2022 Mid Year Update

[rocketman]

On 9/13/2022 at 1:41 PM, Buzz said:

No performance issues here with any Combat Mission games using an i5 9600k (no overclock) and my recently purchased RTX 3060 ti. Using Nvidia image scaling at 2560x1440 with all settings at best ColdWar looks fantastic.

Buzz

@Buzz

Sorry for a bit of off topic, but:

I'm curious about what you think about using the image scaling feature. I also have a 1440p monitor and wonder which setting you use and what the main difference is than without it? Is it a global setting or can it be used with selected games?

[Buzz]

3 hours ago, rocketman said:

@Buzz

Sorry for a bit of off topic, but:

I'm curious about what you think about using the image scaling feature. I also have a 1440p monitor and wonder which setting you use and what the main difference is than without it? Is it a global setting or can it be used with selected games?

Hi @rocketman.

NIS (Nvidia Image Scaling) works well at 1440p.

I recently purchased an "Asus TUF RTX 3060 Ti Gaming" and replaced a failing Monitor with a "Gigabyte M32Q" -32" 2560 x 1440 QHD SuperSpeed IPS Display - 165Hz / 170Hz (OC) Refresh Rate, 0.8ms (MPRT) & 1ms GTG.

Older Monitor but spot on perfect for the RTX 3060 Ti power.

When you got to "Nvidia Control Panel - Manage 3D Settings" - Select ON.

A table of the generated resolutions based on input resolution. The level of image scaling efficiency is related to the GPU you are using & your Monitor (as well as many other settings in "Nvidia Control Panel - Manage 3D Settings" you select.)

3 hours ago, rocketman said:

Is it a global setting or can it be used with selected games?

Both options available. Learned plenty more in the last few weeks.

Happy to try and consolidate what works in a BFC Message to you or another thread. 

Buzz

I can say that with relatively low investments Combat Mission 2022 looks "pretty amazing" with NIS (Nvidia Image Scaling)  set in my current setup. As a Long Time BFC customer (CMBO...CMx2...) CM 2022 never looked better

[Bagpipe]

On 9/13/2022 at 12:17 AM, Artkin said:

I thought AMD cpu's had pretty good single core performance. What model do you have, and also what gpu? AMD gpu's arw notorious around here for having OpenGL issues, on top of poor OpenGL performance. 

I have never had performance problems in CMCW with my i5 9600k, and my now rtx 3060 ti

I have a NV GPU so its not that. I play countless OpenGL games with no issues.
The problem I have is only apparent at setup phase seemingly due to the blue overlay texture being repeated ad nauseum on larger scenarios. The game grinds to a halt. 5 FPS is good at this stage.
The minute I hit end turn and it disappears we are all good but I can't deploy my units correctly due to the severe, and i can't emphasise the severity enough, stuttering. It is single handedly the worst optimized game I have played in years and I play loooooads of games. 
Not having a go at the devs, I understand that it is probably something they don't look forward to getting into especially using something with such an ancient base as CM. It's almost as old as I am after all and I am pretty broken!

I have tried every trick in the book to try to improve it but nothing works.
If anybody can find the texture file in the packs please let me know where it is because i have exploded every brz file and cant find the damn thing to see about modding it out for something with much lower resolution. 

[Artkin]

I have also noticed a FPS hit when in the deployment stage, which immediately gets better when the go button is pressed. Not sure why your game dies so hard though. I lose maybe 5-10% fps in setup, nothing like what you are experiencing

[Lucky_Strike]

3 hours ago, Bagpipe said:

I have tried every trick in the book to try to improve it but nothing works.
If anybody can find the texture file in the packs please let me know where it is because i have exploded every brz file and cant find the damn thing to see about modding it out for something with much lower resolution. 

I don't think it is a texture, and yes I absolutely agree with you re the slow down at setup and deployment, it can be grievous on bigger maps especially with lots of units, trees, buildings etc. I've got no suggestions I'm afraid, like you I try everything to get around it. Best I can suggest is to turn all the graphics settings off or way down quality wise until deployment is done, then crank them back up.

Edited September 19, 2022 by Lucky_Strike

[Codreanu]

4 hours ago, Artkin said:

I have also noticed a FPS hit when in the deployment stage, which immediately gets better when the go button is pressed.

I notice the biggest performance drop when looking at the deployment zone itself, on some of the big CMCW scenarios I will get single digit FPS when I look at the deployment zone but if I turn the camera away it gets somewhat better. Quite strange. Does go back to normal after I hit play though.

[Bagpipe]

2 hours ago, Codreanu said:

I notice the biggest performance drop when looking at the deployment zone itself, on some of the big CMCW scenarios I will get single digit FPS when I look at the deployment zone but if I turn the camera away it gets somewhat better. Quite strange. Does go back to normal after I hit play though.

THIS! absolutely the same as what I experience. CPU utilization at this point is also as low as 2% with gpu pretty much idling at 40% and RAM looking very unchallenged also. The only fix is optimization from the devs unfortunately.

Pointing the camera straight down to the texture/shader/blue square sorts it but the moment the camera is observing all/lots of them the FPS plummets.
I have tried to find a way around it but cannot. Asked staff for advice to fix too but nobody could offer anything.

At the moment I can play as far as Neuhof and then that is it for the US campaigns. Gets boring playing the same 2 campaign scenarios over and over lol though I am getting pretty efficient at smashing the Russian advance with my roadblock just before Neuhof...

[Bagpipe]

7 hours ago, Artkin said:

I have also noticed a FPS hit when in the deployment stage, which immediately gets better when the go button is pressed. Not sure why your game dies so hard though. I lose maybe 5-10% fps in setup, nothing like what you are experiencing

Sometimes it just locks up completely for a good 2 minutes. It is bizarre. It is as though the setup phase just lulls my CPU to sleep... 

[ViperAssassin26]

Will there ever be an American version of CMA? I know we have a bunch of Mods for that. But there's nothing like an actual game for it.

[rocketman]

9 hours ago, Codreanu said:

I notice the biggest performance drop when looking at the deployment zone itself, on some of the big CMCW scenarios I will get single digit FPS when I look at the deployment zone but if I turn the camera away it gets somewhat better. Quite strange. Does go back to normal after I hit play though.

For some reason I always get a big FPS hit and slow camera movement in scenarios with a lot of locations (red text). Turning those off can be a good start. Also turning off shadows in scenarios when the weather is bad and shadows don't show anyway.

[Vkhani12345]

Still praying this month or next month something releases...! One can dream

[Artkin]

18 minutes ago, Vkhani12345 said:

Still praying this month or next month something releases...! One can dream

With preorders currently being sold you can expect it rather than dream about itm 

[Arjuna.R]

CM runs so silky smooth with cheap current gen hardware! 

For around 20,000 INR I got a 12th gen Intel i-3 (only single core performance matters anyway) + the most pathetic barebones motherboard (makes no difference ) + only 8gb of DDR4 RAM. In India this is all slightly more expensive than in the US I beleive. 

Kept my Nvidia GTX 1070 ti pushing 2560×1600 pixels & SATA Solid state drive. Could drop load times a bit with an up to date SSD but you only really do that once at the start of a game so not really worth it. 

Edited September 19, 2022 by Arjuna.R

[Vacillator]

27 minutes ago, Arjuna.R said:

For around 20,000 INR I got a 12th gen Intel i-3

Kept my Nvidia GTX 1070 ti

I'm running (as I have been for a couple of years) on an i7 laptop with Nvidia 1060.  It has no issues with the game, although opponents with other hardware have occasionally had problems with their side of PBEMs. 

I think cost here in the UK is also more than in the US .

[ManyMilesAway]

On 9/11/2022 at 2:55 PM, Battlefront.com said:

Work has also started on a Module for Cold War.  No details at this point, just preliminary work.  We’ll let you guys know more when there’s more to say.

Wait wait wait, y'all haven't been doing ANY work on the next module for Cold war for a solid year and a half?  Wasn't it developed by an independent team?  This is deeply frustrating...

Also no update on Engine 5 ;(

Edited September 20, 2022 by ManyMilesAway

[amadeupname]

3 hours ago, ManyMilesAway said:

Wait wait wait, y'all haven't been doing ANY work on the next module for Cold war for a solid year and a half?  Wasn't it developed by an independent team?  This is deeply frustrating...

Also no update on Engine 5 ;(

I believe they stated somewhere that the work will resume after the conflict in ukraine is concluded. Don't worry king, the russian army will collapse in 3, maybe 4 days tops. Been saying it since this it kicked off in february. 

[Combatintman]

5 hours ago, ManyMilesAway said:

Wait wait wait, y'all haven't been doing ANY work on the next module for Cold war for a solid year and a half?  Wasn't it developed by an independent team?  This is deeply frustrating...

Also no update on Engine 5 ;(

What part of "work has also started on a module for Cold War" equals "haven't been doing ANY work"?

[zmoney]

I think he was hoping work on a module would have started a year ago and is near completion. I too can not wait for a CMCW module.

[laurent 22]

On 9/14/2022 at 1:32 AM, laurent 22 said:

My father was a French soldier in Germany in the 80s. I was around ten years old when the whole family moved there. He regularly went on maneuvers. I will only buy CW if the French army is represented there.

I'm weak, I bought it (because of the euro/dollar parity↑) ...

[Combatintman]

2 hours ago, zmoney said:

I think he was hoping work on a module would have started a year ago and is near completion. I too can not wait for a CMCW module.

That was not the form of words he used, I repeat "ANY work on the next module for Cold War."

Just for context, there was no mention at all of a Cold War module in Steve's announcement in the original 2022 bones thread on January 14 this year, although he intimated that one might be on the cards in a subsequent post.

[A Canadian Cat]

9 hours ago, amadeupname said:

I believe they stated somewhere that the work will resume after the conflict in ukraine is concluded.

No, Steve has stated certain titles would not be released while the conflict is on going. He has said a few times that work continues.

[A Canadian Cat]

2 hours ago, Combatintman said:

Just for context, there was no mention at all of a Cold War module in Steve's announcement in the original 2022 bones thread on January 14 this year, although he intimated that one might be on the cards in a subsequent post.

For added context the normal flow rotates between titles which one gets the next module. I'm sure it's not a perfect rule but one thing you can be sure of is that the most recent release is *not* the one that gets the next module. It is reasonable to assume that Cold War's next module will not be released for a while. A long while.

[BFCElvis]

13 hours ago, ManyMilesAway said:

Wait wait wait, y'all haven't been doing ANY work on the next module for Cold war for a solid year and a half?  Wasn't it developed by an independent team?  This is deeply frustrating...

Also no update on Engine 5 ;(

The modules, textures, TO&E implementation are all done by Battlefront. Along with all of the coding that goes with it. The development by non"official" Battlefront people involves the research and planning of the content. And once all of the other things are in place they do the building of the content (scenarios, campaigns, maps, etc). 

So......the first bits I've mentioned that the development team does can happen independently of the things I mentioned the Battlefront crew does. The latter part cannot. Also, please keep in mind, the Final Blitzkrieg and Black Sea modules are in front of Cold War. Both of those games are far more overdue for modules than Cold War

Make sense?

[Centurian52]

Returning to Cold War Module speculation, it probably won't take very many modules to get in all of NATO. There are really only four NATO countries that I can think of that have their own unique equipment. The US, UK, West Germany, and France. The tank fleets of a lot of other countries are made up of a mix of Leopard 1s as their latest and greatest tanks, and Centurians as their previous gen tanks which are in the process of being replaced (Belgium has some French AMX-13s). So, for the most part, once West Germany and the UK are in the rest of NATO can probably be done all at once, since most of their equipment will already be in the game (except for France and, by extension, Belgium). I believe Spain and Turkey both have M-47s, which aren't in any game yet. But Spain doesn join NATO until 1982, so probably doesn't make the timeframe cut. It would be interesting to see fighting in the Balkans (Greece and Turkey vs Bulgaria and Romania) and the Caucuses (Turkey vs the Soviets in the mountains), but central Europe is the priority for me.

Obviously all the equipment for the Warsaw Pact is already in, so they might potentially be done all at once. So a potential roadmap could be West Germany, then the UK, then France, then all of NATO (insert Warsaw Pact at any point). Or the UK, then West Germany and all of the NATO countries that have a mix of German and British equipment, then France and Belgium (insert Warsaw Pact at any point). Or the UK and West Germany, then all of the NATO countries that have a mix of German and British equipment, then France and Belgium (insert Warsaw Pact at any point). Or West and East Germany, then the UK and France, then the rest of the Warsaw Pact and the rest of NATO together. The possible permutations are endless and I keep thinking of more plausible ones, so there is plenty of room for BFC to surprise us.

edit: Just reviewed my information. The Netherlands also has AMX-13s. Greece has some AMX-30s. And Italy, Greece, and Turkey all have M-47s. So French equipment is needed to fully represent Belgium, the Netherlands, and Greece. That's enough countries that a French module will probably be needed ahead of a general "all remaining NATO countries" module.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Centurian52

[Artkin]

1 hour ago, IanL said:

He has said a few times that work continues.

I know they said there won't be new kit in the new module, but man, we need T-80U.

Add TOR and some logistical equipment to that list too. It was really nice seeing the new trucks, this is something that is  lacking in CMBS. The lack of behind the front line kit makes the game feel a little lifeless. There is very little diversity in regards to vehicles. It would be nice to have just a bit more.

That kind of thing is what draws me back to CMRT and occasionally other WW2 titles. There is a better atmosphere I think, partially because of the wide array of kit that's driving all over the place.

When I designed the Russian MRB in full, I saw just how much kit was missing. A few new trucks would go a long way, so I'm excited for that.