Is FB more optimized than the others?

[Battlefront.com]

Related to mouse lag in my experience, not related to the game. I went back to a wired mouse and keyboard. I was getting lag with my wireless set up. Control is back to normal now. And maybe the OP is not wireless so sorry if irrelevant.

Ah!  That is a really great thing to note.  Sure, refresh rates for Blue Tooth devices will depend heavily on the quality of the hardware involved, drivers, localized signal interference, and probably a half dozen things I can't even think of.  Great suggestion!

 

Yes, yes we do!  When that one guy is Charles...

Suck up comment noted and appreciated

Steve

[AstroCat]

I have long been a Battlefront supporter going back to CMx1, I even helped them with a little bit of publicity way back. But understanding all things I do have to say the performance of the CMx2 engine is disappointing. I am tech savvy and have run multiple tests through the years and wish the performance was a lot better and feel it should be. Honestly a clean i72600k@4.2Ghz and a 980 ti GTX should not be getting sub 30 frames in this game... heck I often get a lot less than that and I turned down the model draw distance to better or less.

Enabling NCP settings barely effects the FPS while increasing the quality showing there is tons of headroom bandwidth left on the card. Something seems to be working "incorrectly" in the game engine to take advantage of the CPU or GPU properly.

Look, I will continue to support the company but as a long time customer I feel this is a valid complaint that I can voice with the hope that perhaps some resources will be allocated to "fixing" the issue.

 

 

Edited January 3, 2016 by AstroCat

[Kieme(ITA)]

I also hope that the FPS performance will be increased, as I belive there is a lot of potential improvement and it would make even more enjoyable the game.

[A Canadian Cat]

I have a question and perhaps now that we have reasonable sorts hanging around here I might get an actual answer. So, this is just a question. From a guy that genuinely is trying to understand. Nothing more. That's all. All that because the last time I asked I pissed people off and I have no desire to do that...

Why does it matter that the fps is only 30 or even 20? Doesn't the camera moving and keyboard input being smooth matter more? What gets better when the fps goes from 30 to 40 or 50 or 60?

[Battlefront.com]

Enabling NCP settings barely effects the FPS while increasing the quality showing there is tons of headroom bandwidth left on the card. Something seems to be working "incorrectly" in the game engine to take advantage of the CPU or GPU properly.

If it were that simple there wouldn't be a problem at all by this point as we would have "fixed" whatever issue you feel you have a long time ago.  Unfortunately, it isn't that simple.  There are so many variables at play it means that what works great for one person might not for another. 

My comments about the millions spent on programming a single game are important to keep in mind.  Those huge AAA games you are comparing us to have teams of programmers doing nothing but optimizing and working around bugs in various popular combinations of hardware and software.  The purpose of which is to eek out every single last possible FPS for the widest array of computers and software out there.  A single game probably has more budgeted for this one task than we spend on several CM titles in total (including design, research, artwork, etc.). 

On top of that, most games you play are not using DirectX, not OpenGL as we are.  For many years now DirectX has been the favored design choice for drivers and cards, which means they get better engineering attention than OpenGL.  Which in turn means drivers/cards tend to work better for DirectX games compared to OpenGL. 

Lastly, framerates greater than 30fps are not really important on their own.  What is important is fluidity.  Games like CM can be perfectly fluid at 20-30fps.  What matters for a FPS game doesn't necessarily matter for CM (especially for WeGO).  Which means having higher FPS than that is perhaps totally unnecessary, especially since the Human eye can't detect the difference between something like 30fps and 35fps or higher. 

Look, I will continue to support the company but as a long time customer I feel this is a valid complaint I can voice with the hope that perhaps some resources will be allocated to "fixing" the issue.

Complaints are certainly valid when it comes to CM's graphics performance.  As I've admitted, we lack the millions of Dollars necessary to get CM to be as fluid as the big AAA games are for as broad of a range of computer configurations.  Therefore, it's pretty obvious that we'll never measure up to them.  However, we have spent considerable effort in making the CMx2 game engine run better and smoother on a wider range of hardware.  If you don't believe me, download the CMBN Demo (if you don't have WIn10 that is) and see what you think of the game performance.  That's pre v2 and v3 improvements.

Steve

Edited January 3, 2016 by Battlefront.com

[LukeFF]

Ah!  That is a really great thing to note.  Sure, refresh rates for Blue Tooth devices will depend heavily on the quality of the hardware involved, drivers, localized signal interference, and probably a half dozen things I can't even think of.  Great suggestion!

Steve, not to be the bearer of bad news, but mouse lag is still very much a problem with wired mice. I've been using a wired Logitech mouse (and a wired keyboard) for some time now, and the lag in all of the CMx2 titles can be really bad at times. Seeing that I have a very capable system (SSD, GTX 680, quad-core CPU, 16 GB RAM), I can only point to CMx2's coding as being the issue here. 

[AstroCat]

Understood and yes I am aware that OpenGL is being used, and honestly I wished you guys would have gone with Direct X, at least for PC. Maybe something like the Unity engine does... OpenGL on Mac, Direct X on PC? I know your resources are not going to compare with the much larger studios especially those with massive publisher backings.

Have you guys ever considered crowd sourcing for more resources? Maybe put out the feelers on a kickstarter? Perhaps that would be a way to get another specialized programmer or two on staff, at least for a while to do some targeted engine optimizations.

As for fps... it's all down to "smoothness of motion". Straight up 60fps will be much smoother to look at and move around compared to anything less. The lower the fps the more "laggy" and sluggish the movement of the mouse, scrolling the screen and the animations will be. The difference is very noticeable between 60 and 30. Locked 60 vsync'ed is going to be your minimum for a "real" smooth visual experience. I know there is more to it than this but I'm just keeping it easy and to the point.

Now CM can be played at below 60, down to 30 with "ok" results given the nature of the game, it's how I have to play it after all. But often it drops into the 20s and teens and then the movement because so labored it becomes significantly distracting to the experience and this is where I bum out because now I'm fighting the UI instead of fighting the "bad guys"! I play pretty much exclusively WEGO but in RTS mode the lowering fps would be a more serious issue.

Thanks for the response and I appreciate what you guys are doing, looking forward to the newest release.

 

[Macisle]

I have very occasional, momentary (less than a second) mouse lag. However, I used to have huge problems with accidental double-clicking. I actually almost started a bug thread when the CMFI demo came out, but luckily found out it was actually my mouse before posting. It's a Logitech (Logicool) M505. Evidently, it and many other mouse models can suffer from a number of problems. At first, I thought I had the common problem of the metal button contact(s) getting too smoothed out. Taking the mouse apart and bending them back looked very unfun, so I began looking for a new mouse. Then, I stumbled on a thread where a guy suggested that sometimes, it's not the metal becoming too flattened, but rather, a buildup of static electricity that can be removed by blowing your own warm air into the cracks under the left and right mouse buttons. Since that was a free and easy solution (if a little weird sounding), I tried it and to my amazement--it worked!

Now, every time I start getting "auto" double-clicks, click lag, or lose my mouse drag lock, I blow into the mouse. It always works with the double-clicking and click lag, but losing the drag lock can take a few blows and sometimes stays a little iffy.

The double-click on a single click thing first became noticeable with CM (around the release of CMFI) , but it spread to everything on my system later (boy, that made Photoshop fun!). I really like the feel of the M505 and they don't make them anymore, so this was a cool, oddball fix for me. It may not help for your particular mouse troubles, but you lose nothing by giving it a shot. I'm still using the same M505.

Oh, and the problem seems worse when the battery is low.

[Battlefront.com]

Steve, not to be the bearer of bad news, but mouse lag is still very much a problem with wired mice. I've been using a wired Logitech mouse (and a wired keyboard) for some time now, and the lag in all of the CMx2 titles can be really bad at times. Seeing that I have a very capable system (SSD, GTX 680, quad-core CPU, 16 GB RAM), I can only point to CMx2's coding as being the issue here. 

Could be something on our end, though this is the sort of thing that should be consistently bad for everybody or nobody.  At least in theory.  In reality it's not that simple.  We should definitely look into this some more and a bug report should get that started

Understood and yes I am aware that OpenGL is being used, and honestly I wished you guys would have gone with Direct X, at least for PC. Maybe something like the Unity engine does... OpenGL on Mac, Direct X on PC? I know your resources are not going to compare with the much larger studios especially those with massive publisher backings.

Maintaining two graphics engines is absolutely beyond our resources. Which meant in 2004 we had to make a decision to go with DirectX and forego a Mac version forever, or go with OpenGL and support both platforms.  Since OpenGL was doing just fine and dandy at the time, it was a no-brainer.  But fast forward 5 years and OpenGL is losing its shine.  Fast forward another 5 and Unity is king over even DirectX. 

This underscores the dilemma that we face as developers and you as gamers.  Our games enjoy a far longer life than pretty much any game out there, which means whatever we pick to base the graphics on will become dated long before the interest of the game itself runs out. Scrapping and redoing the graphics engine every 3-5 years to keep up with changing technologies means us having to charge a lot more for our games and delivering a LOT less content for you to play with.

In short... there has to be a compromise somewhere.  Game quality and quantity do not seem to be where our customers want us to skimp, therefore cutting edge graphics must be where we look for compromise.

 

Have you guys ever considered crowd sourcing for more resources? Maybe put out the feelers on a kickstarter? Perhaps that would be a way to get another specialized programmer or two on staff, at least for a while to do some targeted engine optimizations.

Kickstarter is not likely viable.  People want something for their extra contribution somewhat equal to their investment.  The time and energy put into a narrow feature would have to be paid back to the customer in some way and I don't see how we can do that.

Also, I don't think you appreciate the major effort it takes to do a Kickstarter campaign successfully.  This takes time and energy away from making the games.  Again, if we do this then we don't do something else.  There is simply no idle time or resources and that means anything we do to significantly improve the graphics means less for our customers in other ways.

As for fps... it's all down to "smoothness of motion". Straight up 60fps will be much smoother to look at and move around compared to anything less. The lower the fps the more "laggy" and sluggish the movement of the mouse, scrolling the screen and the animations will be. The difference is very noticeable between 60 and 30. Locked 60 vsync'ed is going to be your minimum for a "real" smooth visual experience. I know there is more to it than this but I'm just keeping it easy and to the point.

That is incorrect.  The eye can not notice anything over about 30fps.  The reason to have something running at 60fps is so when a bunch of things happen to bog down the hardware that it doesn't go below 30fps.  This is critically important for a FPS because when things start to get laggy one has difficulty aiming a gun or jumping or some other action.  This is not the case with CM in WeGo mode and generally isn't an issue even in RealTime because those sorts of actions are not inherent to the game. 

Let's keep in mind that in the days of Quake 1 if someone was complaining that 30fps wasn't good enough they would have gotten a lot of snickers   Yet I still fondly remember playing networked against my co-workers on more than one Friday night.  One of the small perks of working at a computer game company is you don't have to hide activities like that

Now CM can be played at below 60, down to 30 with "ok" results given the nature of the game, it's how I have to play it after all. But often it drops into the 20s and teens and then the movement because so labored it becomes significantly distracting to the experience and this is where I bum out because now I'm fighting the UI instead of fighting the "bad guys"! I play pretty much exclusively WEGO but in RTS mode the lowering fps would be a more serious issue.

Remember that CM has a lot more going on than other games.  The only way to nearly guarantee you don't dip below 30 is to cap the amount of action that happens on screen at any one time.  That's how the $50,000,000 games do it. 

Thanks for the response and I appreciate what you guys are doing, looking forward to the newest release.

 

Thanks!   And please don't take my comments above as being dismissive or defensive.  I've always believed that you guys deserve more than smoke being blown up your backside.  If I think something is impractical, I not only tell you that but I also explain why instead of making promises I know I can't keep.

I have very occasional, momentary (less than a second) mouse lag. However, I used to have huge problems with accidental double-clicking. I actually almost started a bug thread when the CMFI demo came out, but luckily found out it was actually my mouse before posting. It's a Logitech (Logicool) M505.

....

 

Oh, and the problem seems worse when the battery is low.

Let us not forget that some tools are better suited for a particular job than others.  A mouse that works fine for Word and The Googles might not work very well for a CPU/GPU intensive game, but a mouse that works great for CPU/GPU tasks is total overkill for someone who mostly uses a mouse to surf for porn (I mean important news articles about world events!).  This dynamic exists with everything, which is why I purchased a $400 4" belt sander to sand fifteen 4x6x14' hardwood beams instead of using my Mikita orbital palm sander.  Cripes, I think I'd still be sanding if I hadn't and that job was finished 4 years ago  

Steve

Edited January 4, 2016 by Battlefront.com

[Macisle]

 

...Let us not forget that some tools are better suited for a particular job than others.  A mouse that works fine for Word and The Googles might not work very well for a CPU/GPU intensive game, but a mouse that works great for CPU/GPU tasks is total overkill for someone who mostly uses a mouse to surf for porn (I mean important news articles about world events!).  This dynamic exists with everything, which is why I purchased a $400 4" belt sander to sand fifteen 4x6x14' hardwood beams instead of using my Mikita orbital palm sander.  Cripes, I think I'd still be sanding if I hadn't and that job was finished 4 years ago  

Steve

Yeah, the M505 wasn't an expensive model. However, I've kept it because it is quite smooth and accurate when it's operating as it should and feels better than some more expensive models that I've checked out in the store. Back when the problem first started, I bought an M310 as a replacement, but ditched it quickly because it was a piece of junk in all aspects (though a popular model at the same price point).

I don't know about the static thing, but IIRC, the issue with the metal contacts wasn't limited to cheaper models and seemed to be a problem across the whole Logitech line. I think I remember one guy in a thread who said he was on his third $100+ gaming mouse, with each getting about 6-9 months before developing the issue.

[Battlefront.com]

Not only is there an issue about different tools for different jobs, there is also the point about quality of the tools or the difficulty keeping them going.  I had a conversation with a friend yesterday who was offered a used Saab for free (relative of a friend died) and my friend declined the offer.  Why?  Because WHEN something goes wrong (never IF with a car ;)) the cost of repair is sometimes more than it would cost to buy a whole used car.  I also remember a guy I know who bought an expensive Jaguar and several times he hit potholes and the back window shattered, yet crap bottom of the barrel cars managed to go over the potholes without such behavior.

I mention this not to excuse any shortcomings in CM's graphics but rather to remind people that there's a wide range of variables out there, some of which would still conspire to produce a bad gaming experience even if we plunked another million into CM's graphics.  When we have discussions like this there's going to be a mix of people who have complaints which are more to do with CM and then there are people with complaints more to do with their particular rigs.  And of course perception comes into play big time.

The Internet debates between 30fps and 60fps, not to mention 30fps and 120fps, are pretty amusing if you have some time to check them out.  While I do think there is legitimate reason to argue that 60fps is better/smoother, I think there's also ample evidence to argue that it's not nearly as big a deal as the people with the high end rigs make it out to be.  Whatever you wish to look at (cars, food, audio playback, TVs, games, tools, etc.), there's always a bunch on the high end saying everybody else is inferior, as well as a bunch on the low end saying the high enders are snobs with tiny reproductive organs.  As with most things, the truth is sometimes one way or the other, but often is somewhere in the middle.

Steve

[Macisle]

-Couldn't resist posting a pic of the Old Standby (yes, I am a tight wad, so when I get on people about whining about having to pay for BF's products, it's coming from someone who is very thrifty and very much a minimalist in his life habits):

Check out the spectacular case of "CM Thumb."

(No, not caused by reading "important news articles about world events." No, really! )

Edit just now: I was playing a turn in CMBN and the RMB stopped releasing from its current selection (happens sometimes). I gave five firm clicks, but no results. So, I blew under the mouse buttons and tried again. Voila! It worked on the first click after that and no more problems that turn. Magic .

Edited January 4, 2016 by Macisle

[Vanir Ausf B]

Steve, not to be the bearer of bad news, but mouse lag is still very much a problem with wired mice. I've been using a wired Logitech mouse (and a wired keyboard) for some time now, and the lag in all of the CMx2 titles can be really bad at times. Seeing that I have a very capable system (SSD, GTX 680, quad-core CPU, 16 GB RAM), I can only point to CMx2's coding as being the issue here. 

Do you have "high priority process" checked in the options? Mouse lag is something I never get in CM, even when the frame rate is low.

[Kieme(ITA)]

 

Now CM can be played at below 60, down to 30 with "ok" results given the nature of the game, it's how I have to play it after all. But often it drops into the 20s and teens

 

 

I have the same feeling. If we can give an example there's a pretty simple test. Take a medium sized map or scenario, place a tank on the map border, and look at it giving your back to the map centre, so the tank will have the horizon and few meters of map only behind it. Now, move that tank, and follow it with your camera at ground level, the camera will run smooth and you'll see the tank smoothly move. If you do the same with the map on the background, giving your back to the horizon, the tank (the camera) won't have the same flawless movement, you can really feel the difference.

Edited January 4, 2016 by Kieme(ITA)

[alwaysfish]

 

That is incorrect.  The eye can not notice anything over about 30fps.  The reason to have something running at 60fps is so when a bunch of things happen to bog down the hardware that it doesn't go below 30fps.  This is critically important for a FPS because when things start to get laggy one has difficulty aiming a gun or jumping or some other action.  This is not the case with CM in WeGo mode and generally isn't an issue even in RealTime because those sorts of actions are not inherent to the game. 

I think this saying, that eye can not notice anything over about 30fps, came from movies industry. However, computer animation can not be compared to the way movies work (at least old ones), which had a collection of static images and you had to change them at around 30fps so that human eye does not notice the change in frame (the "blinking" effect is gone). 

In the computer animation, the higher the fps, the more fluid the animation is. Just a simple example. Imagine, that in a game a camera (an imaginary camera, through which the scene is rendered) is turning right. In one second (world time) it will turn 60 degrees. Now, question. How many frames will we see during that "camera turning" animation, if the engine is running at 1 FPS? The obvious answer is one, which will be a scene, rendered when the camera is at 60 degrees from its starting angle. Now just imagine how would this look like in-game. We press the button to turn the camera right, and then after one second (which will feel a very long second) will be turned right by 60 degress. No frames will be showed in between the starting angle and ending angle. I already can imagine that many of us will think that the game is crawling. Oh, and even though the engine will be rendering scenes at 1 fps, we will not see the "blinking" effect, because a monitor refreshes at 60 fps (or 120, depending on the monitor you have). 

Now, let's imagine the engine runs at 30 fps. Obviously we will see 30 different frames while the camera is turning right (the frame will be rendered every 2 angles). compared to my previous example, the animation will be much more fluid. If the engine ran at 60 fps, we would be seeing 60 different frames while the camera is turning (at every 1 degree angle change), which would make the animation even more fluid. In other words, the more frames per second the engine could render, the more fluid all animations will be. 

As for DirectX and Opengl, i think there is no much difference. Both are just APIs, and it is up for a developer to use an API in a smart way. I already wrote in some other messages that i was curious to know why the game struggles with the rendering. I used some developer tools to get a log of opengl API calls that CM is doing. From the log i concluded that CM is using a "brute-force" approach when rendering a scene. Several simple optimizations could be done to increase rendering performance. One of those, which every graphics programmer knows, is sorting geometry (before rendering a scene) by material (textures). I just wonder, what would be performance change, if CM engine actually did that. In any case, i perfectly understand that optimizations require time, smart programming, digging through recommendations from nvidia and amd, etc.

[AstroCat]

There is a huge difference in perceived smoothness between 60 and 30 fps in graphics animation. It is very easy to "see" this in any game genre. I must add this is using an LCD monitor, in the Quake 1 days we had CRT's. Some of this is because of the refresh rate and input lag. So give it a try and you'll see what I am talking about...

1) Run any CM game at vsync'ed 60fps... knock down settings till you get a locked vsync 60fps and then move the camera all over the place, zoom in, zoom out, up, down, all over. Notice the fluidity of motion, and how easy it is to move the camera around.

2) Now jack up the settings and get a good solid 20-30'ish fps and do the same thing... zoom down, up, all over the place. Notice the sluggishness, and input lag, how that smoothness is gone? This is what I am referring to.

3) Another great way to try this is to zoom down to ground level in an area where you are getting 60fps, like looking of the corner of the map, then rotate the camera in a circle as you pan to the larger map area your fps will drop, notice the big difference in the smoothness and visual appearance of the panning. When it comes around again to the edge of the map and fps hit 60 again it will suddenly become visually smooth and the sluggishness in movement will be gone.

In a game like CM it doesn't make as big of difference to the enjoyment of the game as an fps true but the effect is still there. The bigger point being us with high end systems are expecting much higher performance based on our comparative gaming experience. This is not just against the huge studios either actually. There are lot's of more independent studios these putting out bigger releases, a lot of that thanks to crowd-sourcing, which is why I brought it up. 

I know running a kick-starter is a lot of work, I've known people who have done it but if successful you could maybe get a major funding boost for the next iteration of CM. You guys know your business a million times better than we do so this is just a "fan's suggestion" of course.

At this point I'm not expecting any "miracle patches" for the CMx2 engine but it would be nice to get a bit more optimization out of it. I'd be happy with a Medium size map at 50-60fps and Huge at 20-30fps, that would be amazing actually. Currently I'm often seeing way too many teens and 20s and for me it is very distracting to the experience and this is on Medium sized maps and smaller.

Thanks for taking the time for the responses and I'm not trying to "attack" the game or the developers. I like the CM games a lot and I'm "in" for the long haul, I just want to see them keep growing and expanding and some of this I believe includes engine performance improvements relative to "modern" hardware.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 4, 2016 by AstroCat

[AttorneyAtWar]

60 FPS is absolutely noticeable, heres a nice little website that shows what were talking about.

http://boallen.com/fps-compare.html

http://boallen.com/fps-compare-html5.html

Edit: The second link is better.

Edited January 4, 2016 by Raptorx7

[TheVulture]

60 FPS is absolutely noticeable, heres a nice little website that shows what were talking about.

http://boallen.com/fps-compare.html

http://boallen.com/fps-compare-html5.html

Edit: The second link is better.

For some people it is noticably difference. But certainly not for everyone. I can just about see the distance when they're put side by side, but I have to pay attention. Other people I know say they are completely unable to see any difference between the side by side 30/60 fps videos.

Conversely, for some people. 30 fps is really noticably jerky.

By the time you hit middle age, your eyes will no longer be good enough to perceive the difference So I guess it's less of a problem on the whole for Battlefront's somewhat older customer base.

[Wicky]

Here's another frame rate comparison link

https://frames-per-second.appspot.com

At college when I did a a one minute hand drawn animation project 15 frames per second was quite enough!

[AttorneyAtWar]

Here's another frame rate comparison link

https://frames-per-second.appspot.com

At college when I did a a one minute hand drawn animation project 15 frames per second was quite enough!

I'm sorry but a game running consistently at 15 FPS (which combat mission doesn't do obviously) is not acceptable in the year 2016

[alwaysfish]

For some people it is noticably difference. But certainly not for everyone. I can just about see the distance when they're put side by side, but I have to pay attention. Other people I know say they are completely unable to see any difference between the side by side 30/60 fps videos.

Conversely, for some people. 30 fps is really noticably jerky.

By the time you hit middle age, your eyes will no longer be good enough to perceive the difference So I guess it's less of a problem on the whole for Battlefront's somewhat older customer base.

In the provided example you might not notice big difference, however if the bouncing was much much faster, you would definitely notice a difference. Another example, if you tried to record a fast motion (in example, the motion of legs while moving on a running trainer) with your GoPro @ 30 fps and @120fps, and then would like to see clips in slow motion, you would see, that the recording @30 fps is very choppy, missing smoothness. 

[alwaysfish]

Here's another frame rate comparison link

https://frames-per-second.appspot.com

At college when I did a a one minute hand drawn animation project 15 frames per second was quite enough!

Fantastic example. Just remove motion blur effect. The difference in fps is very noticeable.

Edited January 4, 2016 by alwaysfish

[Kieme(ITA)]

Nice application, well done!

The debate on 30 vs 60 we can call it off I agree, but the debate of the difference between 15 and 30 stands, there is an evident problem at 15.

Edited January 4, 2016 by Kieme(ITA)

[Battlefront.com]

I think this saying, that eye can not notice anything over about 30fps, came from movies industry. However, computer animation can not be compared to the way movies work (at least old ones), which had a collection of static images and you had to change them at around 30fps so that human eye does not notice the change in frame (the "blinking" effect is gone). 

While I agree the statement that the eye doesn't notice anything over 30fps is overstated (and I did overstate that), it is true that over 30fps things are more conditional than below 30fps.  The type of motion, the quality of the hardware/software, the individual's eyesight, psychological impact, etc. all come into play when over 30fps.  Some conditions make increased fps more noticeable, others have little to no impact.  Then there is the argument about necessity of the extra fps, which again is not a scientific yes/no issue.

As for DirectX and Opengl, i think there is no much difference. Both are just APIs, and it is up for a developer to use an API in a smart way.

 Oooooo... that isn't right at all   APIs are only as good as their support by the drivers, graphics cards, and OS.  For several years now OpenGL has almost been an afterthought from these produces, or so it seems.  Back in the early days of CMx2 ATI had a massive bug for the mouse handling in OpenGL, but none in DirectX.  It pretty much killed gameplay for the people affected.  We documented the bug (actually two bugs), had ATI tech people confirm they existed, and yet it took a YEAR for them to address it.  We implemented a bloody hack that kinda-sorta addressed the problem, but there was absolutely no way for us to truly work around the problem ATI caused on their own cards.  No way would that have happened with DirectX.

Also look at what happens when a big AAA game comes out.  You quickly see drivers updated by card companies to better support that specific game.  Now, if the APIs were being supported as they should be, why would these changes be necessary?  Because the cards/drivers are doing shortcuts or have poorly documented/implemented routines which get exposed by some games trying to do some things in some ways that the API allows but for whatever reason doesn't work out so well for some specific circumstance.

Like everybody else, graphics card companies have limited resources at their disposal.  Therefore, it is not surprising that they are focusing their energies on whatever is hottest at the moment and not what used to be.  And like all software/hardware producers, their efforts are not uniform nor without fault.  It's always been that way, it always will be.

I already wrote in some other messages that i was curious to know why the game struggles with the rendering. I used some developer tools to get a log of opengl API calls that CM is doing. From the log i concluded that CM is using a "brute-force" approach when rendering a scene. Several simple optimizations could be done to increase rendering performance. One of those, which every graphics programmer knows, is sorting geometry (before rendering a scene) by material (textures). I just wonder, what would be performance change, if CM engine actually did that. In any case, i perfectly understand that optimizations require time, smart programming, digging through recommendations from nvidia and amd, etc.

OMG.  Do you realize how absolutely insulting you just were?  You think after nearly two decades of programming 3D graphical environments, which even AAA games steer clear of because of their challenges, that we basically are bumbling around like kids in highschool programming Hello World?  C'mon... give us some credit.

Are there things we can still tweak/improve in terms of game perforamnce?  Absolutely.  Those big AAA companies aren't spending millions of Dollars optimizing stuff nobody is going to notice, so of course there's things we could be doing.  But there's no shortcut to AAA performance, therefore if you think there is then you should presume that you're not understanding something pretty basic, not the other way around.

In a game like CM it doesn't make as big of difference to the enjoyment of the game as an fps true but the effect is still there. The bigger point being us with high end systems are expecting much higher performance based on our comparative gaming experience.

Yup, and this will always be the case as it always has been.  The people who spend more money want a return on their investment.  That's natural, but the pressure by "bleeding edgers" to have industry cater to them, at the expense of the vast majority, is always going to create conflict.  An example... I see the high end graphics guys referring to anybody satisfied with 30fps as "peasants" and "idiots".  It's no different with food, alcoholic drinks, automobiles, TVs, etc.  For sure it's important for the high end guys to put pressure on that industry to improve, but not to the point of being unreasonable.  

This is not just against the huge studios either actually. There are lot's of more independent studios these putting out bigger releases, a lot of that thanks to crowd-sourcing, which is why I brought it up. 

The ones I'm aware of are pitching to a broad audience who won't get the game at all if they don't put up money up front.  For their investment they get the game in return, free or at least substantially discounted.  It amounts to pre-pre-pre orders, not true investment IMHO.   The crowd sourcing drives do not tend to be aimed at adding very expensive "bling" to niche games where the customer doesn't get a direct return on investment (i.e. something free of near equal value). 

 

I know running a kick-starter is a lot of work, I've known people who have done it but if successful you could maybe get a major funding boost for the next iteration of CM. You guys know your business a million times better than we do so this is just a "fan's suggestion" of course.

If we were to go out and raise additional capital, it wouldn't be to improve CMx2's graphics.  That's not the primary thing people complain about, it's not the primary thing that drives CM sales.  Extra, non-accountable investment would go towards things like additional content, gameplay improvements, and other things like that which we can't do or can't do fast enough.

At this point I'm not expecting any "miracle patches" for the CMx2 engine but it would be nice to get a bit more optimization out of it. I'd be happy with a Medium size map at 50-60fps and Huge at 20-30fps, that would be amazing actually. Currently I'm often seeing way too many teens and 20s and for me it is very distracting to the experience and this is on Medium sized maps and smaller.

Thanks for taking the time for the responses and I'm not trying to "attack" the game or the developers. I like the CM games a lot and I'm "in" for the long haul, I just want to see them keep growing and expanding and some of this I believe includes engine performance improvements relative to "modern" hardware.

I definitely appreciate the feedback.  All I can say is we do share your goals and have, over time, made major improvements to the graphics engine.  As I said, go and look at CMBO v1.x Demo and see for yourself how far the improvements have gone.  Not only have we improved performance, but we've also been able to increase maximum map size as well.

Steve

Edited January 4, 2016 by Battlefront.com

[AttorneyAtWar]

Squad was pitched to a very niche set of tactical gamers based on Project Reality (A mod for Battlefield 2) and garnered 450,000$ on Kickstarter. It later when on to be released on (The S word in early access ) and made another 300K fully funding the development, which is awesome!

Maybe someday CM can do the same...

Don't shoot me, please.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/offworldindustries/squad/description

Double edit: Funnily enough theres a thread over on there forums talking about people who play CM, small world!

Edited January 4, 2016 by Raptorx7