Not so good "first impression"

[JOGR]

Sorry but I have to say it. Even with the 1.01a patch (Paradox version) performance are HORRIBLE! Must be hardware compatibility issues??(see specs.) Even on low settings deploying troops is a real pain due to sluggish performance and crappy camera controls. What was wrong with the CMx1 camera?? I spend more time fighting the camera then fighting the Syrians. A 2D map and "line of sight tool" are needed! Even during combat when you need to overview the tactical situation and selects units, a 2D map would be "very" helpful! Now, it's not even possible to lock the cam in a good overhead view. What's up with that?

Syrian units tends to get hickup and repeats the same vioce sound in unsyncronised choirs. Maybe some uncon method to discourage the player or maybe it's a modern form of islamic chanting? Needs ironing out nonetheless.

We-Go is gone?? It's all played out in real-time anyway and you can't skip time during action phase. The only difference is the replay functionality and the inability to give orders for 60sec. Like the manual say's - "Not everyone have time to play in realtime". That's true, so why did you abandon the whole We-Go concept?

Oh well.. that's all for now. Sorry I had to add another whining thread but as I said, it's my first impression and at the moment it feels like I can skip CMSF until more problems are fixed. It's just too frustrating to be fun.. for now.

specs:

Core2Duo 2Ghz 2GBDDR2 nVidia7950GTX512DDR3 Vista32bit

[Sirocco]

WEGO is still in. I haven't tried it, but apparently the calculation pause has gone; what you're seeing in the first playback is the turn resolution you would have seen as a progress bar in CMx1.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

My first impression: You didn't RTFM.

[ChrisND]

I have almost the same rig as you, except I have XP and not Vista. My game runs awesome.

[JOGR]

Sirocco:

That's what I wrote. We-Go = realtime but with replay options at the end of every 60sek = not really We-Go IMO.

Elmar:

Actually, I RTFM several times during my 2 day cruise I had to attend to just as CMSF arrived in my mailbox. Comments like that are as useful as horse****.

Normal Dude:

Could be the problem. However I actually lowered the resolution a bit and did another test on another map. Things went a lot smoother this time around. Maybe performace is map oriented?

EDIT:

BTW during my second test my assault team got wasted by a BMP shooting through a solid concrete wall. It didn't even have LOS, still he was shooting with precise accuracy.

[ July 29, 2007, 07:22 AM: Message edited by: jogr ]

[Scipio]

WEGO is still in. I was a WEGO fetishist all the time and have played my first battles that way in CMSF. Until I noticed that it takes out a lot of dynamic and fun, compared to real time; and I really hated all real time games til now...well, except Close Combat.

If you don't have the time for a real time scenario, why don't you just use the save function!?

[Sirocco]

Originally posted by jogr:

Sirocco:

That's what I wrote. We-Go = realtime but with replay options at the end of every 60sek = not really We-Go IMO.

But it's the same as in CMx1. The difference is that instead of waiting for the turn to be resolved when you press the "Go" button, now you're watching that turn being resolved.

Would you really prefer a progress bar?

[thewood]

What would be better is the AI churning in the background while you are watching the turn resolve and than the VCR controls become active when its resolved. That way for smaller scenarios, you may have only watch 10 seconds and then you can skip.

[JOGR]

Sirocco:

The old We-Go allowed you to skip time until you felt the situation needed your attention. Maybe when you must sit back and wait for your inf to "hunt" long distances you will understand. Besides, not calculating AI decisions in realtime during the action phases could be a real performance saver for those with slower systems/cpu.

Going to get some coffee and a painkiller now.. maybe I will try another battle later.

[SgtMuhammed]

WEGO is exactly the same now as it was but instead of a blue bar you see the turn being resolved. You still give your orders during the orders phase and you still have VCR controls during the playback phase. All that has changed is that instead of watching the progress bar move across its little window you watch the turn in real time.

You had no vcr controls in CMx1 while the turn was being resolved and you have none in CMx2. If you want to put your troops on autopilot then give them movement orders that take them across the map, just like in CMx1. Some of the commands are a little different but the overall process is the same.

[JOGR]

Originally posted by sgtgoody (esq):

WEGO is exactly the same now as it was but instead of a blue bar you see the turn being resolved. You still give your orders during the orders phase and you still have VCR controls during the playback phase. All that has changed is that instead of watching the progress bar move across its little window you watch the turn in real time.

You had no vcr controls in CMx1 while the turn was being resolved and you have none in CMx2. If you want to put your troops on autopilot then give them movement orders that take them across the map, just like in CMx1. Some of the commands are a little different but the overall process is the same.

Actually thats not true. You have no VCR controls until the actual action phase are complete. You still have to wait 60sec in real-time before you can use it to replay the action once again.

[rune]

And if you read it again, it is because instead of the turn calculating and showing you a blue bar, it is showing you the turn being played out. Once it is done, you have the vcr controls just like you did before. So, you are saying you prefer waiting at the blue bar as it scrolls across?

Rune

[thewood]

Actually, if it takes significantly less than 60 sec., I would think yes. Am I missing something?

But, of all the things I would like to see, this one is way, way down on the list.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by rune:

And if you read it again, it is because instead of the turn calculating and showing you a blue bar, it is showing you the turn being played out. Once it is done, you have the vcr controls just like you did before. So, you are saying you prefer waiting at the blue bar as it scrolls across?

Rune

Not the same thing. If you have a fast processor in CMx1 the time for the blue bar gets reduced. If you have a fast processor in CMx2 it doesn't, you still sit there the full amount of real time.

[rune]

Redwolf,

I know you knwo why that is. The amount of information is much more.

Rune

[SgtMuhammed]

But now you can skip the entire replay if you want and still know what happened. So where before you had to wait for resolution and then replay it now you can just watch the resolution and skip the replay if there was nothing you needed to spend time on. When there is nothing happening this system is actually faster.

[whaco]

Originally posted by jogr:

Syrian units tends to get hickup and repeats the same vioce sound in unsyncronised choirs. Maybe some uncon method to discourage the player or maybe it's a modern form of islamic chanting? Needs ironing out nonetheless.

This is one thing I did notice quite early. I thought it was only my PC that was doing this.

[molotov_billy]

jogr, I have the same specs as you and had the same performance issues. See this thread for a fix. Huge improvement for me.

[LuckyStrike]

Originally posted by sgtgoody (esq):

But now you can skip the entire replay if you want and still know what happened. So where before you had to wait for resolution and then replay it now you can just watch the resolution and skip the replay if there was nothing you needed to spend time on. When there is nothing happening this system is actually faster.

No, its slower if nothing is happening, because you have to watch every second and you can't fast forward through slow parts. The blue bar was extremely quick in smaller scenarios.

And I might add that I get much better performance in Medieval 2, with 4500 beautifully-rendered high-res troops, on breathtaking battlefields, than with a few squads on a small CMSF map.

[ July 29, 2007, 12:14 PM: Message edited by: LuckyStrike ]

[Battlefront.com]

Jogr,

Welcome. Two issues:

1. You have some hardware conflicts with CM. We are working on better fixes, but for now use the link at the bottom of my post to see the work arounds. There is a fix for your problem. nVidia apparently just uploaded new drivers that might require no work arounds, so if you have nVidia go to this link first:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_162.22.html

2. As others have pointed out, WeGo is exactly the same as it was in CMx1. The small exception about how the turns compile is a very small part of what WeGo is. So it is very wrong to say there is no WeGo any more, just like saying a car with no cup holders isn't a car any more.

Overall the way WeGo's turn compiles work now is better than the way it was before. True, in the beginning when there isn't much going on the 60 seconds you must watch in CM:SF is probably longer than you would have spent in CMx1 with a turn compile + skipping the playback. We understand that. However, later on when the action gets thick you are less likely to want to skip over the playback. And guess what? That is also the time in CMx1 when the turn compiles were the longest! Several minutes was common! So instead of having to wait many minutes for one turn, every turn for 20-30 turns, you don't wait at all. Instant playback.

What you guys have to remember is that turn crunching in CMx1 on today's hardware is super fast. That's because CMx1 was coded for P2 processors running at a few hundred MHz!!! So comparing how a 7 year old game runs on current hardware to a current game on current hardware is not very fair.

Plus, there is no point in complaining about this even if you don't see the improvement in the system. The reason? There is no way we are going to purposefully make people sit through a blue (well, green this time!) progress bar just so they can skip over something they actually probably want to watch anyway

Steve

[JOGR]

Thanks molotov_billy but I got great perf once I changed from 1920x to 1024x resolution. I have everything maxed out now. Still hate the sloppy camera controls. Will never get used to it. 2D tactical map please!

sgtgoody - rune:

WTF is the problem? Like I said many times before: I prefer being able to SKIP TIME during the action phase! Is it possible with the new We-Go method? Is it? NO I didn't think so! So yes I prefer having the blue bar CMx1 style as it's MUCH faster and I can skip those pesky moments without action. I have no interest in skipping time during a "replay" when I had to watch the same 60sek action less phase already! Last time I'm going to mention this.

After testing some of the pre-made battles I must say, CMSF got to have the most passive AI ever made in any wargame of wargaming history. I noticed more movement it my first QB:s. Not very tactical but AI units did move.. a little. See now I want the CMx1 We-Go method even more.

[acrashb]

Originally posted by Sirocco:

The difference is that instead of waiting for the turn to be resolved when you press the "Go" button, now you're watching that turn being resolved.

Would you really prefer a progress bar?

Yes, I would. Because the progress bar would "progress" a lot faster than the real-time resolution, as a) it would not have to wait for graphics to catch up and it would not have to wait for 'real time' to catch up.

[JOGR]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Jogr,

Welcome. Two issues:

1. You have some hardware conflicts with CM. We are working on better fixes, but for now use the link at the bottom of my post to see the work arounds. There is a fix for your problem. nVidia apparently just uploaded new drivers that might require no work arounds, so if you have nVidia go to this link first:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_162.22.html

2. As others have pointed out, WeGo is exactly the same as it was in CMx1. The small exception about how the turns compile is a very small part of what WeGo is. So it is very wrong to say there is no WeGo any more, just like saying a car with no cup holders isn't a car any more.

Overall the way WeGo's turn compiles work now is better than the way it was before. True, in the beginning when there isn't much going on the 60 seconds you must watch in CM:SF is probably longer than you would have spent in CMx1 with a turn compile + skipping the playback. We understand that. However, later on when the action gets thick you are less likely to want to skip over the playback. And guess what? That is also the time in CMx1 when the turn compiles were the longest! Several minutes was common! So instead of having to wait many minutes for one turn, every turn for 20-30 turns, you don't wait at all. Instant playback.

What you guys have to remember is that turn crunching in CMx1 on today's hardware is super fast. That's because CMx1 was coded for P2 processors running at a few hundred MHz!!! So comparing how a 7 year old game runs on current hardware to a current game on current hardware is not very fair.

Plus, there is no point in complaining about this even if you don't see the improvement in the system. The reason? There is no way we are going to purposefully make people sit through a blue (well, green this time!) progress bar just so they can skip over something they actually probably want to watch anyway

Steve

Thx for the reply. Strange reply but a reply nonetheless

No new drivers for my card and Vista 32bit. It's a laptop Dell XPS m1710 with a Go 7950 GTX 512DDR3. Don't need to update anyway, in 1024x SF runs pretty good with everything maxed. No complains here.

Still, I don't like the new We-Go thing but that's just another opinion.

Camera is a real pain.. also, just another opinion. How about adding a tactical 2D-map with a patch?

I'm more worried about the lack of AI responsiveness. Maybe the era of single player days with CM is over. CMx1 had the most respectable tactical AI ever.. and still has.

Cheers and good luck supporting CMx2.

[ July 29, 2007, 12:41 PM: Message edited by: jogr ]

[Battlefront.com]

I remember Rune made a scearnio for CMBO that took 10-15 minutes per turn to calculate and the framerate was single numbers. Do you think I am stretching the truth? I most certainly am not! This was his infamous "Battle of the Bulge - The Movie) scenario. I wonder if anybody here still remembers that one.

I think people forget how slow our computers were when CMBO was new

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Jogr,

The mouse based camera controls take some time to get used to, that is very true. Almost all of our Beta testers hated it at first, but soon they stopped fighting it and found it was superior to the way they thought it should work. Then they told us to not change it

We are still dedicated to having a great single player experience. This is a tough job for a game this complex. It was hard enough for CMx1, but now... sooooooo much more difficult. We will continually improve things as we go along. We had to do that for CMx1 games too.

That is the message I want everybody to remember. We support our games for YEARS, other developers only support for a few months or weeks. Some never support theirs

Steve