banned Posted July 26, 2018 Share Posted July 26, 2018 9 minutes ago, sburke said: Actually have no problem with that statement snowflake, but you seem unable to understand the point and not be so subjective. But hey good idea, Burke’s diplomacy award. Today’s award goes to bulletpoint! It was never intended to hurt your feelings however you have a point. And the diplomacy award, it was meant as a compliment as I hold your mannerism in high esteem as I am probably are not made for diplomacy . However Burke I think with this: 47 minutes ago, IanL said: I recommend everyone just add him to your ignore list. Then you don't have to see this silliness. we got everything sorted out. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GAZ NZ Posted July 26, 2018 Author Share Posted July 26, 2018 Ok thanks for the PC / Open GL info and comment about gravtactics which I also played I wasn't aware of CM2 being made with older graphics engine parameters Was hoping the new engine was a bit more modern I'd never really cared much for it's specs running an older machine lol I was upgrading to play other games and was hopeful of CM2 series loading faster and having better FPS I'll time it on my system now and do comparisons and post them when I upgrade in next 2-3 weeks If open GL loses support etc I wonder how long the game designers will continue to use It's a unique game , it's a shame they have not upgraded it - redesigned it for modern PC's to get the most out of current GPUs etc Cheers guys 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Canadian Cat Posted July 26, 2018 Share Posted July 26, 2018 1 hour ago, sburke said: Actually have no problem with that statement snowflake, but you seem unable to understand the point and not be so subjective. But hey good idea, Burke’s diplomacy award. Today’s award goes to bulletpoint! Oh a daily award - excellent - perhaps I'll win it one day. Oh who am I kidding that will never happen. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Artkin Posted July 26, 2018 Share Posted July 26, 2018 (edited) I found major increases in fps when I overclocked my cpu. You can test this by tossing a company v company in the standard editor map and watch the carnage unfold. Things got tremendously smoother when I upped the GHz. My assumption is CM runs on less cores, therefore a cpu with strong single core performance and large overhead for overclocking will do you the best in CM. ~i5 2500k 3.3 GHz vs 4.6 GHz Edited July 26, 2018 by Artkin 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thewood1 Posted July 26, 2018 Share Posted July 26, 2018 It's not an assumption. It is a fact it only runs on one core. Other cores can offload background stuff, but do nothing for CM. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sburke Posted July 26, 2018 Share Posted July 26, 2018 2 hours ago, GAZ NZ said: Ok thanks for the PC / Open GL info and comment about gravtactics which I also played I wasn't aware of CM2 being made with older graphics engine parameters Was hoping the new engine was a bit more modern I'd never really cared much for it's specs running an older machine lol I was upgrading to play other games and was hopeful of CM2 series loading faster and having better FPS I'll time it on my system now and do comparisons and post them when I upgrade in next 2-3 weeks If open GL loses support etc I wonder how long the game designers will continue to use It's a unique game , it's a shame they have not upgraded it - redesigned it for modern PC's to get the most out of current GPUs etc Cheers guys There is a cost to everything. Stopping to change the engine would have meant stopping the release of new games and if there is one thing I think we can all agree on is our intake of new product from BF sometimes feels like a crash diet. Within that CM is still one of the most stable games I have. I get crashes quite frequently with others and it takes a lot for me to cause that with CM. I pretty much have to keep loading really big maps in the editor to 3d view over and over. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted July 27, 2018 Share Posted July 27, 2018 Seems the heated part of this thread has cooled. Good. Please keep it that way because there is no need for things to go in the wrong direction. Here's the official statement about CM2's game engine history. In the mid 2000s OpenGL was API of choice for 3D gaming. Or at least it was supposed to be. DirectX had a spotty history and OpenGL was still regarded as the better platform to be based on for the type of game we make. We also chose it because we didn't want to rule out having a Mac version, which is what would have happened if we went with DirectX (we can't afford to make and support two versions of the game engine). That said, as we were moving along DirectX got much better and OpenGL kinda lost the attention of both game developers and card makers. That shaped what came later. We made massive improvements to CM2's graphical performance between the original Shock Force release and Battle for Normandy. We made another big round of improvements with Engine 2. Then another round of improvements with Engine 3, including using multiple processors for a limited number of activities (mostly involving loading scenarios). This when we introduced our own shaders and bump mapping. Performance did improve over this period of time, though not necessarily in top frames per second. Instead lower end systems struggled less and higher end ones had smoother rates for more complex situations. We were also able to increase the size of maps to sizes earlier versions of the game couldn't handle well enough to play. Which is to say that if you were running a pretty good system all along you'd not notice the changes as much as those of use using mid to lower end systems. You'd also not notice it in terms of top performance, but rather more consistent framerates over a wider array of situations. Note that all the things I've said are worded in relative terms. Meaning, I'm making no attempts to say that CM's speed improved proportional to technology improvements or what newer games are capable of. For sure we lack the ability to keep up with the newer games because we don't have the luxury of either making a new engine every few years or diverting major resources to recoding significant parts of it every time some new technology appears. Also, we must keep in mind that CM2 is burdened with things other games are not. The amount of data CM has to move around is massive compared to other 3D games. Even for large scale games like the Total War series, they take tons of shortcuts with the game elements in order to keep up frame rates. Combat Mission is all about NOT taking shortcuts with the game elements, therefore there's an inherent performance penalty. That said, eventually we will have a new game engine. Obviously it will be written with contemporary technology in mind and won't be OpenGL as we view it as a dead end. It will also benefit from 20 years of experience with how best to simulate tactical warfare on a computer. It's only a matter of when, not if Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BletchleyGeek Posted July 27, 2018 Share Posted July 27, 2018 That last paragraph contains a pretty huge announcement. It kind of sounds like you guys are already in the planning stage of CM3 and making the BIG decisions. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Artkin Posted July 27, 2018 Share Posted July 27, 2018 CM3 CONFIRMED WOO ! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted July 27, 2018 Share Posted July 27, 2018 Not really news, guys. We're always thinking about the future. It's just difficult for us to get there as soon as we would like. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BletchleyGeek Posted July 27, 2018 Share Posted July 27, 2018 Update then, rather than announcement 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SgtHatred Posted July 27, 2018 Share Posted July 27, 2018 36 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said: Seems the heated part of this thread has cooled. Good. Please keep it that way because there is no need for things to go in the wrong direction. Here's the official statement about CM2's game engine history. In the mid 2000s OpenGL was API of choice for 3D gaming. Or at least it was supposed to be. DirectX had a spotty history and OpenGL was still regarded as the better platform to be based on for the type of game we make. We also chose it because we didn't want to rule out having a Mac version, which is what would have happened if we went with DirectX (we can't afford to make and support two versions of the game engine). That said, as we were moving along DirectX got much better and OpenGL kinda lost the attention of both game developers and card makers. That shaped what came later. We made massive improvements to CM2's graphical performance between the original Shock Force release and Battle for Normandy. We made another big round of improvements with Engine 2. Then another round of improvements with Engine 3, including using multiple processors for a limited number of activities (mostly involving loading scenarios). This when we introduced our own shaders and bump mapping. Performance did improve over this period of time, though not necessarily in top frames per second. Instead lower end systems struggled less and higher end ones had smoother rates for more complex situations. We were also able to increase the size of maps to sizes earlier versions of the game couldn't handle well enough to play. Which is to say that if you were running a pretty good system all along you'd not notice the changes as much as those of use using mid to lower end systems. You'd also not notice it in terms of top performance, but rather more consistent framerates over a wider array of situations. Note that all the things I've said are worded in relative terms. Meaning, I'm making no attempts to say that CM's speed improved proportional to technology improvements or what newer games are capable of. For sure we lack the ability to keep up with the newer games because we don't have the luxury of either making a new engine every few years or diverting major resources to recoding significant parts of it every time some new technology appears. Also, we must keep in mind that CM2 is burdened with things other games are not. The amount of data CM has to move around is massive compared to other 3D games. Even for large scale games like the Total War series, they take tons of shortcuts with the game elements in order to keep up frame rates. Combat Mission is all about NOT taking shortcuts with the game elements, therefore there's an inherent performance penalty. That said, eventually we will have a new game engine. Obviously it will be written with contemporary technology in mind and won't be OpenGL as we view it as a dead end. It will also benefit from 20 years of experience with how best to simulate tactical warfare on a computer. It's only a matter of when, not if Steve If anyone from about 2002 onwards told you that OpenGL was better for a small team with limited resources they were either an open-source crusader or just wrong. Interoperability with non-Windows operating systems was its only advantage, unless you wanted to assemble a team of experienced engine developers and ride the cutting edge. OpenGL back then was a lot more work. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted July 27, 2018 Share Posted July 27, 2018 14 minutes ago, SgtHatred said: If anyone from about 2002 onwards told you that OpenGL was better for a small team with limited resources they were either an open-source crusader or just wrong. Interoperability with non-Windows operating systems was its only advantage, unless you wanted to assemble a team of experienced engine developers and ride the cutting edge. OpenGL back then was a lot more work. Oh, we knew it would be a lot more work. The advantages of DirectX were many, but the 3D stuff was less powerful and less flexible. From our perspective, at the time, it seemed that our future was better hitched to something specifically geared for 3D and not something with a goal of being all things to all people. We also felt that long term having a more open platform to work off of was better than a proprietary one. Both Charles and I had experiences working with DirectX prior to CM1, so it was an informed choice. The problem with decisions like this is you're never sure how things will go over a period of years. What we didn't foresee was that DirectX and Unity would both pretty much rob OpenGL of support and enthusiasm. We also didn't think that CM2 would be around 14 years after we started coding. Or exist as a company, for that matter. All in all things turned out pretty well. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weta_nz Posted July 27, 2018 Share Posted July 27, 2018 (edited) Steve - always good to hear any positive news about future Combat Mission products. Though I understand why you keep your cards close to your chess. It seems any significant period of silence (e.g when you are working hard to release new content) seems to get taken by a 'vocal' few (not necessarily anyone in this thread btw) of impending doom for CM . So cheers! Edited July 27, 2018 by weta_nz 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ithikial_AU Posted July 27, 2018 Share Posted July 27, 2018 1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said: That said, eventually we will have a new game engine. Obviously it will be written with contemporary technology in mind and won't be OpenGL as we view it as a dead end. It will also benefit from 20 years of experience with how best to simulate tactical warfare on a computer. It's only a matter of when, not if For what it's worth, for some long term thinking and on the assumption CM3 isn't going to be something completly different is scale/scope. When the time comes it would be great to have the ability to import CM2 era scenarios into CM3. (Even if this was a part process that still required editing in the CM3 editor). The amount of time and effort it's taken scenario designers to build something in CM2 compared to the CM1 days jumped heavily. There's also some real cracking scenarios/maps out there that would be great to keep alive in future iterations of the game. Not to mention letting the designers focus on new sceanrio ideas rather than rebuilding from scratch what's already been done before. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerKommissar Posted July 27, 2018 Share Posted July 27, 2018 I used Open GL in Uni -- actually my big project was optimizing an Open GL app via parallel computing. Our school computers ran primarily on Linux, and it was a platform we were most comfortable with. The focus of this exercise was the parallelization of the program (cores vs performance), as opposed to using Open GL to create something beautiful. Network and the security aspect was the one that took us a while -- seizing university computers, connecting them, establishing trust, and slaving them from 1 master, in order to get MPI to work. As a uni student, and a C fanatic -- I really liked Open GL. It was easy to integrate into our Frankenstein monster. As far as libraries go, it gave us plenty of options, but at the same time, not too much. Plenty of top notch documentation, and all our Uni comps already had the libraries natively. So I got respect for the OpenGL, and have always wanted to see Combat Mission on Debian. I can imagine the games would run much better. I have a disdain for verbose and clusterf__k nature of (modern) Microsoft's design philosophy (I am still on 7). My desktop is a mid-range AMD build that's capped by its 2011 mobo, it doesn't like a lot of games and AMD drivers aren't the best. My CM games don't like many shadows, but are completely playable. I've only ever had 2 crashes across all CM2s, and both of them were while saving a game (not graphics related). All this being said, I am happy to see BFC looking forward. DirectX is really the consumer's environment. Unity has piqued my interest and have seen a lot of good games, from smaller companies, on that platform. Just a disclaimer, I don't claim to be an expert. High level programming has always boggled my mind -- and generally, graphics stuff is the worst. Architecture of 32bit systems annoys me (I'm looking at you, ARM), let alone 64 bit CPUs -- with which I have 0 experience with (a 64 bit word is like a byte of 8-bit registers -- wtf kind of settings do you put there). Just sharing my 2 cents, in a system with the lowest physical currency being a nickle. oh and, speaking of CM3... (Fulda Gap, Fulda Gap, Fulda Gap...) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thewood1 Posted July 27, 2018 Share Posted July 27, 2018 "Within that CM is still one of the most stable games I have. I get crashes quite frequently with others and it takes a lot for me to cause that with CM. I pretty much have to keep loading really big maps in the editor to 3d view over and over. " I don't get crashes in CM either. But I can't remember the last time I had a crash in ANY game. I think I had a crash in CMNAO last year on a very large scenario. But generally, I see games as becoming more and more stable on modern systems. Now my brother overclocks and he gets crashes on games like IL2:BOS and Project Cars 2. So I am curious what games and what kind of system you are running that gets so many crashes. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sbobovyc Posted July 31, 2018 Share Posted July 31, 2018 https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BletchleyGeek Posted July 31, 2018 Share Posted July 31, 2018 On 7/28/2018 at 2:13 AM, Thewood1 said: I don't get crashes in CM either. I do have some crashes occasionally, when selecting units. Last time two nights ago. I think that has to do with how NVIDIA (up-to-date) is implementing the OpenGL calls that map points in the view port to 3D primitives. But I haven't been able to create a test for it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c3k Posted July 31, 2018 Share Posted July 31, 2018 I'm VERY impressed with how well CM plays across a spectrum of machines I've got running. Heck, I even played an AAR (at times) on a friggin' Intel Atom powered laptop/netbook. THAT is impressive. Like the rest, I'd love an engine which is more modern and responsive to updated tech. The drawback to being responsive to updated tech, is leaving old tech behind. I'm in the midst of a new AMD build: Ryzen 2700X. Yeah, I'll put CM on it...but it still plays VERY well on my old stuff, too. Gotta like that. C'mon: imagine the bitchin' if updated engine v5.00 was put up for sale and it had a disclaimer that only mobos/cpus/gpus from 2015-2017 and newer were supported? Egads. The niche would get nichier. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bulletpoint Posted July 31, 2018 Share Posted July 31, 2018 6 hours ago, c3k said: C'mon: imagine the bitchin' if updated engine v5.00 was put up for sale and it had a disclaimer that only mobos/cpus/gpus from 2015-2017 and newer were supported? Are there any modern games with such a disclaimer? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thewood1 Posted July 31, 2018 Share Posted July 31, 2018 3 hours ago, Bulletpoint said: Are there any modern games with such a disclaimer? I was going to jump in and l was going to throw down Project Cars 2, IL-2 BOS, and DCS as examples that can't play on older systems. But I checked their minimum specs and they all have specs that are at least five years old. The DX11 requirement is probably the closest deal killer. But other than that, they all seem to be able to run on 6-7 year old systems. So I would have to say there aren't any games I have seen out there that require 2-3 year old specs. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rake Posted July 31, 2018 Share Posted July 31, 2018 On 7/26/2018 at 1:51 PM, IanL said: I recommend everyone just add him to your ignore list. Then you don't have to see this silliness Done... before I even got to your post. Trolls like this are a major reason why I rarely post on any forum. The anonymity of the keyboard gives far too many a presumed right to be asshats obnoxious. I'm far from thin-skinned, but I doubt he's spoken with too many people in that vein 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sttp Posted August 2, 2018 Share Posted August 2, 2018 On 7/27/2018 at 12:30 AM, Battlefront.com said: Not really news, guys. We're always thinking about the future. It's just difficult for us to get there as soon as we would like. Steve Action squares every 4 meters instead of every 8 would be incredible. 4 times the processing horsepower would be (theoretically) needed, sure, but I think modern systems could handle that. Cannot WAIT for the day we've got a new engine in our hands! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sttp Posted August 2, 2018 Share Posted August 2, 2018 (edited) 16 minutes ago, sttp said: Action squares every 4 meters instead of every 8 would be incredible. 4 times the processing horsepower would be (theoretically) needed, sure, but I think modern systems could handle that. Cannot WAIT for the day we've got a new engine in our hands! Or wait a sec... hmmmm... would that be 16 times the (theoretical) processing power that'd be needed? (4 times the number of action squares, with each testing LoS to 4 times the number of other action squares...? Or would it be something else? Any mathematicians here?!? Or I bet Charles would know!) I guess it doesn't really matter. Just calibrating my own expectations and keeping them in check.... Edited August 2, 2018 by sttp 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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