bighead Posted May 30, 2000 Share Posted May 30, 2000 I knew CM from other game forum. To be honest, I wasn't impressed before playing the Demo, cos the graphics weren't looked very nice, but after playing it, I was very much attracted by its realtism. However, I'd like to know if CM'graphics will be improved in the future version to take advantage of those high-end graphic cards like GeFore or Voodoo5, so the terrain and all objects, specially the skome will look more realistic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PanzerShark Posted May 30, 2000 Share Posted May 30, 2000 I think BTS will always try to push the hardware as far as possible, but i'm not sure if this will happen in the "other" releases. As far as i know one of the things that needs so many horsepower (cpu) is the 3d-trajectory of the many flying objects. These won't be calculated by the 3d-card. You cpu is ofcourse, next to your 3d-card, responsible for the "flow" of the game. This means that when the graphics are spiced up even more, your cpu will be having a very hard time. Just take the gold-demo. I have a pIII, 256mb ram and a TNT2 Ultra card (32mb). When i was bombarded with about 30 smokescreens , scrolling didn't went as smooth as it did without them (think i got 12 fps or so). When the graphics are spiced up even more, i think i should not only buy a new card but also a new cpu...and that my friend is NOT in my yearly planning Also, if CM2 arrives in about 1.5 years from now (just a guess), the voodoo 5 and Geforce will be "old". And i don't think that in the meantime everyone has purchased a Geforce or Voodoo. Ofcourse these are all shots in the dark since i have NO idea how the game/3d-engine works, but i was bored and now i finally reached my 200 posts PanzerShark *edited because of all the typhoz* [This message has been edited by PanzerShark (edited 05-30-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bighead Posted May 30, 2000 Author Share Posted May 30, 2000 Hi PanzerShark, ThanX for your reply. As far as I know, GeFore card by using GPU was in theory be able to lighten the workload of CPU, like lighting and transform. Also I noticed CM still uses DX6, sicnce DX7 is already out, which improves much 3d features, by the time CM2 released, it should be able to take those improved 3D features and make the smoke and explosion look more realistic. I think this is very important for a wargame and it will certainly attract more gamers when the graphics are improved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mch Posted May 30, 2000 Share Posted May 30, 2000 bighead, Are you getting the real translucent smoke texture?I had to upgrade my drivers and dir.x to get it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Rollstoy Posted May 30, 2000 Share Posted May 30, 2000 I think they should spend a few more polygons on the faces, but of course only at the highest level of detail! Tank models are - or so it seems to me - second to none on the market. Maybe they would benefit from dynamic lighting, though. Explosions are very original and give a good sense of the destructive forces. I am waiting for B17 II as the new reference in this field. Buildings should allow for more level of destruction. Will be considered in the next editions, I am sure. But all in all, where do you see room (realistically) for improvement?! As for technology in general: Lets wait for Republic: The Revolution for something completely different ... The Hype, The Hype ... Well, formerly Thomm ... waiting to finally get his brand-newVisa card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maximus Posted May 30, 2000 Share Posted May 30, 2000 bighead, you should have seen the smoke in the Beta Demo....trust me, the way it is now is much, MUCH better. The specs may say it needs DirectX 6, but trust me, the game really only runs well with DirectX 7. Since this game has been in development for almost 3 years now, DirectX 6 was just coming out at the time this game started development. What kind of explosions do you want? Bit-maped, simulator-type explosions? Yes those would be nice to look at, but the hit to the CPU and video card in an already complex environment would slow the framerate down to a crawl. Really you got to look at the absolute HUGE number of ploygons being used in any given scenario. We're not talking just the units, we're talking the terrain, projectiles, etc. Just look at the amount of polygons used in one infantry figure. Now multiply that by 3 and then by the number of squads. So therefor I beg you to find a game that offers such a high polygon count that maintains a reasonable frame rate count. The reason their hasn't been a true 3D battlefield wragame will now, is that there hasn't been the hardware to handle it. Also, people really over-estimate what today's hardware is really capable of doing. ------------------ "While stands the Collosseum, Rome shall stand. When falls the Collosseum, Rome shall fall. And when Rome falls -- the World." **Byron** Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maximus Posted May 30, 2000 Share Posted May 30, 2000 Well, I'm formerly somebody else too, but I'm not telling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bighead Posted May 30, 2000 Author Share Posted May 30, 2000 Hi Maximus You never know man, nVidia produces its new things every six month, but so far no many game developers have taken a real advantage of them. Maybe CM can't be improved this time, but what about CM2 or 3 or 4. CM is the first real 3D turn base game, I don't believe there is no room to improve it, specially with new hardware availble. B17 II is very impressed to gamers, not only because its gameply aspects, also the stunning graphics, so CM has to be improved if its wants to be a big hit. Trust me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt.Morgue Posted May 30, 2000 Share Posted May 30, 2000 bighead, To a lot of us old wargamers , the realism of the game means a lot more than graphics. The graphis of CM do a fine job of telling what is going on on the battlefield. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbaro Posted May 30, 2000 Share Posted May 30, 2000 To succeed economically a game has to be pitched to the hardware base out there in the real world, where the numbers are. The latest technology takes a while to filter into the consumer base in large enough numbers to actually be economically effective in sales. A game pushing the latest capabilities, for example the 1 gig hertz chips now coming out, would take time to develop, so that when the game shipped it would be facing a newer more powerful technology with people saying did not the developers do better. That is just what is happening now with CM. When development started PIII 500 meg computers were on the horizon and still are not the most numerous of the machines in the hands of gamers. I had to buy up to be able to play CM where it would work well. I chose a PIII 500 meg setup. I was lucky to be able to upgrade at this time. Had I upgraded 6 months ago to something less, I just would not have felt it justifided to go to what I have now, and would have been most grateful that CM would play on a lesser machine. You just can not make money by sellilng games that will only work well on the latest technology Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maximus Posted May 30, 2000 Share Posted May 30, 2000 bighead, What makes sells is the quality of the game, not the graphics. If a game has a lot of "flash-bang" graphics, but has really ****ty gameplay, interface, support, etc..people will find out and not waste their money on such garbage. Prime example of that is Gunship! Yes the graphics are top-notch, but the game itself sucks big hairy...well you know what and the hardcore sim fans are very turned off because of the cheesey gameplay. OK, another example. Diablo II. I have read recently that Diablo II's resolution is stuck in 640x480. Yes, that is a low resolution, but the game will sell because it is a bigger and better sequel to a former hit. Now, take a wargame called Combat Mission. CM has been in development for nearly 3 years. It is the first undertaking to create a solid 3D wargame with the ultimate priority in accuracy and realism. Until now, all true wargames have been hex-based 2D or 3D isometric games. CM was design to run on a P233 CPU with a 3D card. And most "grognard" wargamers don't have the latest CPUs. There are some people on here that have been trying to run it on P133's. You talk about improving CM's graphics over time. Well yes, they will indeed. They will also continue to update these earlier versions as well to keep them up to date by the time CM4 comes out. So when CM4 comes out, you won't be saying, "Geez, I don't wanna play CM1 anymore, 'cause the graphics are outdated." Becasuse, they won't. I personally have a 32MB TNT2 Ultra card and it handles everything pretty well. It handles FPS and racing games fantastically. But it gets bogged down in CM because of the shear numbers of polygons. Remember that in a FPS game that you're usually looking at a large or small room with a relatively small polygon count. In CM, you're looking at a 3D rendered battlefield with a HUGE amount of polygons in the terrain, units, and structures. Not to mention all the tree sprites. I am saying all of this, because there have been countless discussions on this before. One of them being, why aren't squads represented by "one figure=one man"? Simply cause today's hardware couldn't handle all the polygons. But of course, CM's graphics will be improved as each subsequent version comes out, but by then I'm hoping to upgrade to something around the 1 GHz mark. I've got a Celeron 433 right now, and I consider that a "decent" machine to run CM on. ------------------ "While stands the Collosseum, Rome shall stand. When falls the Collosseum, Rome shall fall. And when Rome falls -- the World." **Byron** [This message has been edited by Maximus (edited 05-30-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Big Time Software Posted May 31, 2000 Share Posted May 31, 2000 Pretty well covered, but here is my two cents 1. People do have unreasonable expectations of what bleeding edge hardware can do (as well as average hardware ) 2. People who have, or at least follow, the latest and greatest technologies vastly overestimate how many people have such stuff. And since we are catering to wargamers, they are even less likely to have it than the average (which is low enough). 3. We will improve CM's graphics over time, but we can't do more than the customer base has at their disposal. And that is generally last year's or two years' ago technology. Bighead, as for your question of why game companies don't support x technology to the fullest... the reason is partly contained in your question. These hardware companies are coming out with too many "standards" too quickly and with very low compatibility with each other. So why should we waste x weeks of development time to support something that most people don't have, which will be surpassed by something else in 6 months, and won't work on any other card? And the answer is exactly why most game companies don't support the latest and greatest. We have to wait and see what is actually popular FIRST, then decide if we want to support it. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maximus Posted May 31, 2000 Share Posted May 31, 2000 Well put Steve. That's what I was trying to say. Is that most people really over estimate the power of today's average hardware. In fact the main reason behind my software purchasing in the past IS because the "Industry" has always seem to produce games that DO require the latest hardware. So therefore, I couldn't buy much. I always had a system that became obsolete in a matter of months. One example was the game "Navy Fighters" which came out around 1995 I think. It required about a P120 and that's when Pentiums were practically brand new. At the time, I had one of the original P60s with the FPU error. Granted 3D accelerators have helped the low-end systems out tremendously by taking a lot of the load of graphic rendering off of the CPU. But try to do a 1024x768 software mode render of a racing game and you get pitifully slow frame rates. But turn on your Z-buffer and you get sharper, richer textures at an extremely fast frame rate. So with a good 3D accelerator you can extend the life of a average CPU. But in the end, usually within 2-3 years, you'll need to upgrade your CPU. But anyway, the point Steve was making is that actually maxxing out technological advances actually KILLS potential sales because the average Joe Smoe doesn't have the top-of-line hardware. At least it has for me. ------------------ "While stands the Collosseum, Rome shall stand. When falls the Collosseum, Rome shall fall. And when Rome falls -- the World." **Byron** Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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