Patch released!

[c3k]

Cool bonus. Open up a setup turn which has off-map artillery available. The delay information is very nice. I've only just noticed this. Woot.

[Juju]

I'm pretty sure -after staring at the UI for hours- that was introduced in MG, not the patch.

[c3k]

Juju,

I defer to your greater focal array!

Ken

[Quintus Sertorius]

I bought MG and grabbed the new patch a couple of days ago, and everything's working great. No problems, and the FPS is definitely improved. I've noticed lots of other little improvements too.

[Bradley]

As much as I enjoy the improvements to the combat engine, FPS and drawing distance advancements are BIG improvements and gives significantly more enjoyment to CBMN/FI! Thank you BF team.

[nachinus]

I haven't tried the patch yet, but I'm curious about these 'drawing distance advancements'. What are they exactly?

[Wicky]

Ground/tree textures polygons render further in the distance - plus they sorted the bug where the helmets of soldiers would disappear a certain distance away.

[Placebo]

Definitely an (unquantifed) improvement in performance for me. I have a hi spec pc and it did annoy me that the game can seem a bit lagy at times. The patch has made the game much smoother.

[nachinus]

Ground/tree textures polygons render further in the distance - plus they sorted the bug where the helmets of soldiers would disappear a certain distance away.

That's great, lowres texture squares look ugly. I reckon this will also affect the distance at which the grapeyard models dissapear, which is one of my most recurrent annoyances when I play in the Italian theatre.

[Jock Tamson]

For me, on a high end PC - i5-2500k @ 4.7Ghz, 4GB GTX680 - frame rates are still low on some maps at times while scrolling about in the planning phase (20FPS) in a heavy forest or large map, but it seems smoother.

[para]

England got beaten by New Zealand at rugby today. Not wholly unexpected but you still feel like kicking the cat :mad:

Thanks for the patches BFC

kensal don't be too sad the England Rugby League boys have a chance for pay back at Wembley this Saturday. They are playing the Kiwis in the RLWC2013 semi final

[Battlefront.com]

For me, on a high end PC - i5-2500k @ 4.7Ghz, 4GB GTX680 - frame rates are still low on some maps at times while scrolling about in the planning phase (20FPS) in a heavy forest or large map, but it seems smoother.

Yeah, some of the improvements might not increase your FPS, but you won't see them periodically drop and then speed up again. I'd rather have a consistent 20fps than to have 30 one second and 5 the next!

Unfortunately some scenarios will burden even good systems. People say "but when I play Battlefield it's really fast!". Well, besides them having a larger programming budget than we've earned off of CM in it's entire lifetime (yeah, that counts!), they deliberately limit gameplay options to make sure the framerates aren't hammered. Combat Mission, on the other hand, has very few limitations. The only real limitation is how big the map can be, not limitations on how many different terrain types, how many polygon hungry terrain types in a given area, the amount of elevation differences, the number and types of units, the weather effects, etc.variation, map size, unit numbers, unit variations, etc. Tradeoffs different depending on the approach. We trade off some guarantees of speed for little compromise of creativity.

Not to say there aren't things we can do to make CM faster. Because there are. It's just that when we go after those areas we don't do other things. Another tradeoff

Steve

[Buzz]

Nice patches. Thanks Steve and everyone at Battlefront.

Both CMBN/CW/MG and CMFI/GL play smoother - a more consistent fps?

Unfortunately too much work to play much CM right now but I should have more CM play time this December when the 'horse race' winner(s) are released

[John Kettler]

BFC,

I'm grateful for the patch, particularly the fix on the problem which had ATGs sticking through house walls and stone fences, both of which bedeviled me. But I don't understand this one:

* AA guns can no longer incorrectly limber near walls and bocage

I didn't know they could limber. I vaguely recall some talk of a fix to prevent them from moving, since they weren't supposed to move once deployed. Naturally I don't agree with this as a blanket solution, given the highly mobile one we saw street fighting in SPR and independently verified through research online.

Just DLed the patch, and all that went great. A quick check of A New Dawn and Barkmann's Corner showed perceptible improvement in vehicle rendering. Am running an iMac Arlington, 3.06 GHz Intel Core Duo, 4 GB RAM, 256 MB ATI Radeon 4670. There does seem to be some sort of never before seen by me button freeze glitch which locks things up for a bit. While in effect, the button stops working, and the cursor won't respond, either. This occurred in both exiting the Barkmann's Corner battle and exiting CMBN.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Jock Tamson]

Yeah, some of the improvements might not increase your FPS, but you won't see them periodically drop and then speed up again. I'd rather have a consistent 20fps than to have 30 one second and 5 the next!

Unfortunately some scenarios will burden even good systems. People say "but when I play Battlefield it's really fast!". Well, besides them having a larger programming budget than we've earned off of CM in it's entire lifetime (yeah, that counts!), they deliberately limit gameplay options to make sure the framerates aren't hammered. Combat Mission, on the other hand, has very few limitations. The only real limitation is how big the map can be, not limitations on how many different terrain types, how many polygon hungry terrain types in a given area, the amount of elevation differences, the number and types of units, the weather effects, etc.variation, map size, unit numbers, unit variations, etc. Tradeoffs different depending on the approach. We trade off some guarantees of speed for little compromise of creativity.

Not to say there aren't things we can do to make CM faster. Because there are. It's just that when we go after those areas we don't do other things. Another tradeoff

Steve

Yes, on something like Rise of Flight where a good framerate is desirable, I generally find the minimum and then limit the FPS to that in the Nvidia Control Panel. I'd rather have a smooth 50FPS all the time, than peaks and troughs between 60 and 50.

[Guest]

Just wanted to throw this up here - I was preparing to post it yesterday or the day before and got sidetracked! We heavily optimized the rendering pipeline. You should be getting better image quality - better shadows, better draw distance, better model quality - at *faster* frame rates than before. Better AND faster. Which is good!

It doesn't eliminate the extensive non-graphical work (AI, ballistics, and pathfinding, oh my!) that needs to be done every frame, and it doesn't completely eliminate the load of rendering a large, complex, free-camera 3D world. So you probably won't suddenly see 60 FPS where you were seeing 20-30 FPS before.

However, it should be faster and prettier than it was overall. In my profiling, overall throughput was *significantly* higher with the renovated pipeline. I don't want to slap a number on it, but as an inveterate optimizer it made me very, very happy. And it should certainly be more resistant to getting bogged down in very low frame rates. As a poster above mentioned, I wouldn't get fixated on FPS, as it's only part of the picture with this optimization.

[John Kettler]

Phil,

My AFVs look better than before, but the stock bocage is seemingly immune to progress. Too complex to render properly without a much more powerful video card, perhaps?

Any luck with the wall protruding German in that Canadian para scenario or with that poor American jeep passenger in Cats Chasing Dogs?

Regards,

John Kettler

[Ultradave]

Yes, Phil, it's definitely noticeable. Much better panning, and gone completely are the flickering shadows (they were most noticeable on early morning - long shadows scenarios).

Great job.

MacBook Pro, 16GB RAM, 1GB video.

[Childress]

Not to say there aren't things we can do to make CM faster. Because there are. It's just that when we go after those areas we don't do other things. Another tradeoff

Speaking of trade offs.... In-game performance in CMFI seemed a lot zippier, or more fluid, than CMBN, at least prior to the latest patch. Yet I find that, even now, given equivalent size a battle in the latter game- with its generally denser foliage- loads considerably faster. Is there a connection?

[Collingwood]

I don't want to slap a number on it, but as an inveterate optimizer it made me very, very happy.

It definitely shows. As others have mentioned the flickering shadows are gone. Don't know if I'm imagining it but the anti-aliasing seems a lot better now, and the overall look is greatly improved, scrolling across the battlefield goes smoother. I didn't have to look closely to see the improvements, it's just obvious.

This is on a mac powerbook by the way. Applause for the job you've done Phil, well done and thank you.

[Battlefront.com]

Speaking of trade offs.... In-game performance in CMFI seemed a lot zippier, or more fluid, than CMBN, at least prior to the latest patch. Yet I find that, even now, given equivalent size a battle in the latter game- with its generally denser foliage- loads considerably faster. Is there a connection?

Probably. Some of the optimizations were specific to the way terrain renders, so it's possible that there's some differences between CMFI and CMBN simply because the terrain sets for each aren't the same. But in terms of the code itself? No difference.

It definitely shows. As others have mentioned the flickering shadows are gone. Don't know if I'm imagining it but the anti-aliasing seems a lot better now, and the overall look is greatly improved, scrolling across the battlefield goes smoother. I didn't have to look closely to see the improvements, it's just obvious.

Yup, the fancy stuff like anti aliasing and shadows are highly sensitive to particular systems with particular cards with particular drivers. These things are generally pretty twitchy, but usually more twitchy when there's a lot of demand placed on it. Less demands, better results.

Steve

[Buzz]

Just wanted to throw this up here - I was preparing to post it yesterday or the day before and got sidetracked! We heavily optimized the rendering pipeline. You should be getting better image quality - better shadows, better draw distance, better model quality - at *faster* frame rates than before. Better AND faster. Which is good!

It doesn't eliminate the extensive non-graphical work (AI, ballistics, and pathfinding, oh my!) that needs to be done every frame, and it doesn't completely eliminate the load of rendering a large, complex, free-camera 3D world. So you probably won't suddenly see 60 FPS where you were seeing 20-30 FPS before.

However, it should be faster and prettier than it was overall. In my profiling, overall throughput was *significantly* higher with the renovated pipeline. I don't want to slap a number on it, but as an inveterate optimizer it made me very, very happy. And it should certainly be more resistant to getting bogged down in very low frame rates. As a poster above mentioned, I wouldn't get fixated on FPS, as it's only part of the picture with this optimization.

Works well for me Phil. Thank you for the "optimized the rendering pipeline". It is clear it works on my older Mac. It is easy to get fixated on FPS but the real test (for me) is can I play the game smoothly. The improvements you all made make this happen.

".....Combat Mission, on the other hand, has very few limitations. The only real limitation is how big the map can be, not limitations on how many different terrain types, how many polygon hungry terrain types in a given area, the amount of elevation differences, the number and types of units, the weather effects, etc.variation, map size, unit numbers, unit variations, etc. Tradeoffs different depending on the approach. We trade off some guarantees of speed for little compromise of creativity.....

Steve"

CM not having limitations does make for a better product and IMO a longer product value. The "creativity" possible in CM is an important hunk of the game's attraction.