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[Gobalopper]

It has been a while since the last recap from the messageboards but it looks like we have some new info today. ChrisL talks about resolution, ship dates, and video card problems while Cliff responds to a thread on crates. Check them out below:

The 3D engine is hugely efficient & well optimized.. there are just a whole lot of polygons & multipass rendering. Most terrains run between 20,000 & 60,000 polygons, depending on LOD settings. Also, path-finding is by no means trivial or cheap.

Juulepuul is correct, you need to compare apples to apples. There are 2 completely different types of engines, and are optimized very differently.

If you truely want the fastest FPS, then drop all the settings to low. You'll get amazing FPS, which is not particularly helpfull in a RTS (but great in a first-person shooter). If you want the fastest, but without sacrificing beauty, then choose the Medium settings. Very fast, and all rendering features on enabled. (and use 800x600.. to free up more VRAM for textures, and reduce texture cache hits).

There are plenty of dials to create the game experience you like.

p.s. If you set all the advanced graphical settings to their hightest possible, you will need a top-end machine to play it smoothly, and that is the way we designed it. We designed for the medium setting to be gorgeous, and then in the last 6 months added some high-end features to support those users who just bought a high-end system and wanted to see what they could do with it. (Don't you just hate buying a new expensive machine, and most games don't get any prettier because of it? Emperor does get prettier on those machines!). - LINK

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Just to clarify, the 'ship dates' we reported (June 12th US, June 8th Europe) are the dates they ship from the factory out to the stores. Depending on the store, it could take 1 to 14 days for them to recieve it and sell/shelf it. - LINK

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Some video cards have problems dealing with the read-caching on some CD-ROMS. If you add a +w to your shortcut, it should make the movies play without the stutters.

The +w option will preload the movie into RAM, which takes the CD-ROM out of the picture. - LINK

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There are crates, and they include a variety of things. By far, the most amusing one I ever saw was a crate I picked up with a Freydakin on a Worm. It was a cloaking crate. :) Oh, the merry mischief I had for a minute or two.

"Why is there sand being kicked up? OH MY GOD! WHAT WAS THAT?!?!" said one webmaster.

"That," I replied, "was the worm."

What a priceless moment. - LINK

So far the only legit copies of the game that I have seen are from those who have gotten the game directly from the store because they knew someone who worked there. But it should be showing up on shelves this week for most of you.