MikeyD Posted March 4, 2003 Share Posted March 4, 2003 Just curious, has anyone tried any of the most extreme options in the game? For instance, has anyone tried going beyond the normal 25-40 turn scenario, and seen how a game would play out with max number of turns? Sound's like it's give you the opportunity to maneuver, to disengage from a fight, to redeploy decent reinforcements. Anyone try playing on a mx size map... at night... in dense fog? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sublime Posted March 4, 2003 Share Posted March 4, 2003 Lol... Well I've tried the smallest map, smallest number of turns with only 1 platoon... does that count? Maxing it out sounds alright but since I dont like huge battles anyways not much fun IMO... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Becket Posted March 4, 2003 Share Posted March 4, 2003 I'm under penalty of death not to give specifics, but yes, I've been playing some scenarios that are designed for 60 turns on massive maps with lots of forces. And they are quite fun. You can actually the AI redeploy its forces as one line crumbles and the line behind it needs to be strengthened. More than that I will not say. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bartokomus Posted March 4, 2003 Share Posted March 4, 2003 SP Balck and the Bridgehead is a 100+ turns on a large-ish map, with about around 15000 poins total . it is a very challenging game from both side, especially PBEM. a definite recommendation 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyD Posted March 5, 2003 Author Share Posted March 5, 2003 Whew, I can't even conceive of a 15000 point game! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
offtaskagain Posted March 5, 2003 Share Posted March 5, 2003 If it's an armor heavy battle 15000 points can be reached quickly. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike the wino2 Posted March 5, 2003 Share Posted March 5, 2003 Hey Becket would one of the maps be at night, in fog and lots of flamethrowers? :confused: If you come across anything interesting and you want someone to play against let me know...just as long as you don't get any M17 HTs. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbertles Posted March 5, 2003 Share Posted March 5, 2003 15000 pts total. Hmmph, that's only (quickly tries to do math, gives up and gets calculator) 7 platoons of Panthers on the one side - but 25 platoons of T34s on the other!!!! The map would look like the floor of the kitchen in my old apartment when I'd turn the light on late at night... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hub Posted March 5, 2003 Share Posted March 5, 2003 My son and I have elderly PC's that wouldn't be able to play anything too massive. I went on a big conversion program of resizing and downsampling the files in the game (almost 10,000 with all the mods I have)- we realised about a 40% increase in playability with the "new" files (my son has a 333 Celeron with 128 RAM and a Voodoo 3000 video card). We can play rather larger battles on bigger maps than before- still, playing games with lots of gear on a huge map is not going to be possible for us. PC's are getting pretty cheap, but neither of us can afford a new one yet. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reinald@berlin.com Posted March 5, 2003 Share Posted March 5, 2003 Hi Hub, can you be more specific on how you're doing the compression and how exactly it does help. My PIII 600MHz takes awfully long once it gets regimental for processing the 1minute movie. AI thinking is done quite quickly, but the blue bar takes forever. Does compressing the BMPs e.g. with a software like Fireworks help accelerate the blue bar? [ March 05, 2003, 07:17 AM: Message edited by: reinald@berlin.com ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soddball Posted March 5, 2003 Share Posted March 5, 2003 I have finished designing and am now playtesting a 120-turn, 22,000 point scenario on a map 4km long by 2km wide (approximately). It works out at around a regiment of Russian infantry on the attack. The AI doesn't advance quickly enough on the attack, but is doing sterling work on the defence. It's not a foggy, night scenario, filled with flamethrowers though, unlike some of my other evil efforts. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hub Posted March 5, 2003 Share Posted March 5, 2003 reinald: I've used a freeware program called Irfanview to reduce all the files from 24 bit to 8 bit colour. I went through all the files again and reduced many of those to 4 bit. I used Irfanview once again to take "square" textures, like the buildings, and resized them by 50%, then sharpening them by a factor of 20 (not sure what the number means- higher than 20 causes the textures to start to pixellate, so 20 is as high as I go). There has been some discussion on the tech forum as to whether this helps the game- I believe it has in my case- I can play much larger maps with more details on than before- scrolling stays smoother and the frame rate stays up enough so that vehicles don't appear to "hop" along (movement is smooth). Unfortunately, I believe in your case it is the AI just "thinking," so none of the above will help speed up the process. I still wait a long time for this to happen myself (it doesn't bother me that much). Some of the more computer savvy players out there will laugh at me for even mentioning this, but you should remember to defrag the drive CMBB is on, especially after you've been adding or taking away a lot of files, such as when manipulating mods. It makes a difference- but it is surprising how many people don't bother or forget to use this basic tool, both in gaming and other computer related things. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mchlstrt Posted March 6, 2003 Share Posted March 6, 2003 Hub, Changing the bit depth doesn't seem to have an effect. However, downsizing the .BMPs does. A lot. If you want to downsize 'odd' .BMPs just cut both dimensions in half. For example a 128 x 64 .BMP is reduced to 64 x 32. This is 1/2 the resolution, but it only calls on 1/4 of the VRAM. You could also go to 32 x16, if you can stand how it looks. This can be OK with Grass/Snow graphics, which are the single biggest VRAM hog. Good eye on the 'sharpening' bit. I'm aware of this from Modding. It lets you 'get back' a good bit of your resolution if you find the sweet spot. I have BO loaded on my little PowerBook with just this sort of treatment. strt 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reinald@berlin.com Posted March 6, 2003 Share Posted March 6, 2003 Thx Hub. I got a 64MB graphics card, so the graphics aren't the prob. Just the darn blue bar. I'll try defragging. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hub Posted March 6, 2003 Share Posted March 6, 2003 I found that trying to resize certain textures, especially ones that have round objects in them (like road wheels, for example)caused the objects to look distorted when viewed in the game. I couldn't go past resizing dimensions by more than 50% as the textures lost too much clarity after that. I found that resizing and downsampling the building textures made a huge difference- I had a town with 150+ buildings showing in the panoramic view, and scrolling was very smooth. Before, it wouldn't have been possible for me to scroll at all. Still, once a map goes beyond about 1500 x 1500 m, things start to go south for me unless I start turning settings down. First to go is ambient sound, then cut back on weather effects, then doodads, then trees... My video card (Hercules 4500 64 mb) uses Hidden Scene Removal, where it only renders what is actually visible (it won't render a tank hidden behind a house, whereas other video cards render everything, whether you can see it or not). This means that I tend to get better performance at lower camera angles, where more objects are in the way of each other. My personal taste is to have a certain amount of visual appeal when I play- I'd rather play a smaller map with all the trees on, then a bigger one with them all shut off, for example. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hans Posted March 6, 2003 Share Posted March 6, 2003 Try a scenario made for CMBO called Tactics 2- has 21,000 points I believe, the max out for both sides. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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