Risen - Demo Released!

[Gorath]

Deep Silver and Piranha Bytes released the Risen demo a few minutes ago, and the internet explodes. The usual suspects should have it soon.
More information. (http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?newsbit=13345)

[JDR13]

This is a nice surprise, I didn't see PB releasing a demo so soon. :D

[ikbenrichard]

This is a nice surprise, I didn't see PB releasing a demo so soon. :D



a good move, not that it matter to me, bought the game already :P

[crpgnut]

It's a really good move. I didn't care for the Gothics, so I can look at this and decide whether Risen, is just Gothic 4 or something, imho, better.

[Thaurin]

Gief link nao!!1!

[Gorath]

Deep Silver nuked the demo!

There was a problem with the installer. Should be back soon.

[DogInARocket]

Must…. not… download..

[Thaurin]

The site is also very slow. It looks like they got Slashdotted! ;)

[Gorath]

Which site?

[Thaurin]

DeepSilver's Risen blog. Their site was timing out on me. I was able to see the download link for the demo, but when I clicked it, I got a 404. Seems they had problems, but I admit I never really visited their website, so maybe I found the wrong one.

It said it was the official Risen blog, anyway.

1.1GB demo link: http://download.deepsilver.com/rpb/demo/Risen-Demo-PC-EFIGS.zip

Doesn't say it's down, it says all download slots are taken.

[Gorath]

No, it's the right one.

The game is still not officially available in Germany - and it's on sale tomorrow at the biggest electronics chain. 100.000 people are trying to download the demo today. ;)

[Thaurin]

Ooooh, mirrors and even torrent found on the forum (http://forum.deepsilver.com/forum/showthread.php?p=399746):

Mirror 0 HTTP (http://download.deepsilver.com/rpb/demo/Risen-Demo-PC-EFIGS.zip)
Mirror 1 FTP (ftp://194.97.2.74/pub/hosted/trackmania/misc/Risen-Demo-PC-EFIGS.zip)
Mirror 2 FTP (ftp://forum.deepsilver.com/downloads/risen/Risen-Demo-PC-EFIGS.zip)
Mirror 3 FTP (http://d1.w3hoster.de/risen-demo-pc-efigs.zip)
Torrent (http://www.computec.de/bittorrent/risen-demo-pc-efigs.zip.torrent)

Currently getting 50 kb/s on the torrent.

[JDR13]

Ooooh, mirrors and even torrent found on the forum (http://forum.deepsilver.com/forum/showthread.php?p=399746):

Mirror 0 HTTP (http://download.deepsilver.com/rpb/demo/Risen-Demo-PC-EFIGS.zip)
Mirror 1 FTP (ftp://194.97.2.74/pub/hosted/trackmania/misc/Risen-Demo-PC-EFIGS.zip)
Mirror 2 FTP (ftp://forum.deepsilver.com/downloads/risen/Risen-Demo-PC-EFIGS.zip)
Mirror 3 FTP (http://d1.w3hoster.de/risen-demo-pc-efigs.zip)
Torrent (http://www.computec.de/bittorrent/risen-demo-pc-efigs.zip.torrent)

Currently getting 50 kb/s on the torrent.


Are these links to the "fixed" demo?

[Gorath]

I don't know.

[Thaurin]

I would seem they're not, since they were posted two-and-a-half hours ago.

[Lemonhead]

I'm downloading the torrent at 1.2 MB/s so I can really recommend going with that option. I don't know if the installer works though...

[JDR13]

I'm downloading the torrent at 1.2 MB/s so I can really recommend going with that option. I don't know if the installer works though…

1.2 MB\s ?!? I'm only getting around 45k\s.

[lumiapina]

I'm getting around 450-550 KB/s at the moment. Hopefully the installer works.

[Thaurin]

Hopefully they have a quick fix or workaround if it's the broken installer. :)

[Foss]

Downloaded and finished the demo aswell.

Good thing I did, my rig can't run it very well, so I won't be buying it untill I get something better.

[Lemonhead]

1.2 MB\s ?!? I'm only getting around 45k\s.

Yeah, I couldn't believe it myself, and now it's done! It took a whopping 22 min.

I'm using µTorrent, am based in Sweden and have a 10Mbit ADSL connection…

[JDR13]

Yeah, I couldn't believe it myself, and now it's done! It took a whopping 22 min.

I'm using µTorrent, am based in Sweden and have a 10Mbit ADSL connection…

That's fast, I wonder if which client you use makes a difference. I think location is probably the biggest factor though.

[Thaurin]

Yeah, I'm using uTorrent at well and I'm getting 150-200 Kb/s. So it's confirmed that this installer works?

[Gorath]

Even if not, there's a workaround. You can unrar the file and then extract the .exe with Universal Extractor (http://legroom.net/software/uniextract#download).

Use at your won risk.

[Gorath]

Still all old links. There is no new version yet.

[Foss]

I used the Mirror 0.
Had between 700kb-1.1mb/s

[JDR13]

Finally gave up trying to get the demo, it was going to take about 10 hours at the speed I was getting. Doesn't really matter, I should have the retail game by tomorrow.

[Gorath]

The new demo is up. Make sure the filename ends with v2.

Mirror 1 FTP (ftp://194.97.2.74/pub/hosted/trackmania/misc/Risen-Demo-PC-EFIGS-V2.zip)
Mirror 2 HTTP (http://download.deepsilver.com/rpb/demo/Risen-Demo-PC-EFIGS-V2.zip)
Mirror 3 FTP (ftp://forum.deepsilver.com/downloads/risen/Risen-Demo-PC-EFIGS-V2.zip)

[Nithrakis]

I downloaded the original demo and it installed fine for me on Vista 64.

[elikal]

Madness! The download request must be madness! I am getting nothing from any source, it always says all connections full or something.

[Thaurin]

Hmmm, no go here. Installation failed on C++ Redistributable… guess I might try this universal extractor work-around, or the new links.

[Moriendor]

100.000 people are trying to download the demo today. ;)

Demo doesn't matter to me since I got the full game already but I think they did a pretty poor job on the demo.
First, it was (at least unofficially) delayed since it was the stated goal of PB/DS to release the demo approximately two weeks prior to the game's release.
Secondly, despite the delay the demo seems to not have been properly tested (installer issues).
Thirdly, why did they not team up with some big download sites (Gamer's Hell, FileFront, FilePlanet, K-Files etc.) for the release of the demo? Seems pretty dumb to offer up only three mirrors. They could have avoided a lot of pissed off people if they would have distributed the load and posted a list with a dozen mirrors right from the start.

It seemed from comments by DS community reps like the "delay" of the demo had to do with extra careful planning and precautions regarding the release of the demo but I guess that can't have been the real reason looking at the poor handling of the demo's release...

[Gorath]

Hmmm, no go here. Installation failed on C++ Redistributable… guess I might try this universal extractor work-around, or the new links.

Also the same error if you use the default install path?

[Thaurin]

Also the same error if you use the default install path?

Retried it and now I'm using default install path. Same issue, the installer seems to hang with 0% progress at the installation of the Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable (run-time libraries, I assume). Clicking Cancel after a while cancels the whole installation. I remember having similar problems with the installation of another game, so maybe it's my PC. After all, it's been running XP without a reinstall for 4,5 years. ;)

I'll let it run for a while now, it's taking 100% CPU. Let's see what happens; the new links don't work yet anyway.

[Thaurin]

Looks like I was just impatient. The installer just sat there, not moving for minutes… but it's done now. Seems to work. I'm gonna try it now! :)

Wow, what's even more remarkable is that the demo runs pretty well on my PC. I wonder if the whole game is this smooth. Who'd have expected!?

[Nithrakis]

Runs great on my rig with maxed out options @ 1920x1200.

Core i7 920 w/ 6GB Ram and Geforece GTX 280.

I wonder if the demo saves will work with the full game. Anyone know?

[northreign]

And I received the game today too! But no working game PC to play it on. Dagnabit!

[Lemonhead]

I got some sort of "feature transfer error" after the visual c++ installation and then the installer crashed.

I guess I'll try the new link. No torrent for that one?

[Thaurin]

Runs great on my rig with maxed out options @ 1920x1200.

Core i7 920 w/ 6GB Ram and Geforece GTX 280.

Runs great on my Athlon 64 3500+ with 2GB RAM and a Radeon 4650 video card... and almost maxed out settings! Who said the game was CPU-bound? I can't believe this. Will the game suddenly eat frames further in? I won't even have to upgrade my PC if this framerate keeps up. So infinitely better than Gothic 3.

Oh yeah, this should have been Gothic 3. :D Same sort of feel, but everthing feels much better. Liking it.

I got some sort of "feature transfer error" after the visual c++ installation and then the installer crashed.

Had some problems there, too. Try again, maybe?

[Lemonhead]

Runs great on my Athlon 64 3500+ with 2GB RAM and a Radeon 4650 video card… and almost maxed out settings! Who said the game was CPU-bound? I can't believe this. Will the game suddenly eat frames further in? I won't even have to upgrade my PC if this framerate keeps up. So infinitely better than Gothic 3.

Oh yeah, this should have been Gothic 3. :D Same sort of feel, but everthing feels much better. Liking it.



Had some problems there, too. Try again, maybe?

Tried it a few times now and it crashes at the same place. Oh, well I'll just wait for version 2 to download.

Interesting about your rig. I have almost the exact same specs and I thought I wouldn't be able to play Risen on this computer. Keeping my fingers crossed that I wont have to upgrade!

[Thaurin]

Interesting about your rig. I have almost the exact same specs and I thought I wouldn't be able to play Risen on this computer. Keeping my fingers crossed that I wont have to upgrade!

Yeah, I couldn't believe it. Okay, so this game doesn't look like the next Crysis and I'm happy with just 22-25 fps, but it's still very good! I'd say it looks better than Gothic 3, but it still performs really well here. I was hoping for something playable on minimum settings, but I've maxed almost everything out. I'm playing at only 1370x768, of course… the resolution of my TV. That probably helps a bit versus the big PC monitors.

I hope the demo is representative of the rest of the game. I'm gonna buy this the second I find a copy.

[Badesumofu]

That's also quite similar to my system, but i have a better CPU (E7500, core 2 duo 2.1ghz) and a slightly (I think?) worse video card 8600GT. I've found I can current gen games quite well at low to medium settings, which is fine by me. This is one great thing about the consoles - systems last longer :)

But the question is over whether to get a new comp now to run current gen games at maxed settings, or wait until the next gen starts and get a system then to make sure it canrun those games well. I sometimes put the settings up to max on some games to see what it would look like. But then, I still find a Gothic 1 more immersive than, say, Assasins' Creed because it has a more realistic and reactive world despite AC having much prettier graphics. (although I'm told that AC is much better oncd you get to the main city.)

Arghh, I'm excited about this demo and I'm babling!!

Oh noes!!! my internet is not working. Sometimes I don't get enough electricity at peak times for my router to work properly :(

[ToddMcF2002]

gamershell 1.8MB's. Can't complain about that, and it is V2.

[Gorath]

That's also quite similar to my system, but i have a better CPU (E7500, core 2 duo 2.1ghz) and a slightly (I think?) worse video card 8600GT. I've found I can current gen games quite well at low to medium settings, which is fine by me. This is one great thing about the consoles - systems last longer :)

But the question is over whether to get a new comp now to run current gen games at maxed settings, or wait until the next gen starts and get a system then to make sure it canrun those games well. I sometimes put the settings up to max on some games to see what it would look like. But then, I still find a Gothic 1 more immersive than, say, Assasins' Creed because it has a more realistic and reactive world despite AC having much prettier graphics. (although I'm told that AC is much better oncd you get to the main city.)

In your case the answer is trivial, if your mainboard supports PCIe. A 8600GT is a very slow card according to today's standards. Hell, it even sucked when it came out. ;)
Replace the card with something reasonable and you'll be surprised how fast your PC really is. 100-150$ will work wonders.

[ToddMcF2002]

Just reporting in: 2.26 P8400, 9800m GTS 1GB, 4 gig RAM, Vista 64 Home Premium smooth as a baby's butt @ 1400x900.

I really think they "borrowed" the code from Gothic 2 quite frankly. Its not just close, the character movements are identical. The camera is identical with all its quirks when you spin around quickly. Too identical.

Whoever said it looks better than G3 though, you must be smoking crack. Everything is very tightly bound like G2, less of an open vista feel. G3 feels MUCH bigger than Risen. Personally, I prefer the G3 game world. Graphically this is more like G2 with incredible textures, bumb mapping, shaders and depth of field.

I'm guessing however I'm going to like combat much better in Risen.

So far so good!

[northreign]

Everything is very tightly bound like G2, less of an open vista feel. G3 feels MUCH bigger than Risen. Personally, I prefer the G3 game world.

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Tomorrow, I will hopefully see for myself now that I know its the video card that broke. It said, 'oh no Risen is coming! I'm dead!' It died. What the h?

[JDR13]

Whoever said it looks better than G3 though, you must be smoking crack. Everything is very tightly bound like G2, less of an open vista feel. G3 feels MUCH bigger than Risen. Personally, I prefer the G3 game world. Graphically this is more like G2 with incredible textures, bumb mapping, shaders and depth of field.


I certainly wouldn't consider Gothic 2 to be "tightly bound", the world was very open, it just wasn't nearly as large as Gothic 3, which was a bit *too* large imo.

[enodenroH]

Greetings.

I have just played the demo for the past half hour.

All I can say is :

Welcome back PB. I've missed you! :iloveyou::thumbsup:

[vanedor]

Gosh. Gothic 3 world was so empty and boring. Fortunately, from what I hear, this game seems much better. Downloading the demo at the moment...

[Zloth]

Sweet! Played it at 2048x1536 with just about everything (except depth of field) turned on with my 8800GTX. Path? What path? Paths mean "go the other way", right? ;)

All is not perfection - I've got no idea why we can't change the keys to quickload/quicksave and I guess we have to use FRAPS or some such to take screenshots. The jumping is, as the reviews have said, downright funny.

I put a little playlist on WeGame (http://www.wegame.com/view/Abandoned_House_just_as_a_leaf_fell/?playlist=399).

[Moriendor]

All is not perfection - I've got no idea why we can't change the keys to quickload/quicksave...

You can via a small workaround. You need to edit the user config XML file that is stored where the saves are stored (depends on whether you are using XP or Vista... check your user folder).

[Bartacus]

Downloading at 1.6MB/s -> will test it this evening unless I'll find the complete game later at home :)

[mavsynchroid]

Hey fellas. Just downloaded the Demo, interested in getting the game. Here's my dilemma. It's running like crap and I'm not sure why. First, here are my specs.

Processor - AMD athalon 64 X2 Dual Core processor 4200+.
Ram - 3 GHZ.
Graphics Card - Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS

Now I know it's not alot of ram, but I've dropped all the settings in the game and it's still running choppy, (unless I'm in a cave). Yet one torch will make it choppy all over again. Any pointers on what to do? Much appreciated, thanks.

[Thaurin]

Whoever said it looks better than G3 though, you must be smoking crack.

It may just have been my PC, but I found Gothic 3 a little rough around the edges. The little things, like the ocean bump mapping, clipping, colour pallette. I think Risen looks a lot more interesting. Gothic 3's world was big, but it seemed less detailed than Risen's.

[Arkadia7]

Hey fellas. Just downloaded the Demo, interested in getting the game. Here's my dilemma. It's running like crap and I'm not sure why. First, here are my specs.

Processor - AMD athalon 64 X2 Dual Core processor 4200+.
Ram - 3 GHZ.
Graphics Card - Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS

Now I know it's not alot of ram, but I've dropped all the settings in the game and it's still running choppy, (unless I'm in a cave). Yet one torch will make it choppy all over again. Any pointers on what to do? Much appreciated, thanks.

That is odd. I ran the demo for a few minutes before I had to go to work earlier and it ran quite smooth on my Athlon 64 4000 with an 8800 GT and 3 GB ram. I was surprised to read how someone said in an earlier reply that they were running the demo well with an inferior system to mine, but after seeing it for a few minutes have to admit the game can be run well even on an old system like mine.

Not sure why you are having trouble, your computer should run it well, it is a more powerful system than mine.

Edited: Didn't mention I still use a CRT monitor and run a resolution of 1152×864.

Maybe you are running it in a resolution that is too high for your computer to handle?

[JonNik]

I hope the demo is representative of the rest of the game. I'm gonna buy this the second I find a copy.

Very interesting to hear. I am tempted to try it on my old rig (AMDFX55, X1900XT,
2GB) before the new parts arrive.

A note though. When I first tried the G2 demo back in the day performance was from
ok to great. I distinctly remember the lowest fps was something like 23 when coming
down from the pass from Xardas's tower in front of the little shrine and looking toward
the sheep herder guy. Very playable I thought (for 1280x960 all maxed). The game
itself was a different story (14 fps at that exact same spot and even lower inside the
city). What I am driving at is that performance at the game might be lower generally
(and especially inside the port city)…

I guess it may have to do with the demo being a slice of the actual map (ofcourse
their streaming design could be much more different now and offload/stream
resources more efficiently so the size of the "map" is irrelevant, who knows).


It may just have been my PC, but I found Gothic 3 a little rough around the edges. The little things, like the ocean bump mapping, clipping, colour pallette. I think Risen looks a lot more interesting. Gothic 3's world was big, but it seemed less detailed than Risen's.

I get the same impression even from the vids. Also it is more important imho for a
game to be graphically consistent and glitch free rather than provide an insane amount
of polys and highres textures. That is where G3 was a bit problematic (due to its LOD
mechanism). You could heavily tweak it from the ini though at the point that it would
look very very good. Oblivion for instance with its much praised graphics was far more
problematic in that area and the difference between indoors or even near outdoor and
distant graphics was jarring and an immersion breaker (It too could be tweaked of
course, it just entailed downloading GBs of Textures and Normal maps to replace the
crappy originals)…

Ooops I guess my graphics whore aspect wanted a peek out of the closet ;)
But seriously Art direction and consistency > Latest tech at any case for me.

[Thaurin]

What I am driving at is that performance at the game might be lower generally (and especially inside the port city)…

That's exactly what I'm worried about. Since my CPU is clearly the lowest performer, there is a chance that with the complete map and tech like in Gothic 3 where NPCs could travel the whole world basically, things might get slow later on. When it's just graphics that need to be rendered, my video card can handle it just fine. When complex calculations that are done by the CPU come into play, my PC might just crash and burn. :(

[guenthar]

I decided to just compare Gothic 2, Gothic 3, and Risen and from what I have seen Risen is clearly superior to the previous games. The A.I. in Risen is way better then either Gothic 2 or Gothic 3 and now the enemies will try to flank you. The graphics in Risen are superior to Gothic 3 and also the weather system is way better. The environment is way more detailed and varied then either Gothic 2 or 3 where the brush is more dense and varied and the landscape is much more varied the the former.

So far I have liked the story more then either aforementioned game and unlike Gothic 2 has far less railroading and more choice. The game world sounds like it is far bigger then Gothic 2 but is smaller then Gothic 3. (Haven't played that far yet) In Gothic 2 there was only 1 major city but I know of at least 2 major cities so far (read about one online) in Risen. I know there are at least 2 smaller settlements so far in Risen. (the monastery and the Bandits camp)

I love the combat so far and I love the quests I have experienced so far and this game would have been much harder if I didn't have my shield where as I didn't need a shield for Gothic 2 or 3.

[ToddMcF2002]

Well to each is own I guess on Gothic 3 graphics and design vs. Risen. I heavily tweaked the G3 ini for distant LOD etc and I thought it was simply amazing. So much detail, so open and realistic (relatively speaking). Risen is clearly gated graphically because of the requirement to perform acceptably on the xBox360. Don't get me wrong though, I think Risen looks great though.

[Gorath]

Hey fellas. Just downloaded the Demo, interested in getting the game. Here's my dilemma. It's running like crap and I'm not sure why. First, here are my specs.

Processor - AMD athalon 64 X2 Dual Core processor 4200+.
Ram - 3 GHZ.
Graphics Card - Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS

Now I know it's not alot of ram, but I've dropped all the settings in the game and it's still running choppy, (unless I'm in a cave). Yet one torch will make it choppy all over again. Any pointers on what to do? Much appreciated, thanks.

It should run okay. I have a nearly identical system, just slightly slower, and I was positively surprised.

[ToddMcF2002]

It should run okay. I have a nearly identical system, just slightly slower, and I was positively surprised.

what resolution is he driving? What OS? My Vista 64 can chew up to 2.1GB. Drives me insane, which is why I have 4GB. I wouldnt want 3GB. I believe 3GB can't run in double data rate because of the mismatched slots.

[DPB]

Risen is clearly gated graphically because of the requirement to perform acceptably on the xBox360. Don't get me wrong though, I think Risen looks great though.

I'm not sure this is true, seeing as the Xbox 360 version apparently has much poorer visuals than the PC version. Having received the game today, Risen might be a little less detailed than Gothic 3 but I'm happy to sacrifice some details for the vastly improved loading and saving times and complete absence of the horrendous stuttering that plagued Gothic 3.

It runs quite well on my system on maximum settings and 1680x1050, no lower than 20 fps so far and usually from 25-30 fps.

Core 2 Duo E8400 3ghz
Geforce 9600 GT
2gb RAM

[Gorath]

Now I read impressions from somebody who actually has Risen on XBox. He says Risen looks approximately as good as Oblivion.

[indigo]

Graphically this is more like G2 with incredible textures, bumb mapping, shaders and depth of field.

You mean boob mapping?

Here on AMD Athlon II X2 (Phenom architecture) , Radeon 4850 1GiG, 2 GiG ram and XP SP3 I have mediocore performance on high setting, no AF, no AA - avg. 21 fps in resolution 1280x1024 and sometimes (however not often) noticeable drops to even 12 - 14 fps :/ And I've just upgraded my rig exclusively for Risen :/

[Krzychu]

Downloading the demo now, just so I can see for myself that Risen indeed won't work on my rig.

Welcome back PB. I've missed you! :iloveyou::thumbsup:

Heh, reactions like these fill me with hope. :)

[Clonedyke]

Risen is clearly gated graphically because of the requirement to perform acceptably on the xBox360.

I highly doubt that. Risen on the 360 has not even Oblivion quality and that title is three years old.

Risen PC / 360 screenshot comparison

http://tinyurl.com/ybqx2cc

[guenthar]

I have seen pictures of the Xbox 360 version and it looks like crap.

Below is a picture from the Xbpx 360 version someone put in the comments of the eurogamer.net review.
http://www.gamepro.de/_misc/galleries/detail.cfm?pk=55598&fk=1231777##

[Alistair]

It's interesting - I thought from the prerelease videos that they'd reined in their ambition to make sure they avoided the performance problems of G3. And it kind of looks like they've gone a bit too far, targetting PCs below XBox 360 spec.

I've only played the demo so far, too early for much of an opinion. It runs fine so far, about 40 fps on a GTX 260 at 19x12, and neither CPU core was being maxed out when I checked. I was impressed with the initial foliage/lightning/water/shadows impression although I do get a weird effect with lightning inside a nearby cave... Combat is obviously better than G3 at release, though the animation/physics is not quite A-list... If my steam copy would only unlock, I could play the damn thing...

[JDR13]

I was impressed with the initial foliage/lightning/water/shadows impression …


Same here, I think Risen looks great, and graphics aren't the most important thing in a game like this. I can't comment on the Xbox version, as I haven't seen it, but I would never consider getting a console version anyways.

[Krzychu]

It's alive!!!

*laughs maniacally*

The demo seems to run pretty okay on medium settings on my system (apart from that GF7 fog glitch), which is a pleasant surprise for me. I've only played it for a few minutes so far, so I haven't experienced much of it, but I can already tell one thing for certain, and oh gosh, lemme say this:

Kairo's music is just perfect!

[Dhruin]

For those with low-end systems, these days I game on a laptop: C2D 2.4Ghz, 4Gb RAM, 256Mb 8600GT - on medium settings @ 1280x800 (except "high" draw distance - I like to see where I am going) - I get around 20fps. It's perfectly playable and generally "feels" higher than that because it doesn't seem to glitch or drop much (in the demo, anyway).

I'd say it's well worth trying on low-ish systems if you don't mind medium settings.

[Thaurin]

It's perfectly playable and generally "feels" higher than that because it doesn't seem to glitch or drop much (in the demo, anyway).


I wholeheartedly agree and my system specs are below yours. That is, I have a single-core CPU and a modern low-end graphics card (4650). I'm pretty tolerant of low framerates, though, but the game is indeed perfectly playable on near-max settings for me (only the texture filtering is set to Linear, have yet to try higher settings). It doesn't glitch or drop, like you said, which is a huge plus for lowish framerates.

The actual game performed as well as the demo did, too.

[JonNik]

The actual game performed as well as the demo did, too.

Nice. I am downloading now to gauge performance at my old system (I am not getting
my hopes up though).

I can't wait to see it in action and I doubt my amazon.uk preorder will be here before
next friday…

Edit: Yep can be made playable at low settings but they don't do it justice so I'll be
playing it a month from now (on a core i7 950 ATI 5870 rig :) ).

At 1680x1050 all maxed out the game looks very good. I am perfectly satisfied and
the atmosphere is simply great (lighting, weather effects, sound effects, all great),

btw methinks I am gonna love the combat system. Why did the idiots in the prerelease
demos just clicked clicked through it when there is so much variety even from the
moment you grab your first stick ?! They must have wanted it to be a surprise…

[aries100]

I have played the demo on the ancient rig:

Intel Pentium 2,4 Ghz
2GB RAM
512 MB 3650 ATI Radeon graphics card

The demo for Risen played great on this machine; I didn't expect this, but it was nice to find out :) The demo was great, it played liked the old Gothic games. Unfortunately, it ended way too soon...

[zakhal]

The game sees only 2 speakers in the settings even though I have 5.1 dolby surround. Perhaps it doesnt understand the digital output on my soundcard.

EDIT: I tested it with unconnected analog 5.1 output on my secondary soundcard and it confirms it. Risen demo defaults digital output as 2.0 and works only with analog 5.1 output. Id call it a bug.

Ok I managed to get 5.1 working by defaulting my sound output to analog 2.0. Somhow my soundcard still defaults this to digital since the analog isnt connected and risen defaults this as 5.1. Doesnt get any more confusing than this but I guess I got lucky.

[Badesumofu]

Gorath, I would probably do that (and also I'd love anotber gig of RAM) but my system is a laptop (forgot to mention that in this thread). I love being able to play and browse the internet in bed, and I got this basically for half-price thanks to a salary-sacrifice deal, so don't get me wrong, I love having a laptop, but I'm not sure if upgrading is really possible. It's a Dell Inspiron 1520, and when I was customising it I put in the highest graphics card it would allow.

Maybe I should contact Dell and see if I could do an upgrade for this system, because it's still in excellent shape and the processor stands up very well, I think. I kinda regret onl getting 2GB of RAM, though. 2 gigs is not a lot when you run Vista. I was considering 3, but then it wouldn't have been dual channel. 4 would have cost like $300 more or something :o I know desktop RAM is dirt cheap now, I wonder if laptop RAM is...

mmm... if I could upgrade this machine I'd love that. If I got a new box then I could connect it to my LCD TV and play on the couch.... but lying here in bed with the doona is so comfy, it would be hard to go back desktops.

[Corwin]

I have An Inspiron 1720 and have been able to play anything and everything on it. For some things it works better than my mid to high end desktop!!