sbg2112 Posted May 10, 2000 Share Posted May 10, 2000 First, the good: 1. The audio really adds to the immersion (which seems kinda like overkill the way some of us are addicted to this thing....) 2. Group move works very well and is every bit as useful as I'd hoped. 3. I've never cared for fancier / better textures, but the soldiers really look much better and the faces are much more realistic. 4. The "splash screens" are much nicer -- very professional looking. Now for the not-so-good: 1. Some of the tiles are "blinking" -- in CE, for example, one of the tiles in one of the fields was randomly being replaced with one of the tiles from the road. I don't believe I had this problem with the beta demo... 2. The "fire" sound is more like an electronic buzzing sound, and doesn't sound as nice as the crackling sound I used to get with the beta demo. Guess I could figure out which WAV it is, and try to replace it.... 3. Noticable drop in framerate (at least in CE), but nowhere near enough to make me quit playing. 4. I had a unit go into a building, and they disappeared as if CM thought it was drawing the building transparently but the graphics card / driver wasn't actually doing the transparency. 5. The mouse cursor was stuck on the hour-glass the entire time I was running CM. My system is a PII 266, 128 megs memory, and an ATI Rage Pro graphics card, DirectX 6.1 (I believe). I imagine I'll be playing around with drivers to try to fix some of my problems.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fionn Posted May 10, 2000 Share Posted May 10, 2000 1. Sounds to me like you may have had a bit of a bad install. I've NEVER seen anything like what are you describing in ur first point. Maybe its a hardware incompatibility but it is so weird I'd be willing to bet that the install screwed up somehow. 2. matter of personal preference. I'm sure you could just replace the Wav easily enough. Personally I prefer the new fire sound but everyone to their own eh? 3. I agree. That's cause of all the new textures etc which are much bigger than the beta demo ones. 4. Hit either Shift-I or Shift-O (I always forget which) to turn off transparent buildings.. This toggle will bring it back to the way it used to be in the beta demo for those whose cards can't handle transparency. 5. No idea what that could be. If I were you I'd update to DirectX 7a since I've updated to it I've had no problems with CM really.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sbg2112 Posted May 10, 2000 Author Share Posted May 10, 2000 Fionn, Thanks for the quick answer. I'll try the re-install today. 4. As far as toggling the transparency goes, I tried that and it didn't seem to have any effect. I also tried to get it back to the beta demo's behaviour, but no luck -- I'll play with it more later today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Madmatt Posted May 10, 2000 Share Posted May 10, 2000 Yes,I would agree with Fionn. Dump DirectX 6 and get on baord with DirectX7a. Then post back here with the results! I also recommend deleting the PREFS file that is in the Combat Mission folder. That will get re-created when CM restarts. Madmatt ------------------ If it's in Combat Mission, it's on Combat Mission HQ! And if it's NOT on CMHQ then its just GOT to be on CMHQ-ANNEX... CMHQ http://combathq.thegamers.net CMHQ-Annex http://cmhq.tzo.com Both now proud members of the Combat Mission WebRing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Pham Posted May 10, 2000 Share Posted May 10, 2000 $50 says it's your video card drivers. Make sure they're updated(and update DirectX as Fionn said). I've got an ATI too, and have had similar problems with other games that were fixed by swapping the drivers for older or newer ones(depending on the situation). ATI drivers suck, but check for new ones at www.atitech.com. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fionn Posted May 10, 2000 Share Posted May 10, 2000 My pleasure sbg2112. Polite questions get complete and polite replies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sbg2112 Posted May 11, 2000 Author Share Posted May 11, 2000 Okay, I did some tweaking last night -- pardon me while I respond to myself with the results: 1. Tiles are no longer blinking after upgrading to DirectX 7.0a. (I still get some narrow seams between tiles sometimes, but it's very minor and I had already learned to overlook this in the beta demo....) 2. Fire sound is still not all that great -- I noticed in the readme that the sounds had been downsampled for the demo, so I'll live with it until I get my CD on the remote chance it's better in the full release... 3. Framerate seemed ever-so-slightly better after upgrading DirectX, but I didn't try to measure it.... 4. Transparency still doesn't seem to be working -- I didn't upgrade my Rage Pro driver, but I'm kinda sceptical that'll make a difference. I'll try that when I get more time. I did manage to get it to behave the way the beta demo did when units entered buildings. 5. I discovered the same workaround for the mouse cursor that somebody else already posted -- Alt-tab away from CM (or minimise it) and when you return the mouse cursor will be the pointer instead of the hourglass. (Now for the weird thing -- the framerate also seemed to be slightly better after doing this. I hate to say that at the risk of blowing any credibility I may have, but that's the way it seemed. Need to get my hands on a framerate counter....) There's probly still some more DirectX tweaking to be done -- fer instance, I noticed that DxDiag claimed my card wasn't AGP. May not matter, but something to look at.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rdarnese Posted May 11, 2000 Share Posted May 11, 2000 It said your card wasn't AGP? Is this win95 or 98? Do you have the USB update installed if it is 95. Also is this an Intel based motherboard? I used to have a Rage Pro (have a Rage Fury now) so I am somewhat of an expert. And no they don't suck, you just have to keep up to date with the newest drivers. Besides that their cards kick butt . ------------------ Richard Arnesen Shrapnel Games www.shrapnelgames.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Berlichtingen Posted May 11, 2000 Share Posted May 11, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>2. The "fire" sound is more like an electronic buzzing sound, and doesn't sound as nice as the crackling sound I used to get with the beta demo. Guess I could figure out which WAV it is, and try to replace it....<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> An "electric buzzing" sound would be appropriate for an MG42 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sbg2112 Posted May 11, 2000 Author Share Posted May 11, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>It said your card wasn't AGP? Is this win95 or 98? Do you have the USB update installed if it is 95. Also is this an Intel based motherboard? I used to have a Rage Pro (have a Rage Fury now) so I am somewhat of an expert.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Sigh..... I've just spent some time hammering DejaNews and found some leads on this -- looks like I may need some updates from Intel (so that the OS can properly configure for the chipset) and may also need some updates from MS. I have Win95, but I'm not sure which level -- I just hope it's one of the ones for which I can get USB support (because that's apparently the one that has the AGP support I'm looking for). Anyway, thanks for the help -- since you're something of an expert, does this sound vaguely correct? Somebody claimed that this pain was well worth it -- assuming this works, will it really make a difference in framerate? [This message has been edited by sbg2112 (edited 05-11-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sbg2112 Posted May 12, 2000 Author Share Posted May 12, 2000 Ohmygosh! I updated the chipset stuff, and managed to apply the USB patch, which resulted in DxDiag showing AGP as enabled. It was well worth it -- framerate went from being marginal to usually smooth. Fraps shows I'm getting around 15fps, sometimes as low as 10 or 11, and sometimes as high as 17 or so -- all during movies. That's not as much as I'd expected given how smooth it seems. Then again, CM ain't no flight sim.... Anyway, framerates aren't a distraction now.... (The only thing left of my original complaint list is that transparency still isn't working.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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