Badger73

That's right! More information on Denmark can be found in this old documentary about our little kingdom
 
 

Count me too among those who would like to see the pre-v4.00 behavior regarding this.  Thank you.
 

Here ya go.
http://cmmodsiii.greenasjade.net/?page_id=5#search/text=MJ+Kerner
 
Mord.

Didn't realize that.  Thanks for pointing it out.  Gave you my heart as well . . . 

Hey, @Badger73 now you can up vote his post - check out the heart icon at the bottom of it.

I ran the same scenarios as Hister using my system with the following specs:
AMD FX 8320 3.5GHz 8-core (4 modules totaling 8 integer, 4 floating point, up to 4.0GHz turbo mode)
8GB of DDR3 1600 (CAS 9)
MSI GeForce GTX 660 Ti  - 388.00 driver
Asrock 880GM-LE FX motherboard (AMD 880G chipset)
Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD
Windows 7 Home 64-bit SP1 (latest patches)
Running at a resolution of 1920 x 1200.
Using the default settings in CMBN 4.0 (Balanced/Balanced, Vsync OFF and ON, AA OFF) and in the Nvidia Control Panel I typically got about 6 FPS (measured with the latest version of FRAPS) in "Op. Linnet II a USabn UKgrnd" on the German entry side of the map (all the way to the edge) and scrolling right or left looking at the Americans in Richelle. In "The Copse" scenario it measured around 28 FPS behind the allied armored units at the start (scrolled around the map a bit).
Messing around with Vsync (both on and off), anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, Process Lasso (affinity, etc.), power saving settings in Windows control panel, etc. didn't seem to have a significant performance effect on the low FPS of 'Op. Linnet II...'. I overclocked the FX 8320 to 4.0GHz (simply using the multipliers in the BIOS and turning off several power saving features there too, such as APM, AMD Turbo Core Technology, CPU Thermal Throttle, etc.). With 'Op. Linnet II...' the FPS increased to only 7 FPS. Turning off the icons (Alt-I) did bump up the FPS by 1 additional frame (the option reduced the number of objects to be drawn in this view) to 8 FPS.
There are some Hotfixes from Microsoft that supposedly address some issues with the Bulldozer/Piledriver architecture and Windows 7 involving CPU scheduling and power policies (KB2645594 and KB246060) that do NOT come through Windows Update (you have to request them from Microsoft). I have NOT applied these patches to see if they would make a difference since they CANNOT have their changes removed (supposedly), even if you uninstall them. A number of users on various forums have stated that the changes made little difference to their particular game's performance.
I decided to compare this to an Intel system that was somewhat similar:
Intel Core i5 4690K 3.5GHz 4-core  (possibly running at 3.7 to 3.9GHz in turbo mode)
16GB of DDR3-2133 (CAS 9)
eVGA GeForce GTX 670 - 388.00 driver
Asrock Z97 Killer motherboard (Z97 chipset)
Crucial MX100 512GB SSD
Windows 7 Home 64-bit SP1 (latest patches)
Running at a resolution of 1920 x 1200.
Again using the same settings used on the FX system with CMBN and the Nvidia Control Panel I got 10 FPS in 'Op. Linnet II...' while scrolling on the far side looking at the American forces in the town. In 'The Copse' scenario the FPS went to 40 FPS behind the allied vehicles at their start positions. The biggest difference between the GTX 660 Ti and the GeForce GTX 670 is the greater memory bandwidth of the 670 since it has a 256-bit bus compared to the 660 Ti's 192-bit memory bus. So POSSIBLY the greater GPU memory bandwidth in conjunction with the Intel i5's higher IPC (Instructions Per Cycle) efficiency and the increased system memory bandwidth (faster system RAM) resulted in the higher frame rate on the Intel system, but only by so much.
I ran a trace of the OpenGL calls used by CMBN while running 'Op. Linnet II a USabn UKgrnd' on the FX system. This recorded all of the OpenGL calls being used in each frame. The trace SEVERELY slowed down the system during the capture (a lot of data to be written to the trace file). Examining the trace file suggests that CMBN is SEVERLY CPU BOUND in certain graphical views. This is especially true with views of a large amount of units and terrain like that in 'Op. Linnet II...'.
What appears to be happening is that some views in large scenarios of CM involve A LOT of CPU time in issuing instructions to the video card/'frame buffer'. The CPU is spending so much time handling part of the graphics workload (which IS normal) and sending instructions to the video card on what to draw that the video card does not have a full (new) frame of data to post to the frame buffer at a rate of 60 or 30 FPS (Vsync). At 30 FPS each frame would have to be generated between the CPU and the video card within 33.3ms. Instead this is taking around 100ms on the Intel system and about 142ms on the FX system (resulting in the 10 and 7 FPS respectively). Some frames in the trace file had hundreds of thousands of instructions, some reaching near 700,000 instructions (each one is not necessarily communicated between the CPU and video card, only a fraction of them are), whereas sections where the FPS was higher might only have less than 3000 instructions being executed. The low frame rate is a direct consequence of how busy the CPU is and this can be seen with both Intel and AMD CPUs.
So the accusation comes up, is the CM graphics engine un-optimized ? To a certain extent, it is. There are limitations on what can be done in the environment and with the OpenGL 2.x calls that are available. CM could be optimized a bit further than it is currently, but this involves a HUGE amount of time experimenting and testing. Working against this optimization effort is CM's 'free' camera movement, the huge variety, number and size of maps available and the large variety and number of units.These features make it hard to come up with optimizations that work consistently without causing other problems. Such efforts at optimization are manpower and time that Battlefront simply does not have as Steve has stated earlier. Charles could be working on this for years in attempt to get better frame rates. While this would be a 'worthy goal', it is unrealistic from a business standpoint - there is no guarantee with the amount of time spent on optimizing would result in a significantly better performing graphics engine. Other, larger developers typically have TEAMS of people working on such optimizations (which, importantly, does allow them to accomplish certain optimization tasks within certain time frames too). When CMSF was started sometime in 2004 OpenGL 2.0 was the latest specification available (with the 2.1 specification coming out before CMSF was released). Utilizing newer versions of OpenGL to potentially optimize CM's graphics engine still involves a lot of work since the newer calls available don't necessarily involve built-in optimizations over the 2.0 calls. In fact a number of OpenGL calls have been deprecated in OpenGL 3.x and later and this could result in wholesale redesigning of the graphics engine. On top of this is the issue that newer versions of OpenGL may not be supported by a number of current user's video cards (and laptops and whole Mac models on the Apple side).
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.

+1 to @Schrullenhaft!!

+1 to @Schrullenhaft!!

It's important to consider that the more variety you have with how Objectives work, the more intriguing/compelling/interesting/dynamic things can become for a human player whereas it gets increasingly difficult for an/to get an  AI (scripted or otherwise) to deal with them intelligently.
This has implications on scenario design.  I am not sure what percentage of scenarios are designed exclusively/primarily for H2H play but I could see scenario designers limiting their creativity when it comes to Objectives based simply on the challenges/impracticalities they present when considering/scripting the AI to be an intelligent opponent.
Unlike human players, the CPU opponent and any scenario AI scripting in CM literally is incapable of making the kind of dynamic/educated/strategic decisions based on ever changing battlefield intelligence that human players do as a matter of course.  CM AI (if can call it that) is like a blind highly inflexible and opponent made to follow very simple rigid predetermined actions that may or may not be triggered by very simple human opponent induced actions.
As a consequence increasing "the complexity" of things like scenario objectives in a "vs AI" scenario is likely going to result in situations where the human players advantage of being flexible and intelligent when assessing multiple possibilities/options becomes even more of an advantage when playing against any "CPU opponent" for which scripting even a decent battle pla.  It just "wouldn't be fair".
I could see this being a reason why BFC might not want to have more types of objectives available because of issues reconciling them with respect to scripting AI opponents.
I appreciate the effort and time some scenario designers put in to scripting complex AI opponent behaviours, though I do not rate this aspect of scenario design too highly because most of my CM gameplay is (where possible) against human opponents.  I do however enjoy playing operations and "AI only" scenarios which you hope have been "optimised" to be more of a challenging "vs AI" experience for the player.
In many ways I think that the evaluation of scenarios should be split in to it's evaluation as a H2H scenario (if it is intended to be played like that) and as a "vs AI" scenario (if AI has been considered).  In theory a terrible "vs AI" scenario (extreme example being.one with no AI scripting in it), could be an awesome H2H scenario.
I think the potential to make the best and compelling scenarios lies with open creativity designing scenarios exclusively for H2H play.

Shane,
Any ETA on when The Proving Grounds (your place to test w.i.p. scenario's) will be available?
What's the thinking on the Proving Grounds process to manage uploads, testing, feedback, and finishing (for posting to TSDIII)? 
Thank you and the rest of The Few Good Men for making Scenario Depot III happen.
 
 

@RockinHarry - I uploaded this to new GAJ repository.  It will appear there when migrations complete and site opens to public.
 
 

Consider uploading to The Scenario Depot III.  Links can be found at FGM (Few Good Men).
Scenario Depot III URL = http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/
 
 
 

Besides the forum at Battelfront, there are clubs for this.  The two (2) most promient are
The Few Good Men   http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/ The Blitz        http://www.theblitz.org/index.php I'm partial to FGM.  Lurk at both a while to see whose members suit you more.  Good luck and good gaming.

Besides the forum at Battelfront, there are clubs for this.  The two (2) most promient are
The Few Good Men   http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/ The Blitz        http://www.theblitz.org/index.php I'm partial to FGM.  Lurk at both a while to see whose members suit you more.  Good luck and good gaming.

@JorgeMC,
These are exceptional!  Kinderleider, Marschleider, the Red Army Chorus!  Your cinematography is spot on.  You have a real gift for this.
When Battlefront "KickStarts" their video production company, make sure you hire on as chief production director!  Keep 'em coming.  Thank you.

+1 to all the above except for Mord; +2 for his demonstration efforts instead!

Nobody mentioned Real time vs. WEGO.  I suggest using WEGO to begin.  The turn by turn replay capability lets you see what happened verses what you intended.  That in itself will help you understand game mechanics much better. 
 
Start with the TINY and SMALL infantry only scenarios.  Get comfortable with squads before managing platoons and then companies.  Get skilled moving infantry and mortars around on foot before learning how to "mount", "dismount", and other vehicle stuff. 
 
Play the game like a tall glass of single malted scotch or really fine bourbon; sip slowly and savor, no need to hurry. 
 
Be welcome and enjoy!

I don't have a strong opinion for Module vs. Standalone per se.  I trust Battelfront will develop and deliver a high quality product.  I do feel strongly about still being able to apply existing Mods if at all possible.

Even though "Bulge" graphics will likely be better than CMBN, I would hope that I could still apply:
- Mord's Unit Portraits
- Existing Uniform Mods
- Weathered faces Mods
- Juju's UI Mods
- Explosions & Fire & Tracer Mods
- Gridded Terain Mods
- Horizon Mods
- All of Aris's existing terrain and vehicle Mods
- Sound and Music Mods

Looking foward to the game regardless.  Thanks, Chris, for the update.

Commonwealth Forces: Buron - Sticking it Out :Part 1

Your answer explains well.  It seems we have very different tastes in this regard.    I did not like "Apocolypse Now" either! 
For me the "art" in these films distorted reality to dishonest outcomes.  The novels I prefer must tell well a (philosophical) truth in their (nonfiction) lie.   I couldn't sympathize with the "truths" these characters portrayed.  Thank you for your articulate and thoughtful response.

Use tanks to suppress likely points of enemy resistance using area fire, don't wait or try to spot em - infantry move up under this supporting fire. Rinse and repeat.
 
Or mount infantry onto tanks and charge hell for leather onto the position - take yer knocks but overrun it. You've enough infantry.

I am "allowed" to area fire.  But unless I have a hard contact previously and lost it, I generally don't.  It just isn't that effective.
If I had a full spot there a minute ago but it has gone away and I suspect that is just the men going heads down, area fire at the old spot is perfectly reasonable.  
It is also effective enough, often enough, that I will spend the ammo to do it, though generally only for a minute, not for extended periods.  Ammo is too useful to blow on a possibly dead target.
 
Recon by fire is something I only use when there is quite limited enemy side cover and I think I can deduce where they have to be.  Sometimes high ammo weapons like "target light" from a tank to use its MGs only, about it.
 
As for runners, no I don't "simulate" them.  The troops are hard enough to corral without such additional work.  Sometimes I still find I have to run HQ teams hither and yon to get spots or put forces in command etc.  Works.
 
As for the brittleness of infantry, if they go stationary and rally whenever shot at, and someone else moves off, they can absorb plenty of punishment in my experience.  It helps to have steppe terrain / high grass to hide in, and undulating ground and such, to be sure.  It works because the enemy will lose the spot and shift fire to still moving units.  Then the previously hit units get a few minutes of respite, to rally. The enemy rarely has enough firepower to kill a whole company at range.  To scare it sure, or to kill it close enough.  But by then spots happen and I can fire back.  As long as I spread around who is moving and don't push faster than the men rally = want to go, a couple of HMGs can't hold off a whole company of infantry in the long range envelope.
 
Good stealthy defenses can supplement a few HMGs with other weapons, though.  Mortars firing from defilade at units that go to ground; light FOs dropping artillery fire on any sizable group, snipers on top of the HMGs (even harder to see etc).  And if all of it is meant to draw the tanks forward to give ATGs side shots, sometimes tanks ahead won't solve the whole problem.  But just a couple of entrenched MGs vs a supported rifle company, no problem.  It is a standard drill one needs to learn, without needing to rely on great cover to get close.

Start with the infantry in a formation with one platoon leading, two platoons in line behind them and to the sides, weapons and HQ in the middle of that line directly behind the lead platoon.
Tanks initially in the middle of that line and trailing it slightly.  Everyone well spread out to avoid giving good artillery targets etc.
 
Leading platoon steps off on move to contact until it draws fire.  Goes to ground when it does so.
With the lead platoon 100 yards ahead, all the rest of the infantry, plus the tanks, advances at a walking pace, on line.
 
As soon as enemy fire halts the infantry, tanks advance through the infantry to 200 meters from the sound contacts firing at said infantry.
The infantry are on their bellies, using every fold of ground as cover, hiding in the grass etc.  No job but to rally.  HQs, ATRs, MGs with binocs are eyes up but stationary, rest can hide.
Occasionally a single squad at a time advances 50 meters and hits the deck again, "walking" gradually closer to the enemy if not fired upon sufficiently.  There is no rush whatever, you have all day.
 
If the enemy MGs "go quiet" to avoid being spotted by the tanks, then the squad infantry begins advancing.  Roughly half are moving at any given time, the others on their bellies.
They switch off who is moving, moving only every other minute and for less than the full minute.  Perhaps 1/3rd of total elapsed "clock time" is spent moving.  
This is meant to present a poor target for a defender's "mad minute", meaning opening up with all MGs and squads.  Such an attempt would only pin half the attacking infantry.
The other half and the tanks would be untouched and the tanks instantly replying.
 
Meanwhile, if the defenders stay quiet, the tanks remain out of infantry AT range, and the whole company crawls closer in a staggered fashion.
Once the infantry are within good rifle range - 250 yards, say - all their heavy weapons stop moving closer, MGs set up, etc.
Then one platoon, only, advances to 200 yards and goes stationary there.  Then a second.  Then one advances to 150 yards and goes stationary there.
 
When you have a whole line of rifles and MGs even with the tanks ready to blow apart any enemy who opens fire in less than a minute, send a half squad to the nearest old sound contact.
Minimal risked force in any movement that close.  They only need to trigger fire, and should get within grenade and good SMG range if they don't draw any.
 
Whenever they like in the above process, the defenders are invited to challenge the approaching infantry company.  The tanks then murder them, supplemented by the non-moving, in-range portions of the infantry company.  The moving, fired-upon portions of the infantry company just hit the deck and remain stationary, with no mission but to hide and rally.  They count on their friends getting the shooters off of them.  Other squads may move out to draw the fire in the meantime.
 
All it takes.  A defensive position, even in the open and with entrenchments, needs ranged tank killing weapons to stop such an advance.  If it doesn't have them, or enough artillery to break up the infantry company without revealing any infantry firing positions, then it is toast.  It just takes time.

Here´s one I made as a kind of trailer/teaser for my scenario "Tiger by the Tail" (Get the scenario here)