Factory Outlet battle-low FPS

[Percival]

Hello everyone, I'm new to CM games and so far I've been very impressed with CMSF. It's extremely addictive! No real performance issues at all apart from some CTDs early on caused by out of date video drivers (now upgraded). I usually run the game (V 1.01) at 1600x1200, elite level, with turn-based play. My options include improved 3d models, vsync and AA on and I have been averaging about 25-35 fps.

However, the Factory Outlet battle (playing Blue) brings my system to its knees; 7 fps when looking towards the factory. Reducing my graphics settings drastically brings it up to 8, still unplayable. The odd thing is looking towards my units in their deployment area I get 55 fps!

Looking at the balance of units in the scenario editor they don't look excessive compared with some of the other scenarios, so I'm wondering whether the minefields are having this effect. I was going to test this out by building a small scenario and see what effect adding mines has to my fps, but I would be interested to know what others think about this.

My system specs are as follows

P4 3.2 Ghz

Nvidia Geforce 6800 GT 256 Mb

1024 Mb DDR RAM

Windows XP SP2

[Percival]

To answer my own question, no it's not the minefields, so it could be the size of the map.

Has anyone else been able to play this scenario at a decent frame rate? It's completely unplayable for me at 7-8 fps. If I turn the map so I am looking across it I get over 50 fps but that's an awkward viewpoint to fight a battle from! Not sure what the point of very hardware-intensive scenarios like this is as most people won't be able to play them, but maybe it's something in my setup.

Any thoughts?

[SlapHappy]

Percival

I have the same problem when looking towards the enemy buildings from a distance (in that mission). I thought it was the map, but now I'm not sure.

I haven't had that severe a frame rate issue with any other scenario. Even when edited in a huge number of US troops on a downloaded user scenario, I didn't get those horrible frame rates. And that map was around 1024 x 768. How big is the Factory Outlet map?

[Hertston]

Originally posted by Percival:

However, the Factory Outlet battle (playing Blue) brings my system to its knees; 7 fps when looking towards the factory. Reducing my graphics settings drastically brings it up to 8, still unplayable. The odd thing is looking towards my units in their deployment area I get 55 fps!

Same thing with a very similar system, although it happens on all large maps. There's a lot of calculation going on here and I have no idea why, all that is visible are enemy 'tags'. Although there are enemy units 'on screen' in that sense, none are being graphically rendered, yet the FPS hit is huge.

[Percival]

Thanks for your replies. The Factory Outlet map is a huge 3008mx960m, compared with for example 224mx352m for the House Cleaning battle and 736mx1024m for the Jisrash Shugur scenario.

Although my system isn't cutting edge, it meets the suggested requirements so I have my doubts about scenarios this demanding as part of the basic release. Of course if people want to build scenarios that cripple anything but very high end hardware that's fine, as long as they include a "health warning" about low fps.

It's a pity that larger maps aren't viable on my PC (if that is the case) because it rules out tank battles at realistic ranges. It's just as well that the small street fighting scenarios are the ones I like best! Perhaps someone on the Battlefront team could comment.

I'm not sure who built this scenario but I'd be interested to know what hardware it was intended for and tested on and how it performed. I've tried everything I can think of to get it to run faster, but I'm stuck at 7-8 fps whatever I do. Not sure whether more RAM would help, but for me that's going a bit far when all the other scenarios so far have run smoothly. I'd be grateful for any further thoughts others may have.