Based on Acclaim's forthcoming Descent-killer, Forsaken takes you into a futuristic world where the Earth is now a barren wasteland and every scavenger in the known universe is grabbing anything that's not nailed down.
Exploring via a first-person persepctive in darkened tunnels and abandoned corridors, Forsaken uses just about every known D3D trick in the book, including tons of alpha-blended transparencies, blended colored lighting effects, and texture-mapped polygons galore.
The benchmark uses about 3MBs worth of textures.
Installation:
This benchmark requires DirectX 5.0.
Once the program is successfully installed, it will create a four new selections inside the Forsaken Benchmark folder located on your START/PROGRAMS button.
- Forsaken Benchmark (runs the test at 320x200 D3D)
- Forsaken benchmark for 3Dfx (runs the test via native Glide API)
- Forsaken benchmark for PowerVR (runs the test via native PowerSGL API)
- Forsaken benchmark in Hi-Res (the one we always use, this runs the benchmark at 640x480)
After the initial splash-screen is displayed, press RETURN to start your run. This will take roughly 3-4 minutes, depending on your system. After which, the splash screens will appear again. On the second splash screen will be your average FPS written in blue in the lower center of the screen. To Quit, simply press the ESC key and choose Quit.
Notes: Try running the test in different resolutions to see how well your video card and system handles D3D double-buffered apps at 800x600 or higher.
Do this by pressing the ESC key, which brings up on options menu. Use the arrow keys to highlight your selection, and press ENTER to go in. Pressing ESC within the menus will move back one step.
For video cards, we record results at 512x384, 640x480x, 800x600, and 1024x768.
If you get problems with transparencies, such as white boxes where glowing projectiles should be, you'll need to play with your texture formats under the options menu.
Once you're done recording your results, run the test again for visual quality by starting another run of the ForsakenMark, and then slowing the playback speed down by setting the playback speed to 14 or greater in the options menu. This means moving the highlighter number to the right.
Look for MIP-mapping quality by looking far down a corridor and checking to see if you can spot MIP maps popping in as you get closer to a spot. When weapons are fired, look at the blended lighting effects and check to make sure you're getting the correct color mixing with the terrain textures. Semi-transparencies are also present in explosions, so look for them. Look down corridors for proper perspective correction, and when you bump up real close to a wall, look at filtering quality.
Range: 30fps is the bare minimum you should accept, with 60fps being the sweetspot. After that, anything higher is all gravy.
