Laptop with No 3D Card--worth it?

[perpster]

Will Combat Mission be worth playing on a Gateway Solo 9100 laptop without a 3D card but with 128ram and PII 300? Any comments welcome at perpster@aol.com. Thanks.

[chrisl]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by perpster:

Will Combat Mission be worth playing on a Gateway Solo 9100 laptop without a 3D card but with 128ram and PII 300? Any comments welcome at perpster@aol.com. Thanks.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I use a laptop with a RageLTPro (some 3D acceleration, not much ram for textures) and it's well worth it.

[perpster]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by perpster:

Will Combat Mission be worth playing on a Gateway Solo 9100 laptop without a 3D card but with 128ram and PII 300? Any comments welcome at perpster@aol.com. Thanks.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I should add that my video is by Trident Cyber 9397 PCI, 4mb, featuring DirectDraw 1.00.

[Schrullenhaft]

You will probably be limited to software rendering for CM. This will be pretty slow and large battles could take quite awhile to play. In general it should work, but laptops are going to be sub-par performers for CM.

You will want DirectX 7.0a installed on your laptop to play CM.

DirectX 7.0a:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?ReleaseID=16819

Next upgrade your sound and video drivers:

Trident video driver (note that you need a specific revision to your laptop to use this driver - otherwise use the video driver that your currently have):

http://www.gateway.com/support/product/drivers/portable/9101.shtml

Audio drivers (which you probably already have installed):

http://www.gateway.com/support/product/drivers/portable/9102.shtml

This is the BIOS update, which probably isn't applicable to CM. If you decide to update your BIOS follow the instructions exactly, otherwise you may damage your laptop.

http://www.gateway.com/support/product/drivers/portable/9103.shtml

[perpster]

Thanks for the reply. Assuming I'm up to date on all my drivers, will CM be FUN to play or will I regret it? Currently I play Close Combat III and love it. I also play PanzerCommand Smolensk '41, but that's more a strategy game.

[perpster]

Thanks for the replies. I dl'd the demo and so far it's lousy on my laptop. Had to go to 400x600 to get rid of exreme choppiness, but still looks ultra cartoonish. I'll tinker a bit with it but it looks like this Mission is a No Go.

[chrisl]

Play the demo a little more. I can only play in 640x480, and it's still awesome. It's not going to compete with the Emotion Engine for graphics on your laptop, but the graphics are just the icing on the cake. The game system underneath is really awesome, and has unlimited replayability (because of the possibilities for scenarios).

Play a little more and you'll get hooked like the rest of us.

[tfdodo]

Dell Latitude 233 & no add-ons sez - go for it. I've found space for a full installation, & it gets slow on bigger battles [but after several intermittent months I'm still at scenario level anyway]. Most but not all 'challenged-hardware' settings [ie quick smoke], but superb fun to play.