Lee

I like the name punkrawk better.

Mark IV: Lol. Any fool knows that a .45 is the choice of *real* men.

I see Steve got the chance to vent some of his angst. I don't blame you for being ticked off, Steve. The tone of AH64D's post would have gotten me mad too if I were you. I think one of the most common mistakes that people make when trying to guess how much further you can push the graphics limits on a PC is that they base their assumptions on a typical scenario in that game. Instead of taking into account the more extreme loads that can be placed on a system when a scene is being rendered that has is far more complex than your typical scenario. So far all we have seen is the beta demo featuring small battles. But what happens when there are two reinforced battalions facing each other on a *huge* map? Now the demands on your system go through the roof. One has to remember that Charles and Steve have to design CM's graphics loads with the *worst* case scenarios in mind. The biggest battles fought on the largest maps with the most explosions and tracers imaginable. It is these types of battles that they are trying to make sure run on the minimum system requirements. I bet there are a lot of sytems out there that will run LD fine but will slow down massively when a really big battle comes along. So before you become too confident in what kind of graphics today's average system can handle, think about these worst case scenario 3D graphic loads situations first.

MantaRay: If I were you I would wait a few weeks till the new Via KX133 based Athlon MB's start shipping. You'll get 133 mghz ram onboard (instead of 100 mghz ram) and AGP 4x to boot.

In bet if BTS could strike a deal with Mplayer they could have their own CM lobby. That would make for a very convenient place to setup direct IP games and such. Also, Mplayer features voice chat that works like a charm. You just press a button on the screen and hold it down while you talk and everyone in the room (which can be locked for private chat) can hear you. I bet an Mplayer CM lobby would be abuzz with activity.

Fionn: "They're bringing out 3D-engined RTS games called "War Monkeys" and something about dogfighting Zeppelins for God's sake." Lol! Kinda sad isn't it?

Ok, Steve. Sounds good. Yeah, the veteran unit keeping cool and returning fire in a coordinated skillful fashion and being resistant to diving for cover and hiding will make them much more effective on average than the green unit (in addition to the fact that their fire is much deadlier to begin with). So the results are about the same as a faster reload, I guess. Isn't it nice to have a wargame that is so realistic that we can spend time on minute details like this and not have to worry about more critical issues like armor penetration being accurate? Three cheers for Steve and Charles for making that possible.

Babra: Hehe. We here in the U.S. are a nation of citizen/warriors (at least we're supposed to be), so we expect our civilians to be able to handle a decent variety of weapons.

All I can say is, I can't wait to get my Athlon (somewhere in the 850-950 mghz range). Imagine CM running at 80+ fps 95% of the time (and 60+ the rest of the time). This will define liquid smooth.

Hmm, that reminds me. Steve, have you guys added a greater variety of sounds when projectiles hit tanks? Would be nice to have some interesting variations.

Steve: I agree that in general the military wants you to be conservative if anything about ammo use. But I wasn't referring to your typical situation, but rather one where the veteran squad was in serious peril and needed to take really decisive action. For example, a vet SMG squad is in a house and one or two enemy green squads comes into the house to clear em out. In this type of close quarters battle situation a lot of quickly and skillfully applied firepower is called for. And I just wondered if the veteran squad would have the advantage with faster reload times and so be able to maintain a higher ROF during the course of the firefight. Thus enabling them to apply their superior skill with their weapons in a more overwhelming fashion. This would reduce the chances of the green unit getting a few lucky kills before they are cut down. And as far as MMG/HMG teams, one could easily imagine a situation where a MG crew is being assaulted by a fairly large number of charging riflemen who's intention it is to swarm the position bayoneting the crew and blasting them at point blank range. In this type of situation being able to load in a fresh belt a few seconds faster could make all the difference.

Wargaming personnel? Hehe. There is only Steve and Charles, and I don't think they are going anywhere. Welcome aboard, Runyan99. Yep, CM is the final word in WWII tactical land combat wargames at this scale, nothing else can touch it.

Interesting. I wonder if a veteran squad would put out a higher rate of fire if in close proximity to a dangerous enemy squad than would a green squad. This would simulate the greater training and experience in fast reloads of their personal weapons that a vetan or better squad would possess. Is that modeled in CM, Steve? And a related question. Do MMG/HMG teams reload their machine guns faster the more experienced/trained they are? This alone would enable them to fire at a higher sustained rate when they needed maximum firepower.

Somtimes even our own countries do things that are wrong, but that doesn't mean we can't judge the wrong doing of others. We just have to have the guts to say when something is wrong, whether it be something that our own nation has done or some other nation. Stand for the truth, that's what's important.

Zigster: You are wrong when you say that you can't really judge whether the nazis were evil or not. They were quite clearly evil. You base your statements on the false assumption that there is no right and wrong. Under that sort of misguided thinking you can say that gassing jews is fine and disecting children in medical experiments is ok, too. Why not, there is no right and wrong, correct? "Values change", right? We'll just decide for ourselves what is right and do whatever we want. Nazis think like this and use it to justify murder on a mass scale. If I were you I would be very uncomfortable thinking like them.

Ah, no need to change names. Steve has fixed the problem.

please don't tell me that all 30,000 plus posts have been lost. It will just be too painful to think of all that great info. as being lost.

If you want to talk about old wargames, how about the Wargame Construction Set from SSI? I have that for my C-64. My favorite scenario from there is Rommel's 88's. Ah, memories...

I agree, BTS does a great job on all their games and CM will no doubt be their crowning achievement. After all, we're talking about the finest computer WWII tactical land combat wargame on *earth*, that's saying something. And Steve and Charles deserve tons of credit for that. Who would have thought two guys could pull off beating all the big game companies in not only the area of realism (apparently that part's not all that hard to do ), *but* also in the areas of sound quality, graphics quality, interface quality, AI quality and, of course, the finest customer support there is? But they are in fact doing all these things as we write. It's quite an accomplishment. Now the only bad part is that once the game comes out there are going to be roughly 12,000 posts a day here. And it's going to be almost impossible to keep up. I wonder what the big companies will do when all their "highly realistic" claims about their upcoming WWII tactical wargames are rendered obsolete?

Richard III: Lol! Yeah, that Gordon Freeman is awful fierce in close quarters battle for a physicist.

Lorak: Seems there may be hope. Moon says that the full version runs a lot cleaner than the demo. Of course, smooth can be a relative term, I wouldn't expect to get 45 frames per sec or anything. But why not give it a try if you like it that much? I have played DF on a LAN with friends and that was fun, but a bit choppy, haven't tried DF2 yet. Personally, I like Rainbow 6 better (I rule at that ).

Lol.

You could pick up an Athlon 800 mghz, that should get DF2 moving.

Hey, Tom. I am considering getting 256 meg but that might be kinda pricey (especially if I get DDR ram). Even if my system doesn't have that much when I first get it I intend to add it in within 6 months. If the price isn't too steep I might just get it right off the bat, I'll have to see what the ram prices are looking like when I order the system. I wish ram prices would come back down to where they were (about $1 a meg ). By the way, how much ram did you have before you went to 256 meg? [This message has been edited by Lee (edited 01-24-2000).]

Well, it all comes down to frame rate. How smoothly do you want the graphics to flow on the screen when a big battle is in progress? In wargames this is largely a luxury, since it isn't necessary to play the game well (although it is desirable). Now, if you plan on playing Quake II on the same system then you'll want all the speed you can get. Because in games like that frame rate isn't just a nicety but rather is essential to keeping your body from being blown into messy chunks (and the cleaning bills from that can add up fast ). As for me, I'm going to be getting a new system soon anyhow (something in the neighborhood of an AMD Athlon 850 mghz, 128 meg PC133 ram, voodoo 5500 video card... you get the idea ), so I'm all set either way to run even the most demanding games liquid smooth.