CoolColJ Posted October 31, 1999 Share Posted October 31, 1999 PSY I suggest watching the movies with view 4 and a +2 or +3 scaling for an overview of the turn - and then zoom in closer for a more detailed look afterwards if you need/want to. ------------------ CCJ aka BLITZ_Force My Homepage - www.geocities.com/TheTropics/Beach/4448 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pirate Bill Posted October 31, 1999 Share Posted October 31, 1999 AI and turn calculation is blazing fast on my Rev C iMac, as in each-one-finishes-in-under-5-seconds fast. I can't wait to test it on the UltraKludge (G3/300, Voodoo2, 112 MB RAM) However, one of my friends was running it under Windows on a very powerful system (Fast P2, Voodoo3, 200+ MB RAM) and said that turn and AI calculation was 'painfully slow'. What's everyone else's experience? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kingtiger Posted October 31, 1999 Share Posted October 31, 1999 AI and Turn Calculation is 4 seconds and 3 seconds respectively. System: PIII 540 (450 @ 124 mhz * 3.5 = 540), 32 MB TNT2 Ultra. Richard Kalajian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PSY Posted October 31, 1999 Share Posted October 31, 1999 I'm running on a PII 450 w 128 Megs and a TNT card. I find the game slow, but not because of the amount of time the CPU takes for a turn. The CPU turn doesn't take long, I haven't tried timing it, but I would imagine it's taking no more than 5-10 seconds. Actually I'm having problems because I find that I have to play the turn over and over again just to figure out what's going on. When I first started, I'd play the turn, hear strange fire coming from somewhere, and have to hunt around trying to figure out where it was coming from. My latest strategy is to play a turn from the top "8" hotkey viewpoint, then try replaying from various angles. This makes the game proceed very slowly IMHO and it gets to be a bit tedious. I don't want to have to watch a turn over and over ten times just to find out what happened in the last minute of combat. Using the "8" view, still doesn't work that well. With the bases on, I can see most of the enemy units, however, from what I've seen, when an enemy unit goes from "generic unit" to "generic insignia" it dissappears from the high-level top view. This leaves me with no easy way to tell what's going on. Some things that might help are a window with a list of my units, where I can click on a unit and move to it (yes, I know there are hot keys, but a list is much better than having to hot key through all the units). Also a list of enemy units (including previously spotted units, which are now insignias) which again I can click on and move to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Big Time Software Posted October 31, 1999 Share Posted October 31, 1999 Macintoshes will outperform "faster" Pentium systems, in general, when doing turn calculations. Difference has to do with the superior floatingpoint performance of the PowerPC. NOTE: to potential PC vs. Mac flame war folks, this is a fact that no PC lab I have every seen call into question. They do dispute the overall impact of FP on common day tasks (OS, word processing, browser speed, etc), and they are correct to do so. But when it comes to raw calcualtions of basically solid FP calcualtions, like CM's turn crunching, the PowerPC has always been better than any chip on the PC side (but especially Intel chips). PSY, you shouldn't have to replay the turn so many times to figure out what is happening. You should use your gut instincts more. And lists won't help either, because data changes every milisecond and there are dozens of units in an average game. You would have to keep your eyes stuck to such a list or you would miss info just as you will without it. And more importantly, where would this list go? Remember that we have to support 640x480 screens. To list off up to about 200 units for ONE side would be impossible. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fionn Posted October 31, 1999 Share Posted October 31, 1999 PSY, I was like that at first too. After a little while though you really do get experienced enough to know exactly what's going on by placing the camera better and having more awareness of what should happen and being able to spot when things go awry. Remember, CM is different. Get ready to unlearn and learn a NEW way of doing things. Within a couple of days you'll find yourself much, much more experienced with the camera and replays. Generally I get all the info I need + cool shots within 3 minutes when PBEMing. ------------------ ___________ Fionn Kelly Manager of Historical Research, The Gamers Net - Gaming for Gamers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PSY Posted October 31, 1999 Share Posted October 31, 1999 Thanks for the replay suggestions. I do seem to be getting better at it. One thing that I think might help is assignable hotkeys. If we could save and restore specific camera locations, that would be great (please let me know if this is already in there and I don't know about it!) Back on topic for Pirate Bill, I timed some turns on my PII 450 and they are running 5-8 seconds from the time I hit "Go" to the time the replay starts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guachi Posted October 31, 1999 Share Posted October 31, 1999 The first time I played, it was REALLY disorienting. I started playing Last Defense as the Germans and I must have spent an hour setting up my troops and learning the interface. Luckily, nothing much happened the first couple of turns. After two games, I've got the interface down. When I watch from one of the top-down levels I look at traces and listen for sounds (mostly MG fire). Sometimes I'll look over things several times like unit ID, artillery barrages, or tank fire. But overall, I've really found that sound is the best conveyer of information. (Of course, it helps that I've got cool speakers) Playing as Germans- Canvas ripping = Good (MG42) Wham-Wham-Wham = Bad (American MGs) "They're coming straight for us!" = Good (It also reminds me of South Park) I don't know German, but the only phrase I can decipher is the one that basically means 'Move Out!' Basically, if my units didn't run away and ocassionly fired at the enemy, I'm happy. On my K6-2 350, turns take a total of 10-15 seconds to process. One strange thing, though. I hear sounds while the turn is processing. Jason [This message has been edited by guachi (edited 10-31-99).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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