresive, but have tricks, so this enhance skill.
Anyway I think is better to read this review as to search something to enhance on Nex, than to be angry or something.

Tei wrote:Anyway I think is better to read this review as to search something to enhance on Nex, than to be angry or something.

That's so true. It's just hard at times to stay calm and objective.

Unfortunately this review does little to help Nexuiz improve. The author states that:

1. Nexuiz has gameplay that's the same as Quake 1. The problem is that this isn't true. If the author talked about what he liked and didn't like about Nexuiz's gameplay, it could have helped Nexuiz improve, but instead he states that Nexuiz is the same as Quake 1 and that gets us nowhere because it isn't true.
2. Framerates are really low. There is a problem with framerates in Nexuiz, as we all know, because of un-optimized player models due to the lack of an active modeler. However, the framerates really shouldn't be as low as stated in the review with a 6600GT, the video card the author has. I think it's a technical problem that I've read about in the forums that some people experience. If he would post some more details about the problem, and maybe contact some of the Nexuiz devs or post here on the Nexuiz forum, then maybe he could help improve Nexuiz.

I think that this review should include some more detailed, accurate, and constructive criticism.

i like this guy Fred187 -Personally I prefer Warsow (http://www.warsow.net/) and Paintball2 (http://digitalpaint.planetquake.gamespy.com/news.php). But that's mainly just because they run oh so much faster on my PC with graphics almost as good as these two games.

i mean, forget AA but Almost as good?! as nex!?? waah?
warsow is so generic and boring too... ahh

upQuark wrote:2. Framerates are really low. There is a problem with framerates in Nexuiz, as we all know, because of un-optimized player models due to the lack of an active modeler. However, the framerates really shouldn't be as low as stated in the review with a 6600GT, the video card the author has. I think it's a technical problem that I've read about in the forums that some people experience. If he would post some more details about the problem, and maybe contact some of the Nexuiz devs or post here on the Nexuiz forum, then maybe he could help improve Nexuiz..

This is a really old review, though, and he was probably running 1.5 - which was pretty bad about slow load times, and the bot code made the game slow down a lot. This was all drastically improved for the 2.0 release, though.

Of cource Nexuiz has areas of needed improvments and yeah can be quite resource intensive but i really do not get those comparisons.. Nexuiz and its engine use very very advanced features that only a few other commercial !! games offer. Those can be disabled (currently not all at once in the menu but all its quite easy with prebuild config files or each one by it self in the menu. This will for sure be improved in the future) and it is explained in the FAQ for people that do not want to bother with single settings or the menu. Of course it will be slower then other games with the default settings as those just do not use as much (eye candy) effects.
Other comparisons about the gameplay are also very bad imho as all those mentioned games are rather unique. And the worst thing are those !#$% people trying the review something but only present their option as fact. Such a thing is not a review its just bashing something.

Uhh this thread was inactive for almost half a year.. it almost smells. But i still do not like the review a single bit for all those mistakes made in it. Maybe people should have used an other thread to discuss about problems with Nexuiz. Its way easier to address issues and fix them if NOT being compared or reminded about those in a unfair way . Oh of course having more free time would also be a good start

You see the reason why people do not search for hints in this 'review' is because its totaly biased, unfair und just bashing. We all know there might be things hidden deep inside of those but its just not fun to search for them with all that bullshit. If you had played Nexuiz for longer you would have noticed great improvments already and those will continue!