donnieitaly Posted February 17, 2009 Share Posted February 17, 2009 I find CMSF to be the finest game I've ever played on a computer. I love it. It's even better than all the old games (of which I bought multiple copies!) Barbarossa and Overlord etc... What annoys me is that my Dell laptop won't let me play it properly. On some scenarios it freezes for so long that I stop giving orders because I can't wait, on others it seems to work perfectly and on some it exhibits strange and not wonderful quirks. So it occurs to me that there must be a simple answer from those who claim to run the game without problem. What do you have on your computer that I don't? I have Vista. (Don't say anything to that - it wasn't my choice and I'm seriously considering buying another computer and throwing this one in the local canal.) So if your game works what, given that you must be using Vista (otherwise your answers will be useless to me) do you have on your computer? Now understand I know nothing of Audio Cards and Memory and Gizmo auto sound woofle brackets. I grew up on the TRS 80 4P (I think the "P" stood for "Portable" which it was, if you were very strong or had lots of friends.) But I have a 28 year old son who does understand these things. Indeed he revels in them. So make my son and me happy... Please tell me what you have and I'll either ask my son if I have it or I'll go and buy it. Please. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lethaface Posted February 17, 2009 Share Posted February 17, 2009 Hey donnieitaly, There might be a 1000 different possibilities why your game doesn't play well. If your windows installation and all driveres and hardware work correctly, it is probably your Laptop's RAM that isn't enough to play CMSF properly in Vista. I never had any problems with CMSF on my PC's (both XP & Vista), however on my old desktop large maps in RT where quite slow. My ~6 months old Dell Latitude E6500 is able to play the game very well, even on highest settings (Vista64, 4gb ram, Core2duo 2.4 ghz, Nvidia 160). It even plays CSMF well on a 24" screen, using the same settings. My old Desktop PC was slower but played it fairly ok, however it used XP. Vista requires a lot more RAM so perhaps your short on RAM. My new desktop PC plays it best of all (i saw), but it better did for costing a lot of money. So, Vista shouldn't be the problem in your case. Probably it is the hardware (RAM shortage), but without more info there is no way anyone could give good advice as what to do. It is possible that some more RAM could solve your problem. This is fairly cheap, lets say ~100 euro. Ask your son to buy some extra RAM for the laptop, if the laptop isnt too old (dual core processor minimum I guess). It wont cost a lot and is quite easy to install. If the laptop is older, it might not be worth the upgrade. Remember that laptops dont have the equivalent of deskop pc graphic processing power, and this goes for computing power too most of the time. However any recent laptop with a Core2Duo processor (2.0+ Ghz), 3+ GB RAM and with a graphics card with dedicated video RAM onboard should play the game pretty smooth on highest settings. Having a 7200rpm harddisk helps to speed up loading and saving, too. Good luck! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donnieitaly Posted February 17, 2009 Author Share Posted February 17, 2009 Hey Lethaface, nice answer thanks. My son bought my laptop for me at my request specifically to play CMSF and I doubt he missed on any of the "obvious" stuff, but he has never played the game so maybe that's the problem. He's also fairly busy and probably tired of helping his old Dad out. He's been doing it since he was eight. Anyhow I'll email this to him and ask if any of it makes sense. And keep you and everyone else posted. Thanks again. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lethaface Posted February 17, 2009 Share Posted February 17, 2009 MMM, In that case your pc shouldn't be to problem to at least play the game without crashing. It could be very well fixable by installing the latest drivers and directx, for example. The difficulty with computers however that IF there is a problem, you need someone with experience/knowledge to diagnose it. It could be a piece of cake or impossible to fix (have a some friends etc who screw up there pc's once in a while). Perhaps the best investment for you to make is inviting Junior for a nice bottle of wine, and sneakily request Junior to fix this fastidioso problema! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyD Posted February 17, 2009 Share Posted February 17, 2009 Two things that happened to me recently - I started complaining about the look of the vehicle models - til I realized that I had inadvertantly dropped the 3D model and 3D texture quality to 'Fastest'. Later I was complaining about how slow the game was running til I realized... you guessed it, I accidently had moved it's setting up to 'Best'. Danged "shift-}" comand! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaiza Posted February 20, 2009 Share Posted February 20, 2009 I am having a similar problem, the demo ran absolutely fine on my computer, but the full game is very slow even on the fastest settings, is that a function of the demo maps or something else? Many thanks 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donnieitaly Posted February 24, 2009 Author Share Posted February 24, 2009 I figured it out, now as soon as the dentist sews up my gum I'll be able to write to you all and tell you how I did it. Lethaface you're going to larf.* And then you'll kill me. Which'll be great since my mouth is killing me slowly 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donnieitaly Posted February 26, 2009 Author Share Posted February 26, 2009 Boy is my face red. Let's get to the heart of the matter. I took no notice of the Options. So I set them to Fast or Faster - and everything worked better (perfecter) than when I had them set on Best (or Highest or whatever.) So why didn't I look at the rulebook? Well I grew up with Avalon Hill and one game a year (and I bought them all and still have them - no not "Shakespeare") and then I went to New York and met Jim Dunnigan in his Lower East Side apartment the month he took over Strategy and Tactics and met Ed Simonsen (RIP) who showed me a hand made "Crete". And I got used to games not being perfect and full of holes that were fixed with "Errata" (Like Victory Conditions! and CRTs <sorry that's Combat Results Table not Cathode ray Tubes>) and I got used to games sucking until they came out as boxed or zip lock versions. Then I left the board game field for a while and sold Fantasy Role Playing Games and cards like "Magic" (spit) and finally some 45 years later discovered computer games that worked when you plugged them in. So being used to my computer being a glorified typewriter and then an EBay solution and a fount of all knowledge (God Bless the Internet) I figured that if my son said we had what we needed to run the game then all you had to do was to plug 'em in and play them. Who read rules books? All the Avalon Hill games had the same rules (well for about the first three games - but then that's three years) so there was no need to read them and anyway I'd [played CMBB and CMBO so why would I need to read CMSF until I'd fooled around with it a bit and pronounced it unplayable and then gradually figured out that it was GOOD and then re-read the book and decided it was (In I believe today's parlance) MEGA-GOOD and so I got into it and suddenly damn the ****g thing it wasn't PERFECT and needed fiddling with . So what was wrong? Clearly not me or the rules it had to be the computer and VISTA. Only it wasn't. It was me. And now it runs perfectly. And now I'm happy. My retirement is planned Bless you Battlefront. When are the British coming? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkEzra Posted February 26, 2009 Share Posted February 26, 2009 WOW you met Jim Dunnigan! My Personal Wargaming hero! Glad to have you on the forum.... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meach Posted February 26, 2009 Share Posted February 26, 2009 Hey, Mark Did you get the scenario Mish sent you for checking over? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donnieitaly Posted February 26, 2009 Author Share Posted February 26, 2009 WOW you met Jim Dunnigan! My Personal Wargaming hero! Glad to have you on the forum.... I knew Jim, Dave Isby, Redmond and Al Nofi (the anti-English "noted ACW Historian" <to quote from S&T>). I was a frequent visitor to all of them in New York almost up to the end. (sob...) Really nice people, apart from Nofi, oh and Edi Birsan too. (REALLY nice chap.) I turned down the S&T agency in the UK (Duh!) Then again I also knew Gary Gygax, so it evens out :-) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donnieitaly Posted February 26, 2009 Author Share Posted February 26, 2009 (REALLY nice chap.) He bought me my first ever Pizza. (I had to mention that.) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lethaface Posted February 27, 2009 Share Posted February 27, 2009 Hehe, nice it all worked out finally Enjoy the game! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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