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Redwolf

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Posts posted by Redwolf

    Which Combat Mission games can my computer run?

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted

    30 minutes ago, Wahooka said:

    Thanks for the responses, very helpful, I appreciate it.

    I am interested in getting "Cold War" but the system requirements say "Windows 10" on Steam.  On this website it says Windows 7.

    Before I buy the game on Steam, I just want to make sure this Windows 10 requirement won't be prohibitive.  Perhaps it is more of a suggestion then a requirement.


    The Steam text is from Matrixgames, who are not the developer. BFC's word should be better.

    Unless that PBEM++ stuff somehow introduces a Win10 dependency...

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    Annual look at the year to come - 2023

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted

    1 hour ago, nox_plague said:

    @Battlefront.com 

    Ah, I was wondering about those AMD issues.  I had the actual issues where the game rendered improperly with my PC Radeon 6700XT.  For my latest desktop I went with an Nvidia RTX just because I knew it would have better OpenGL support. And the load times are so much faster.

    I appreciate your dedication to multi-platform support over the years. I've done some tests on other forum threads comparing the load times on MacOS with a Radeon and then with Windows (Bootcamp), same machine, and seen much longer game load times when on Windows, my guess is that Apple just did a much better job with their proprietary OpenGL drivers for the Radeon GPU.  My Mac is still the best at loading CM and it plays pretty darn well for a laptop. I've read on the forums that CM continues to perform well on Apple Silicon and their custom GPUs even though they've deprecated OpenGL support.  To me this example of how well CM performs on a much less powerful portable Mac compared with my beefy desktop shows that a lot of the performance fault lies with the GPU vendor driver implementation, something you have zero control over.

    Eventually you'll probably want to look into Vulkan and MoltenVK (Vulkan to Metal translation layer) since they are the Kronos Group successor to OpenGL.  I understand the opportunity costs make it difficult to invest in such an expensive engine rewrite/re-architecture when OpenGL continues to run.

    Regarding the Black Sea expansion - would it be possible to setup a donation campaign or some other form of giving to help show the release is not trying to exploit the ongoing conflict.  I could see a purchase option to add an additional $5-10 dollars to each order to help raise humanitarian aid or some similar way to help bring to market the expansion while being sensitive to the reality.

    Anyway thanks for the plan and looking forward to continued Combat Mission updates for years to come.


    Or bring your own OpenGL:

     

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    Bring your own OpenGL if the graphic card vendor's doesn't work right

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted

    This is what flight sim X-Plane does in a situation similar to CM: non-working OpenGL drivers, but working Vulcan API. Like with ATIAMD cards and newest drivers for CMx2.

    Bring your own OpenGL to Vulcan mapper. Where "your own" means the free one from Mesa.

    https://www.phoronix.com/news/X-Plane-Zink-Shipping

    [quote]

    As written about last year, the Laminar Research developers responsible for the incredible X-Plane flight simulator software have been working to make use of Mesa's Zink for leveraging OpenGL atop Vulkan to thereby avoid vendor OpenGL drivers that can vary in quality across platforms. With X-Plane 12.04b3, that goal is finally realized.
    [/quote]

    2

    USA Trucks

    in Combat Mission Fortress Italy

    Posted

    11 hours ago, sburke said:

    we used to say BF will never do a Cold War game too......   never is too definitive.


    You would think an automatic process would be possible to keep the QB selectable units in sync with those in the scenario editor. Either to generate the code for both, or at least a sanity test that you can run before release. Doing it by hand is problematic as you always overlook some things.

    1

    Annual look at the year to come - 2023

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted

    8 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

    Personally, I have a lot of interest in the Barbarossa period.  However, my interests are not relevant when I look at what to do next with our limited time and resources.  I look at what is practical, which includes a range of things including potential return on investment.  The big one is opportunity cost.

    Two scenarios... someone wants a game that might sell 100 units, other wants a game that might sell 100,000 units.  The costs of making the game are identical and someone offers to cover all of those costs.  Which game would you make?  I doubt it would be the one that has the smaller market because that would be giving up an opportunity to earn a lot more money.  Businesses tend to do better if they remember money is what keeps things going :)

    As it so happens, the costs of doing a Barbarossa game would exceed the cost of any other WW2 game I can think of.  Why?  Because the biggest single expense is on the modeling of vehicles and forces.  There's very little in what we've done so far that would be applicable to Barbarossa.  For less effort we could make a mid-late North Africa game, which of course would make some people happy and bum others out.  Especially those who would rather see Finns and Hungarians fighting on the Eastern Front, which is something even easier to do.

    Which means someone would need to pay us not only what it costs to make Barbarossa but also pay us what we could have earned if we made something else.  I can guarantee you guys that price would be quite high and sales from it wouldn't even put a dent in recovering development costs.

    Steve


    But the question is - don't you have to cover some new area/timeframe? If you already did all the attractive ones you can only do them again with a CMx3 game. As long as it is CMx2 engine v5 you have to move [i]somewhere[/i], no? Is there a 100,000 copy theater left?

    1

    CM content creation and monetary gain (compensation)

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted

    54 minutes ago, 37mm said:

    The license on the first page of all game manuals explicitly says that BFC owns everything including user made scenarios, campaigns & any mods.


    Definitely not enforceable. Again, Adobe doesn't own what you make in Photoshop. You can redistribute works that aren't derived from other works any way you like. The tools don't matter as long as you don't ship parts of the tools.

    The whole question is a bit academic. Nobody is going to sell a battle pack. At least not successfully. Asking for donations is a different matter.

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    CM content creation and monetary gain (compensation)

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted

    11 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

    Actually if you use their games BF is the owner of any scenarios or mods people have created. Technically it may even be illegal to ask for money. I welcome any comments and I am hoping I am actually incorrect.


    Yeah, sorry that is nonsense. As long as you didn't reuse any CMx2 original base you are clear to ask for money, whether it is voluntary donations or "forced" before a download.

    Just don't base your mod textures on CMx2 textures, they need to be made from scratch.

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