| BASIC GAME INFORMATION |
Year of construction: 2011
Genre: MMORPG
developer: Bioware
Publishing house: Electronic Arts
Star Wars: The Old Republic is a story-driven massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by BioWare in Austin, Texas, United States. The events in which take place 300 years after the games in the Knights of the Old Republic series. The game was the first fully voice-acted MMO; there are currently versions in English, French and German. The game was announced on October 21, 2008. The release took place on December 20, 2011.
The game takes place approximately 3500 years before the events of the films – a setting that has already given Bioware almost complete freedom, without the need to become attached to the “worn up and down” parties and characters. Many quests contain references to previous parts of the Knights of the Old Republic series. The player can join one of two main factions – the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire.
| THE GRAFICAL PART |
This subsection of our review highlights the main graphical aspects of this game. Particular attention is paid to the version of the graphics engine used, the version of the API used, graphic settings and the quality of development of the main visual aspects.
| Supported OS and graphics API |
Star Wars – The Old Republic is supported by the major Windows operating systems, which include Winows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Other operating systems are not currently supported by the developers and are unlikely to receive support.
The primary and primary graphics API for Star Wars – The Old Republic is DirectX 9.
| Game engine |
The game Star Wars – The Old Republic uses the HeroEngine engine as its basis. HeroEngine WorldBuilder uses the Malleable Terrain Tool, which means that a flat surface can be sculpted like clay into almost any shape, depending on the number of polygons on that surface. And although this tool seems simple and logical, it began to appear only in the most recent versions of the world’s designers, as far as I know. For example, WoW uses an older form of modeling taken from Warcraft 3 World Builder, where hills and ground are created independently of each other without a tile system. This caused WoW players to notice uneven and often “pointy” ground due to the construction kit lacking a leveling tool. Even Valve’s Source engine’s Hammer builder didn’t have such a sophisticated tool for creating terrain. The HeroEngine tool ensures that The Old Republic will have smooth, beautiful landscapes, which will hopefully reduce the chance of getting stuck in the game world when going in the wrong direction.
WorldBuilder uses Texture Layer painting, which means you can layer multiple texture layers on top of each other, such as making a dirt road through a grass field. This tool is relatively new, but it is older than Malleable Terrain. The “Hammer” world builder in the Source engine uses an early version of this tool, which allows you to overlay only 2 textures on top of each other. HeroEngine allows you to overlay up to 4 textures, which makes it possible to create more varied and interesting landscapes, unlike the endless grassy or rocky valleys that you see in WoW.
HeroEngine includes a plant system called Speed Tree. This plant system allows for the creation of vast, dynamic forests. What exactly does “dynamic” mean? SpeedTree’s dynamic plant system allows the designer to define the number of leaves on a tree, the length and width of branches, various external patterns, and so on.
SpeedTree allows the use of Dynamic Wind Effects. This means that the stress applied to the plants will affect the plants themselves. The degree of this influence depends on the detail of the work, but obviously the wind will be present. One possible use for this technology in The Old Republic is for plants to react to your movement through them. They can also react to explosions and the use of Force abilities, but this depends on the level of detail in the game and the desire of the developers to implement all this in the game.
| Advanced Game Settings |
Star Wars – The Old Republic has both basic and advanced graphics settings available. There are five levels of graphics quality available: ultra, high, medium, low and very low. You can also manipulate the settings more flexibly using advanced settings.
Below we have provided screenshots of the game at various graphics settings, where our readers can see the difference between minimum, medium, high and maximum graphics quality settings.
| Low quality settings | ||||
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| Medium quality settings | ||||
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| High quality settings | ||||
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| Very high settings | ||||
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As we can see, there is still a difference in the picture between the graphic settings in Star Wars – The Old Republic.
| General visual design and game physics |
Star Wars – The Old Republic has quite nice graphics, very well in keeping with the spirit of Star Wars – the environment fully immerses us in the vastness of this world. Texture detailing is quite high, and the graphic settings themselves give users room for all possible manipulations.
But at the same time, unfortunately, it’s impossible to call Star Wars – The Old Republic a technological one – the game uses outdated DirectX 9, most likely to attract more players. The physics in the game are mediocre and are more focused on the interaction between characters – there is no destructibility in the game. In general terms, to a distant user, the graphics in the game look outdated and cartoonish.
Well, then we will move directly to gaming tests and determine what impact this game has on modern computer hardware.
| TEST PART |
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Test configuration |
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test stands |
Test bench No. 1 based on the Intel Socket 2 platform011 Test bench No. 2 based on the Intel Socket 1155 platform Test bench No. 3 based on the Intel Socket 1366 platform Test bench No. 4 based on the Intel Socket 115 platform6 Test bench No. 5 based on the AMD Soket AM platform3 Test bench No. 6 based on the AMD Soket AM3 platform Test bench No. 7 based on the AMD Soket AM platform2 Test bench No. 8 based on the Intel Socket 1155 platform Test bench No. 9 based on the AMD Soket AM3 platform Test bench No. 10 based on the AMD Soket AM3 platform+ |
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Multimedia equipment |
3D monitor LG W2363D Monitor LG E2750 Dell U3010 monitor product provided by the company AMD 3D Vision Kit product provided by the company Nvidia |
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Software configuration |
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Operating system |
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Edition x64 SP1 |
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Graphics driver |
Nvidia GeForce/ION Driver Release 304.79 AMD Catalyst 12.7 |
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Monitoring program |
MSI Afterburner v2.2 |
| GPU test |
All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality using MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The average FPS was taken as a performance indicator. Below is a video of the test segment:
Our video cards were tested at different screen sizes of 1680×1050, 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 with the maximum graphics quality settings allowed by Star Wars – The Old Republic. The test was conducted with very high graphics quality settings. Multi-chip configurations from NVIDIA and AMD work without any problems.
Testing at maximum quality settings 1680×1050
At a resolution of 1680×1050 at maximum settings, an acceptable minimum FPS was shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 5750 or GeForce level GTS 450. The optimal video cards will be solutions Radeon HD 5750 or GeForce GTX 550 Ti and above.
Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080
At a resolution of 1920×1080 at maximum settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 5750 or GeForce GTX 550 Ti level again showed an acceptable FPS. The optimal video cards will be solutions Radeon HD 5770 or GeForce GTX 460SE and above.
Testing at maximum quality settings 2560×1600
At a resolution of 2560×1600 at maximum settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 5830 or GeForce GTX 560 level showed an acceptable minimum FPS. The optimal video cards would be Radeon HD 5850 or GeForce GTX 570 and higher.
| VRAM test |
Testing of video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the program MSI Afterburner. The indicator was based on results on top video cards from AMD and NVIDIA with separate screen sizes 1680×1050, 1920×1080 and 2560×1600.
Testing at maximum memory GPU quality settings
The optimal amount of video memory for this game is 700-1000 MB, which is the standard for modern video cards.
| CPU test |
We tested processor dependence on 12 models of basic configurations that are relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the value of video cards for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 1024×768 with minimal graphics quality settings.
Testing at minimum quality settings 1024×768
The game is optimized for 2-core models and more. The presence of four cores in the system does not give such an increase in performance in Star Wars – The Old Republic as we would like…
| RAM test |
Testing of the RAM consumed by the game was carried out by monitoring directly through the Windows task manager. The test was carried out on the basic configuration of Core i 7 [email protected] GHz with 8GB DDR3 2400 MGz pre-installed video memory.
Testing at various quality settings
As we can see, with various quality settings, the amount of RAM consumed in Star Wars – The Old Republic is at the level of 1100 megabytes. Thus, for a comfortable game you need to have minimum 2-x GB of RAM installed in your PC.
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| Тeating 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Rating 95% |
Graphics 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Rating 48% |
Optimization 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Rating 61% |