Ok, time to report my experience.

I bought the game directly from the developer. Payment and downloading the installation file were simple and hassle-free.

My desktop is an Intel i5-2500, 8GB Ram, Nvidia 570GTX, Windows 7 SP1 x64 PC, far exceeding the game's recommended specs.

Installation was smooth. It let me choose the drive and directory it would install to, and after it was done, it checked for .Net framework and DirectX installations, both of which were up-to-date, so it did nothing. It did not ask or attempt to install anything related to AMD CPUs. 

This is, however, where the problems started. First of all, it did not create a desktop shortcut, a start menu folder or an icon in the Win 7 Games tab. I had to hunt for the game's executable in the installation folder, and it does not help that it's named UDK.exe (from Unreal Development Kit, used to develop the game).  A gamer without Windows or even other games using UDK experience could have a frustrating time even finding out how to get the game to start.

For the record, the correct path is

installation folder\Binaries\Win32\UDK.exe.

So, the game starts. First thing I check are the Options. More problems. While the game correctly auto-configured for my resolution (1980x1020) and fullscreen, which is how I like it but I know many gamers prefer to play in windowed mode, I could not manually change any of the options. Shadow Quality, Vsync, AntiAliasing, Anisotropic Filtering and Motion Blur all resolutely remained at their default values, no matter what I did. Clicking on any of the options produced a sound like a book page being turned, but it had no other effect.

Well, the default values being somewhat lower than I prefer them but still good enough, I clicked new game.

Ok, the graphics are nice, but I immediately noticed the flickering in the lower part of of the screen when moving around that CB also experienced. This looking like a rendering rather than performance problem (MSI Afterburner reported a rock steady 60FPS. This is in itself somewhat strange, as Vsync was Off in the game options. Either the game uses VSync regardless of Options selection, or it has an internal frame buffer set to 60FPS. The latter case could cause problems to people with fancy 120Hz monitors), I decided to take rendering options away from the game's control.

I used Nvidia's Control Panel to create a custom profile for The Five Cores, set to completely ignore the game's own 3D rendering settings and use the ones I wanted directly off the GPU. I believe the most important concerning the flickering problem is Vsych, which should be ON, but I generally chose the maximum quality values for all available options.

I've heard that ATI/AMD has recently added the option to create custom game profiles to Catalyst Control Center, but I have no personal experience on the matter.

At any rate, it worked. After a lot more fiddling than should be necessary for a newly released game to run and render properly, the game works fine, the flickering issue resolved and no other weirdness obvious in the fifteen or so minutes I got to actually play.

I will also try it on my laptop and report back.

Thanks for the update MrI. The problems seem fussy but not insurmountable - hopefully.

BTW, ATI/AMD has had a custom game profiler in their CCC for some time though I usually adjust on the fly..

EDIT: just DL'd and installed on fresh W7/SP1. It automatically installed .NET Framework [that's okay since I didn't have it in, but there was no option to cancel had I not wanted to proceed], automatic reboot, followed by the game install itself which went smoothly to a directory of my choosing. No game shortcut or program group, but there was a shortcut in the start bar 'recent apps panel'. Curious, I navigated to the game install folder anyway and made my own shortcut.

The game fired up and all Options were available, and game ran smoothly with no graphical hitches. My system differs:

W7-64/SP1 [2 day old install], AMD 4-core 555BE @ 4.05, ASUS Crosshair V, 2x ATI HD 5770 crossfire, Catalyst drivers v12.8, 8gb PC2133.

Perhaps The Five Cores is more AMD/Catalyst friendly? Next up I'll install to XP/SP3 which is parked in the same rig...

TFC looks really promising...

Mmm, this game is sounding more and more like it was not sufficiently beta tested, and the designer apparently didn't do enough market research.  I think a lot of people will buy the game and ultimately ask for their money back. What a pity.

I have been playing the game problem free since it was released. Downloaded from the games web site. Just love the game and I give my kudos to the effort this Myst lover has given, it must have been a labor of love.  Hope to see more from him.

BTW

Win XP Pro SP3

Just a brief update to say thanks for the updates. With the laptop I've already turned off such things as 'use application settings' in CCC. Other than a slightly choppy framerate (what I suppose one might expect with that piece of budget hardware) it runs well enough to play on the fly or wherever.

I'm curious though so I guess I'll have to take another look at what GPU settings I'm running at currently on the PC. Aside from VSync, switched now to 'on' in options, the immediate solution to resolving the flickering issue is to turn motion blur to 'off.' No idea what the conflict might be. Anyhow, my feeling though is that unless you are tweeking your mediocre machine to get the best possible performance from a high end game you shouldn't have to worry about customizing specific profiles.

BTW- In case everyone hasn't noticed, when you use the mouse to select options or saves or whatever, place the cursor slightly to the left of the text.  

Originally Posted By CB (17 SEP 2012 7:55pm)

BTW- In case everyone hasn't noticed, when you use the mouse to select options or saves or whatever, place the cursor slightly to the left of the text.

Yes - threw me at first but so far the only hiccup! Very interesting AG so far but I still miss good old node-based point-n-click haha... I just navigated the nearer portions of the island to make sure everything was running smooth, now I'll dive into it more seriously...

The laptop experience

Intel i5-540M @ 2.40Ghz

4GB RAM

ATI 4570M GPU

Win 7 SP1 x32

The installation was completed successfully without any issues. No desktop shortcuts, start menu folders or Windows Game Explorer icon created this time either, I again had to hunt for the executable in the installation folder. Am I the only one with this issue? There doesn't appear to be an option during installation for shortcut/start menu folder creation like most modern games have.

In-game Options seem to be working properly this time, so I didn't have to fiddle with custom profiles.

Performance is just about acceptable with every graphics option available turned to the lowest possible value, and resolution set to 1440x900, my laptop's native one.

FPS hold steady to about 20, which is not smooth, but  still playable. I am sure that if shadows could be completely disabled (they can only be set to "Low", not "off") I would get a more comfortable 25FPS. Turning even one of the graphics settings a single notch up causes the FPS to plummet to unplayable levels. This is due to the intergrated GPU, which is better than anything Intel had at the time, but still not meant for gaming.

It is fairly obvious you need a somewhat modern (within the past 3 years) mid-range gaming GPU in either your desktop or laptop to really run The Five Cores with a comfortable frame rate. The game does reward with very nice visuals, it remains to be seen if the actual gameplay is good.

Well, I fully expected to be among the smug ones, who had no problem installing and playing this game, but alas, it is not to be.

My system is running Windows 7 home premium, 64-bit version, but the game installer says I need XP service pack 3 anyway!

It will not install the .net framework. So here I sit, ten bucks poorer, and a bit more frustrated. 

Interesting.  I believe W7 can be run in XP mode, perhaps W7 needs to be configured in a specific way in order for the installer to work.  

I've been updating myself on all things to do with laptops and Shader model 3. Virtually all of my 'powerful' gaming laptops are Sony Vaios. All of them are now older than 5 years, but they are still no slouches. The biggest is the Vaio 380G which has a 2.7g CPU and Nvidia Fx Go 5600 graphics. This was one of the first GPUs for laptops that was capable of emulating some pretty good desktop GPUs of the time, but it can only handle Shader model 2. It's interesting that you need to have Directx 9.0c or above to run Shader 3, but just because you can run Directx 9.0c (which the Vaio 380G does) doesn't mean you have Shader 3.

What's interesting for me is that the laptop that failed to install The Five Cores, allegedly due to GPU limitations, was my Vaio S460 which has the Nvidia Fx Go 6200 GPU which apparently can & does run Shader model 3. Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to retry the TFC installation at the moment, but if I get some time this weekend, I'll give it a go. I'll start by seeing if there's a GPU Driver upgrade available and then if so, I'll go ahead and install it and then MS .Net Framework 4 just to get it out of the way. Even if I get it going, I have a feeling that the S460 is too borderline in the CPU department to run the game well, but I'm still interested in giving it a try.

Now having educated myself on the subject, I feel as if my perspective is more up to date and even with that being so, I still think it's unfortunate that TFC was developed with requirements that would be similar to the various recent shooters, wargames etc. Obviously, I haven't run TFC, but the only thing that will convince me that I'm out to lunch on this subject is if it turns out that TFC does some things that are noticeable improvement on URU which required a pretty good GPU at the time.

Ok, yesterday I installed The Five Cores  to my fresh Win7/SP1 build, it went in nice and clean, and  today I installed it to my XP/SP3 which resides on the same rig ["dual" boot from BIOS] and all went off without a hitch.... hmmm... 

No wonder I didn't have a problem launching the game from the laptop. After the installation was done I chose the play option and thus the game, for my convenience, automatically left an icon on the start menu.

Oh well, hopefully by now I had every expectation that everyone interested in the game had overcome their unique difficulties challenges or whatever to get this thing up and running and was on board. I even had high hopes for some sort of community playthrough. Sadly I'm at the point where I could really use a hint before I transport via the red or green crystals with no knowledge as to how to return to base as I sincerely doubt that I have done everything possible on the original island on which I have landed on.

Someone, please tell me what is wrong with installing the net framework program?

Is there a problem? I've had it on my XP rig for some time, and in W7 now since installing TFC...

By the way, I tried installing dotNet from the t5c installer, and I also tried downloading it and installing directly from Microsoft. It won't install either way.

As regards running Windows 7 in XP mode; yes it's possible, but not without a ninety-dollar upgrade from home premium to professional. Another Gotcha. This game might be worth ten bucks, but not a hundred.

It would not matter if you did get the upgrade. Windows 7 Professional (and above) Edition's Virtual XP Mode is meant to provide backwards compatibility with professional applications and tools. It does not support DirectX acceleration, so you can't run games that require it in this mode.

cheaper/better/easier just to have XP loaded on another physical drive you can't boot to!

Originally Posted By Tally Ho (19 SEP 2012 11:30am)

By the way, I tried installing dotNet from the t5c installer, and I also tried downloading it and installing directly from Microsoft. It won't install either way.

 

As regards running Windows 7 in XP mode; yes it's possible, but not without a ninety-dollar upgrade from home premium to professional. Another Gotcha. This game might be worth ten bucks, but not a hundred.

Just my 2 pennies - could you maybe try d/l VMware Player 4 (it has 3D acceleration) and create an XP virtual machine or Virtual Box and create an XP VM (VB also has 3D acceleration) as long as you still have your XP install discs. I did this already on my Win 7 Home Premium Acer laptop without having to spend $90.

•  
• PC WINDOWS XP SP3 or higher
• DirectX 9.0c
• 2.0+ GHz dual-core processor
• NVIDIA 8000 series (or equivalent)
• Shader Model 3 compatible video card
• 2 GO RAM
• 600 MO disk space

I believe this game will run OK in my XP laptop, whose specs are:

-Core 2 Duo @ 2 GHz,

-256 MB Ndivia GeForce GT,

-4 GB RAM,

-XP_sp3,

-but I don't know if my video card can handle shader 3 - will it? 

Or can shader be turned off?

I appear to be one of the fortunate few not to have problems with this game. Save perhaps for a slowish 25-35 fps frame rate, but I'm not surprised as I have a very low end graphics card (Geforce GT 430). And the game is still quite playable at that.

I like the bit I've seen so far. I've seen part of the main island, and have (I think) completed another island. Not brilliant, perhaps, but pleasant enough to work through.

I truly don't like the two handed maneuvering to get around the place.  One hand you have to work the mouse and the other hand you either use the alpha keys or the arrows.  I don't know if there's a ''fix'' for this or not but it should of been ''fixed'' before it was released.  It is tiring to play a game this ways and I can't play it for any length of time.  And the surroundings and backdrop are not as I would like it to be.  It's kind of looks like it was made on the cheap.  You can see the different boxes that make up the scenes.  It takes away from what should be a beautiful surround and atmosphere.  But besides all that I cannot figure out what I'm doing and get tires with the two handed operation of the maneuvering.  So far I'm not having any fun.

The two-handed control is common in RPGs.  The question of whether or not the designer could have changed it depends on the game engine employed.  I've been playing one of the recent MMORPGs lately and it has the same control system.  I agree that it detracts from the enjoyability of the game, but that is partly because I'm used to the controls more commonly found in adventure games.  It does seem a bit too much like hard work to me.  

Originally Posted By Eowyn (21 SEP 2012 8:32pm)

The two-handed control is common in RPGs.  The question of whether or not the designer could have changed it depends on the game engine employed.  I've been playing one of the recent MMORPGs lately and it has the same control system.  I agree that it detracts from the enjoyability of the game, but that is partly because I'm used to the controls more commonly found in adventure games.  It does seem a bit too much like hard work to me.  

Thanks for your reply.  I guess I'll just muddle through the game as best I can.  The developers could of gone with a different system if they wanted to, right?  I don't quite know or understand why they went with this particular one.  Seems that almost ALL adventure games are basically point-click-steer with a mouse, which is the most acceptable and favored.  Sigh!

I agree with you Exile - it's a long standing debate and people tend to be on one side or the others. I like mouse /WASD for shooters, and point-n-click for AGs. Simple as that. Node based PnC with 360 degree freedom of viewing at the nodes is great, and you get the advantage of much more fine scale detail with the pre-rendered scenes [something TFC could use]. And you don't need to fuss with the crontrols all the time time to do simple stuff like open valves, pull put drawers etc... I prefer PnC for AGs since the mechanism reinforces the simplicity of observation, navigation, thought and solution..

Alas the PnC system is wrtitten off as archcaic and "non-interactive" by many, so we see less and less of it.

Gee, maybe I'll make my own game - another Myst clone and call it Acca? Just an idea. And see if I can make it wholly mouse-controlled.