Framerate

[snakeeyes]

1. Ok... First of all... what SHOULD a GOOD framerate be during a battle? 12?

I get these slowdowns that make the game very frustrating. I've tried almost everything.

I have recently had to drop all settings to low and actually set my grass form distance to zero in order to get good frameates.

I also have to ask about the configurator:

2. Should I lower my resolution? I play games like raven shield with feverish fluidity on 1024x768... should I keep it for T-72?

3. I have my monitor frequency at 85

4. What is "backbuffer mode?" I have mine set to X8R8G8B8... I have the option of setting it to R5G6B5? Should I change it?

5. What is depthbuffer moder? I have mine set to D24S8 but I have the option to change it to D24X8 or D16.... should I change it?

6. What is Antialiasiing? I have my card set to "none." I have the option of turning it on to "nonemaskable" or "multisampling." Should I make any changes and what quality should I set?

7. Should I used the option of "managed textures?

8. Should I use the option of "compressed tectures?"

[Madmatt]

Let me try and answer some of these as best I can.

#1 depends on the size of the battle, how many AI units there are, the terrain, graphics level, the speed of your CPU, memory, video card etc... T-72 does require a powerful system though.

#2 I play in 1024x768 with good framerates and all i ever did was lower the grass draw distance and clouds. My system is over a year old. Lowering resolution may increase the speed but the best thing to do is try it and see.

3. Thats fine. Refresh rates only limit the maximum frame rate on the screen and I don't think there is anytime in T-72 that you will hit 85 frames per second.

4. Backbuffer, in short, describes the order that colors and graphics are drawn on the screen. The different options use different techniques but by and large they are equal in terms of performance.

5. DepthBuffer is related to the Z-buffer and stencil drawing. The various settings are as follows:

D16 A 16-bit z-buffer bit depth.

D24S8 A nonlockable format that contains 24 bits of depth (in a 24-bit floating-point format - 20E4) and 8 bits of stencil.

D24X8 A 32-bit z-buffer bit depth that uses 24 bits for the depth channel.

By and large the best performace, although lowest subjective graphical quality, is acheived with the D16 setting.

6. Antialiasing is a way to clean up the "jaggies" you will notice on certain models and edges. Depending on your video card this can affect performance a great deal. "None" will give you the best performance.

7. Managed Textures is basically a way for Direct X to offload a great deal of work from the video card and is best to leave enabled.

8. Enabling compressed textures may give you a slight performance increase but it can also cause slight graphic degradation.

Madmatt

[snakeeyes]

Thanks for the long post. I know you guys are busy.

I made the changes and was sure to go and download my card's latest drivers. I have better performance now and frame rates that can drop to around 7 during battles but only for a few seconds.

I STILL can't play the big "move to engagement" mission for some reason.

Oh well.

I'll keep tweaking but I'm having a great time with your game!

PUT A T-80U IN THE EXPANSION PACK!!