System requirements?

[Publius Cornelius Patton]

I know, I know, I haven't posted in ages, but...

What will the system requirements be like? I know it's great to include so much detail and such, to have such fine graphics, but how powerful a machine will be needed in order to run the game? I'm wondering because I've got a 1.6mHz, 768 MB iMac and given the tendancy for game designers to design for the highest, most powerful top-end models out there, I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to play CM again. (My iMac is MacOSX native, so I can't play CMBO (whose CD seems to be lost) or CMAK.) Having enjoyed CMBO and AK immensely on my old System 9-native iMac, I'd much like to be able to play the game you are now designing.

God bless,

"P. Cornelius Patton"

[aka_tom_w]

well

I should not answer for the developers but it is looking MORE and more likely that if you want to play CM:SF as soon as it is released you will need an intel Mac and you will need to boot into Windoze.

NO one has said that officially yet... but it looks like there has been no official commitment to release an OS X version of the game at the same time as the Windoze version either. I understand they are developing for windoze on windoze now BUT I could be wrong and I hope I am wrong.

I regrest saying this but if you have a 1.6 gHz iMac that does not have an intel chip in it you are in "no man's land", it won't boot into OS 9 so CMAK and CMBO are a right off and it won't boot into windows (forget emulation it won't work with video games) then if CM:SF is not released to run on OS X you will need a new computer (Mac or PC ) that can boot into windows.

As far as I know, all Apple computers that are currently offered for sale at this time have intel chips in them.

sorry to break the news...

I hope I am wrong.

-tom w

[ December 26, 2006, 07:13 PM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[aka_tom_w]

Battlefront.com

Administrator

Member # 42

posted December 06, 2006 11:18 AM

Tom's right. I'm playing on a 2GHz system with a crappy ATI card. It works pretty darned well, though I certainly wouldn't mind something faster.

What EVERYBODY should do is stay away from ATI cards. We're doing our best, but trying to work around their flakey shadow technique and a few other things is impossible. We can only do so much

I hate bad mouthing hardware, but if someone has a purchase decision to make, going with ATI is a bad idea.

Steve

from this thread:

web page forum thread with Steve's comments

[crisss]

Hope you can work around this no ATI vid card issue , you could loose a large slice of customers .

Plus i have a ATi : ) And its a great card too

[YankeeDog]

Read the thread. Steve doesn't say the game *won't* work with ATI cards, just that they may not be ideal.

ATI cards have, in the past, been problematic for BFC to support, and as a result, performance can be sub-par.

ATI is notorious for releasing new drivers for their video cards that create compatibility problems with software written and optimized under previous drivers. This generally screws over smaller game developers like BFC, who can't afford to release a patch updating driver compatibility every time ATI decides to change things on a whim. IIRC, this is what happened back in the CMBO days -- ATI released a new driver, and, IIRC, suddenly fog and some other graphics features stopped working properly.

There were work-arounds -- you could roll back to previous drivers, and/or turn off Fog table emulation, etc. But obviously any of these fixes have drawbacks. I had an ATI card at the time, so I experienced these issues first-hand.

CMx2 will almost certainly run on ATI cards -- Steve has already mentioned that he is actually playing the current build on an ATI card. But if history is any indicator, there are more likely to be issues with ATI cards and drivers that result in less than optimal graphics performance with CMx2, than with other brands.

So, if you expect to be playing CMx2 alot, and you're about to buy a new computer, and/or upgrade your graphics card, I would avoid ATI.

But if you already have an ATI card, I wouldn't worry about being totally locked out of playing the game.

Cheers,

YD

[aka_tom_w]

Google "ATI" + FOG + Problems + drivers (add video games or Mac or PC or windows to make you happy.

There are 1000's of hits that come up ALL about Fog and ATI and how it JUST DOES NOT WORK.

BFC's on going support of this nightmare is detailed on this page:

BFC Page for tech support of ATI Radeon card problems in the past.

If you can live without fog or smoke the game will likely run fine I am guessing.

BUT don't get me started on Mac OS X issues, it would appear the only card that comes in new intel Mac Laptops (and I am guessing you will need an intel based Mac if you want to play CM:SF on your non-PC laptop, ONLY ships with those darn ATI video cards in them!!! grrr).

May I ask that someone somewhere please beta test CM:SF on an Mac Powerbook Pro Intel chip Laptop? Please. While the Mac users are only about %10 of the computer market in general there are (I would guess) more then %10 of us Mac (and MAC OS X ONLY!) supporters on these forums.

Thanks

-tom w

[Pzman]

Well, once it comes out I'll be sure to try it out on my Macbook Pro (no powerbooks anymore). Not sure if I'll get the Mac version or the PC version. In the past ATI cards have had less issues on OSX, so I'm hoping for the best.

[aka_tom_w]

Old news on the "Mac OS X" issue"

Mac support

Nothing new to report. We still want to do a MacOS X version, but we are still planning on waiting until the last minute to decide if we will. I would expect that at the very worst CMx2's first game will be for PC only initially with a MacOS version to follow up soon after. The decision, though, is yet to be made and has nothing to do with our desire to support the Mac (I am typing this on a Mac, after all), only the desire to not get ourselves burned like the last time.

…but it is up to Apple if we reach it or not. If we're near ready to release the game, and there is good reason to still hold off from doing a port, we are not going to hold up the release for an undetermined length of time until a factor completely outside of our control MIGHT fall into place. And then wait another undetermined length of time until the Mac OS port is finished. That is just not going to happen. Nobody would do this, even if we were talking about 50/50 split of platforms. And as we Mac people are well aware... we are a "bit" less than 50% of the market place

Nothing I said should make anybody think there is no hope. Well, not unless you think that Apple is going to totally botch things up beyond all hope of recovery. We don't think they will. We just don't want to get going on the port when there are a couple of big unknowns yet to be nailed down. After that, then we can go in and do it.

-Steve

date unknown

Any more up to date news on Mac OS X?

Not all Mac users have Intel Macs yet, and even worse Apple intel Macs mosly ship with ATI video cards.

So right now it looks like an owner of an intel macbook Pro (with the intel CPU) will be very interested in loading and booting in Windows to play the PC version of the game (first to be released) on their intel Mac.

oh well

-tom w

[Redwolf]

Just google "driver problems" together with ATI, then with NVidia.

ATI basically try'n'errors their drivers together, using current games. Users of older games, or newer games than the driver, or authors of their own 3D software are usually the ****ed soup chicken.

NVidia does proper software engineering and implements the OpenGL and DirectX standards to a very high degree.

As a result ATI plays well if you play nothing but current games, but NVidia is several orders of magnitude better for more general use.

[Pzman]

That is well noted, its too bad that things haven't changed since AMD took over.

[Kilroy Lurking]

Hi!

I've been running the CMxx series on a B&W G3 (upgraded to 933) wirh an ATI Radeon 7000 - shows fog, dust the whole 9 whatsits. The only trouble is I use OSX Panther for day to day use......

What I really want to know is ...... My son has gone on a years "walkabout?" down under and left me his PC which is a 2.8 core duo with1.5Gig memory and a Gforce 6200 graphics card.......will this run CM's anticipated games?

It runs NWN with all Bells and Whistles and Oblivion with everything "turned off" and with not to many crashes to the desktop! For some reason Medieval Total war is unplayable as it crashes instead of loading a campaign.

Of course all of this might be acedemic if he returns in 11 months time and thes CM games are still pending. In which case I will be hopefully looking at a Macbook pro, ATI and all, and wondering if it will run them.

David

[Pzman]

As noted, ATI cards have different issues on the Mac than they did on PCs. ATI cards on the Mac never had fog issues. But cards newer than the Radeon 7500 (Radeon 8500 and on) did not support transparent smoke, dust, muzzle blasts, etc. which sucks.