11th Hour Requirements
Rob Landeros
A Word About Hardware Specifications...
At Trilobyte, we're surpassing the limits of our time. And then some.
Trilobyte designs multimedia entertainment products that maximize the
capabilities of both today's -- and tomorrow's -- multimedia systems.
The 11th Hour was designed and engineered to run at 16 bit (65 thousand
colors), 30 frames per second. It is the first multimedia entertainment
product ever to achieve this frame rate, with this many colors, without
requiring special hardware additions. If your system meets The 11th Hour's
Minimum Specifications -- today's multimedia system standard -- you will
witness this wonder in either full or quarter screen display, depending upon
your particular hardware and preferences.
As a bonus of sorts, The 11th Hour is additionally capable of running at an
extraordinary 24 bit (1.6 million colors), 30 frames per second. If you are
lucky enough to own a system which meets or exceeds The 11th Hour's
Recommended Specifications -- tomorrow's multimedia system standard -- you
will enjoy the ultimate performance offered by The 11th Hour, in full or
quarter screen display, depending, again, upon the capabilities of your
particular hardware as well as your own preferences.
In order to accommodate the widest variety of system capabilities, The 11th
Hour offers "scaleability." Players can tailor video playback screen size
and/or number of colors to savor the finest presentation of The 11th Hour
supported by their systems. Feel free to tinker. It's worth it!
Rob Landeros
Creative Director / Co-founder
Trilobyte
Alan Davis
> The 11th Hour: The Sequel to The 7th Guest
>
> A Word About Hardware Specifications...
>
> At Trilobyte, we're surpassing the limits of our time. And then some.
> Trilobyte designs multimedia entertainment products that maximize the
> capabilities of both today's -- and tomorrow's -- multimedia systems.
>
It's a shame that you think everyone can afford "today's-and
tomorrow's" system, and forgot to support the rest of us who are playing
on a computer which is only one or two years old, and cannot afford the latest upgrade
or computer every time Trilobyte decides to step up the specifications.
I have plenty of speed and ram on my system, but because my video card
has only 256 colors I would have to play your game in black and white.
Since I have only ISA expansion slots I could only buy an Isa video card which
you also do not support.
As far as I know yours is the only game on the market that has abandoned support
for such computers. That's not my idea of progress.
Rob Landeros
Alan Davis <ada...@omni.voicenet.com> wrote:
>It's a shame that you think everyone can afford "today's-and
>tomorrow's" system, and forgot to support the rest of us who are playing
>on a computer which is only one or two years old, and cannot afford the
latest upgrade
>or computer every time Trilobyte decides to step up the specifications.
> I have plenty of speed and ram on my system, but because my video card
>has only 256 colors I would have to play your game in black and white.
> Since I have only ISA expansion slots I could only buy an Isa video card
which
>you also do not support.
> As far as I know yours is the only game on the market that has abandoned
support
>for such computers. That's not my idea of progress.
Obviously, we have some basic differences of opinion when it comes to which
platforms it makes sense to support. Basically, the platform which we have
chosen for the initial release of 11h is that of MPC2. We have a fine piece
of software that can make a PC sing, and it wants a good instrument on which
to play. I think if you were in our shoes, you'd choose the same.
In a way, I guess it comes down to that old philosophical question of whether
you think the glass is half empty or half full. If your system is not of the
MPC2 platform, I suppose the glass must look pretty empty. Perhaps Graeme and
I cannot ease your minds (short of rewriting 11h or funding an upgrade to your
system), but we are here on-line with you, listening to your concerns. And we
appreciate the time you've taken to express them.
For those of you who see the glass as half full, we are here to offer any
support you might need so that you may enjoy a refreshing and quite tasty
beverage.
Todd Sinclair
>It's a shame that you think everyone can afford "today's-and
>tomorrow's" system, and forgot to support the rest of us who are playing
>on a computer which is only one or two years old, and cannot afford the
latest upgrade
>or computer every time Trilobyte decides to step up the specifications.
Dude, get used to it. THere's ALWAYS something better than what you have. If
you went out and bought the absolute best stuff you could today, tommorrow
there would be something better. Sure, it sucks not being able to run some
programs because your computer isn't good enough. I had a 386-20 for ages.
But if it wasn't for companies putting out games that require fast computers,
the technology would not take off like it has. If no one supported the
Soundblaster when it came out (since hey.. people with PC Speakers couldn't
hear the sound!), then we wouldn't have soundcards today. Some companies make
programs, others make programs that push computers to their limits.
And I'd be willing to bet that 90% or more of computers bought this year have
VLB video cards with SVGA ability... and I'm sure you'd be hard pressed to
find a SVGA card that can't do millions of colors! It's not Trilobyte's fault
your computer, well, sucks (I know what that is like). If they overestimated
the number of computers that can run 11th Hour, then they'll pay for it
(literally). If not, then they'll do rather well. But face it... you HAVE to
upgrade. Games, especially ones using 3d engines and full-motion video,
aren't going sit around and wait for you to upgrade...
vak...@imap1.asu.edu
: It's a shame that you think everyone can afford "today's-and
: tomorrow's" system, and forgot to support the rest of us who are playing
: on a computer which is only one or two years old, and cannot afford the latest upgrade
: or computer every time Trilobyte decides to step up the specifications.
: has only 256 colors I would have to play your game in black and white.
: Since I have only ISA expansion slots I could only buy an Isa video card which
: you also do not support.
: As far as I know yours is the only game on the market that has abandoned support
: for such computers. That's not my idea of progress.
Think about the notion of backwards compatibility. From a
technical standpoint, EVERYONE's PC is obsolete. The ISA bus has already
been deemed as an obsolete architecture in 1988! However, because of the
number of cards out there that supports the ISA bus standard, it was
retained for the sake of "backwards compatibility."
It gets to a point where eventually backwards compatibility will
be counter-progressive for the industry as a whole. Yours is an
excellent case for backwards compatibility, but is it reasonable to
expect an obsolete piece of technology to perform feats it was NEVER
designed to do? Of course not! That is the price of PROGRESS.
We should applaud Trilobyte for not being too shackled to the
past and the trappings of TOTAL Backwards compatibility. Instead, they
chose to be backwardly compatible enough to allow for future growth in
the industry.
If your board cannot support anything but ISA slots, you might
want to consider upgrading your motherboard (and video card) - it's a lot
cheaper than buying a whole new system outright. But, you and I, like
everyone else on this Earth cannot avoid the inevitable time when your
equipment goes obsolete.
Mike
Stephen A. Gutknecht
> It's a shame that you think everyone can afford "today's-and
> tomorrow's" system, and forgot to support the rest of us who are playing
> on a computer which is only one or two years old, and cannot afford the latest upgrade
> or computer every time Trilobyte decides to step up the specifications.
> I have plenty of speed and ram on my system, but because my video card
> has only 256 colors I would have to play your game in black and white.
> you also do not support.
> As far as I know yours is the only game on the market that has abandoned support
> for such computers. That's not my idea of progress.
Jesus Alan, it's not like you HAVE to have this game to stay alive!
Can't the rest of us see "tommorow's technology -- today" and enjoy it. The 7th Guest is still
selling, and it had complaints like your TWO YEARS AGO. A game like the 11th Hour will still look good
in two years, if your system isn't ready, play one of the other 10,000 games on the market.
I for one, am glad that we have this game, the way it is in respect to underlying technology. Because
of it, it paves the technical road for future high-quality games. When these other titles come out, in
one year or so, the systems will be ready because of people who are working with it NOW, not just
complaining. THAT IS PROGRESS.
Stephen Gutknecht
sgut...@computek.net
W C Newell Jr
In article <49en8k$1...@marvin.tbyte.com>, Rob Landeros <r...@tbyte.com> wrote:
>[assorted customer complaints about 11th Hour performance deleted]
>
>Obviously, we have some basic differences of opinion when it comes to which
>platforms it makes sense to support. Basically, the platform which we have
>chosen for the initial release of 11h is that of MPC2.
First off, Trilobyte needs to send someone to school and learn what the MPC
specs really are, and then have that person train the rest of the company.
MPC2 = 486/25, 2x CD-ROM, and 640x480x256 video (NOT VLB, and NOT 16-bit
color). For full-motion video, MPC2 was intended to support 1/4 screen
windows at up to 15 fps.
The minute you start talking about full-motion 30 fps video (without depending
on hardware MPEG or MPEG2 support), you're immediately way beyond what you can
expect from an MPC2 system, so to claim the game will run on any MPC2 platform
is nothing short of false advertising. From what I have read in the gaming
literature over the last year or so (and from what Trilobyte employees have
posted in this very newsgroup), I thought the game was designed to support 256
colors and to adjust its frame rate as necessary to run reasonably on "low-end"
486/66 systems. Such is the industry standard today for any adventure game
using full-motion video and/or high frame rate animation. I seem to recall
that the game which so firmly established the need for broad flexibility was a
little something called "The 7th Guest".
Having said all that, I fully expected to be able to run 11H in 16-bit color
mode on my "low-end" system, a 486DX/50 20 Mb with an ATI Graphics Ultra Pro
VLB (Mach32) 2 MB video card, NEC 3x CD-ROM, and PAS-16 + RAP-10 + MT-32 sound.
I'm not heavily into flight sims, but I've run other performance testers such
as WC3, Links 386 Pro, ST:TNG Final Unity, and a variety of full-motion video
titles on this machine without a hitch. (This is my third PC, and it's three
years old, and I'm buying a new Pentium after the 1st of the year, so please
send the flames to someone else.) 11th Hour's performance is terrible by
comparison.
I had much the same installation problems as have been reported by other Mach32
owners (video squished into top 1/8 of screen, very choppy sound, and the
system hangs). I diagnosed these symptoms to mean a problem with properly
initializing the board, which could be a bug in either the UNIVBE driver or
the game itself. I'm inclined to blame the game, since I've played other
titles recently (e.g. "Final Unity") which ran fine in 16-bit color mode using
the exact same versions of UNIVBE (5.1a) and UVCONFIG.
I found that if I ran anything else that would set up the board in 16-bit color
mode before running 11th Hour, then the Welcome screen would come up just fine.
Then I discovered that if I actually tried to run the game, the screen would
blank and the system would hang. I was trying to run in 1/4 screen and
interlaced mode from the start (remembering that I have a "low-end" system),
so it took some head-scratching and trial-and-error to figure out that I had
to also turn the page flipping off to get it to run (even though the ATI
supports hardware page flipping, and in fact it's a strong performance booster
for applications which support it). Again, I'm inclined to blame this on a
bug in the game, a conclusion influenced by the >many< Trilobyte posts telling
people with other cards to turn the page flipping off. I also tried to run
some of the "Making Of" videos, and in every case the system would hang,
although for some of them it would put up a nice "Please Insert Disk 2" box
first, so I'd pop in disk 2 and wait and wait, until I guessed the part about
the page flipping.
At that point the introduction ran and the video clips all looked OK, albeit a
bit slower than I expected for my card. I believe that if the page flipping
support was fixed, the clips would run as intended. Throughout all of this,
however, the sound was a mess, of which more below. And once I got into the
mansion, I found that the frame rate for the animations was a lot lower,
noticably worse than what I got for 7th Guest using the same configuration.
It took 10 seconds (!) to move each piece in the chess puzzle. Why should that
be so difficult? More significantly, I don't see anything in the design of the
mansion which would compel 16-bit color resoltion for the backgrounds. The
mansion looks pretty much the same to me as it did in 7th Guest, obviously
with new objects in new places, and showing some signs of wear. I could have
played this in a 256-color mode for animations, if there was one, and been very
happy.
And now to the stated subject of this message, the choppy sound. I fully
expected that the steps taken to get the video working would also improve the
sound, but they appeared to have no effect. To solve the puzzle, I had to
start thinking like Stauff/Trilobyte. It turns out that the scheme being used
to force 30 fps video generates so many video interrupts that it effectively
"locks out" the sound card, which is why the voices are always clear in the
Gamebook and in the mansion when nothing is moving, and why there are a lot of
little gaps in the sound whenever there is significant animation or a video
clip running.
(For the benefit of neophytes, this is a crude explanation of how it works.
Every card in the PC which needs to interrupt what the CPU is doing and get its
assistance in processing that card's particular function is assigned an
interrupt request, or IRQ, number. The video and sound cards each have one.
The numbers are significant, since they determine the order in which the CPU
handles the interrupt requests. The lower the IRQ number, the higher the
priority it gets from the CPU. So a video card, which almost always uses
IRQ 2, will always have a higher priority than a sound card using IRQ 5 or 7 or
12. The priority levels are pre-emptive, i.e. if a bunch of requests from the
IRQ 2 card come in one after the other, the CPU will field them all, even if
the card with IRQ 12 has an interrupt request of its own and has been waiting.
The CPU has no way to "rotate" its attention to all of the cards in sequence;
Intel didn't design it that way. (And if there are other cards in the system
with IRQ #s lower than the sound card, e.g. network controllers, SCSI
controllers, etc., they can make it that much harder for the sound card to
get the CPU's attention, even if it's needed.)) A similar rule applies to the
DMA port numbers as well, but I won't go into the cause/effect here.
I found that the "Mr. Death" song was very choppy when played behind the
Welcome screen, but appeared to play normally when in the Setup screen.
Moving the cursor around affected the sound speed signficantly; the eyeball
had negligible effect on sound, whereas any of the skeleton hands brought back
the sound gaps, hence the choppiness. All of this was using the PAS-16 for
both speech and music. I found that when I changed the DAC selection to the
RAP-10, I could no longer get past the welcome screen; in fact, the cursor
was stuck as an eyeball and would not move at all. The "Mr. Death" song was
played back at much better resolution and appeared to have fewer gaps, but it
also played at least twice as slowly as the PAS-16 DAC. This behavior is
consistent with the fact that the RAP-10 has two DACs (stereo) of much higher
resolution, and generates more interrupts than the PAS-10. I also tried to
switch the music to either of my two MIDI devices, and never got anything out
of them.
Readers may have guessed that I took the game back for a refund. My assessment
is that the minimum requirements stated on the box are much too low; 11th Hour
realistically requires a Pentium, probably at least a P90, and even more if
using a MIDI device and/or a non-SB DAC. Unfortunately, the sound is likely
to be messed up even on some high end Pentium systems, since on those machines
the game is using the extra CPU cycles to speed up the video processing, which
in turn generates a lot more interrupts, which serve to slow down the sound
card.
Things that can be done to help improve the sound: Remove all non-essential
interrupt-driven cards from the PC, in particular any network cards or special
hardware interfaces, such as for a scanner. If the system has a SCSI
controller, check its manual to see what is the highest IRQ # it can be given.
If at all possible, it should have a higher IRQ than the sound card. If the
SCSI IRQ cannot be changed, then remove any non-essential SCSI devices. And
finally, if you have a choice between an 8-bit and a 16-bit sound driver,
choose the 8-bit driver, e.g. if you have a PAS-16 card, choose the generic
Soundblaster driver instead. If none of that is applicable or if it doesn't
make a significant difference, complain to Trilobyte -- it is the programmer's
responsibility to ensure that the application doesn't demand so much from one
particular device (in this case the video) that it unduly interferes with the
rest of the system.
>We have a fine piece
>of software that can make a PC sing, and it wants a good instrument on which
>to play. I think if you were in our shoes, you'd choose the same.
Dance, yes; sing, no. I have no problem, personally, with the idea of trying
to push the performance envelope, but the box (and the advertising, press
releases, and various public comments by Trilobyte employees) should reflect
the true requirements to run the game smoothly, and I suggest that some
significant misrepresentations have been made.
>In a way, I guess it comes down to that old philosophical question of whether
>you think the glass is half empty or half full. If your system is not of the
>[required] platform, I suppose the glass must look pretty empty.
>Perhaps Graeme and
>I cannot ease your minds (short of rewriting 11h or funding an upgrade to your
>system), but we are here on-line with you, listening to your concerns. And we
>appreciate the time you've taken to express them.
Real Gamers, much like Real Programmers, don't drink from glasses; it's
straight from the can, or die.
In a way, I guess it comes down to that old philosophical question of whether
you think my computer desk is half empty or half full. If your product is not
in my new stack of holiday goodies, I suppose the desk must look pretty empty.
Perhaps I cannot ease your mind (short of repurchasing 11H and upgrading my
system), but I am here on-line with you, listening to your disclaimers.
>For those of you who see the glass as half full, we are here to offer any
>support you might need so that you may enjoy a refreshing and quite tasty
>beverage.
And for those of you who see my desk as half full, you will note the space
being taken up by The Dig, Torin's Passage, Shannara, and CivNet...
--
Bill Newell
w...@biostat.washington.edu
I must be working too hard. Last night I had a dream that the great French
impressionist Monet came back to life and asked me to tutor him on desktop
computing and graphics applications. I proceeded to do this, and he showed
his gratitude by giving me a new painting which represented one of his first
impressions of the modern world. It was entitled, "Woman With Cellular Phone".
Ed Jankovsky
: product ever to achieve this frame rate, with this many colors, without
: requiring special hardware additions. If your system meets The 11th Hour's
: Minimum Specifications -- today's multimedia system standard -- you will
: witness this wonder in either full or quarter screen display, depending upon
: your particular hardware and preferences.
: Rob Landeros
: Creative Director / Co-founder
: Trilobyte
I can't believe this was posted.. from everything I've read, people with
much more than the minimum are having major problems.. I have a system
that meets the minimum.. P5 overdrive, 32 Megs Ram, Diamond Stealth
Video, and SB AWE 32 with 4x CD/ROM and I am witnessing in some form of
wonder.. I'm wondering what you were hoping for.
So far, walking around the house is much much slower than T7G, it's takes
almost 11 hours to make it from room to room without right clicking.
Watching the video clips the sound gets choppy that you almost cannot
understand what is being said. I'm just waiting for some clue to be
missed because the sound is bad. I've tried every combination that has
been recommended here, and none show any difference at all.
There's no excuse for the video playback to be this bad, especially when
I read of people with P90's having problems..
Allie Davidson
In article <30C099...@computek.net>,
Think of it this way Alan, it's something to look forward to when you
upgrade. I'm stuck on a sh*tty 486/25 and get around CPU requirements
by having a good scsi card, a fast CDrom and the best video card I can
afford (that runs on an ISA bus). I can run most games with 66mghz specs.
As much as I'd like all the games on the market to run on my outdated piece
of offal..uh... machine, I'd rather see cutting edge games out on the market
because one of these days (when I convince my husband or hold him up at
shotgun point which ever occures first) I'm going to get a kickass 133mghz
pentium (by then we'll probably be looking at 200+mghz systems).
Uh, sorry about that horribly long sentence.
I suppose though all my blabber above I am trying to say; the games will be
there when we upgrade and being able to finally view them in all their
cutting edge glory will be worth the wait.
-Allie (I'm excited 'cause it looks like the Riddle of Master Lu will
run on my poor excuse for a computer system, but I'll have to do some
*serious* upgrading before I can run Crusader: No Remorse *BUMMER*)
--
==============================================================================
all...@sco.com #
Geek by trade, # /earth is 98% full, please delete anyone you can.
artist at heart #
==============================================================================
Wayne Hixson
wrote:
>
>First off, Trilobyte needs to send someone to school and learn what the MPC
>specs really are, and then have that person train the rest of the company.
>MPC2 = 486/25, 2x CD-ROM, and 640x480x256 video (NOT VLB, and NOT 16-bit
>color). For full-motion video, MPC2 was intended to support 1/4 screen
>windows at up to 15 fps.
>
>
>Having said all that, I fully expected to be able to run 11H in 16-bit color
>mode on my "low-end" system, a 486DX/50 20 Mb with an ATI Graphics Ultra Pro
>VLB (Mach32) 2 MB video card, NEC 3x CD-ROM, and PAS-16 + RAP-10 + MT-32 sound.
>I'm not heavily into flight sims, but I've run other performance testers such
>as WC3, Links 386 Pro, ST:TNG Final Unity, and a variety of full-motion video
>titles on this machine without a hitch. (This is my third PC, and it's three
>years old, and I'm buying a new Pentium after the 1st of the year, so please
>send the flames to someone else.) 11th Hour's performance is terrible by
>comparison.
>
"486DX/66 Required Minimum, Pentium recommended"
So I'm not sure why you expected a DX/50 to be able to run it
satisfactorily?
Wayne Hixson
Seattle, Washington USA
cyg...@halcyon.com
Volker Seitz
You wrote:
>I can't believe this was posted.. from everything I've read, people with
>much more than the minimum are having major problems.. I have a system
>that meets the minimum.. P5 overdrive, 32 Megs Ram, Diamond Stealth
>Video, and SB AWE 32 with 4x CD/ROM and I am witnessing in some form of
>wonder.. I'm wondering what you were hoping for.
I had very much problems too, but I fixed them all!
I'm having a 486dx4-120, 24Meg, Vesa VLB 1MB, 6xTeac and it works at
last!
>So far, walking around the house is much much slower than T7G, it's takes
>almost 11 hours to make it from room to room without right clicking.
>Watching the video clips the sound gets choppy that you almost cannot
>understand what is being said. I'm just waiting for some clue to be
>missed because the sound is bad. I've tried every combination that has
>been recommended here, and none show any difference at all.
I cannot solve the slow motion inhouse for you, 'cause it must be
programmed so sloooooowwww, I don't know why either!
But I think I can help you with the sound! I have a Ensoniq Elite and
there is a seperate CPU (68000) on it that helps sound going faster
without reducing CPU-Speed for other things. But I cannot play the
videos with stereo sound and full screen! So I changed the setup to
1/4 screen and it works great! No bad sound at all! If you don't have
a CPU on your soundboard, I think your Main-CPU is overcome at
videotime! So you have to go to Mono sound -> halfen your soundcard
working!!!! It could be the page flipping, but if you don't have any
flickering under the trailer it won't!
For all of you:
1) If you have graphic-problems: change setup to 1/4 screen, and if
this doesn't work, change to interlaced mode (it's not too bad)
2) If you have sound-problems, change to mono!!
3) If the trailer flickers, change page flipping to off, 'cause the
game will crash otherwise.
4) Don't change ever to 8bit mode, 'cause this needs more CPU than
16bit!!!! I don't know why but it's so!
5) If you have the "System error: ...frame buffer..." error you have
to change your system-files: NO SMARTDRV! BUT YOU MUST HAVE EMM386
with no other option installed! It worked with my system! Crazy error
message! It took me 5 hours to read between the lines!
>There's no excuse for the video playback to be this bad, especially when
>I read of people with P90's having problems..
It needs too much CPU-time! I agree to you all!
Bye
Volker