DaveDash

It can be frustrating sometimes (especially LoS and pathing) when things don't work out how we expect. But bare in mind this happens more IRL than in the game Always build redundancy into your plans. Account for pathing oddities by having proper movement to contact drills. I also think just because there are btlns in the game you can't expect it to run flawlessly. The more units the more you're going to see outlining behaviour, and the more strain on your computer. I agree about the higher micromanagement in the new engine. Hopefully CMx3 has a lot of focus on the interface and command system.

If you use WeGo I assume that is what happens, but if you do not use WeGo then everything is done real time (thus more CPU load). I remember this was an issue in CMSF so they reintroduced to blue bar for this reason. Phil will be able to clarify though.

Fair enough regarding the comparisons. I don't know enough about programming so I'll take your word for it. We just want a great game to be perfect I'm also very happy by the way with the release state of the game, given the trend these days to release first fix later.

The thing is that I am not really buying though Phil is that it seems that shadows seem to be the main culprit and not AI. With all due respect I've got loads of CPU taxing games on my machine (mostly Paradox games) which do number crunching that makes the numbers in CMx2 seem pitiful. Victoria 2 for example manages population movements of a simulated world that is extremely processor intensive. As demonstrated earlier I don't see problems with CPU load but rather strain on the GPU, especially with shadows. Maybe the calculations for their geometry is handled by the CPU? The shere number of them visible at once on a map? And with all due respect while the unit details are great, the terrain is kind of average (and not exactly detailed while zoomed out either). And this is where I am having trouble grasping your explanation from a purely graphical standpoint. Ok yes, CMx2 has to deal with rendering loads of troops and terrain, but the sheer amount of objects being rendered in some FPS games is pretty astounding (with high res textures, complex shadows, etc) too. In CMx2, units may look detailed from far away but the terrain doesn't. In regards to units, If the units themselves retain their high res textures from all angles, and high details the more you zoom out, which contributes to bad frame rates even on top end gear, then wouldn't that actually indicate the engine is unoptimised? Ie, you're not using little tricks of your own when players zoom out? I understand and appreciate that this task may be difficult given the resources you have.

Phil - I appreciate your comments. I understand that comparisons to other games might be unfair, and I appreciate that CMx2 does things that other games do not. But the fact remains that no matter what hardware I through at your game it doesn't run in a satisfactory manner. The net result is I find large battles a chore playing at 20fps when every other game I have ever played runs like a dream. You get used to a certain standard and maybe our expectations are wrong, but I am glad to hear this is something you guys will constantly try to improve with your limited resources. As long as there is some sort of acknowledgement that there is room for improvement and it is something BFC would like to work on then that is enough for me, because it may seem fussy, but I spent so many years as a poor student with a crappy computer that now I really enjoy games that run smooth.

I knew you'd bring that up. I've had sometimes hundreds of troops, tanks, vehicles in map at once, flying around, on the ground, and on this computer it runs like a charm. Not only that, I ran various mods which are running AI scripts for each unit in the game. I used ArmA 2 because it is the closest game I can think of to CMx2 in terms of demand on hardware. It's also not strictly FPS (in command view and with various mods) and can be a hybrid RTS/FPS with no noticeable slowdown. Obviously yes, camera angles can be assumed and the game isn't strictly the same, CMx2 has complex LOS calculations and so forth and pushes the boundaries in many ways that other games don't. I understand and appreciate that. The point is, there is something very noticeable about the combat mission CMx2 engine that is unoptimized. I am not complaining, but I have spent a lot of money on this computer and it is the only disappointment with the game. It's the only game on my machine that does not run in an excellent manner, despite what hardware I throw at it. HAVING SAID THAT, I applaud the effort that has been made to make combat mission what it is, given the resources that BFC have. The game is still perfectly playable at 20-40 FPS, and given Steve's benchmark of 20-30 FPS then I guess the 80/20 rule probably applies to squeezing out that extra optimisation.

Back on topic, yes that gapa tool is actually very cool.

Why are you being so argumentative? I work in IT so I am more than familiar with how all this works. I do have a second monitor. You can see the CPU load is around 60% on the first core until I quit the game, in which it returns to low usage and THEN I take the screenshot. Whatever issue you are experiencing is different from the issue reported by myself and others. I'd almost say it's something to do with your configuration and NOT the game. I have been playing the CMx2 engine for -years- on multiple rigs. I am quite experienced with it. So calm down, stop making assumptions. The issue I have is 100% GPU related and not CPU related. The issue you have is that your CPU is bottlenecking performance first, for whatever reason. The fact is my CPU is NOT a bottleneck, yet my video cards are. This makes my assumption that CMBN is not well optimized to work on GPU's correct. This would also be logical considering the resources at Battlefront's disposal. Maybe perfmon is more your thing? No maxed out core usage there either. Each core is an i7 2.67ghz. I do have two processors but I don't think CMBN takes into account multiple processors? I could be wrong. In any case, my processors are not the bottleneck. Post from Steve on the topic, plus other people complaining about performance: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=96422&page=2 Any more questions? Some screenshots: Shadows On: Shadows Off: Even 30 FPS is pretty meh given the amount of money spent on this computer, and the superb performance in every other game. In fact, I actually bought a second GTX 580 to try and get the most out of CMBN as it's the only game on my computer which doesn't run nicely. Using ArmA II as comparison, which runs smooth on pretty much max, and is also quite a CPU intensive game:

Hmmm nope. Your problem (which was hard to tell from your OP) is definitely caused by something else - anti virus maybe?. Why on earth would any coder design an engine to render shadows using CPU's and not GPUs? This problem hasn't just been reported by me, but other uses in the tech support forums (also with GTX 580's). The game isn't optimized to render shadows, terrain, etc very well and in my case and the case of others it's purely GPU related. It was the case in CMSF as well, but it's exasperated now in Normandy with all the forests and more units. Here are my processors while playing "School of Hard Knocks" - which is a Btln sized engagement. Barely breaking a sweat (and I run VM servers in the background). With all due respect, I am not "100% wrong". Maybe you need to look elsewhere than the game to figure out what your issue is.

The biggest cause of casualties for me is the time limits. Now I just try to ignore them and go at my own pace. In real life commanders quite often when over their time limits. 4 weekly operations turned into months. Especially in the Bocage of Normandy and some Islands in the Pacific.

I love CMBN. I actually struggle to go back to CMSF now, and that is saying something because I love the modern setting. HOWEVER, despite his review being badly written and clearly he hasn't delved that deep into the game (or he'd realise the AI is not clever, but scenario designers are), he is right about some things. The terrain (and stock audio) isn't that flash, and definitely was second fiddle to the unit graphics. It's also badly optimized and doesn't run well on my pretty much top of the line PC. The camera IS annoying and clunky to use. It DOES get tiring giving 50 billion move/pause orders because assault doesn't work properly. For some reason I find large formation battles more cumbersome than the original titles, might be to do with the laggy graphics, I am not sure. However, given the resources BFC have I think they've done a fantastic job overall, and most importantly, the game is fun. I also do kind of agree with the ETO being over-used. I'd love to see a Pacific theatre module/game from BFC. I think fighting to the death such as was in the Pacific Theatre would suit the AI a little better. I understand however that it's more Naval/Infantry focused instead of the nice set piece battles of Europe.

I have the same rig as him. The screenshots are most definitely touched up. I also get the lacklusture game performance from CMBN given the power of my rig. It's almost 100% video card related as turning shadows off boosts fps by at least double, and the performance changes when you zoom in and out. Thus it is not CPU or RAM related. In short, there are lots of objects being drawn and I don't think the engine is well optimised in this regard.

Well you'd want your spotter looking down onto the woods ideally. You can usually find a gap somewhere in the trees. Either that or just paste the entire area at the start of the game during the deployment phase. I usually do that with "likely" enemy positions if I have the assets available. Reverse slope woods or on top of a hill? Forget it. Just go around it.

Even with veteran modern troops in CM:SF clearing out woods with infantry results in heavy casualties. WW2 era troops is very tricky. Definitely send in scout teams and try to locate and avoid his concentration of troops. Mortars really are your friend here.

Nope. It's definitely GPU related (since zooming in speeds up framerate) and almost certainly shadows are highly unoptimized. Turning off Shadows alone boosts FPS from roughly 20fps to 30-40fps. I do not get the same "Bottleneck" in CMSF, even with battalion sized engagements with trees all over the map. CPU is not the bottleneck here. Ricroma - I believe CMBN is 32bit meaning it cannot take up more than 3GBish of memory. In fact, I've never seen it take up more than 1.5. I'd say you will be fine with 6GB.

I have one of the best graphics card on the market, the MSI GTX580. It runs the game slightly better than my 2-3 year old ATI 4890. The performance is "lackluster" at best. There is a problem with CMBN. It's not very well optimized. You won't get a good framerate until they optimize the engine somewhat (especially shadows). Also the 570 GTX is a "poor" card for gaming AFAIK. Nvidia IMO usually produce better cards than ATI but always review the individual card first.

I don't bother with mainstream game reviews. If I did, there would be tons of great games I would have missed out on. Meanwhile buggy, unplayable, and/or utterly boring games like Total War (newer titles), Civ5, etc all score in the high 80s, low 90s.

Some chick added me on steam, she could have only found me through the BFC group. At least, I think it was a chick. Jenni 16v ? There are a lot of girl gamers out there, but sadly I think this game is about as far away from anything women would be remotely interested in as you could possibly get.

Ive seen planning a few times in CMSF. From memory, it seemed to be related to pathfinding. Could be wrong though.

Landing on the beaches of Omaha was also suicide. Going into the Adrennes forest as part of the 101st was suicide. Men still did it. See my point about modern perspectives. If you want them to hide, tell them to hide. Also you really seem to be struggling with the concept that they are better off engaging a tank approaching their position that sitting still doing nothing. Covered Arcs solve your other problem of infantry engaging too early. It's tactical suicide to have defenders in exposed positions anyway, so that is YOUR mistake and not a game flaw. Like I said in my earlier post, when defending, put infantry in keyholed positions or reverse slope positions. If three tanks can shoot at your infantry YOU have done something terribly wrong.

Infantry does not engage buttoned tanks. So, your infantry might knock out optics, or the TC, and the tank may retreat. This is WW2, men did extremely brave things in the face of insurmountable odds. From our modern perspective it may seem like suicide. However, if that tank is rolling towards your position you're in grave danger anyway - much more danger if the tank has situational awareness. As it's been pointed out numerous times in this thread, infantry didn't sit idle and let tanks roll up to their position. If you specifically require them to do this, then issue them a hide order and manually control who they shoot at. If anything the only change that should be made is that infantry should be a targeting priority for other infantry instead of tanks. Those of us who have played CMSF against tanks with modern optics, fire control systems, etc have learnt to deal with enemy armour to a degree of lethality well beyond CMBN. We don't set up our infantry in the tops of buildings or at the tops of hills. We don't set up our infantry without covered arcs or hide orders. Learn, Adapt.

The only problem I have with this is MG gunners exposing their position by shooting at unbuttoned armour. However that is more a scenario designer/tactics problem (lack of cover arcs) than a game problem. Can't say I've ever seen infantry open up with small arms at a tank from 400m+, ever. Snipers are the only exception.

I guess we'll agree to disagree. The campaigns produced in CMSF (Marines, British Module, NATO) were excellent. This mission for a start is not finished properly, and goes against many of the design components that made the later CMSF campaigns excellent. This mission is "fun" because CMBN is new and fresh, but if I loaded up this mission in CMSF after NATO, I would be utterly disgusted with its design.

Ok this mission is a pain in the a**. Spoilers Below: First mission ever in my CM life where I have not been able to win it first try. Came oh so close and had 118 KIA vs 93 KIA. Not bad given the ridiculous circumstances of this mission, but still terrible casualties. This mission may be realistic - but it is certainly not fun. When CMSF started, a lot of the missions in Task Force Thunder were designed from a realism point of view, and the CMSF campaign wasn't the best. As the designers got better, missions became more of a balance of realism and fun. This mission really fails as a fun mission. You are given hordes of units to control that you must filter through one little choke point. The enemy has craploads of artillery and you have no cover. Basically it is a meat grinder. You can't set up effective bases of fire, because your guys get chewed up by artillery. I managed to clean up the all the enemy anti tank guns and would have steamrolled to victory, except ALL my tanks got bogged as soon as they touched one small fraction of grass trying to navigate the buggy mess that is the bridge. Pretty much for round 2, I'm just going to sit back and blow the hell out of the Germans with artillery for 1 hour 30 minutes, then move one guy up to the bridge near the end. All in all, horrible horrible mission. Thumbs down. This mission could be improved dramatically if there were multiple paths you could take to win it. For future campaigns, please, take some lessions from the CMSF campaign designers.

Foxholes definitely help. Id probably say foxholes are the best place for infantry to be - IF they had to be hit. The best place to be of course is not where the mortars are falling (watch for spotting rounds).