Is FB more optimized than the others?

[Placebo]

For those struggling with slow frame rates, it is work checking out some of the old tech support posts about NVIDIA cards.  I changed some settings in the NVIDIA control panel specifically for CMBN and it made a world of difference.  It was a long time ago now but there are instructions out there.

[c3k]

Performance related.

I've been building gaming rigs for, well, too long. My best one was very expensive. I built it purely for high fps. The GPU had a cooling loop which I filled with unicorn blood (everyone knows it has the best thermodynamic properties for this purpose): the CPU was a hand-built, one-off, quantum processor which only worked when the wormhole was stable. My family had weekly "No food Thursday" so I could pay the electric bill when I turned it on. (Of course, due to the power issue, I built a Faraday cage around the house. Duh.) When I sat in front of that monitor, boy, could I tell how smooth the gameplay was. Far better than the other "normal" rigs I had. My wife didn't see the difference the insanely high fps made, but she wasn't trained to see it. (And, of course, only had a woman's eye.)

250 fps was far better than a pedestrian 60 fps. Really. I could tell.

Yes, that's meant to express that there is psychology involved in how we process visual input. (Check how Crye came up with Multi-Cam.) I have spent a lot of time, money, and effort building gaming machines. I currently run 3 at home. In my opinion, consistent frame rate is far more important than maximum framerate. I run all my CM installs fully maxed, frequently filled with high-def mods. I have capped the fps at 30. I get consistent smoothness. When it flexed from 60 down to 30, yeah, I'd see/feel the lag. But a constant 30 is silky smooth. Would a constant 60 be smoother than a constant 30? Yeah, probably. But not so much that it would matter...for this game. 

For those with lagginess, try opening your GPU's control panel software and capping your fps. You may be pleasantly surprised at how well the game plays.

Ken "won the lottery with that wife"

 

[RockinHarry]

This site is also of help for NVidia users:

http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_1.html

Anybody has an idea if some the OGL settings below from NVidia inspector apply to CMX2?

Edited January 5, 2016 by RockinHarry

[Michael Emrys]

This conversation reminds me of the general topic of gambling and the differing personality types involved. Some personality types see gambling as a fool's game. Other personality types believe you're never going to win if you don't play. For some people the thrill of winning is more-than-ample compensation for those other times when they lost. Others see 'winning' as the carrot that gets dangled just beyond the reach of suckers to keep them shelling out their dough.

All I ever needed to know was that the odds are always in favor of the house. Unless you are running a casino, gambling is a sucker's way of making money. Now, if you are careful not to bet the farm, the entertainment value of taking a spin might justify a small wager. But you need to watch out and not get sucked in over your head.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Inevitably someone called up and defended playing the lottery by saying "if you don't play you can't win".

Heh. The flip side of that is "If you don't play, you can't lose."

Michael

[Kieme(ITA)]

 I run all my CM installs fully maxed, frequently filled with high-def mods. I have capped the fps at 30. I get consistent smoothness. When it flexed from 60 down to 30, yeah, I'd see/feel the lag. But a constant 30 is silky smooth. Would a constant 60 be smoother than a constant 30? Yeah, probably. But not so much that it would matter...for this game. 

For those with lagginess, try opening your GPU's control panel software and capping your fps. You may be pleasantly surprised at how well the game plays.

 

 

What's your system c3k?

[Battlefront.com]

Driver settings are critically important.  As mentioned above, a few tweaks here and there could mean vastly different performance.  Or not.  That's the thing that sucks about video performance on PCs... there's way too much variety!  First, look at how many different options are available to the average graphics card and think of how many ways those variables can work complimentary or at cross purposes.  Then think of the thousands (and I do mean thousands) of unique cards that have been released since 2007 when we put out CMSF.  Then think of how many operating systems are in play, then think of how many driver versions are "current" for each of those OSes.  Also add to this outdated drivers that people have purposefully or accidentally continue to use.  And then think of the 10s of thousands of unique hardware platforms the video card is anchored to.

Each one of these variables has the potential to nuke performance.  Customer A has one experience, Customer B has another experience.  Sometimes even if they are using the same dang'd card and OS!  And yet people want their computers to operate as predictably as a toaster oven working with a single type of bread product.  For us, we'd be better off playing the lottery

There's just too many paths any one specific person can be on for anybody, us included, to give specific advice to.  Best we can do is give general advice that works to some extent for a bunch of people in some circumstances.  And by "us" I mean each other, not just Battlefront.  Someone messing about with a particular card might be very helpful in helping someone else with a similar problem with a similar card.  Or not.  There's just no way to know until someone tries it.

We're in a no-win position when it comes to this stuff, that's for sure

Steve

 

[Battlefront.com]

Has the price for CMFB been announced?if so what will it be?

We're keeping our pricing the same as it has been for now.  That means CMFB will be $55.  At some point (sorry!) we will have to raise our pricing to keep pace with inflation.  Like all other businesses in the world, we're trying to put that off as long as possible because nobody likes to see price hikes.  In the gaming industry, as with most other industries, it is a game of chicken.  Nobody wants to be the first to raise pricing, but once a few big companies or enough small ones have done it everybody else follows suit.

Steve

[slysniper]

Switching mouse could solve the problem. I also had a wired mouse that was creating problems for me with the game. So I switched my mouse and the problems went away.

I figured it had to do with the game, the mouse and the software I had on the rig to run the mouse.

[WallysWorld]

Yes, that's meant to express that there is psychology involved in how we process visual input. (Check how Crye came up with Multi-Cam.) I have spent a lot of time, money, and effort building gaming machines. I currently run 3 at home. In my opinion, consistent frame rate is far more important than maximum framerate. I run all my CM installs fully maxed, frequently filled with high-def mods. I have capped the fps at 30. I get consistent smoothness. When it flexed from 60 down to 30, yeah, I'd see/feel the lag. But a constant 30 is silky smooth. Would a constant 60 be smoother than a constant 30? Yeah, probably. But not so much that it would matter...for this game. 

For those with lagginess, try opening your GPU's control panel software and capping your fps. You may be pleasantly surprised at how well the game plays.

 

That's definitely what I do for all of the CMx2 games and my GTX 970 with an aging i7-920 at 4 Ghz.

Set Vertical Sync Tear Control in nVidia Inspector to Adaptive and also set Vertical Sync to 1/2 refresh rate and I get a very smooth 30 fps. Without those settings, I actually lose fps to below 30 fps.

With Shadows and Shaders on and best Texture Quality set, I only have to modify the Model Quality setting from Improved for huge scenarios up to Best for smaller to mid size scenarios.

 

Edited January 5, 2016 by WallysWorld

[Battlefront.com]

Capping the framerate at 30 is definitely sound advice.  Some games are hardcoded to cap at 30fps for this very reason.  And boy howdy doesn't that get the 60fps fanatics peeved I've seen what basically amounts to a gamers' Fatwa against a couple of developers for capping.  Some people are, as c3k pointed out, too invested in their hardware.

Steve

[c3k]

 

What's your system c3k?

The "bad" one has AMD Phenom II, 1090T, 8 GB ram, MSI R9 390 (8GB) gpu,  (Gigabyte ud3h mobo), 500GB Samsung 850 evo ssd, 3 WD 1Tb spinners. 

Obviously, the cpu/mobo is the weak link. That's because I've been beefing up the rest of it in preparation for a new cpu/mobo combo. (Going to be i7/z170. That'll balance it out. I had always tried to keep an amd/amd rig, an intel/nvidia, and one that mixed and matched leftovers as the other two got upgraded. I'm abandoning that approach. )

Of note, the previous gpu was an HD6870 (1GB). With no ssd, and the 6870, it ran smoothly at 30 fps, all else maxed.

(One other item to check would be pixel count on the monitor if specs match but laggies still occur. One guy could be on a 1080 while the other is trying to drive 4k.)

There are some excellent guides posted around hereabouts which show tweaking nvidia and amd settings for cm. They work.

[MikeyD]

Talk about frame rates, which title are you talking about? Obviously (almost) nobody's playing CMFB yet. For me CMBS runs like a charm, CMRT is a breeze, but CMBN still does struggle a bit even with the upgrades. My hardware is hardly top-of-the-line so I'm more than willing to point fingers in my own direction. Theoretically they're all more-or-less using the same game engine these days. Still, I merrily play maps in CMBS and CMFB that in CMBN would give me pause. Perhaps its just a function of scenario design. Gone are the dense Normandy bocage mazes.

[weapon2010]

 Since CMBO was made in "2000 for $45", I think $55 for CMFB in 2015 is more than fair, actually a little low, it should be priced around $65.You see,I want you guys to stay in business so you can keep making new stuff, so I can play new stuff. 

[Battlefront.com]

 Since CMBO was made in "2000 for $45", I think $55 for CMFB in 2015 is more than fair, actually a little low, it should be priced around $65.You see,I want you guys to stay in business so you can keep making new stuff, so I can play new stuff. 

Why you selfish basta... oh wait, never mind! 

Steve

[Pak40]

With regards to FPS and smoothness in CMBN, I will say this:

I used to be a fickler for running CMBN at the highest graphics settings but I found that the denser larger maps with lots of units would chug a little. I experimented with going down to the next lowest graphics level (I forget the setting name). It improved the smoothness a lot - no more chug. And I tried several times to spot the graphical differences between the two settings - I couldn't see any difference, so I've kept it that second highest setting.

 

With regards to game prices over the years:

I find it interesting that in 1986 or so I could buy computer games such as Ultima III or King's Quest for $50 or so. Here we are in 2016 and the price of popular games has not changed much. Many major titles are selling for $50 with a few at the $60 range. Obviously there are a lot more potential customers now but games are also a LOT more expensive to produce. The end game credits on some of these major titles are as long as some movie ending credits.

[Battlefront.com]

I find it interesting that in 1986 or so I could buy computer games such as Ultima III or King's Quest for $50 or so. Here we are in 2016 and the price of popular games has not changed much. Many major titles are selling for $50 with a few at the $60 range. Obviously there are a lot more potential customers now but games are also a LOT more expensive to produce. The end game credits on some of these major titles are as long as some movie ending credits.

I bought SSI's War in Russia back in the mid 1980s.  It came in a thin printed box with a paltry manual (about 8 pages) and a 5 1/4" floppy disk plus a map.  The game was programmed by one guy who also did the ingame artwork.  The price of the game in today's purchasing power?  $187.49 according to the CPI calculator.

What's changed is the size of the market.  Back in the 1980s they might have sold only a few thousand copies in total.  Largely because the retail mechanism for software was even more primitive than the paltry amount of computers in use.  When I started out in this industry any game that sold 100,000 units was considered a massive hit, now a AAA game needs to sell several million in order to break even.

As customer bases have grown so too have their demands.  To meet those demands the games developer/publisher can no longer get by with one programmer, an artist or two, someone to write the manual, and a couple of people to make sure the games are sold and supported after sale.  Well, if they wish to hit big numbers of sales, that is.  Which is the problem niche companies like Battlefront have... some people demand that we produce games which are in every way equal to the best of the best of today's games, yet do it with development staffing equivalent to a games company from 30 years ago.  Fortunately, most of our customers realize that is kinda sorta a little tiny bit unreasonable

Steve

Edited January 6, 2016 by Battlefront.com

[c3k]

^^^

TL;DR. Soo... CMFB is going to be released on a 5 1/4" floppy???

 

 

Ken

[RockinHarry]

Yeah that good old Grigsby´s War in Russia.  It´s latest reincarnation (War in the East) is at 78.99 $, if it wouldn´t be on sale ATM.

[Kieme(ITA)]

C:/

C:/CD/setup_CMFB.exe

Or something like that.

 

[LukeFF]

 

 

Could be something on our end, though this is the sort of thing that should be consistently bad for everybody or nobody.  At least in theory.  In reality it's not that simple.  We should definitely look into this some more and a bug report should get that started

I will certainly remember to make a report about this.  

Do you have "high priority process" checked in the options? Mouse lag is something I never get in CM, even when the frame rate is low.

Yep, I do have it enabled. 

EDIT: I just saw the suggestion about capping the frame rates. Will give that a try!

Edited January 7, 2016 by LukeFF

[Hister]

Doesn't capping it at 30 make the drawing distance much shorter? Like if you would have 3D setting on balanced or even less...

[Doug Williams]

-Couldn't resist posting a pic of the Old Standby (yes, I am a tight wad, so when I get on people about whining about having to pay for BF's products, it's coming from someone who is very thrifty and very much a minimalist in his life habits):

Check out the spectacular case of "CM Thumb."

(No, not caused by reading "important news articles about world events." No, really! )

Edit just now: I was playing a turn in CMBN and the RMB stopped releasing from its current selection (happens sometimes). I gave five firm clicks, but no results. So, I blew under the mouse buttons and tried again. Voila! It worked on the first click after that and no more problems that turn. Magic .

 

Wow, check out Mr. "Moneybags" Macisle here, with his expensive mouse. ;-)

 

This is the one I use, a Logitech M185:

$13.89 baby.

For what it's worth, I can play Huge size CM2 games with little noticeable lag (WeGo).

My system specs:

I7 4770k @‌ 3.5 GHz

GeForce GTX 680 video card

16 gig of ram

Windows 10

 

Edit: removed commercial link (forgot about the rule, but Steve quoted it so I think I'm ok) ;-)

 

 

Edited January 8, 2016 by Doug Williams

[Battlefront.com]

Doesn't capping it at 30 make the drawing distance much shorter? Like if you would have 3D setting on balanced or even less...

I don't think draw distances are affected by capping.  The adjustment code is weighted towards what 30fps being the best possible speed, with anything over that considered extra.  If 30fps does seem to shorten the draw distance maybe it can be set for 31fps.  That might make a difference if this is in fact an issue.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Wow, check out Mr. "Moneybags" Macisle here, with his expensive mouse. ;-)

 

This is the one I use:

http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Wireless-Mouse-M185-910-002225/dp/B004YAVF8I

$13.89 baby.

Oh, I have that beat!  I'm using an old Dell PS2 mouse on my Mac.  Cost?  Technically something, but in effect $0   Even the PS2 to USB adapter was free because it came with the Dell.

That said, the right mouse click is getting a bit fussy.  Not long before it will have to go into a hole in the ground.

Steve