Scourge of War Boards

I'm not surprised your happy with the way your game performs watching that video. I just about get that kind of performance in a Corps v Corps sandbox game.

When playing Gettysburg I have no issue at all, it runs really smooth.

I would say I'ts alot better...I can play the entire battle of Waterloo with almost no lag at all, vs much lag in a corp-size battle ib GB, and disaster lag in army vs army...

In 1968, during the height of the Vietnam war, I volunteered for the US Navy. Today I am on a VA disability that pays 1% above poverty level. Knowing what I do today, I would still answer my country's call. Those are my standards.

In future please don't confuse the two.

Xreos1,

Thank you for your Service and Sacrifice!



Chamberlain

While i don't think performance is good enough (devs happy to release a game were 90% will have 20fps max most of the time )

It is much better then gettysburg (don't have channslorville)

I get 5fps in full army vs army battle (some 140k menn and 35k sprites) in gettysburg.

In waterloo i get 12-15fps in the full waterloo senario, 47k sprites )

I fall down to 4-10fps in battles above 300k troops and 77k sprites )

Nudz did you try disabling SLI?
I used to run a rig where I had to do this for certain games, especially indy games that have not had the time or resources to test every configuration.

I find in general with indy games that use this kind of in house custom engine, combat mission included. That they tend to run just as badly no matter what rig you have. Sometimes worse like yours on particular configurations.
They will tell you it's because of the CPU crunching because this is a "wargame". However when you look at your CPU utilisation it will be less than half, that is what happened with combat mission for me anyhow. In the end it's all about CPU threads and how well the game uses them.... in you're case it seems to be an issue with drawing trees. I would guess that perhaps the problem lies with the PC trying to utilise the 2nd GPU but the game not responding? Of course none of this is supposed to happen as the OS API is supposed to handle this stuff at a lower level.

This game is supposed to support multiple threads... well the way it was explained it kind of does and perhaps does not. But it is supposed to be optimised to use multiple CPU threads so I don't see that should be a problem unless you notice CPU utilisation at 100%.

I notice with trees and terrain detail that games like this for some reason do not use LOD instead choosing to just remove the objects causing the game to look horrible and unfinished. Maybe this has something to do with how much time they don't have to optimise. THat would be extra work that you would need extra staff for? I don't know and obviously this sort of thing is a complete guess on my part.

What does get my goat though is the amount of people that are willing to assume you are the bad guy here.... telling you it's your fault for expecting too much. It gets repeated here a lot that the performance of your computer is what determines how well it can run and what ratio you can handle. Like I said though. In my experience with games like combat mission, it is usually the engine and code optimisation limitations that cap performance.

You didn't answer the question. What is your FPS exactly? Subjective phrases like "slideshow" and "powerpoint presentation" are not useful. People can't help you unless we begin to deal in specifics.

The Tutorial-scenario peaks at the early twenties. It varies between other scenarios. Sunken Lane can drop to 10-7 if the camera is pointed in the right direction. Tall grass appears to be the biggest performance-killer. The Young Guard starts about the same as the Tutorial, despite being a much larger scenario. Don't ask me why.

The foliage is just very simple 2D sprites generated from a few large texture sheets. There is no way it should affect performance.

Indeed. And yet it does.

I suspect something is wrong with your PC if these simple textures and 2D sprites are hurting game performance so much.

No.

My PC runs everything else beautifully, with the exception of games that are known to be bugged and/or poorly optimized, which tend to get fixed with patches. SoW: Gettysburg was one of the few games I've owned that had this awful performance, and that was on two different computers from the one I have, now. I had similar conversations back then, and members of the community told me similar nonsense about "Well, your PC must be broken, then." This was despite the developers openly admitting that their game was poorly optimized, and even fixed it in a later expansion.

You seem to confuse standards with financial ability to purchase the best quality equipment.

Having low performance due to having a poor PC is not low standards. Having no problem with said low performance - to the point of defending it on this forum - are low standards. One thing is to have poor performance; another thing is to be happy with it.

Knowing what I do today, I would still answer my country's call. Those are my standards.

Your standards are absolutely awful, then. You have nothing of value or virtue, there.

Nothing to be proud of.

Nothing.

Lesson #2 from FSX, concentrate on smoothness and the experience,

Absolutely.

Anyway, Fraps shows FPS of between 10 and 14 before the battle gets going, but as you'll see from these videos, the experience is still pretty good:

I, for one, find that to make for a fairly unpleasant experience, but it's definitely somewhat smoother than in my game.

While i don't think performance is good enough (devs happy to release a game were 90% will have 20fps max most of the time )

Indeed. It boggles the mind.

It is much better then gettysburg (don't have channslorville)

I find it to be on about the same level as Gettysburg. It's a shame you don't have Chancellorsville. It would make for extra reference.

Nudz did you try disabling SLI?
I used to run a rig where I had to do this for certain games, especially indy games that have not had the time or resources to test every configuration.

Yes, but I did so before downloading FRAPS. If there was any difference - better or worse - it was unnoticeable.

I find in general with indy games that use this kind of in house custom engine, combat mission included. That they tend to run just as badly no matter what rig you have. Sometimes worse like yours on particular configurations.
They will tell you it's because of the CPU crunching because this is a "wargame". However when you look at your CPU utilisation it will be less than half, that is what happened with combat mission for me anyhow. In the end it's all about CPU threads and how well the game uses them.... in you're case it seems to be an issue with drawing trees. I would guess that perhaps the problem lies with the PC trying to utilise the 2nd GPU but the game not responding? Of course none of this is supposed to happen as the OS API is supposed to handle this stuff at a lower level.

This game is supposed to support multiple threads... well the way it was explained it kind of does and perhaps does not. But it is supposed to be optimised to use multiple CPU threads so I don't see that should be a problem unless you notice CPU utilisation at 100%.

My experience exactly, though having performance as abysmal as in the Scourge of War-games, is an absolute rarity.

What does get my goat though is the amount of people that are willing to assume you are the bad guy here.... telling you it's your fault for expecting too much. It gets repeated here a lot that the performance of your computer is what determines how well it can run and what ratio you can handle. Like I said though. In my experience with games like combat mission, it is usually the engine and code optimisation limitations that cap performance.

Personally, I suspect fanboyism more than anything.

---

On a related note, I find tall grass to be the biggest problem. Pressing "T" once to remove the tall grass will lead to a significant leap in FPS, more so than when the trees and buildings are made invisible.

*EDIT*

Yeah, it's definitely the tall grass.

I have not read through all this thread, just a glimpse here and there. But I will be the first to admit that we need to update the graphics engine. There's no doubt and no question and you'll get no argument from us. The reason we have not is that it would add 1-2 years to the dev cycle with only performance to show for it. Working nights and weekends does not give you a lot of time. So it's just one of those things that we decided upon looking at all the factors. A few times we have tried other engines (one's in our price range), they were not promising. Anytime you shove as many sprites as we have, all sorted, all constantly moving, it's going to take some time. It's certainly not all graphics engine, as you can pause and see the game running much better while still drawing. It's the movement, los, AI too. All those different pieces and I'm sure if we had more programmers on staff, some refactoring would help. Every so often I try to rewrite a different section of the code, but I always have to balance that we adding the features necessary for the game. Not offering excuses, just trying to give out reasoning behind these decisions.

I have not read through all this thread, just a glimpse here and there. But I will be the first to admit that we need to update the graphics engine. There's no doubt and no question and you'll get no argument from us. The reason we have not is that it would add 1-2 years to the dev cycle with only performance to show for it. Working nights and weekends does not give you a lot of time. So it's just one of those things that we decided upon looking at all the factors. A few times we have tried other engines (one's in our price range), they were not promising. Anytime you shove as many sprites as we have, all sorted, all constantly moving, it's going to take some time. It's certainly not all graphics engine, as you can pause and see the game running much better while still drawing. It's the movement, los, AI too. All those different pieces and I'm sure if we had more programmers on staff, some refactoring would help. Every so often I try to rewrite a different section of the code, but I always have to balance that we adding the features necessary for the game. Not offering excuses, just trying to give out reasoning behind these decisions.

But you managed to do this before, Norb. I wouldn't be so utterly upset if this hadn't been a deterioration from Chancellorsville. (Or whatever that expansion was. It was the one where practically the entire battle was fought in a forest.) The performance was abysmal with Gettysburg, then you fixed it with Chancellorsville, and now it's bad, again, despite the graphics not looking amazingly different; let alone enough to explain this huge performance drop.

Also - you can talk as much as you like about AI calculations, number of troops on-screen, number of troops moving, etc - I have repeatedly stated that the chief performance killer - bar none - is the foliage; specifically, as I've just confirmed, the tall grass. If I disable the tall grass, the performance takes a giant leap. The foliage was also the problem with Gettysburg. And you somehow managed to fix it. Why couldn't you repeat that process, whatever it was?

I wouldn't be so frustrated if I didn't really, really, really want to like this game. If a game is bad, I just forget about it and move on. I'm not complaining about the graphics, either. They are just fine, and do their job absolutely enough to be immersive. It's the performance that kills it. Because it makes the experience extremely, extremely unpleasant.

You seem to confuse standards with financial ability to purchase the best quality equipment.

Having low performance due to having a poor PC is not low standards. Having no problem with said low performance - to the point of defending it on this forum - are low standards. One thing is to have poor performance; another thing is to be happy with it.

I never said I was happy with low FPS, I pointed out other improvements were higher on my list.
I have different priorities than you, but I won't insult your priorities.

Knowing what I do today, I would still answer my country's call. Those are my standards.

Your standards are absolutely awful, then. You have nothing of value or virtue, there.

Nothing to be proud of.

Nothing.[/quote]

This is the same attitude most Vietnam vets received at the time. Confusing those who serve with the policy decision of the leaders. The political decision to fight that war was a mistake the cost over 58,300 Americans their lives.

My rating was in training support for Navy Pilots. Some of whom fought in the conflict.

Most of my time was spent in the Atlantic arrayed against the Soviet Union.

I remember nights in October 1962 going to bed unsure if Nuclear Holocaust would arrive before dawn.

I can trace my family's military service back to the French and Indian war, only 1 percent of Americans serve in the military, and for most it is a family tradition. So military service was my upbringing.

In the words of Alfred, Lord Tenneyson

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.