What hardware and operating system do you expect to use to play MWIF?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: lugosi
Hopefully the requirements will not be real high. I only have a 733 MHZ WINXP machine. I have 512 meg of memory, though.

Thanks for the information. One of the reasons I have this thread going is so I have it clear in my mind for whom I am creating this game. As part of the beta testing we are exploring how well the program runs on difference configurations of hardware and operating systems.

The big hurdle will be once all 5000+ coastal bitmaps are part of the game. Right now we have 762 (~15%), which cover the European and Scandinavian maps.

It's going to require some programming skullduggery on my part to make the game run smoothly with all of 5100 of them.

[Greyshaft]

ORIGINAL: lugosi

Hopefully the requirements will not be real high. I only have a 733 MHZ WINXP machine. I have 512 meg of memory, though.

Ther current beta MWiF is running fine on my 800mhz PC with 384mb ram and Win2000 plus 128mb graphics card. Mind you, there's still a fair bit of graphics plus AI code to be plugged in but I think my PC will still run the game adequately.
Nothing in this post should be taken as a statement of intent to support any particular PC configuration and does not bind Matrix, its heirs and assigns, in any way shape or form to do, say or think anything that may give rise to any legal obligation etc etc.

[bkg1007]

Home built:

Athlon 64 X2 3800
2GB DDR Memory
2 120 GB PATA HDD
2 GeForce 6600 GT (SLI) (128MB ea)
Soundblaster Live!
Windows XP Pro (Service Pack 2)
Windows Vista RC1 (5600)
5mb Down/256kb up cable modem
Widescreen LCD (1680 X 1050)

[rtamesis]

Will it run on Vista? I have the default installation of Vista RC1 running on the Parallels Desktop virtual machine on my Intel MacBook Pro, and when the final version is released, I'll be dumping the virtual machine running XP and will try to run all my Windows games on Vista.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: rtamesis
Will it run on Vista? I have the default installation of Vista RC1 running on the Parallels Desktop virtual machine on my Intel MacBook Pro, and when the final version is released, I'll be dumping the virtual machine running XP and will try to run all my Windows games on Vista.

I have not a clue. First, I do not know what Vista is. Windows XP will be supported, though I cannot promise success on virtual machines running Windows XP.

There will be a small market for this game (though I and many others would be ecstatic if that proves to be otherwise), so supporting a wide variety of hardware and operating systems is simply not feasible.

Ergo, perhaps. And I am sorry if it turns out to be 'no'.

[rtamesis]

Windows Vista is Microsoft's replacement OS for XP. Some wags call it Windows XP SP3. They are supposed to release it next year. Release Candidate 1 is still available on Microsoft's website, although they released RC2 to a limited number of testers.

[stretch]

although you can't do much about it right now, it would be critical in my opinion to be sure this game runs correctly on Vista, or the game will immediately alienate anyone wanting to upgrade to the new OS.  It would give the impression of being "old" way too soon.
 
 
 
 

[CBoehm]

uhhh FINALLY able to write something again ...(for some reason I couldnt log in for the last 6 mths ...then I went back and checked some old post and realized my login name was not what I thought it was *ups* ...I pretty much ALWAYS use the same everywhere!)

anyway ...configuration (just got a new one!)

duelcore 3800 AMD
2 GB ram
200 BG harddrive
Graphiccard "something" 3d "whatever" 500 mb-ish
Windows XP
cabal modem

Claus

anyway ...nice be able to write something for once ...and not only read!

[jesperpehrson]

Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.60 GHZ
1 GB DDR Memory
60 GB HDD
Radeon 9600 AGP
Realtek AC97 audio
Windows XP Pro (Service Pack 2)
2 bps wideband
LCD screen

--------

I just copied this at the best of my abilities. Hope it helps.

[bkg1007]

I would think running on Vista should be a necessity IMHO. It will be the default OS from Microsoft by the time this game is released. Are any of your Beta testers running the Vista RC? I don't imagine there will be any problem, but still, a good idea to be sure.

I, of course, will volunteer to try running it on RC1 (build 5600) should you require that.[;)]

[stretch]

I'm a beta tester who plans to test on vista once it's released... as soon as I can convince my wife I need to reinstall the home computer again (I don't believe in upgrades.... backup, reformat, clean install is the safe way to go)
 
 

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: stretch
I'm a beta tester who plans to test on vista once it's released... as soon as I can convince my wife I need to reinstall the home computer again (I don't believe in upgrades.... backup, reformat, clean install is the safe way to go)

I agree : backup, reformat, clean install is the safe way to go.
I'll have a computer running Vista too, when RC2 will be available, and clearly when the retail version comes out.

[stretch]

my wife usually wont let me install pre-release stuff at home.... says it causes too much grief.  But I will work on this one.
 
 

[Zorachus99]

I'm using XP 64-Bit/2003x64 dual boot.  I have 4 GB's of addressable memory on a AMD dual-core 4800+ (I run 3 virtual servers in a cloud on 2003 which requires gobs of RAM).  Will those bitmaps all load up for a beefier machine running XP when compared to a smaller?
 
I guess the question is: are you going to design memory management for a certain amount of memory, and those with more memory will see no value in having more memory?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Zorachus99
I'm using XP 64-Bit/2003x64 dual boot.  I have 4 GB's of addressable memory on a AMD dual-core 4800+ (I run 3 virtual servers in a cloud on 2003 which requires gobs of RAM).  Will those bitmaps all load up for a beefier machine running XP when compared to a smaller?

I guess the question is: are you going to design memory management for a certain amount of memory, and those with more memory will see no value in having more memory?

The constraints on the bitmaps is not RAM but operating system resources. Windows loads bitmaps differently from other uses for memory and has an upper limit on how much can be in memory at once. I have tested this with the MWIF European map and it will permit me to load the map 1.5 times but not twice. Based on that I estimate I can get about 60-70% of the coastal bitmaps in memory at once. Once Rob provides me with too many, I'll work out a bitmap memory management package. Northern Siberia and South America shouldn't need their coastal bitmaps immediately available at all times.

[Zorachus99]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

ORIGINAL: Zorachus99
I'm using XP 64-Bit/2003x64 dual boot.  I have 4 GB's of addressable memory on a AMD dual-core 4800+ (I run 3 virtual servers in a cloud on 2003 which requires gobs of RAM).  Will those bitmaps all load up for a beefier machine running XP when compared to a smaller?

I guess the question is: are you going to design memory management for a certain amount of memory, and those with more memory will see no value in having more memory?

The constraints on the bitmaps is not RAM but operating system resources. Windows loads bitmaps differently from other uses for memory and has an upper limit on how much can be in memory at once. I have tested this with the MWIF European map and it will permit me to load the map 1.5 times but not twice. Based on that I estimate I can get about 60-70% of the coastal bitmaps in memory at once. Once Rob provides me with too many, I'll work out a bitmap memory management package. Northern Siberia and South America shouldn't need their coastal bitmaps immediately available at all times.

Bizzare. So rather than have a repository in memory, you'll have to pop the bitmaps out of memory and then later have to reload from disk? If so, wouldn't it make more sense to keep your bitmaps in a structure? I'm just curious if you can allocate larger chunks of memory and de-assemble the bitmaps at need. My assumption is the disk thrashing from paging ram to disk from this option woulnd't be much slower than managing the whole thing yourself (I could be way off on this one). I bet there are other issues I'm much less aware of making my questions invalid...

[Shannon V. OKeets]

I have only done a tentative design at this point. I hate to plan things in detail until I have an actual problem/data to work with.

So far the concept is to maintain a fixed number of coastal bitmaps in memory (say 60% = 3000) and to know the frequency with which they are accessed. Actually I will maintain frequency counts for all 5000 bitmaps. When one of the "not in memory" bitmaps is needed I will swap out one of the low frequency ones. Bitmaps that have just been loaded will get a bonus so they are not immediately swapped back out (to prevent thrashing).

Maintaining the counts and "if in memory" processing should take effectively zero time, given the speed of today's machines (500 MHz +). Even the swapping in and out of a bitmap is negligible - provided thrashing is avoided.

There is a good chance the players won't even notice this happening unless they decide to go to zoom level 1 (most visible hexes on the screen) and then start scrolling around aggressively. Or save a couple dozen map views that are scattered all over the globe and then click cycle through them all in sequence. By the way, that's how I will stress test the design to determine its speed of processing.

But this design is only theory at this point.

I do not see this as a big deal, just some fairly straightforward memory management stuff. The game I wrote in 1985 where I only had 128KB available as swap space on the disk and 32KB of RAM for the program, on a 1.2 MHz machine (yes those are 2 K's and an M). Now that was a difficult problem, requiring segmenting the program into self-contained pages.

[Zorachus99]

Arigato Steve-San.

[thrud]

I have two machines to play MWIF

Dell Inspiron 8600
xp pro sp2
processor 1.7m
512 MB RAM
video: 9600 pro 128MB

Home built Desktop
AMD 3200+ Athalon XP
1 GB RAM
XP pro SP/2
Geforece 6200 256 MB

[Darken]

Operating system: Windows 2000 SP 4
CPU: AMD Athlon 1500+
Main memory: 1 GB RAM
Hard Disks: 30 GB (3 boot-partitions) + 160 GB (4 data-partitions)
Display Adaptor: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200
Monitor: 19 inch flat (1280 x 1024)
Internet connection: none at home (DSL in uni and work)