Another thread about graphics...

[Chorizo]

Nope... I've got a PII 400 with 128 Mb mem, its got a graphics card, sound card, 3d card but I couldn't tell you what they were or who made them.....

I mean - who cares right? it works... and when it doesn't I'll buy a new one.....

sheesh

I wanna meet the guys who cant afford a computer... come on ..... where are you, speak up ???????

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Don't take life too seriously - you'll never get out of it alive!

[Mark IV]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mr. Clark:

What the bloody heck? Am I the ONLY person on the earth with a low-mid level system?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

P3-300, 128 Mb RAM, Voodoo 3-3000, 19" Impression 7 Plus monitor. Extra RAM and the Voodoo were just for CM.

This little screamer was pretty hot 3 years ago... actually, it runs CM great, though you can see it choking a little on the large scenarios.

As soon as I sell my little boat, in comes the new one. And I figure if I go to one meal a day I can justify a cable modem.

[Mr. Clark]

Heh... you should see my system choke on the large scenarios!

It runs small ones GREAT however, and medium ones OK... so the most I'm going to shell out is for a voodoo 3 (to get rid of my Voodoo 2).

Should I buy the Voodoo 3 2000 or 3000??? Whats the diff? Is one AGP? (I only have an open PCI slot)

(Also, don't try to talk me out of Voodoo, as I have an AMD chip, and they seem to work best w/ Voodoo... plus the V3 is cheaper nowadays)

[R-Man]

Actually, CMBO has saved me the expense of upgrading or replacing my (now) mid-level machine. It seems that a PII 333 MHz machine with a TNT2 video card is just good enough to play any and all scenarios at full-detail. However, I still have to avoid panning the camera through thick smoke to avoid the occasional lock-up.

I should be fine until CM2 comes out, or some other as-yet-unknown WWII tactical level 3D wargame comes out.

[David Aitken]

R-Man wrote:

> I still have to avoid panning the camera through thick smoke

Try low-quality smoke. I couldn't bear the idea to start with, but neither can I bear having the framerate grind to a halt whenever someone pops smoke. I thought LQ blocked out things you could see with HQ, since HQ is partly transparent, but on double-checking I realised that HQ actually blocks your view even more. LQ doesn't look as good, but you get used to it, and HQ smoke has a disproportionate effect on framerate.

David

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They lost all of their equipment and had to swim in under machine gun fire. As they struggled in the water, Gardner heard somebody say, "Perhaps we're intruding, this seems to be a private beach."

[Jeff Heidman]

This biggest difference I saw with my new system is the ability to run the game at 1600x1200 32MB color. Now my game looks like all those screen shots people are posting.

My previous system was a p2-333/64MB with a Voodoo 2. Ran CM just fine at 800x600, although I did have to turn the HQ smoke off, like David mentioned. I was playing Move It or Lose It and all the burning stuff was making the framerate when scrolling drop quite a bit. Outstanding double blind PBEM BTW.

Although now I am even more irritated at all the wasted space taken up by the BTS logo. I imagine I will get over it though...

Jeff Heidman

[Bruno Weiss]

Don't know Clark, but "Ah feel yer pain". I use a Pentium III, 733 coppermine on a Tyan Trinity 400 mb, 256 megs RAM with a Voodoo5 5500 and a 2XFSAA setting. I certainly have no complaints about CMBO's graphics, to me their beautiful. At level 1 zoom, I feel like I'm there, and that is what it is all about aye? The first look I had at CMBO was a night scenario and I was walking through a woods in the zoom level 1 behind the guy, and suddenly tracers come ripping through the night, guys in my squad were hit, screaming, everyone hit the ground for cover, couldn't even raise your head. Now, I gotta say, the realism don't get much better than that. Could graphics be better? Maybe, and probably eventually will. But I sure don't have any complaints.

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"Mer zuerst schiesst hat mehr von Leben"

Bruno "Stachel" Weiss

[Mr. Clark]

R-MAN, you give me hope that the upgrade to a Voodoo 3 will make ALL the scenarios playable (which is all I'm looking for... a little more framerate in the large maps)

That means I'll not have to upgrade anything else till... CM2.

Transparent smoke... who needs transparent smoke?

[Lane]

You guys talk about Frame rate?

Do you guys have a counter? Is there key set

I missed? I am running a 233 with 64 ram with 3D monster card When I try to run large battles and scenarios It just takes a long

time for blue bar to load.

Thanks for any info.

Lane

[Jeff Heidman]

Lane, I am rpetty sure that things like graphics loading time, AI thinking time, and turn resolution time are largely CPU dependent.

I definitely noticed a HUGE improvement in all of those things going from a 333 to a 1100. I would say an order of magnitude faster, not just 3-4 times faster.

I doubt that there is any way to turn on a frame counter for CM.

Jeff Heidman

[David Aitken]

As Jeff says, your CPU speed affects the calculations the computer does after you press "GO". Your graphics card speed affects the smoothness of the graphics when you're scrolling around the map. There is no framerate counter, but you'd have to have the top-of-the-range computer in order never to see low framerates in a contemporary game.

If I turn my resolution down, CM is perfectly smooth, even if the screen is filled with high-quality smoke. But I prefer resolution to smoothness (ever so slightly), so I play at maximum resolution (for my monitor) in exchange for a bit of jumpiness, and the inability to feasibly display HQ smoke. Apparently 30 fps (frames per second) is ideal, and 10 fps is the minimum playable rate.

David

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They lost all of their equipment and had to swim in under machine gun fire. As they struggled in the water, Gardner heard somebody say, "Perhaps we're intruding, this seems to be a private beach."

[Guest Michael emrys]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Slapdragon:

I have just relegated my Dell Optiplex to running SPSS and have switched to a G4 Power Mac 500mhz. Two monitors cannot be beat, and I don't have to worry about damn direct-x errors!!!!

I am free, no more Wintel for me!!!!!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hallelujah! Another soul come to the Lord! Brothers rejoice with the angels on high! Another sinner has seen the Light and cast off his wicked ways!

Michael (another Mac weirdo) (in case you couldn't tell)

[Guest Michael emrys]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mr. Clark:

What the bloody heck? Am I the ONLY person on the earth with a low-mid level system?

Are they growing money trees now, and someone left me out of the loop?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

What? Didn't you get a plain brown envelope with a check for a million bucks in it? How strange. If I were you, I'd write my Congressman. There must have been some oversight.

Michael

[THumpre]

Well, since my wife is tired of hearing about it and I did upgrade JUST for CM...

PIII 866, 128Megs RAM,64MbGeforce DDR

It is awesome

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When one goes tear-assing around, one often ends up with a torn ass.

[Mr. Clark]

Stupid mailman! He gave me my brown envelope with CM in it, and apparently stole the brown million dollar envelope!

Oddly, the only time my framerate drops below 10 is when I am playing a large battle, and then I attempt to move or target... for some reason the LINE (for targeting or moving) is a bit too much at that point and my fps drops to about 5 or 6...

I agree with David... I usually get about 20 to 28 fps, and it drops to 10 when looking across medium or large maps filled with troops and vehicles... and 10 does seem to be the point where anything less is AGGRAVATING.

Seems everyone gets some slowdown at some point (except the SUPER machines) so maybe I need to stop worrying about it.

[Maximus]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Gen-x87:

CM looks abosulutley beautiful at 1600X1200X32

Gen<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

32-bit color?

CM supports only 16-bit color.

Ha! You new guys make me laugh. Upgrading to a Voodoo 3? That's like upgrading to a PII when there are PIIIs available.

One hint: go to at least a TNT based card if you want transparencies.

My system specs are as follows:

Celeron-433

128MB-100MHz SDRAM

32MB TNT2 Ultra

SB Live! X-Gamer

4.8x DVD drive

I'm looking into the possibility of upgrading to the top-end Celeron II chip. Me thinks it's a 700MHz now.

[This message has been edited by Maximus (edited 09-20-2000).]

[Aussie Smith]

Is this where I say the Athlon is better for CM than the P3 cause of its better floating point?

No....oh

[Mr. Clark]

No, upgrading to a Voodoo 3 is more like not having a pile of cash to spend to play one game.

Besides, I get transparencies on my Voodoo 2, except for smoke, so I know I'll get them on the V3.

[Supertanker]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Slapdragon:

I am free, no more Wintel for me!!!!!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Sorry to stray off topic a bit (as if the thread isn't already) but I don't understand people's hatred/devotion to one company over another. I guess it depends on what you mostly do with your CPU time, but I don't understand why any gamer would be happy to not have a good Wintel box around. To me is is a simple matter of having the right hardware to run the games I want.

When it comes to Wintel in particular, no matter the number of headaches that Bill & Andy have caused me, Half-life and Counterstrike more than make up for it. On the other hand, the good games that never come out for Mac, or come out a year later, are legion. If there were some great Mac-only games, I would buy one, but the Mac section at the game store is a little lacking these days. It wasn't always that way, and I have spent many an hour gaming on a Mac.

I have a Dreamcast so I can play various sports games, and I will probably get a PS2, X-box and/or Gamecube if they have some killer proprietary apps. I'll buy a Mac again if they can do the same. The games are the key.

[Aussie Smith]

Super

You rock mate - I play CS far too much (it competes with my CM time ).

In the end my view is you buy the best machine for your needs. A PC struggles to compete with a MAC as a desktop publishing or graphics development machine - where a MAC still struggles against the PC's upgrade ability or integration into the mainstream business world. Both these machines will struggle to compete with the domination of the games market by what I call the computer lite machines like the Sony Playstation, Dreamcast etc.

Truly in 10 years I think there will be no such argument as the development of these platforms will coalesce into one.

Me - well I'd like 1 of each to cater for all these strengths.

Craig

[David Aitken]

The reason people like the Mac is because it is far less complex, and far more intuitive than Windows. You can say that Windows is effectively the same these days, but although it looks like the Mac OS, it does not work like it. However, the Mac OS still has elements of code dating back ten years or so.

The beta of Mac OS X ('ten') has just come out, and the full version is due next year. Developers are really enthusiastic about this – it is the overhaul that the Mac OS has been needing for years, it is based on BSD Unix, and it is much more attractive to programmers. The beta has already sold tens of thousands of copies in the week or so it has been available, and the media reception has been very favourable.

Windows has always been better for games. The Mac has always been a nicer OS to use. Being a creative type, and not too interested in games, I have never considered buying a PC. However, once OS X is out, I think the Mac will become a much more attractive platform to everybody.

David

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They lost all of their equipment and had to swim in under machine gun fire. As they struggled in the water, Gardner heard somebody say, "Perhaps we're intruding, this seems to be a private beach."

[scoop88]

I've been running CM on a Mac G4 and the graphics look great, the game runs well, and life is good. Thank you, BTS, for making a game for the Mac platform instead of just catering to the PC world. I would hate to have tried to run the PC version of CM on Virtual PC emulation software ... usually it works, but sometimes it doesn't. The Microsoft WWII air combat games run so badly on Virtual PC that they are unplayable.