alwaysfish

You should read it as "G-Sync support" Here is explanation what it is http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/g-sync By the way, from the cards you provided, i guess i would choose EVGA if you don't know anything about overclocking. The EVGA card is already overclocked to 1176 MHz base clock, and Gigabyte is overclocked only to 1033 MHz. In theory you should get slightly higher frames per second with EVGA.

Ian, I would not say a statement about bottleneck if I didn't have supportive hard evidence. Sorry if explanation will seem a little technical, however we are talking about rendering engine. First, my educated guess is that during orders phase, when bullets are not flying, only rendering is done (well, i should add that user input is also handled). Since even during that phase FPS is low, I was curious what was happening. It is really easy to trace what OpenGL calls CM is doing with the help of some open source OGL tracers. Trace log showed that during one frame a huge amount of OGL state changes was done. Anyone doing programming in OGL knows that state change incurs a lot of overhead which in turn reduces fps. It seems that rendering engine doesn't sort geometry by texture, which many optimized rendering engines do. A simple example what happens under the hood and what I mean: Set texture A Render geometry 1 Set texture B Render geometry 2 Set texture A Render geometry 3 This constant change in texture back and forth (and other related OGL states) is fps killer. That's why driver implementation and some optimizations at the driver level is very important if engine itself is not optimized. And like I said, Nvidia's implementation of OGL is much better suited for CM rendering engine. Having said that, CM is a wonderful game even if it is not very well optimized. It is the only game I launch every day and I enjoy every release of it. Optimizing rendering engine takes a lot of effort.

AMD implementation of OpenGL is worse than NVidia's. CM is not very well optimized around the fact that OpenGL is state machine and there is a lot of overhead in the drivers when states (e.g. texture) is changed during rendering. Definitely go with Nvidia card if you want to get higher frames per second while playing CM because Nvidia's drivers handle better the rendering implementation of CM. Just as comparison, i have desktop computer with HD 7950 and laptop with Nvidia GT 750m. Even though 7950 performance is much higher in any other game, in CM its performance is much worse. On same settings (Better model quality / Better texture quality) 750M performs much much better and gives me better fps. Processor is not a bottleneck in CM, graphics rendering engine is.

Fantastic post. i couldn't even imagine that so much planning is done before execution.

I can confirm, that CMSF is working perfectly on Windows 10, although i had to put it on Windows XP SP3 compatibility mode. Before upgrade i unlicensed it and then licensed it again when Win10 was fully installed. CMBS and CMBN is also working perfectly on Win10, no need to put on compatibility mode.

thank you. awesome job

I have most of CM games, however i still play Shock Force the most. Have fun with your new toy

thank you John

Thank you very much

thank you very much

Very nice. Thank you Mike

I am sorry to say this, but from last Steve's posts my opinion about BFC has changed. They do create good games, but, man, the way they treat customers/community members... simply not good. Maybe i am wrong, since i am new here. Only time will show.

But BFC does not have to recreate engine. In my opinion, it's an old way of thinking. If everyone was thinking that they have to create their own engine, we would not see a flood of new indie games. Fact is, that new small development studios make a one time financial investment into 3rd party engine provider, and then invest their creative time in gameplay creation. And market is full of very good engines, which are cross-platform, could be adapted to any rendering needs, and the engines are not expensive.

I think that overhauling graphics might increase sales, however the real problem, in my opinion, is that Battlefront sales strategy is a little bit dated already. All the above mentioned games are distributed through many, many different online distributors, Steam, etc. Even Matrix Games is gradually moving to Steam. However, Battlefront doesn't want to share any revenues with anyone, which in turn means that they distribute on their own, they have small sales numbers, they charge high price, etc. It was ok 10 years ago, when most of the games were sold on shelves, however distribution costs have decreased a lot over the last 10 years. Yes, you have to share revenues with distributor, but market size is many times more what you currently have. And more sales means more revenues (yes, with lower margin), which in turn generates money for future projects. Like somebody said, war games are not a niche anymore. CM games stand out from other tactics games, they are really a gem. But for some reason, Battlefront cowers in the woods, does not show up in the big market with a really good product. If i was Battlefront, i would at least try for one year to go to "large waters" and see what happens. By the way, to be honest, i found about CM only by reading some blogs, while Total War series is to some extent crap, but everyone knows about it. And finally, short comment to what Steve said about 2-3 years of new engine development. They don't have to reinvent wheel and create new rendering engine. They could licence Unity 3D or any other already well established, cross-platform, rendering engine and spend time only on developing game logic. Just my 2 cents

One of the best things Battlefront could do is to allow players script AI. No game is perfect and no game will fit everyone's needs. And i think game company should not even dedicate resources to make game perfect. But to make everyone happy, developers could create a simple scripting language, where players would be able to script more complex, "high-level", commands using EXISTING "low-level" commands. That way micro-management could be reduced to just one command. Furthermore, developer, instead of spending time on implementing various military tactics because their loyal players demand that, could just focus to extending low-level commands, while community will be able to experiment with high-level commands. Win-win situation. There are so many successful games which took the approach of letting community "fix" imperfections of the game through scripting and modding. I believe that Battlefront has one of the most dedicated communities, BUT limited development resources. Solution - allow COMMAND SCRIPTING. Very simple example: Player selects community developed command "Charge, charge!!!" and targets it to the building. Script divides squad into Assault and B team, orders B team to overwatch target building, orders Assault team Quick run to point of entry to the building, orders Assault team to wait 15 secs, orders Assault team to Quick run into building, orders B team to Quick run into building, orders Assault and B team to merge back into squad.

To answer, Does it work?, Yes it works. Tried it right now.