Hister
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Posts posted by Hister
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OK George MC, thank you.
BTW, just snatched me Stalingrad game based on the Blitzkrieg series that was published in 2005 for 1,4€ on crazy discount. I said why the hell not. Gonna play that today a bit and then return to your finely crafted art campaign.
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I restarted the 1st mission trying to employing some of the tips given here trying to not do any reload (my in-house rule is reload is permitted only if my units do something I didn't want them to do like go past the house in the wrong side and then getting shot at). Reloading is quite a game immersion breaker. I've been resorting to it way too much. I wanna learn the proper tactics and after this I'll know it wasn't my stupidity that killed that tank but pure luck of war was at play.
I am using only two tanks and one whole platoon to try and finish this one (seems bare minimum to me but you tell me if this is sound or not). Will see how it goes.
First I've put one scout and the sniper team in the small (and agile-fast) half-track and drove it across the bridge, made a left turn, disembark the two teams, took them to the hedge (made them crawl the last two action spots as to not get spotted) and left them there for a few turns testing if they would manage to see the enemy hiding on the other side of the fields in the village. I intently didn't want to made any attract fire by fire move since the two teams are too valuable to be shot at. After several turns they weren't able to spot anything although the enemy was definitely there because after I was bored of waiting for something to happen, I sent in the two tanks and area sprayed the suspected enemy position with their MGs. This made my observing units see some movement after the enemy started to retreat and thus a "?" sign appeared for them.
Is it still too dark that early in the morning for the scouts and the sniper to be able to see up there? Something similar is suggested in the briefing noting that hopefully the enemy doesn't see us crossing the bridge from the village due to the early morning hours so this might be it. Right?
Did you script the enemy to pull back after it encounters a strong fire or is 4.0 game engine funkiness at play here?
BTW, do any of you know if the 4.0 engine patch is gonna be released soon or it's still months in the making? Will the patch be made for all games at the same time or will titles will be patched one after another? I'm annoying myself checking 3 times a day if the patch has already been posted or not.
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Finished the 1st mission and got tactical win with mine 6000 against their 3000 points. 6 men WIA (but only due to the savegame reload spam, otherwise it would be much worse). Thought it was gonna be a draw for me since I employed all my units against the enemy. Looks like not all have been spotted.
There are two houses whose doors are not "enterable" from one side but it's not biggy at all since the enemy was not on the other side where exposed troops could have been moved down. Another thing is (spoiler warning) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- one of the two ATGs didn't fire on my panzers although they were in clear view. They just stood there and followed my tanks but haven't shoot. Dunno what is up with this one. Forgot to check if they perhaps lack any ammo.
In the next mission I'm getting sub 20 frames in some instances. Auch.
Loving your work George MC and thank you all for nice tips.
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I've read this thread fully and got a much better idea how to approach the first mission using my available units.
I wasn't using the two available scouts and the sniper at all thinking they are a too valuable asset to squander in the first mission already as only attracting fire props. Knowing scouts are there just for the first mission this makes much of a difference...
I haven't finished the first mission yet but I'm sure it will be a draw since I employed all my units against the enemy thinking that if I kill all the enemy that then them spotting my units won't count, lol.
George MC, have you finished that other campaign that you had in the works after this one?
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Superb advice. Will follow your lead Erwin.
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2 hours ago, Erwin said:
It's a rare scenario where it doesn't pay to send inf scouts ahead of one's armor to locate enemy AT assets. It's SOP to locate and kill enemy AT b4 exposing your tanks.
Clever designers of course try and make that SOP very hard to carry out.
OK, will employ scouts more. Time constraints and every man counts approach makes this harder though.
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51 minutes ago, George MC said:
It can be done - but I tend to get impatient especially towards the end of a mission and that's when I lose stuff due to carelessness.
Must have been the same in real life for commanders although on a smaller scale I would presume.
53 minutes ago, George MC said:I've played it through without any reloads (after some earlier attempts) but found the later missions tough, albeit doable. However, it is not an easy campaign nor would I class any of the missions as 'easy'. And you have to be on your game when it comes to combined arms tactics. So defo one for the more experienced CM player - assuming reloads are kept to a minimum/none.
Would love to see a let's play youtube video covering this campaign by a seasoned CM player and observe his tactics to learn a thing or two.. or three.
1 hour ago, George MC said:Your panzer grenadiers have panzerfausts but no long range AT capability - so yes, your armour will have to take up the slack in that respect. Your panzer grenadiers mortars though are very, very useful. Just a shame they don't work when in the SPW. One thing about engine 4 I do wish was carried over into CMRT.
My current 1st mission foot grunts don't have any panzerfausts on them - only my tanks have big guns capable of putting out enemy armor (commander's halftracks do have a nice 20mm gun which can shread armoured cars). Or do halftracks carry them panzerfausts and I need to acquire them? Gotta check, I completely forgot about that! Edit: Yeah, I can acquire 2 panzerfausts from all my halftracks. Valuable assets these two...
2 hours ago, George MC said:You'll find the biggest threat your armour and SPW face are PAK, just like in the real deal. Armour is actually pretty easy to take care off. PAK tend to stay hidden till the last moment...
Yeah, I lost my 3rd tank to a PAK. Will reload of course.
What tactics do you employ against them? Send (poor) scouts in the exposed area where PAKs can have their field of fire and if nothing shoots it is supposedly save to cross?
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2 hours ago, George MC said:
Hi @Hister
Nice one
Glad you are enjoying it.
Just keep an eye on grenadier casualties and don't let them mount up too much... Good work on letting the tanks do some of the heavy lifting, but as you found out keep your grenadiers close! Although like you when I've played this I've done more than a few mission 'tactical' reloads!
Yeah, I wonder if this one can be finished without reload cheating though. OK, if you have done it then my conscious is clean.
Objective Prignitz has been secured but by now I would be down to only 2 tanks left (plus one halftrack heavily messed up) if not for reloading. I suck.
Would a very good player playing this for the first time be able to not have any or only one tank casualties? Did it happen when people tested this for you?
I realized yesterday my grenadiers don't have any antitank capabilities so it's really down to my Mark IV's to do the heavy anti vehicle and ATG work.
I played until 4:30 in the morning and only finished playing it when my 3rd tank was hit (well, it would have been the 3rd if not for the reload span I did, he he). Just one more turn button was on to the bewilderment of my fiancee.
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I managed to tackle the first half of the 1st mission and am rolling towards the Objective Prignitz now. I have lost some men but no important person luckily. 1st Platoon has lost the most men. One halftrack has it's radio destroyed but all other vehicles are OK.
Enjoying it a lot so far.
Edit: I did reload due to me pushing the lead tank too far to the enemies flank trying to mow down the fleeing enemy, parked it in front of one as of yet not cleared building and got my tracks immobilized. Decided a reload was in order.
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2 hours ago, TGarner said:
Hister, so sorry I didnt notice your question.
Yes sorry, scalded dog as in fast
Ha, ok. Cool. 😁
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Yes, fully comprehensable. 😋 Where I come from its only about 2 milion speakers of my language but we have around 50 dialects here which differ so much between each other that you could easily not understand a speaker talking in his dialect from the other side of our (tiny) country. Pretty crazy eh!?
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Yeah, hurts as hell. Good to know, I'll open up the gunners only when very far away from possible enemy contacts. They are a bullet magnets. Mine was shot directly in the head with the Russian anti armor hand held gun... His head must have splattered all the soldiers sitting in the carriage, gruesome ordeal. Funny how I feel so much connected to them making these visuals in my head. Seems like I'll have to put mark IVs to the front and only trail with halftracks behind them.
4 hours ago, George MC said:Ca' canny and awra best as we say in Scotland!
I'm sure I wouldn't understand much visiting your part of the world... ;) -
Already got 1st platoon commander injured and the halftrack gunner dead at first contact. This is not "glucking" well...
You really treat your soldiers much better the way you presented this campaign. You know every soldier counts and it hurts a lot when you get losses. Very immersive Sir George MC!
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Ok, firing it up then. Wish me luck.
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You mean scalded dog as yhe game runs fast or slow? 😀
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Hi George MC, I fired your campaign again. Previously I was put off from it due to low performance - have set the 3D model to lowest and am now getting 25+ frames in the first mission so I think I'm good.
Do you think the 4 game engine changes the gameplay too much from how you set it up and I should wait for the patch or am I clear to fire your baby up?
I don't know really how to handle the first mission. What would be the wisest way to approach each touch area? Send one platoon with one tank each as a support, near the area disembark the troops from the half-trucks and close in on foot, neutralize any enemy lurking there, hop back on the halftracks and move on to the next area?
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Oh my, thank you @Schrullenhaft for doing such an extensive test!
This chapter can be closed now. I can finally "rest in peace" when it comes to CM games performance.
Results are very telling. I'll put all the settings that I have changed in the bios and windows back to what they were since no tinkering with them will make any change to how my computer performs with this game. Also this makes me certain my next rig won't be that much of an improvement over the current one and this spared me the disappointment I would otherwise probably have over the future results.
CM is way ahead of it's time - which consumer oriented CPU out there can process 700.000 instructions in a second on a single core and still have room to breath?
I think the recommended hardware specs should be updated, at least when it comes to the CPUs.
13 hours ago, Schrullenhaft said:As for the difference between the GTX 550 Ti and the GTX 660 Ti that Hister is experiencing, I'm not sure what may be going on. The GTX 550 Ti is based on the 'Fermi' architecture, while the GTX 660 Ti utilizes the 'Kepler' architecture. Kepler was optimized for the way games operate compared to the Fermi architecture which had slightly better performance in the 'compute' domain (using the GPU for physics calculations or other floating point, parallelized tasks). The GTX 660 Ti should have been a significant boost in video performance over the GTX 550 Ti, though this performance difference may not be too visible in CM due to the CPU bound nature of some views. It's possible that older drivers may have treated the Fermi architecture differently or simply that older drivers may have operated differently (there are trade-offs that drivers may make in image quality for performance - and sometimes this is 'baked into' the driver and isn't touched by the usual user-accessible controls). I have a GTX 570 I could potentially test, but I would probably need to know more details about the older setup to possibly reproduce the situation and see the differences first-hand.
When I upgraded the rig I kept the 550Ti on it from the previous rig and only later on George MC sent me his 660Ti. The similar performance of the GPU's on the same rig is probably because the CPU is the bottleneck here. I could sport GTX 1080 and got no different results if I also wouldn't swap the CPU. I have my eyes set on the 8th generation Intel Core i5 8600k when it comes available again and mined GPU and RAM prices disappear (will they ever?). If the current price for the processor holds I hear it is the best value for money when it comes to gaming.
Schrullenhaft, no need to do any other tests for me, very much appreciated what you have done. If you want I can do some testing for you in return if you need anything to learn out of my hardware.
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Has this been updated yet?
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It comes down to what GPU and drivers you have. My previous less powerful GPU rendered the shadows very nice, with the current one I'm experiencing the same thing as you do...
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On 10/24/2017 at 4:48 PM, Battlefront.com said:On 10/24/2017 at 4:10 PM, c3k said:
I've got mine driving a 1920x1080 screen. Yours is pushing a widescreen 2560x1080. So, simple maths tell us that your card has a 33% greater load on it...for every frame...than mine does.
I was waiting for Hister to start up a new thread before addressing this, but since you brought it up and I moved the old content to a new thread, time to dig into this one
I'd say this is the #1 likely cause of problems for Hister. It's simple math... the more polygons on the screen, the more strain that is put on the hardware. Having a huge scenario seen from a high altitude with a massive screen size setting and good quality settings is simply not going to work out very well. So first thing I'd advise Hister is to change reduce the screen resolution down to something more reasonable and see how that affects overall performance.
{...}
The solution is to figure out why the hardware is getting overwhelmed. As stated, the most likely suspect is the massive screen resolution. Turn that down and you will, at the very least, increase your top speed and decrease how slow things get. You might still porpoise, but it will be less extreme and therefore less noticeable. If it's still unacceptable to you, then figure out what else can be changed to reduce the strain on the card. Smaller screen resolution, lower the quality settings in some way, turn off fancy card features, etc. There's no one simple answer because there's far too many individual PC specific variables at play.
Previously I forgot to test the game as per Steve's suggestion with lower then native ingame screen resolution on my ultrawide 1080 monitor. I have chosen the lowest possible ingame resolution of 1024x768, exited the game and restarted it. Ingame options set to the usual balanced/balanced as per other tests I made. The framerate as I expected was low also in this small resolution -> only 24 to 25 so by lowering the ingame resolution to 1024x768 I got 2 to 3 more frames only which testifies my screen resolution is not the one bottle-necking the game and it also says Steve's first most likely suspect is now likely excluded.
Screenshot attached - game can't be played in this resolution any way because it gets stretched too much but this can't be observed in the screenshot because it gets unstretched when it is taken. Playing in this resolution would be possible if the game would not stretch and remain in it's native size window with black bars being applied on either side of it to fill the native monitor size like the starting menu is handled. In my case though it wouldn't help at all since again screen resolution is not what is making my game throttle.
Edit: Doing the same test with ingame 1152x864 resolution gave me the same framerate (24/25). With ingame setting of 1280x960 I was interestingly enough given 27 to 28 frames which is counter intuitive due to the bigger resolution being used.
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An update:
So I tried fiddling with the CPU and motherboard just to see if something might work in regards to better performance.
-Reinstalled the latest bios.
- Reinstalled the latest motherboard chipset.
- I unparked all cores (I know the game uses only one core but did this in order if the core which the game utilizes would not be working well under previous settings - I don't run on windows 10 so had to do this manually).
- I allotted the suggested 12 gigs of virtual RAM on my SSD C partition where my windows is installed (some reports suggested this step helps with higher framerate).
- I was swapping between different power options in the bios (went from optimal where power is dynamic to normal when it's always the same and not adapting).
- Turned off the turbo booster (some reports suggested that it was sometimes guilty of stutter in games).
- Checked the RAM frequency used and upped it from 1300 to 1600 (although I am not sure if this is better because if I remember correctly I read somewhere that AMD's CPUs need lower RAM frequency to function better).
So far no change when it comes to Combat Mission - framerates are the same as before.
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32 minutes ago, c3k said:
I'm quoting Schrullenhaft because my post will seem much more accurate and helpful if I include anything he's written.
Consider him the Oracle.
Yes, he's a very helpful guy! Helped me before successfully.
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1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:
I think this discussion is showing how difficult it is to pin down a performance issue. It's never as easy as "the game code is the problem" or "the CPU is the problem", etc. It's always some combination of things, including stuff that isn't normally looked at on the mother board.
I didn't think for a second it would be easy.
1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:It is absolutely impossible to compare the performance of one game against the performance of CM when trying to troubleshoot framerate issues in CM. The reason is that every single game hits different parts of the hardware differently. On top of that, few use OpenGL and that means those games might not even use the same hardware AT ALL or to the same extent that CM does.
Yes, that's why I while I said I have no particular problems with other 90+ games I currently have installed on my PC that probably none of them run on OpenGl chasis.
1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:The lesson here is that expectations should be pegged to what other CM players experience, not what the guy down the street gets with a first person shooter game. It's a comparison that doesn't help at all.
Yes, I am and I was fully aware of that.
1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:For sure CM doesn't run as fast or as smoothly as the AAA games out there. Those games probably spend more money on optimizing for hardware than we spend in a year on everything we do. Hell, probably 2 years!
I know that your CM game family is a little miracle on itself.
1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:Those AAA games also have the luxury of cutting out something if they aren't happy with the performance. For example, those AAA games would never put their equivalent of BP1 Op Linet II in release and would probably put some restrictions so that nobody could make something that. We don't put on restrictions, so the "worst" of CM has no equal to the "worst" in another game because their worst is far, far less stressful on the system than ours is.
Here I would raise a question why include such a stock mission if it runs ok only on some hardware rigs that have all the elements well aligned with the "CM stars" (and again we don't know what works well besides that Intel CPU users are probably gonna experience a better performance then AMD ones due to Intels ticking faster then AMD's - IPC while the game in 3D mode uses one core and thus faster IPC in most scenarios is better) without a accompanying warning that due to the hefty size and complexity of the scenario not all players will be able to get a playable experience (experience may vary - a simple note warning the players what they are getting into).
I also wanna say that I am not owning many AAA titles, have all sorts of indie and niche games. I ain't a spoiled brat but I admit I am a visual slut (but only when gameplay is decent or better otherwise visuals mean not much to me if the game otherwise sucks).
1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:C3K pointed out something very important to keep in mind... Combat Mission pushes around way, way, way, WAY more data than the AAA games you see out there. We have hundreds, if not thousands, of unit objects in good sized scenarios which all demand their own graphics, data, AI, etc. resources. CM also uses detailed physics designed to simulate real life, not quick/dirty approaches that are there for effect and not simulation. This not only affects load times, but it also means any sort of CPU or I/O bottlenecks are going to be pretty noticeable with CM vs. a AAA game.
Yes I know, your game is very special and that's why I haven't forgotten about it and moved on to something else!
1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:For Combat Mission, the average scenario should run between 25 and 30fps most of the time for most people. Big bastard scenarios are the ones that are likely to crash the FPS for one person and not do so for another person. Bottlenecks have a sort of compounding effect that gets disproportionally worse as the strain goes up.
You should really make this clear for the current and new users then. "Our games run on average 25 to 30 frames. Retro sells."
Joking aside sporting a Freesync or Gsync monitor I hear helps elevate such low framerate count. Knowing this loud and clear is better then being miserable asking yourself why any given rig can't churn out more frames and thinking either something is conflicting with the game/hardware/drivers or all these things. See because certain user's rig surpasses the recommended specs he/she might thought that he/she could run the game on all maxed out getting 60 frames on 1920x1080 monitors as is the standard with most games utilizing 3D environment... Maybe write a note about what limitations users might encounter?
1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:Nearly a 20% speed increase by going from 1600 to 1280. How do either of these compare with your FPS on your widescreen?
As I already stated I had 22 frames on my ultrawide with the exact same settings. 2 frames less...
1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:This indicates that the scenario is overwhelming some part, or parts, of your system. You mentioned your CPU, but that's likely not it. As you've pointed out, your CPU is above specs (and you now understand more about cores and why they don't matter). So it's probably buss speed or a sub component on your motherboard that was made by the "lowest bidder" instead of "highest standards". This can be like driving a Ferrari with a plugged air filter. Doesn't matter what the specs of that Ferrari say, or how much it costs, if the air filter is plugged I could probably accelerate better in my Honda. Computers are like so many other things -> only as fast as their weakest component. And even then that's highly task specific in terms of impact.
We are getting somewhere then. I don't remember my Asus motherboard of being the lowest/cheapest possible pick. I remember going through many reviews and picked this one as a good quality to price ratio. But it might have some setting borked or something or in the end it might not and is just crap in it's vanilla state. What would you suggest me to do to check if everything is set right in the first place? What would be the steps one needs to undertake to find out if there is anything off with the motherboard? I know it's a very broad question for every model differs but there must be some basic steps that IT guys do, right?
1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:For sure CM's fluidity and overall performance is not great compared to the AAA games. As I explained in my previous post, there are very good and understandable reasons for that. Setting expectations for CM within what CM can do is really the best way to go. If most people say "I get 25fps for X scenario" then you're not likely to get 40fps and wanting it to be so won't make it happen.
Yeah, that is the only right way to go - accept it for what it is. A hardware/drivers nitpicky gem that provides hundreds upon hundreds of hours of entertainment on a low framerate .
59 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:You keep making a big mistake and making it over and over again no matter how many different people try to explain things to you... this is not a simple A + B = C situation. The longer you hold onto that sort of bad logic the harder it will be to help you. Or want to help you.
An example is with the AMD disclaimer you think we should put on our website. Schrully didn't say ANYTHING OF THE SORT. What he said is that in a lab the Intel chips have a theoretical advantage over an AMD chip. That difference likely has absolutely nothing to do with the slowdowns you are seeing. So no need for a disclaimer for something that isn't relevant and it is distracting for you to suggest that it is.
Steve, you are right - I said that in the light of the issues I'm experiencing but if something is up with my motherboard then that point is moot - I answered Schrullenhaft before I saw your posts since his was the last post on the page and I started replying directly to him without seeing what you wrote. That said Schrull said this: "Admittedly newer Intel CPUs will have an advantage over the AMD FX series since they execute more 'instructions per clock' (IPC) resulting in better single-core performance (comparing at the same clock speed)." Since CM when not loading is using only one core it means that the Intel CPU's are more optimized for the game. No need to get all "attacky" on me for I am not being a dic* towards you, him and the game in general.
59 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:Screen resolution is probably the single biggest cause of problems for you. Your own tests pretty much prove it. There's still something else on your system that is causing poor performance for big scenarios, but your CPU is unlikely the cause of it. As I and others have said, it's probably something or some combination of things which are bottle necking what CM can push onto your screen. For some scenarios the bottleneck isn't a problem, for bigger ones it is.
What is the native monitor resolution the game can be played on with all the settings set to max while getting minimum 25 frames on the suggested system specs? Do suggested system specs take into consideration the standard monitors used for gaming now which are 1920X1080? Do the suggested system specs take into account stock BP1 Op Linnet scenarios? They should by my understanding but yours might be different.
In my case as you know considerably smaller monitor native resolution for the huge Linnet scenario doesn't make a difference thus we are now pointing the finger towards the biggest hardware suspect - currently the motherboard. I fully acknowledge other smaller scenarios fit the 25-30 frames on oldschool tiny square (1280x768) monitor that I am not going to plug on my system for just when I will play CM games because my desktop icons for one get all messed up and also because I have no space on my desk to sport two monitors, etc.
If Schrullenhaft experiences the same 7 to 8 frames on his machine in that scenario then my motherboard isn't at fault and that will spare me the time to fiddle with it in search of the fubared setting on it or a physical malfunction of sorts.
59 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:And finally, you have to accept that CM will not regularly run as fast as a AAA 3D game that was made within the last few years. The two are designed for different purposes and so it follows that their behavior is different too. If you want to get to someplace for dinner quickly with a bit of a thrill, take a sports car. If you want to move your apartment contents, take a delivery van. Expecting a delivery van to go 200km/h is unreasonable, just as it is unreasonable to expect a 2 seat sports car to be a good choice for moving your apartment
Yes and yes. Accepted and no need to be repeated again with me.
Glad you are enjoying it.
Scalable UI
in Combat Mission - General Discussion
Posted
I know who you had in mind while saying that...
Do check the test results of Schrullenhaft on that matter in case you haven't seen it yet.