Date:
Monday , June 15, 2009
Author:
Mark Warner
Editor:
Brent Justice
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Demigod Gameplay Performance and IQ

Demigod arrived ahead of schedule amid uproarious approval of its graphical splendor and downcast horror of its networking abomination. Focusing in on its graphical splendor, we will find out which video card best fits your needs in this game, testing no less than seven cards in performance and image quality.

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Graphics Options in Demigod

To be frank, the graphics options in Demigod are simple. There are only eight settings, and only four of those are unique in any way. The anti-aliasing option is great as AA selectors go, but there is no in-game anisotropic texture filtering option at all. Luckily, forcing AF works from the video card control panels, and enhanced AA modes work too, but it would be nice if, for once, we could have access to more advanced controls without having to manipulate settings outside the game.

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Screen Resolution

The first option is Screen Resolution, which allows the gamer to choose between all of the resolutions that his graphics card and display are capable of.

VSYNC

The next option, Vertical Sync, is a toggling option that can force the game to only update frames during the monitor’s vertical refresh state, which can reduce flicking or tearing on some displays, at the cost of a certain amount of mouse precision.

Fidelity Presets

The Fidelity Presets option allows the gamer to quickly set all of the options to Low, Medium, or High. Note that changing this option automatically enables Vertical Sync.

Fidelity

The Fidelity option is basically a shader quality control. Lowering it disables things like snow and smoke effects, as well as detail textures. Note that setting Fidelity to Low automatically disables shadows and disables the slider itself.

Shadow Fidelity

The Shadow Fidelity option allows the gamer to control the quality of shadows cast by objects and players in the game. During our testing, we found that there is very little difference in performance and image quality between High and Medium. When the option is set to Low, the stencil shadows are replaced with blob shadows which look very odd and unnatural. When set to Off, shadows disappear entirely and the game takes on a whole new atmosphere, looking as if all lighting is disabled and replaced with a dim ambient lighting model.

Texture Detail

The Texture Detail option controls the resolution of textures used for landscape objects, buildings, players, and minions. Using a high setting requires more video memory than using a low setting.

LOD

The Level of Detail option lowers the geometric detail of landscape objects and buildings. In practice, the difference is extremely minor, and the difference in performance is nonexistent.

Overall, the graphics options are in Demigod have varied effects. The Shadow Fidelity option is most critical, followed by the general Fidelity option; it must be at Medium or above if you want the game to look right. The Texture Resolution has a noticeable impact on IQ, if not performance (unless your video card is limited by its memory.) Finally, the Level of Detail option does next to nothing.

Gameplay Testing Scenario

Demigod is mostly a multiplayer game. The nature of multiplayer games is that they are unpredictable. This is what makes them fun and exciting, but unfortunately, it makes them inconsistent for testing video cards. We like to be able to reproduce precisely the same procedure for every test we perform. In a multiplayer game, you just don’t have that kind of control we strive for. Fortunately, Demigod has a single-player skirmish mode versus computer-controlled AI opponents, which is what we used to for our gameplay evaluation.

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During our play-testing, we found that the "Mandala" arena presented the most challenge to our graphics cards. It is a large arena, capable of supporting five on five player games. For our evaluation procedure, we loaded up the "Mandala" arena with ourselves plus five AI opponents. We chose the Queen of Thorns player for our use, and on our team added the Rook and Unclean Beast demigods. For the opposing team, we selected the Sedna, Regulus, and Oak demigods. We disabled the Fog of War, because we found that added load of all the demigods, opposing minions, and their buildings to be more demanding than the fog effect. For the game mode, we chose Conquest, which required that we destroy the opposing team’s citadel for victory. Our test play lasts about five minutes; since performance does not diminish the longer we played any given arena.