Redwolf

Errr. When you alt-tab out of a game it shouldn't take up video RAM anymore until you get back into it, no? I spent a lot of time with all CMx2 games loaded and up in the dock on my Mac with 8 GB video RAM. Clearly they are not all resident in VRAM (although they are in normal RAM).

At least what I propose has a chance of success. Mind you a bigger one if Charles were the one to try it, but anyway. As for the second paragraph of your post - nice chatting but did it lead anywhere?

I seems that the OpenGL calls that CMx2 uses are quite far off the beaten path. Not just old.

He obviously decided that saying "no news" every month is worse than not saying anything.

Why are some people focusing on what Steve does in the Ukraine thread? Surely nobody expects him to work on the game 24/7.

Here is a similar trick actually applied by people on a forum, in this case DirectX to Vulkan. https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/dx12-to-vulkan-mod-for-older-gpus-on-windows.315239/ This particular one is not what we need for CMx2 and AMD, but it shows that replacement graphics API front ends can be done even with no cooperation from the developers.

The CMx1 games work on modern computers. Get them from GoG, they're cheap. Do not buy ATI/AMD graphics.

I recently reported on games plugging in the Mesa driver that translates OpenGL to Vulkan, "for situations where the drivers don't have good OpenGL support". Sounds familiar to you AMD users? There now is a second alternative, by Microsoft themselves - an OpenGL to Direct3D translation layer. So you only rely on AMD to get Direct3D (DirectX12) right and you don't use any of their broken OpenGL nonsense. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Microsoft-OpenGL-4.6-D3D12 Getting this plugged in without Charles will be an effort, but far from impossible. Of course if BFC were to pick this up it would be a big win.

Steam doesn't have the ability to serve old engine versions. Just plug in the keys that you successfully got and chances are everything will be just fine.

Well, it seems that Apple's deprecated OpenGL is a billion times better than AMD's ongoing one I wouldn't be too concerned about this.

No, it really is the OS in full control of all those power saving features for the hardware. Some minimal set is controlled by the BIOS, but that applies mostly to laptops.

Windows power saving features and games don't mix.

Mumble Hamas numbers about Palestinian casualties mumble reliable mumble.

Excellent work.

CM only uses one CPU core, so the Air should be fine without thermal throttling.

When I use CMx2 in Parallels in Windows under MacOS I find it is satisfactory for answering PBEM++ moves. For all other uses including regular PBEM you can run natively of course. But I don't use an Apple Silicon CPU for Parallels, I have it on a 2019 i9 with 5500 AMD mobility graphic chip (which works flawlessly using the Apple driver, unlike the Windows driver). You can pick up these machines cheap if you want macOS and CMx2.

The Steam version has no Mac variant. However, that does not explain why your BFC keys (which are platform independent) don't validate at Matrix.

A Fixation on Moles - James J. Angleton, Anatoliy Golitsyn, and the "Monster Plot": Their Impact on CIA Personnel and Operations Unnamed CIA writers. For free on the CIA website or cheap in kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Fixation-Moles-Angleton-Personnel-Operations-ebook/dp/B00EP6M4D6/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=fixation+on+moles+cia&qid=1699563372&sr=8-1

Circle of Treason: A CIA Account of Traitor Aldrich Ames and the Men He Betrayed. By Sandra V Grimes and Estate of Jeanne Vertefeuille. Excellent first-hand account https://www.amazon.com/Circle-Treason-Traitor-Aldrich-Betrayed-ebook/dp/B00B0YPK3W/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=circle+of+treason&qid=1699563269&sr=8-1

James Jesus Angleton: Was He Right? By Edward Jay Epstein https://www.amazon.com/James-Jesus-Angleton-Right-Original-ebook/dp/B005LPE5SC/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=was+angleton+wrong&qid=1699563056&sr=8-2

The Main Enemy, Milton Baerden: https://www.amazon.com/Main-Enemy-Inside-Story-Showdown-ebook/dp/B000QCS8Y2/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+main+enemy&qid=1699562997&sr=8-1

MS Flight Simulator 2020, sometimes X-Plane. Baldur's Gate 3, although that could count as a fighting game, too. Trying to get into Kerbal Space Program.

It will be quite challenging, but also fun. Assuming you like working on/with windows and you don't mind try-n-error fixing of closed-source software. Having said that, I cannot rule out that CMx2 with an AMD graphics card actually runs better on Linux now (assuming the fix discussed here has been merged into Wine). But you would run on a clearly better and clearly more backward compatible OpenGL implementation.

Bump because AMD is more broken once again.

There still is the unexplored route of bringing your own OpenGL frontend to then bypass AMD's. This has been actually done by a different software (game) company which had a problem with AMD's drivers. It might even be possible for a user to try this without BFC's help. But you would need to find somebody who is well-versed in Windows and decided to buy an AMD card.