First Impressions

[Yskonyn]

Received the email at 18:00LT, clicked the link, download started! No problem!

Downloaded the game in approximately 8 minutes with my full bandwidth (710KB/sec!! Thanks guys for not joining in too soon! Gna gna!).

After download, installed without problems, although when trying to get the license thing going it asked me (and everyone else I suppose, hehe ) for my order ID.

Be aware that it's not the order ID you have to fill in but the license number that's given in the same row in your order confirmation email as where the download link is.

Logical enough, but still confusing, no?

Anyway, got the license to work and fired up the game. It started without any hickups.

Jumped straight into the options to crank every detail up and started a quick battle.

Great visuals! Superbly detailed models, nice textures although the shadows seem jagged and don't display as they should (Catalyst 7.6 drivers), but only a minor gripe.

Camera control is very slow, though and while panning the camera movements speeds up, then slows down again making it quite a burden sometimes to get the right view or to switch position quickly. Maybe I am doing things wrong here? Just first impressions here.

Sounds are great. Difference between speed of light and speed of sound nicely modelled!

Well that's all the time I have for now... Join in and add more first impressions!

Oh and.. please refrain from posting things like: "The game doesn't work, crap!".

It's about first impressions in-game.

Cheers!

[George MC]

Hi Yskonyn

Glad everything looks to be going well.

The camera controls takema wee bit of getting used to, but once you do, well you'll find yourself trying to use the mouse wheel to elevate your viewpoint if/when you go to play CMX1!

You found out about left clicking on the mouse and holding that down as you move the camera - that pans the view. Other control I found useful was, as I have said the scroll wheel on the mouse.

Happy fighting!

Cheers fur noo

George

[Yskonyn]

Hi George Mc, thanks for joining in on my, still quite empty, first impressions party!

Thanks for the camera control tips they are bound to come in handy, although I do wonder how anyone would be able to play RealTime with a slow camera?

But anyway, waaaay too soon to give a funded answer yet.

I am missing the LOS tool though!

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Yskonyn:

although I do wonder how anyone would be able to play RealTime with a slow camera?)

Judicious use of the pause button, naturally.

[George MC]

Originally posted by Yskonyn:

Hi George Mc, thanks for joining in on my, still quite empty, first impressions party!

Thanks for the camera control tips they are bound to come in handy, although I do wonder how anyone would be able to play RealTime with a slow camera?

But anyway, waaaay too soon to give a funded answer yet.

I am missing the LOS tool though!

I'm playing out one of the battles in the campaign now in RT. Must admit the camera works OK for me. I do find myself doing the angel bit and hovering overhead, only going down to lev 1 to check out terrain and stuff. Camera works fast enough for me - could the camera speed be linked to having the graphics set to high for your rig?

Cheers fur noo

George

[imported_Major_Jerkov]

So far, so good... mostly. Graphics look good, as mentioned above though, shadows are real jaggy. Have updated to newest Nvidia drivers and problem still persists. I found the controls relatively intuitive, the basics seem to remain the same.

Started a QB battle which had humorous results, I spawnkilled a few squads of syrian infantry that spawned in my spawn. Good stuff.

Video of QB 1st phase

[RedDevil]

why on earth did they change the hotkeys all around???

sheesh now I gotta relearn the keys again

loaded fine

already lost my 1st unit and got my INF pinned down in a sewer trench.. no video issues so far just trying to get the camera angles to suit my tastes...

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Yskonyn:

although I do wonder how anyone would be able to play RealTime with a slow camera?)

Judicious use of the pause button, naturally. </font>

[Moon]

Camera controls: left click + hold and right click + hold are your friends!

Martin

[InvaderCanuck]

For you fellas running the game smoothly, mind posting your video cards?

I've heard some people are having serious issues while the OP here is having none!

Im dling atm and really hope I fall into the none crowd!

[David Chapuis]

i have a 64MG ATI radeon and I am running decent enough on the low and medium levels.

First impressions: I tried to play the campaign without reading any of the manual, but I am giving up. I guess I will read the manual and the game a bit.

I do like the delayed sound though. I heard a big bang, and was looking rewinding looking all around for it (like it did in CMx1 games). then I remembered delayed sound. Pretty cool.

[Razer]

I have the same jagged shadow problem as Yskonyn. But it's no big gripe. I found for camera movement leftclick hold + right click hold to work the best.

Anyway, I'm sitting here with 1.0, patiently waiting for the 1.01 patch to be released. Still think the game is loads of fun

[Yskonyn]

Thanks for joining in chaps!

Lets make this a nice warmup party as the first few hours pass after the release of CM.

I've just finished my first complete Quick Battle; an attack on a small village, although is resembled an airfield more to be honest.

I started with about 10 Strykers, 4 Bradleys, 3 Engineer Squads, and a whole bunch of riflemen.

The first Syrians were spotted the very first second and 2 Bradleys started to shell them causing panick in the first 2 minutes of play.

I quickly forces their flank to give in and overran the western part of their fortifications.

I rushed the 2 other bradleys over to flank the other side and quite easily broke the whole Syrian squad in under 13 minutes.

Played at lowest difficulty setting though. *grin*

Anyway, the camera control is much better now after having set the Unit Detail backwards two notches, so its now set to Improved, texture detail is set to Best and I have hard-set my Anti-Aliasing to 2x (going to try 4x) and Anisotropic Filtering to x8 in the Catalyst Drivers as the game seems to read those settings directly from the driverset. So yes, it does seem that the Unit Detail setting was too high and caused sluggish performance.

Resolution of play is 1024x768.

Framerates are constant and comfortable and I am running the game on a P4 3.4Ghz HT 800Mhz FSB processor, 1GB RAM (Dual Channel setup, 400Mhz), ATi Radeon X1950Pro 512MB, Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Prof, Windows XP.

Using catalyst 7.6 driverset, DirectX 9.0c (june release).

Rightclick + Hold to rotate the camera and

Leftclick + Hold to pan the camera needs a little to get used to, but even after my first game it seems to work quite well!

And as Elmar stated: CTRL + leftclick still jumps the camera. *thumbs up*

[Speedy]

First Impression after one quick battle is pretty damn good, though I will say I found the camera controls a bit awkward.

First up tried a real time qb on elite difficulty with my Syrians attacking an Uncon village, go to the map and I find I have approximately 2 companies of mechanised infantry with a pyramid of blue icons above them <gulp>.

5 minutes later I worked out how to load my inf into the BTR's, then clicked the start button. Bugger maybe I should have given orders first, so 6 minutes into the battle I finally manage to get all my units moving. By this stage all the Uncon technicals are toast and I start to hear some whoosing noises, uh-oh hauling the camera around I find that I have lost 2 BTRs to rpg hits, better stop my BTRs and dismount the troops (Can we give groups of units orders? Doing this individually takes quite a while).

Now about 16 minutes into the battle I remember I have some mortar support and decide to call it in to see what it is like, even an immediate call gives me a delay of 6 mins so time to wait a bit.

After 2 mins of waiting for the arty the end battle screen pops up with a total victory for me ( so no arty ).

I definately do not want to be commanding that many troops in RT again unless there is a way to give group orders.

Oh and I liked the addition of 'missing' to the casualty list.

[mscano]

Downloaded it in under 5 minutes (1.35mb/sec)! Had a problem with the order ID thing (figured it out myself). Installed flawlessly, no problems.

Fired it up and it runs great! Played the training mission and the first mission on the list. All I can say is throw out whatever tactics you used in the WW2 games....and watch out for RPGs! I took a lot of casualities and would have undoubtly been the lead story on CNN.

One thing I noticed is that you can't lasso units like in the other games. If you double click on a unit, you highlight the entire platoon. They definitely want you to use more realistic tactics.

Overall, I say Great Job!

System Specs: PentIV/3Ghz, 2gigs ram, nvidia7600gt 256mb card, Windows XP.

[rune]

mscano,

yes, you can group select. Look in the manual, but if you left click ont he ground and hold it while moving, you will select that group of units.

Rune

[MoNuckah]

I really like it so far. A couple of little bugs already, but hey, its cool.

Is there any way to toggle 'Show all targets/ waypoints'like in CMx1?

I didn't see anything in the manual or Hotkey menu for it, and its something I'd really like to see.

I have to click on every unit to see the issued commands and current targets, which is a little annoying.

[Steiner14]

Yskonyn,

the X1950Pro can't handle max detail? Damn, this card is on my radar.

What about haze and weather effects? Are they all graphically present with your card?

[Bil Hardenberger]

You can also select multiple units one by one by shift-left clicking on each.

Bil

[Hev]

love the game, its running smooth even on my back up rig with 1gig ddr1 (pc3200 i think)

Just got my arse handed to me on the first campaign mission, im playing on Elite

I realy like how the vehicle dont have "Exact" knowledge of where thier buddies are, its implemented realy well.

Thanks Again BFC GOOD JOB GUYS

PS striker rush's dont work -.-

[Bertram]

My first battle played. Thought I was doing pretty bad, not getting my objectives, and a Stryker burning.

The result was a victory - I like those asymetric victory conditions!!

[Battlefront.com]

Thanks for the early feedback guys!

There is alot of "unlearning" that might be needed, but just remember. Things that are in CMx2 are there for a reason just like things that were in CMx1 were also in for good reasons. Since the games are different, fundamentally different in fact, not everything in CMx1 is applicable to CMx2.

I will say this though. We are planning on adding some better feedback in places. You'll get used to how things work and not notice the lack of certain things fairly quickly, but we do understand that other things would be helpful early on or even after a lot of play.

As with all our CM games... the support for the product will continue for years to come!

Steve

[Hev]

love the game, its running smooth even on my back up rig with 1gig ddr1 (pc3200 i think)

Just got my arse handed to me on the first campaign mission, im playing on Elite

I realy like how the vehicle dont have "Exact" knowledge of where thier buddies are, its implemented realy well.

Thanks Again BFC GOOD JOB GUYS

PS stryker rush's dont work -.-

[Battlefront.com]

Yskonyn,

Camera control is very slow, though and while panning the camera movements speeds up, then slows down again making it quite a burden sometimes to get the right view or to switch position quickly. Maybe I am doing things wrong here? Just first impressions here.

First tip is not to control the camera with the keyboard. That is purposefully slower so as to give more fine control of movement. Camera panning when holding down the right mouse button should be as fast as any FPS game (OK, maybe not QUITE as fast, but darn'd close). There is, however, some built in behavior to slow down the pan so you don't get the "neck snapping" feeling you get with FPS games since that isn't what people generally want for CM. If things seem to be going slower than you want, let up on the mouse button, click in the middle of the screen, and try again. That should do the trick.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Heh... man, you guys are posting fast! Looks like Yskonyn already figured out what I wrote

And yes Hev, Stryker rushes don't work very well. In fact, rushing anything tends to produce an optimal result from the enemy's perspective This is one of the things people are going to have to get used to more than probably anything else. Combat these days is all about taking your time to fix and reduce the enemy while you maneuver something bigger to finsih them off. Going in for close combat is generally not recommended!

You'll hear me say this a lot in the coming months:

SLOW AND DELIBERATE WINS, FAST AND SLOPPY LOSES

Steve