by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko, Anton Shilov
09/21/2007 | 12:39 PM
The idea of pitting gamers against one another rather than against PC-controlled enemies is 14 years old already. Quite a long time for the video games industry. The first time you could face a live opponent in a 3D virtual world by means of a network, modem or COM-to-COM connection it was in id Software’s Doom back in 1993. The game supported two players with a point-to-point connection or up to four players on a LAN. And although it looked primitive by today’s standards, the opportunity of multiplayer battles made it really popular – people would even contest in championships!
<%BANNER[article]%>Almost all of later first-person 3D shooters provided the option of multiplayer, but players would eventually get bored with the concept. Simple fighting for “frags” lost all the excitement eventually. Innovations were called for and didn’t take long to appear. In 1998 Valve released its sci-fi shooter Half-Life . The game offered a thrilling plot, which is still considered an example for the whole industry, but what is more important for our topic, Half-Life became the basis of the first multiplayer shooter that wasn’t limited to the “kill ‘em all” concept. It was Counter-Strike . In that game players not only split into two teams: the terrorists and the counter-terrorists had their own objectives they had to accomplish in order to win.
The year 1999 became a milestone in the evolution of the first-person shooter with the release of two projects focused entirely on multiplayer: Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament . The single-player mode of each game was limited to fighting bots with no plot whatsoever. The project from id Software seemed more dynamic but only offered one unusual game mode called Capture the Flag whereas the project from Epic Games offered a variety of new features, particularly the Assault mode in which one team was to defend a base (castle, ship, etc) and the other, to attack it. Both teams had their own objectives, just like in Counter-Strike . For example, the attacking team’s objective was to destroy a generator while the defenders had to keep them from doing that.
The project from id Software was later complemented with the add-on Quake 3: Team Arena , yet the Unreal Tournament series was developing faster and its 2002 version enhanced the selection of game modes even more. Unreal Tournament 2004 then offered the opportunity to control military equipment, from light air motorcycles to heavy tanks, which made virtual fighting even more engaging. You could also use such equipment in multiplayer shooters of the Battlefield series developed by Digital Illusions and published by EA Games, but the FPS veterans from id Software had switched their attention to single-player projects at that time. For example, Doom 3 had limited multiplayer capabilities, not much better than those of its ancestor, while the multiplayer of Quake 4 wasn’t far better than that of Quake 3 Arena according to many critics.
Finally, id Software remembered it had a whole gaming universe for creating a full-featured multiplayer tactical shooter with a sci-fi plot like the popular Battlefield 2142 . The Quake Wars plot revolves around the history of the war of mankind against the technologically superior civilization of the Strogg.
The fighting between mankind and cyborgs was first depicted in Quake 2 and was in fact the plot of that 1997 game title. The game ended with the killing of the leader of the Strogg, but the story then continues in Quake 4 , which doesn’t end in a victory of either side: the war between the humans and the Strogg enters a new phase. All this provided enough background for a shooter that would allow the player to join either of the conflicting sides.
However, the plot of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars does not continue Quake 4 . It is a prequel to Quake 2 . The game also belongs to id Software’s Enemy Territory series like the multiplayer shooter Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.
The game utilizes the division into classes, which has become traditional for this genre (soldier, commander, medic, engineer, etc.), but unlike most other shooters of its kind, ET: Quake Wars differentiates between the classes of the humans and of the Strogg. For example, a GDF (Global Defence Force) commander can give out extra ammunition to his subordinates, but his Strogg counterpart has an asymmetrical capability to install protective fields.
The restoration of health differs between the two races as well: humans are cured by medics while the Strogg have only one source of ammunition and health – the so-called Stroyent substance the technician delivers to the battlefield. Bringing a killed ally to life takes more time for the Strogg, but they have the opportunity to use human bodies as puppets while the human medics must prevent the capture of bodies and the transformation of allies into enemies.
Although weapons of both races have similar specs, the weapons of the humans require reloading while the weapons of the Strogg do not. But being of an energetic nature, Strogg weapons tend to overheat, which results in a delay effect not unlike with human weapons. With all these differences, the game suggests asymmetry between the teams of humans and the Strogg.
All in all, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars has nothing new to contribute to the online shooter genre. The game looks like a Battlefield 2142 carried over into the Quake universe. Thanks to its high-quality implementation and the developer’s name it has a chance to be a success among online gamers. On the other hand, its time on the throne may prove too short due to the upcoming sequel to the Unreal Tournament series that is promised to deliver an unheard-of level of visuals.
From a technical point of view, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars runs on the Doom 3 engine in the OpenGL 2.0 environment, although the engine has been seriously redesigned to meet the modern 3D graphics standards.
The most notable innovation in ET: Quake Wars is the new MegaTexture technology developed by id Software. The traditional method of texture mapping is not ideal as it often leaves visual artifacts like a visible seam between two textures or a repeating texture pattern on large surfaces. The new technology is meant to solve all the problems associated with this traditional method. As its name suggests, the point of MegaTexture is in using one gigantic texture for the entire game level. This texture contains not only scenery data, but also special effects like destruction from bullets and shells, traces of tank tracks, etc.
Each mega-texture ensures a unique, non-repeating landscape for a territory of over 1 square mile without fog. With dimensions of 32768x32768 pixels it takes about 3GB of memory in uncompressed form, but existing compression methods help reduce its size to more acceptable. Moreover, this mega-texture can be loaded dynamically from the hard disk during play.
The use of mega-textures doesn’t push the quality of graphics in ET: Quake Wars to a new level, but makes it neat and free from the defects of the traditional texture-mapping method. It also provides conditions for large-scale and continuous battles.
Waiting for the official release of ET: Quake Wars we couldn’t help trying to run the demo of the game on graphics cards we had in our labs. We used the official demo version of the game that contained one level, Valley, and allowed playing with bots in offline mode.
We tested our graphics cards in Quake Wars on the following testbed:
We recorded about 60 seconds of gameplay in real gaming conditions, with a team run, shooting, explosions, etc. The integrated frame rater limiter and the performance smoothing mechanism were disabled with the console commands “seta com_unlockFPS 1” and “seta com_unlock_timingMethod 0”, respectively.
It is necessary to point out that the game speed is limited at 30fps and this is the rate at which the physical model is being refreshed at the server. This must be enough for EQ: Quake Wars to run smoothly according to id Software. Thus, every result above 30fps is considered acceptable unless the speed drops below 30fps. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t show the minimum of speed.
The choice of the 30fps limit must be due to the fact that ET: Quake Wars is a multi-platform project to be released not only on the PC, but also on the new-generation consoles Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3.
We set up the AMD Catalyst and Nvidia ForceWare drivers in the usual way:
AMD Catalyst:
Nvidia ForceWare:
We selected the highest graphics quality settings in the game. The performance data were obtained with the command “timenetdemo”, which would run the recorded clip and report the average frame rate.
We tested the following graphics cards, divided into four performance classes:
Ultra High-End
High-End
Mainstream
Entry Level
The cards were all tested at three resolutions, 1280x1024, 1600x1200 and 1920x1200 pixels, except for the entry-level solutions which were not tested at 1920x1200. The top-end cards were tested with enabled 4x FSAA besides the ordinary mode with maximum anisotropic filtering.
Notwithstanding the use of mega-textures that require a lot of memory to be stored, the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 1GB, with a GPU frequency of 742MHz, can’t beat the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX or Ultra. On the contrary, it is slower than the GeForce 8800 GTX cards by 30-35% across all of the resolutions. The card from ATI delivers acceptable performance in 1280x1024 only. It has virtually no performance reserve for 1600x1200.
The difference between the top-end products from Nvidia is negligible, not really matching the difference in price. In the highest display resolution the gap between the GeForce 8800 GTX and the Ultra amounts to 5-6% only, both cards maintaining an average frame rate of over 70fps. Thus, they are both suitable for playing the game on a 24” LCD monitor for which the resolution of 1920x1200 pixels is the native one.
There are no significant changes when we enable the most popular antialiasing mode, 4x multisampling. The Radeon HD 2900 XT 1GB is 40-43% behind the GeForce 8800 GTX cards.
Both cards from Nvidia have become somewhat slower, yet deliver a comfortable speed in 1920x1200. The AMD card can pit only 16 texture and 16 raster subunits against the opponents’ 32 and 24 such subunits. As a result, it cannot yield 50fps even in 1280x1024.
Recalling the frame limit of 30fps we can say that the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 1GB is no worse than the Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra or GTX for playing this game. However, our additional test with the Fraps tool showed that the minimum of speed could differ dramatically from the average frame rate, so you shouldn’t disregard everything what is above the 30fps limit.
Nvidia hardware triumphs in the high-end sector, too, with its GeForce 8800 GTS. By the way, the 640MB version of the card has no great advantage over the 320MB version. The gap between them is less than 1fps. We don’t think a mega-texture can fit entirely into 320 megabytes of graphics memory even in compressed form, so this implies that id Software implemented dynamic loading of textures during play.
The ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT is about 15% behind the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB in the resolutions of the 4:3 format. In the more resource-consuming 1920x1200 resolution the gap shrinks to 10-11%, probably due to the ATI card’s 512-bit memory bus. Anyway, the gap isn’t as large as to call the Radeon HD 2900 XT a hopeless loser. We can say that all modern high-end solutions can ensure a comfortable speed in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars at the highest image quality settings.
As for the last-generation solutions, the Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2 does well enough, but this card cannot ensure an appropriate quality of anisotropic filtering. The ATI Radeon X1950 XTX is a definite loser. Although it can keep above 30fps in the most popular resolutions, we suspect its speed is going to drop below the acceptable minimum in the heaviest scenes with a lot of players and equipment models. We recommend you to limit your Radeon X1950 XTX to 1600x1200 in order to avoid slowdowns while playing this game.
Easy to see, the resolution of 1920x1200 pixels is too hard for mainstream graphics cards irrespective of the generation they belong to. The ATI Radeon X1950 Pro looks best of all, yet it cannot provide the required minimum of 30fps.
At a resolution of 1600x1200 all the cards in this category are somewhere around the 30fps mark. The Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS with its 20 TMUs and 16 raster operators is in the lead, but the GeForce 8600 GTS and Radeon X1950 Pro are a mere 0.1 and 0.5fps behind it, respectively. The ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT takes last place as it has only 8 TMUs and 4 ROPs.
Anyway, none of the mainstream graphics cards can provide any reserve of speed in that resolution, so you have to lower the resolution or the level of detail.
Nvidia’s solutions are better in 1024x768, too. And the GeForce 8600 GTS is again slightly ahead of the GeForce 7900 GS despite the 128-bit memory bus. However, they are not far better than ATI’s cards. The Radeon X1950 Pro and Radeon HD 2600 XT can be used just as well. They provide the necessary minimum of speed with a surplus even. Note that the owner of a Radeon X1950 Pro or GeForce 7900 GS doesn’t have to upgrade to a modern DirectX 10 compliant card from the same price category because this wouldn’t give him any performance gains.
The entry-level graphics cards are too slow for playing Enemy Territory: Quake Wars . Neither the ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT nor the Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT can ensure an average frame rate of at least 20fps, let alone higher. You can try to achieve an acceptable speed by switching to lower resolutions or lowering the level of detail, yet this will unavoidably spoil your gaming experience.
The demo-version of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars proved to be not a very hungry consumer of hardware resources. It runs at a normal speed (for a classic shooter, at 50-60fps) not only on top-end graphics cards but also on rather affordable solutions such as Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB and ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB. We’ve also seen again that the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 1GB at its default frequencies is not really worthy of its price and is only meant for overclockers. Enabling 4x FSAA results in a considerable performance hit, making some resolutions unplayable unless you have an Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra/GTX.
Considering that the game has a frame rate limiter set at 30fps, owners of mainstream graphics cards shouldn’t have any performance-related problems, either. This category of cards even have a reserve of speed in the most popular 1280x1024 resolution. The ex-kings of 3D graphics, ATI Radeon X1900 XT/XTX and X1950 XTX, seem to be able to run the game normally at 1600x1200. Thus, it’s only entry-level cards such as GeForce 8500 GT and Radeon HD 2400 XT that are out of the play, yet this is true for every other modern game with high-quality visuals.
It’s clear that the engine of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars prefers Nvidia’s solutions, probably due to their higher texture-mapping and rasterization performance. This is true for top-end solutions, at least. The mainstream cards from ATI and Nvidia do not differ much in their technical characteristics, and Nvidia’s ones do not have an overwhelming advantage. What we could see too is that the game makes no use of the advanced features of the super-scalar ATI Radeon HD 2000 architecture and, as the results of the GeForce 7950 GX2 suggest, is quite satisfied with the capabilities of the last-generation graphics architecture, having a high enough speed on it. In fact, ET: Quake Wars focuses on the number and performance of texture-mapping units while the computing power of shader processors is not the decisive factor, which is actually the case with all the previous games from id Software.
From the gameplay point of view, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is a well-made multiplayer shooter based on the Quake game universe that does not bring fundamental innovations into the genre. As we’ve written above, it may get some degree of popularity among the fans of id Software but may not stand the competition against the upcoming Unreal Tournament 3 which promises a new level of visual quality.
