New file at the Repository: Nupremal World.zip (2010-03-14)

[Big Al]

This is really nice with 3 different scale Global Conlficts available to players. It appeals to everyone. I cant wait to look at the monster when I get home. I borrowed the Gray Super computer just so I could scroll the map.

[Nupremal]

1 - Yeah 2GB won't cut it but I am not sure that XP issue is true. You can still play but it is a tad challenging. I am doing so now as my current PC is not up to snuff it is 3-4 years old. I would say you just need a newer generation PC. I think 8GB is considered decent now. I went for 12 myself.

2 - I never added AI - he just assumes the standard default AI = AI. It does not, it will move stuff it won't do any scripts so you won't get builds or any kind of transport. It will be pretty useless.

[bowenw]

1 - Yeah 2GB won't cut it but I am not sure that XP issue is true. You can still play but it is a tad challenging. I am doing so now as my current PC is not up to snuff it is 3-4 years old. I would say you just need a newer generation PC. I think 8GB is considered decent now. I went for 12 myself.

2 - I never added AI - he just assumes the standard default AI = AI. It does not, it will move stuff it won't do any scripts so you won't get builds or any kind of transport. It will be pretty useless.

Well come on Nup get on the stick will you, or get someone to help with the AI, your map is superb, love what you did with Truk which was a huge Japanese naval base, but if no AI then I am not going to invest in any upgrade, I will just have to play other maps. and thats a shame with all the work you put into it.:eek: I have an idea Nup redo the map and make it about the size of big Al's

Bo

[jjdenver]

I downloaded and have some comments.

1) Wow - that map is amazing. That is what I'd hoped and expected the base map for SC2GC would look like. Fantastic job Nup!!

2) I have a reasonably fast PC - dual core 2.53, 8 gb RAM. The scrolling itself on the map is soooooo slow. It looks like the base SC2GC game engine just can't really handle this many hexes(squares) very well. So my suggestion is a v2 of this map that removes lots of areas that normally aren't played over. For example US other than coast, Canada other than coast, S. America entirely, mid of S. Africa, North half of Siberia: these could be removed from the map to speed up the game. Also it might be possible to remove slices of the Pacific. In general there wasn't much naval combat afaik in remote reaches of the pacific - the combat was centered around naval/air bases and shipping routes. I'm suggesting something similar to what Brute Force map does- i.e. remove areas that don't get much play to speed it up.

3) Adding communist china is a great job.

4) I wonder if it would be even playable with AI so I'd suggest focus on improvements for PBEM. I think it would be so slow to wait for AI that it wouldn't get played against AI. PBEM seems a better option to me.

This mod really blows me away overall but to make it actually playable for the SC2 community I think measures must be taken to speed it up by removing parts of the map. Then it will be playable and played by the community at large.

Again- FANTASTIC job on this - wow.

[kowalewski]

Jesus, thats a big map! Love the work you put in it. My deep respect. Looks really good! Sadly the slow downs kills the game experience.

Cheers

Dominik;)

[Fintilgin]

Yeah, it's a nice map, but it's completely unusable on my computer, which admittedly with XP and only 2 gig of ram is getting a bit long in the tooth.

I'm still trying to hold off on upgrading my box until next year or so. With my 8800 I can still play stuff like Fallout 3 maxed out, so it's kinda amusing to have Strategic Command bring my machine to its knees.

[Nupremal]

yeah the slowdown is disappointing - Hubert any engine tweaks that could help?

[Emperor Elliott]

Ya maybe cut the game down to theaters only. e.g. you could play the Mediterranean theater only

[SeaMonkey]

Yeah Nupe, I kind of prefer your PT world configuration.

I'm running vista with a dual core and 4 gigs of RAM and the scrolling is a bit slow, even the left/right click select has a delay. You can jump around the map using the minimap but lots of details, especially the loop arrow locations, can't be discerned on the mini map. Be nice if we had something in the middle scale to jump around on, more like the war map.

But really a nice job Nupe, as usual your out on the "cutting edge".

[bowenw]

yeah the slowdown is disappointing - Hubert any engine tweaks that could help?

Nup not trying to be negative but please with your talent lets do something different with this map, it is almost impossible to play and that really hurts from a gamers view point because we can see what a terrific map would look like but now the bright bulb has come on and it shows me why Fury and Hubert did not do a large map because they are unplayable, how about something between Huberts and your map pretty please with an AI.

Bo

[Emperor Elliott]

ya i cant even scroll the map. it take to long

[KvP]

In what kind of dimension do you live, Nup?!

Your card is freakin' awesome... wonderful... amazing...! How many years does it take to make a mod like this?! And how many years will it take to play a mod like this?! Sorry, but I don't have the fu**ing time time!

I really like the details, and the continents scale exactly to each other, that's astonishing me!

Do you know why Greenland is called Greenland? -> The coasts to the south are green! I don't like this "everything is just white" in the deep north and deep south of mother earth. If it would be possible to build some kind of arctic research stations or military bases the arctic and antarctic regions could be useful either.

Seems to me that the SC engine does not support cpu-multi-core, does it? (Hubert, what do you say?) The scrolling is quite slow, doesn't matter if hardware acceleration is enabled or not, makes no difference. My cpu cores are not used to the full capacity. Or maybe the RAM is too slow to load the processor cores! The graphics card is definetly fast enough (with 216 stream processors, 1.8 GB VRAM with 448 bits interface) and not so important for a 2D game like the SC series. Think it's the RAM! We need new technology for a card like your's, maybe light(speed)-computing could cope with it.

It's playable indeed, but it's just too big. You would need teams to manage Axis or Allied. Such a huge card, think I would loose control after a while.

I will play this card when I live in another dimension, like you (:confused:), where the day has 100 hours with a need to sleep of just 2 hours.

KvP says: "Done very well, A++!"

PS.: It's version 0.9, right, what will follow 'til it's 1.0?

[Hubert Cater]

I think the biggest problem with the slowdown is simply the size of the map, i.e. at 512x256 it is ~10 times the size of the current Global Conflict map at 256x64.

For example:

512x256 = 131072 tiles

256x64 = 16384 tiles

I can check to see if I can at least speed up the scrolling but I am not 100% sure if I can with such a big map as that is a lot of data for the game to process.

[Gorgin]

Something in between is probably the best solution. IMHO GC's map is too small. Nupremal's is a WOW job, but it brings my system to an absolute crawl.

[Big Al]

I finally got back. WOW what a map. Its wonderful. Nice job. Scale is too small for me.... or is it large?

[acrashb]

Since I have a super-fast, dual-graphics-card, big-everything system I'd like to try it ... but no AI == not for me.

Pity.

[SeaMonkey]

acrashb, how about a little experiment? You don't have to play the mod, just DL it, tinker around, and let us know how your CPU runs it, simple!

Then perhaps we can conclude how powerful a system we'll need to run it. Don't forget to post your specs.

Then you can delete it.

[John DiFool the 2nd]

I'll likely be soliciting for 5 (more) players for a 6 person slugfest soon, but I want to wait for the 1st patch first (so that the saved games aren't invalidated, which has sometimes happened in the past).

[John DiFool the 2nd]

The bug described in this thread bit me in the bum last night:

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=91431

I had a German corps in eastern Poland when they surrendered, and the corps surrendered to the Russians, and was lost, instead of being shifted back westwards over the line.

I'll also, once again, ask Nupremal to consider adding a 2nd chit level. At the moment the player is far too subject to the vagaries of chance when it comes to tech paying off (I've argued this before), with no possible redress.

[Thinking outside the box mode]What if each chit cost say 500 MPPs, but with a 25% chance of paying off? That would reduce the huge standard deviation inherent when the chance is only 5%, thus making things a bit more predictable. This way tech investment will require the significant outlay you'd expect (and not the lottery ticket we currently get), but you'll almost always get it within a year. And even if you do get an immediate payoff, for offensive purposes at least it will be 2 more turns before you can use it anyway. Thoughts?

[SeaMonkey]

Hang in there John, I think most of us realize the model for tech advancement that you have previously laid out is the best so far. We just got to get Hubert to see the light.

Tell you what, I'll keep supporting you on the tech model and you come my way and help me solicit for the anti-air feature....deal!

Isn't that they way they do it in politics? OOOps...nope....my mistake, they use bribery and threats.:mad:

[SeaMonkey]

Ohhh and by the way...my apologies to all that have sent me PMs over the years, I just now noticed them and accessed them, some as far back as 2008.:eek:

Sorry.....and Bill(pzgndr) my friends call me Brad.

I'm not very attentive to accessing my email either, its like answering the phone, but I do check occassionally.

[John DiFool the 2nd]

The AA tech being applied to things other than cities and resources, you mean? I've always wanted them on ships too, so yeah we can shake on that.

[acrashb]

acrashb, how about a little experiment? You don't have to play the mod, just DL it, tinker around, and let us know how your CPU runs it, simple!

You make a good point.

specs:

• Dual HIS Radeon HD 4850 Video Card - 512MB GDDR3 each
  
• Three Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB Hard Drive ST31500341AS - 7200RPM, 32MB Cache, SATA-3G configured to spread out the I/O load.
  
• One Intel Core i7 920 (CP2-I7-920), with a large copper cooler (I run it at stock speeds, and it is very cool which encourages a long life).
  
• 12GB Corsair Core i7 Dominator 6GB PC12800 DDR3 RAM, 1600Mhz ( C13-2048)
  
• Asus P6T Deluxe motherboard, with NCQ enabled on for the SATA drives as above.
  
• Tempest NZXT case, 6 fans, positive internal pressure and all intakes filtered.
  

I think SC runs on only one CPU at a time, and I'm not sure how it interacts with the dual graphics.

Loaded, scrolled etc, results:

- scrolls about 1.5 times / second - playable, if a bit slow.

- goes from the strategic map to a specific spot in less than a second.

- when minimized, returns to the game in 9 seconds.

- uses about 381MB of memory - so no biggie, and extra memory will not help anything.

- appears to not be hard on the graphics - the fan is still off and everything cool enough while scrolling. Having said that, I have so much cooling in the case that the GPU fan seldom runs.

- puts a not-too-noticeable load on the CPU.

- calculating the first turn took 352 seconds (mostly active, so not quite like watching a pot boil).

So it's a livable combination, just a bit slow on the scrolling.

The campaign itself? Looks like a blast. Detailed and realistic on the face of it - now I just need an AI

[SeaMonkey]

Crap acrashb, just hotseat against yourself. Do a turn, then go off, do something else, play other campaigns, later, come back and do the other side. This is how I test a game. Remember to take notes, Nupremal/Vypuero is very receptive to user observations.....just like Hubert!

One more question, did you note a delay when selecting with either left or right mouse clicks?

[acrashb]

re delay, yes, sub-second. annoying but manageable.