Millennia - Steam Next Fest Demo | Live Now!

[Sephi]

Well, steam is just an api. It can't do anything unless you call one of it's functions. But if you do it should be able to terminate the current process. I doubt though that the steam api has a function like this.

If you put steam into offline mode you can probably play the demo as long as you want. Might have to change system time as well.

 

[Quintillus]

Just out of curiosity, what happens if I don't exit the game by the deadline? Can steam enforce game exit while you're playing that game? (not that I'll do it, but can't help my software engineer brain... )

Based on past experience, if you leave the game up, you can play indefinitely. Although IIRC, games launched via Steam will refuse to launch if another game is up, so you will have a one-game Steam account for a while.

The other option that I didn't think of until recently for the "demo week" games is to copy them to outside the Steam folder. If the game doesn't check whether Steam is running when launched, and doesn't check whether the date is past the intended end of the demo, that would allow you to keep playing the demo, just not with Steamworks enabled. Would be even more handy on those "demo festivals" Steam has where dozens of games have demos all at the same time and there's never enough time to try them all. Most of the games I don't try, I just forget about and never buy; archiving the demo locally (or not having it expire in the first place) would increase the chance that I'd buy the game eventually.

And on that count, Millennia's demo has done well. I went from having a passing interest but likely to wait until a half-to-two-thirds-off sale to buy (pretty much my default option given that I have more than enough games already), to likely to buy a few days after launch, provided reviews don't indicate major bug issues at that time. And it's definitely on my radar now.

Hopefully Millennia will have another demo in the future. I think it's a game where a permanent demo could do quite a bit for sales, especially if post-launch the full game allows demo saves to be continued without restarting.

 

[Nikolai II]

Based on past experience, if you leave the game up, you can play indefinitely. Although IIRC, games launched via Steam will refuse to launch if another game is up, so you will have a one-game Steam account for a while.

I often play my games while my wife's favorite game is running, so no.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

What's the point of a time-limited demo anyway? Don't games usually have permanent demos? (And time limits are only for when the full base game is free-to-play for a limited time?)

 

[Dale]

Well, he makes good observations and gives interesting opinions (from what I read so far... ), and being a game designer for Old World puts him automatically into an "expert" category for me, considering how amazing that game is

<<-------------

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Steam punk units enabled here?

 

[Solver]

What's the point of a time-limited demo anyway? Don't games usually have permanent demos? (And time limits are only for when the full base game is free-to-play for a limited time?)

That's not strange because Millennia is still in development. As they make various improvements to the game, they wouldn't want a permanent demo available that has less polish etc, and doesn't reflect the latest state of the game. When a game is out then yes, it's much more common to have permanent demos.

 

[Sephi]

Steam punk units enabled here?

maybe, the demo only covered the first 3 ages.

 

[OzzyKP]

Those are quite old games, though, about 14 and 12 years old respectively. How the graphics look, especially taking into account things like art style, is not necessarily indicative of system requirements, and apart from the battle viewer, I don't think Millennia's graphics are necessarily that low fidelty:

Spoiler :

View attachment 684202

Anyway, these are the minimum requirements according to Steam:

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS​

• MINIMUM:
  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows® 10 Home 64 Bit
  • Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4690K | AMD® Ryzen™ 3 2300X
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 660 (2GB) | AMD® Radeon™ R9 380 (4GB)
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Storage: 10 GB available space

My biggest takeaway is how darn slow the game ran for me. There was a lag after every click. Moving units was difficult, I had to make several clicks before it registered my movements. There were delays for mouseover text and delays for them to go away. I made it through 60 turns, but I'm not going to bother with another run. My computer is a bit old, but this game (with its rather clunky looking graphics & UI) runs slower for me than Civ6.

My specs:
Intel Core i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20Ghz 2.21 Ghz
16 GB Ram
WIndows 10 Home 64 Bit
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060
Running it off of my HDD instead of my SSD (which is nearly full)

This isn't the only game that runs slow for me (Frostpunk made my computer very angry). I've been thinking about getting a new computer, but I'm not even sure what the weak point is on my current PC. New computers (in my price range) don't have more than 16 GB Ram, so... I dunno. Any folks care to humor a small digression and tell me what's wrong with my PC?

 

[Nikolai II]

Any folks care to humor a small digression and tell me what's wrong with my PC?

Worst is HDD and not SSD. Latter has a lot to say for many games.

Both CPU and GPU is old, but if you replace CPU you need new mobo and RAM... Speaking of RAM, speed of the RAM has a lot to say. My two and a half year old PC has 32 GB DDR4, which is recommended for gaming of newer titles I'd say. But 16 GB gets you far.

My recommendation is try it on the SSD. Barring that, you need to change up mobo, CPU and RAM. And then you can just as well build a new PC. Your GPU is too old for newer CPUs, but a new GPU will be limited by your CPU...

 

[Solver]

Ozzy sighting!

Nik is correct that switching to SSD is the largest performance gain, but overall this kind of problem is unsurprising for a game built on Unity. I speak from experience when I say that, when Unity starts performing poorly, it does so in obvious and annoying ways, and optimizing a game on Unity is quite a lot of work.

 

[Nikolai II]

What.....!? I uninstalled the demo two days ago. It still runs according to the AMD software...!

 

[Nikolai II]

I'm even logged out of Steam.

 

[Solver]

How about you play a game at least once without breaking anything?

 

[Sephi]

My biggest takeaway is how darn slow the game ran for me. There was a lag after every click. Moving units was difficult, I had to make several clicks before it registered my movements. There were delays for mouseover text and delays for them to go away. I made it through 60 turns, but I'm not going to bother with another run. My computer is a bit old, but this game (with its rather clunky looking graphics & UI) runs slower for me than Civ6.

My specs:
Intel Core i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20Ghz 2.21 Ghz
16 GB Ram
WIndows 10 Home 64 Bit
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060
Running it off of my HDD instead of my SSD (which is nearly full)

This isn't the only game that runs slow for me (Frostpunk made my computer very angry). I've been thinking about getting a new computer, but I'm not even sure what the weak point is on my current PC. New computers (in my price range) don't have more than 16 GB Ram, so... I dunno. Any folks care to humor a small digression and tell me what's wrong with my PC?

Check taskmanager for CPU and Ram Utilization. Check Nvidia performance overlay (alt+R) for GPU and CPU utilization. SSD will just make the game load faster, it is not that necessary for strategy games unless you load savegames a lot. Installing the lastest nvidia graphic drivers might help if GPU usage is a problem.

Sometimes games just have bad performance or bugs. I played an older RPG latelty that ran with 20fps or something. Once I disabled vsync I had nearly 60 fps.

 

[Nikolai II]

How about you play a game at least once without breaking anything?

Impossible. Last game I played I found three bugs before it had been 15 minutes!

 

[Revolutionist_8]

What's the point of a time-limited demo anyway? Don't games usually have permanent demos? (And time limits are only for when the full base game is free-to-play for a limited time?)

As Solver has said, because this is only a timestamp from the game, far from the quality of the final release. If you check potatomcwhiskey's youtube video (there is a link in the "streamer preview" thread, but you find it on youtube in 5 seconds) you can already see some nice improvements compared to the demo (better icons, turn counter for movements, influence expansion highlight, etc.), which suggests that the demo is a weeks if not months old build.

Edit: both the turn counter (you need to zoom out) and the tile influence is in the demo already (press P), but it seems to break sometimes or idk, seems better / smoother in the video

 

[Revolutionist_8]

The availability has been extended until tomorrow evening

https://twitter.com/x/status/1757072236710686877

!
(presumably so that it doesn't ruin Valentine's day ^^)

Lol, they extended the demo with an additional week As much as I love the game, this is getting a bit silly

Spoiler steam pic :

 

[Solver]

The demo build's from 18th of January. Potato's stream is I think from a build about 2 weeks newer, which is simultaneously little time for development and a lot of time for polishing.

 

[MrRadar]

Lol, they extended the demo with an additional week As much as I love the game, this is getting a bit silly

Probably they register enough interest and also collect some useful data. I only wish they added 10 or 20 more turns to the demo every time they extend the availability