(and, oh yeah, good day to you all, haven't been posting in like... well over a year)

Knowing me I'll end up buying it first.

Me, too. And I haven't even played The Longest Journey yet (which I got for Christmas when it was first released).

I have a 1300 MHz Duron, and thanks to my nVidia GeForce 5700 I can run Myst V just fine, so I don't expect many problems with Dreamfall. May I add that Dreamfall is the most (over)hyped adventure game I've ever come across? I sure hope it lives up to its expectations!

This was not because ATI was optimised for Half-Life 2, and Doom 3 optimised for Nvidia. It is marketing nonsense that has no value. It's obvious, just look at what API's the games use, Half-Life 2 uses DirectX 3D, and Doom 3 uses OpenGL. ATI has long had problems supporting OpenGL as well as Nvidia and 3DFX could.
Which was not the case with Doom 3 or Half-Life 2, or any other game. Although having ATI support on games sometimes means they have added extended ATI features like TruForm which is quality, rather than performance related.

So some say. :)

There's definately a lot of anticipation for it's arrival, but then A: It's the Longest Journey sequel (lots of TLJ fans here) B: It's a new take on the adventure genre, offering new ideas, interface etc. C: The visuals and sound are among the best we've ever seen offered to this genre and have definately given us adventure fans reason to feel excited again.

I think it's a lot to do with what the game is being billed to offer us, as much as it is what it is. If this takes off, there's a good chance that others will look at the design, layout and consider investing time in making their own games of this calibre. There's a lot of support for adventures coming out over the next few years than I think people give credit for... (aka Revolution, DS, in as much as PS3 and X360 consoles with hard drives and the ever upgrading PC).

Farenheit gave a lot of people cause to think that adventuring in games is far from dead. Dreamfall, I feel, could certainly help to strengthen that conclusion when it's released!

As you say, time will tell.


P:S - Sorry about the test, I saw it up and figured it might be worth a try, considering a lot of people have been concerned about machine specs. I feel this site does definately give a good insight as to how your cpu will fare with a game. It isn't the definative article (and won't be until the game is in your drive, ready to play), but it certainly gives a rough indication.

would working with a company to choose the API which suits their cards not be considered optimizing the game for those cards? For example if they were optimizing dreamfall for Nvidia cards with the purpose of giving a performance edge over ATI, they could use opengl... regardless, choosing the right API is just the start, there are many things that can be done to cater to specific hardware. Whether or not this is actually done often, who knows, and is probably just marketing nonsense as you point out.

Wow, very nice idea.

If you're suggesting that id uses OpenGL for Nvidia, and Valve use Direct3D because of ATI, you're wrong, that's not what happens. If you're suggesting that it could be like that in the future, then it could, but it won't.

Cool, totally passed every test :) Then again, I also passed every Oblivion test, so that's not the whole truth, sadly :P

Errr, I'm not too sure (not looking at them right now), but I failed the CPU (I'm pretty sure) speed test ( I had 1.5 GHz and need 1.6 GHz?) and my video card failed as well (on a couple counts). Unfortunatly my comp's a laptop so upgrading the video card isn't much of an option...

I guess that's my report floating around. The Dreamfall press demo runs OK in 1024x768 + 2xAA + 'High' settings on my laptop system:

Pentium 4-M 2.4GHz
1GB RAM
64MB Nvidia Quadro4 700 Go GL DirectX 8.1 card

You can lower the settings all down to 640x480 and/or 'Low' graphics quality, but I find it fully playable with the above settings.

Especially considering that Direct3D is NOT faster on ATI based cards, regardless of what FUD is spread. In fact, vista will only support OpenGL via an emulated layer....meaning OpenGL will pretty much be a lost cause in the future of windows games. Direct3D works just as well on both brands, with different fps gains depending on each model (certain pixel shader support, etc)

Yes, ATI was faster when Direct3D was used because they were much faster in general from the 8500 to the X850, not because they supported Direct3D better, now they're pretty even.