phil stanbridge

Okay I have Windows 7 turn up today and I want to install. For this I need to format and start with a clean slate as I am going from 32bit to 64bit. I have all the bundles, but when it comes to unlicensing it is only asking me to unlicense the latest bundle which is the British module. It will not let me unlicense anything else. I presume this will then allow me to install all the modules again? Edit, I did a search and may have found the answer. I will see how I get on, thanks anyway!

Interesting read thanks. You can definitely see the AI shortfall when it comes to planning an attack. They go all out, and once they run into heavy fire they tend to route quickly in a disorganised chaos. But it's preparing the defence that is key - this is where I have a lot to learn. I'm sure when I replay the Brit campaign I will attempt the same strategy. Out of interest you said you could not get further with the campaign - is it semi-dynamic or something? I have been trying to work it out. I'm now playing through the marines campaign and I am not doing well. The campaign seems to realise, by the briefings. I wasn't sure if this was supposed to happen, (being pushed right back to the beach) or whether it's semi-dynamic in structure which would be an awesome improvement.

I had exactly the same problem! Except I lost the battle a lot sooner! I didn't realise Javelins were effective within buildings? I tend to put my guys on rooftops or out in the open but then they get slaughtered pretty quick. Also I had a lot of bad luck with my anti-tank guys. For some reason they fired a few duds and exposed their position. There is a huge learning curve with this game but I love it. I found a sniper team really effective - they appeared to flip from side to side of the building they were in, would pick out targets by themselves and would also use small arms. There is a productive way to use every unit in this game, it's just learning how. Also, with the different types of artillery, what is best for attacking troops housed within buildings/fortifications? Is general the type or should you use personnel, because personnel seems to airburst and doesn't seem very effective. One thing I have learnt is to keep the defenders hidden until the very last moment although that doesnt seem to work for vehicles. Where did you end up sticking the warriors? Right at the back? Mine were next to useless and I couldn't even get my FO anywhere useful. Do you keep them up the front or well out of harms way? Sorry about all the questions.

Well I'm running the 32 bit Win 7 evaluation copy and it's smoother than Vista any day of the week and my graphics card is overclocked as well. My other games (not that I have many) run very well indeed as you would expect, it is just this game that really seems to struggle. I'm talking about some of the larger battles that form the British campaign - there is very apparent stutter and I can't put it down to anything in particular. Well, maybe it's my AA & AF settings, but they are not high! I know what you mean about x64 feeling smoother though - I have the 64 bit Vista on my laptop, and that flies. It is very responsive and even plays SF very well! So I don't know where to go from here really. I think I will wait and see how Win 7 64bit pans out before splashing the cash on a new card.

So game settings maxed, and AA & AF set to high presumably and it's smooth in urban areas? That's impressive for a 512mb 4850! My setup stutters around built-up areas generally, and if there is smoke. Also craters and deformable terrain seems to effect the frame-rate unless you zoom out some distance. Bearing in mind I have a i5 with 4 cores at 3.4ghz (that's a decent overclock) you would expect it to be able to handle this.

Sweet that's a good result. Can you use Ansitropic filtering and Anti aliasing okay? Also, how does it feel? Is there any slowdown in missions etc especially in urban areas? If you can answer me those I may consider an upgrade. This Nvidia is fine but there is a lot of lag in different missions and you've got my wondering if it is a problem with Nvidia drivers too.

i7 uses DDR3, and you can get matched triple packs of memory from the likes of OCZ. i7 is really aimed at encoding, and business apps that can make use of more physical memory, so apps like Photoshop et al will really benefit (providing you are also using a 64 bit o/s). Games will not show any benefit with 6gb as most games are still only utilising 2-3gb tops. That's why I went i5. It's still DDR2 and is cheaper plus it's only marginally slower than i7 unless you overclock (which I do). But back to the problem - I reckon it *must* be down to the ATI drivers. Hopefully 9.10 cats will resolve your issues, but I would be tempted to reinstall. If you are going to install Win 7 (on the 21st/22nd) then it's no major hassle to reinstall Vista and just SF for now as you will be formatting anyway.

Yeah drivers first, although if you are using different drivers with XP and Vista, and it's still occuring then I would say you have a genuine hardware incompatibility there, which is quite bizarre. You could try removing 2gb of memory (I guess you have 3 sticks) so remove 1 and see if it's the way SF is interacting with 6gb. I've got it running on 4gb fine with x64 but haven't tried 6. Out of interest what makes are your psu and memory? I'm using a Gigabyte board too, but i5.

I was wondering about the ATI drivers guys - but something else to consider although it is a belt and braces approach to things. Have you tried formatting the pc and just installing the operating system and then the game? That's what I would do. You never know there might be some corrupted problem somewhere. But that's time consuming I realise. Alternative idea, try removing 2gb of ram.

I've played most of the British scenarios, some US and couple of smaller marine scenarios. I'm about mission 9 into the British campaign. Are some of those not big enough?

Good to know! We need to find someone with one of the brand new ATI cards now.

I find this a little confusing. I am running Shock Force 1.20 on a laptop, with Vista x64, 4gb ram and an ATI 4330 and it has not crashed once. I am running Shock Force 1.20 with all modules on a Win 7 desktop (build 7100), with an i5/4GB DDR2 and an Nvidia 275 and it runs perfectly okay. Admittedly there are some 'laggy' scenarios but this is acceptable. It doesn't crash (or hasn't yet!) which is the main thing. I've tried it on a mates older pc with a Nvidia 260 GTX, and it runs perfectly fine with no crashes. I've also tried the demo on two other pcs, both fine. I've been able to run SF on all manner of pcs with different components, to varying degrees obviously. But the bottom line I have not seen a single memory error. So what is this 'memory error' that you and others refer to? I am happy to try and help if possible. Could it 'possibly' be related to your ATI 4850 and the catalyst drivers? Have you tried using older cats?

This is disconcerting. Is this an issue that will effect all new gen ATI chipsets until there is the driver fix? Reason I ask, I am playing SF here on a laptop, with a DX10 ATI 4330 and it's working absolutely fine. None of these crashes! Admittedly this is using the Vista proprietory laptop driver, and not ATI's catalyst suite. But with the potential news that Nvidia are dropping their top-end graphics cards it would appear that most people who want to invest in new components will be forced to opt DX11 ATI. In fact, with the quality of the latest ATI cards, their low energy requirements and low noise I am half tempted to get one myself, but not if SF will crash! I am still finding scenarios laggy with the Nvidia

Hmm whilst on the subject of rifles and ammo I noticed my teams swapping frequently from the rifle to the seconday weapons and more. Are these guys 'Uber' or what? I saw this sniper pick up a rocket, fire it at a structure, kill the opposing force, calmly change his weapon back to the rifle, aim, fire AND take out a hmg team, all within the same turn. THEN he picked up an AK-47 and started to spray some unidentified team in the building opposite!!! I mean wtf? I've never seen anything as detailed in a CM game. It reminded me of the old Close Combat days.. Probably slightly unrealistic, but tremendous fun all the same! Actually, equally, I've lost a dozen or so men to one or two single Syrians which is highly frustrating, but probably just down to bad tactics on my part.

I've just disabled vertical sync and antialias and that option for quicker/better responses in the game menu and that has sped up things a lot, but it looks pretty poor now. So I will try it now with all off apart from the anti alias to see. I guess I could roll-back my drivers but I hate having to do that when they are fine for everything else. As soon as you enable the multisampling option in the menu the game takes a huge performance hit! More than it should. So is this a problem with the engine or a problem with the Nvidia drivers?

Thanks I had a look at that. I've determined it is simply down to Ansitropic filtering and AA which is a shame. If I set both those to off then I gain some frames although it is still somewhat laggy. It's curious really because this is a top spec pc and I should get better frame rates than I am. I wonder if it is down to the latest Nvidia drivers.

I'm using 191.07 and I can't say I have noticed those glitches. I sometimes see flickering though. I will inspect further.

I've got a very powerful pc sitting here in front of me but I have to say, even with a near top-end Nvidia card I do find some of the larger scenarios somewhat 'laggier' than they should be. Are there are performance tips or tricks that I could try to speed things up without losing the high quality graphics? I'll add that everything else I have on here is fine, and it is only CMSF that runs like this. Even CMBB/CMAK runs smoother than this to be honest although that isn't overly surprising. My spec: i5 @ 3.4ghz 4gb DDR3 1GB 7200rpm HD Nvidia 275 GTX overclocked a little 1920x1200 Win 7 RC1 AF x 2 (or 4), AA is off usually. There isn't much of a hit if I use AF. I'm running with the latest Nvidia betas although I'm happy to try other drivers. I have run with the official Nvidia drivers and there didn't appear any difference.

Isn't that how it should be though MikeyD? I've found the AI (red) pick out snipers and artillery observers first and foremost, with things like those artillery transporters a close second (if you are stupid enough to drive them up to the front). But I am still having some trouble with my little dudes. I can only really use them out in the open, otherwise they appear to have obstructed views, even if I can see the enemy positions from their line of sight.

A-ha! Well, I tried moving my dudes into more open terrain (from wooded areas) and within a few minutes they had spotted a machine gun emplacement and taken the primary gunner out. Out of interest does the secondary gunner take his place? Because I'm sure I noticed it. Very clever if so. It's early morning, as was the last engagement. 5am-6am time slot.

I'm playing through some really impressive British scenarios but I am struggling with the Brit snipers - how do you use them effectively? All I am trying to do is place them somewhere safe perhaps slightly out of the way of the front-line fire but within LOS of the enemy positions, however this doesn't seem to make much difference. I can't even get them to see many positions let alone take any action even with binoculars/scopes. I had this in the scenario prior also, where I managed to target some enemy armour but they refused to fire. Maybe the tanks buttoned I don't know, but the bottom line is I don't think I've seen a single allied sniper fire!

I was in exactly the same boat. But I tried the latest demo and it blew me away. Now I have all the modules and I am learning the ropes but I am still finding things that I love. Like realtime weather. I didn't realise it was realtime! So there I was starting a mission in the dark and by 6am it was getting light and I had most of my armour exposed in the sunlight! Doh!! Bloody brilliant though. Not that the crews thought so! ;-)

What about a 'unfill' with reference to the ammo selection - there doesn't appear to be any way to drop the ammo if you make a bad choice, or you want a light team. I presume weight makes an impact? Also, a delete save game option would be nice.

I absolutely agree with you here. I was the same until a week ago. For some reason, I tried the game for a third time, with the latest patch and the British module and really liked it. I have no idea what made it click. Beforehand I found the interface somewhat clunky and although there is certainly a lot more lag than with the previous games that is progress for you. I am actually enjoying aspects of SF moreso than CMAK/CMBB, although WWII is my favourite theatre. I also completely agree with reference to the difficulty levels in SF. Is it hard as nails or what? I am definitely struggling. I guess I chucked myself in at the deep end mind you - I played one of the larger British scenarios almost immediately and I decided to restart part way through. Them again, and again. Now I'm over half way but I just can't work out how you are supposed to win with such a limited force.

lol. Okay that's excellent.