A Design Caution
Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 6:14 pm
One thing I ran into yesterday in designing a scenario. Watch the number of units you add. I had a 1200 point per side scenario which worked fine for the German Tiger company I'm building, but when I assigned that number to the Russians the number of unit icons spilled over beyond the graphic box in the game. The icons ran along the bottom of the screen.
When this happens the first "Simulating Turn" phase took 12 minutes to complete. The game does not have a built in "stop" to the number of units you can add. It's only limited by the amount of points (or you cut the number of listed units in the xml). This is somewhat rasonable as the size of your computer rig will determine performance. I have a 2+ ghz AMD 64 bit CPU with a gig of memory and it took the aforementioned 12 minutes to complete the 'Simulating Turn" phase. Once I cut the number of Russian units back it ran quickly. The key is finding a middle ground.
This also means if you build a large scenario with tons of units and it runs fine on your uber rig it might fail miserably on a lower powered machine.
Love this game. In my mind with the proper approach, development, and management by Matrix/Koios (and I think they're well along the right path from what I've seen) this game could become a classic much like the Steel panthers series.
When this happens the first "Simulating Turn" phase took 12 minutes to complete. The game does not have a built in "stop" to the number of units you can add. It's only limited by the amount of points (or you cut the number of listed units in the xml). This is somewhat rasonable as the size of your computer rig will determine performance. I have a 2+ ghz AMD 64 bit CPU with a gig of memory and it took the aforementioned 12 minutes to complete the 'Simulating Turn" phase. Once I cut the number of Russian units back it ran quickly. The key is finding a middle ground.
This also means if you build a large scenario with tons of units and it runs fine on your uber rig it might fail miserably on a lower powered machine.
Love this game. In my mind with the proper approach, development, and management by Matrix/Koios (and I think they're well along the right path from what I've seen) this game could become a classic much like the Steel panthers series.