three gigabytes
(updated)
the problem with having an apple store 5 minutes from my house is... well, there's a lot of problems with that. i innocently went there to get a better case for my ipod (at soze's recommendation), given that yet again i took it out in the rain today, and that doing so is not terribly bright. so, anyway, i wound up also purchasing unreal tournament 2003. which i then spent half the night installing, because it takes 3GB of space. but i played the hell out of the demo, and it's just a fun game, so i'd have bought it eventually anyway. something for hardware to grow into, for sure, but it's really fun, just like the original... i sat on the couch and plugged my mouse into my powerbook and played for a while, and it was good stuff. it is something of a beast though, and it's kinda deceiving, considering that it ships with default settings that are good for screen shots, and playable, for sure, but not really what you would call 'optimal'. it plays fine on my powerbook, but it may cause me to buy a better video card for my tower. good stuff, and just the thing to wash out the bad aftertaste of master of orion 3 (which i started out kinda liking, then quickly grew bored of, and worse).
update, the next day:
So, after spending much of my free time playing it, i have to say it, like the first, was well worth the $50. oddly enough, the original UT was the surprise hit of late '99 since everyone expected Quake 3 to be the juggernaut. Turns out that they both went on to have an enduring influence on the first-person shooter genre. But UT was hailed as a better game due to its slightly more forgiving requirements, less cartoony physics, and superior (and surpassingly creative) level design. Now UT 2003 has seemingly gone the other way, with cartoon physics, somewhat more conventional level design, and harsh, harsh requirements.
so, anyway, it's wicked fun. and the funny thing is, the hardware demands are kinda weird. There are some levels that really beat you up, performance-wise, but the majority i've played actually run really well at 1024x768 on my powerbook. the ones that run less well are the big ones, with lots of bots, and you know what, cranking the resolution and the detail down doesn't even help. the thing is, the game is CPU-limited in a big way. a forum post somewhere said that you actually lose 2-3 frames per second for every bot that is in play. that's just crazy. but at the same time, they're pretty impressive; the team deathmatch bots noticeably work together. they cover for each other, guard doorways, stuff you can easily notice going on.
but the thing is, so much is made of frames per second, because these games are the equivalent of the 0-60 time for car geeks. you know what, as long as it's playable, and as long as it's fun, it's good for me. even making sacrifices to play the big maps, it's still wicked fun. that doesn't mean i'm not pricing a badass 1.4GHz board for my quicksilver, but in the meantime, i'm having fun with it...
