Win10 upgrade issue

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: spence

I've tried all kinds of switches along with compatibility with Windows 7 and Windows 8. Still have a very pronounced lag in the game...any magic bullets?

Could you post which switch combinations you have tried already? There are actually several 'magic bullets' and I'm sure you read about them and tried them. But if you can post what you have tried that might trigger someone to suggest something you haven't tried yet.

[spence]

Wish I had kept better track. Somehow I think it relates to the screen resolution more than anything else but so far that hasn't worked. I tried Commander: The Great War and that seemed to work just fine with no lag at all. I looked at the route or whatever and it only showed the default switches (as in no switches at all). That's a more recent game but for those of you who can delve into deeper layers of code or whatever can find the clue that lies down there.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: spence

Wish I had kept better track. Somehow I think it relates to the screen resolution more than anything else but so far that hasn't worked. I tried Commander: The Great War and that seemed to work just fine with no lag at all. I looked at the route or whatever and it only showed the default switches (as in no switches at all). That's a more recent game but for those of you who can delve into deeper layers of code or whatever can find the clue that lies down there.

Shot-in-the-dark ideas:

- if you have been playing the game for a while, issuing orders and visiting lots of bases and units, RAM gets overloaded with data that has been retrieved and kept in case you need it again. Once RAM is overloaded things like clicking on a new base suffer quite a bit of hesitation getting the data to present to you. The cure for this is to save, exit the game and restart. I have a screamer Alienware machine with 8 gigs of RAM and this still happens to me.

- having the hex sides highlighted adds a lot of work to the graphics card. When you scroll one hex in any direction the entire screen has to be redrawn, so scrolling is greatly affected. Use the F6 key to turn it off until you really need to see the hex side control details.

- graphics cards have specific native resolutions that they are optimized for. If yours has , say, 1600X900 as one of the standard settings and you go with 1600X1000 in the game start menu, the card has to calculate everything it does rather than access whatever shortcuts are in the optimization. Right-click on your desktop to access the properties and check out the settings your graphics card presents to you as available.

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: spence

Wish I had kept better track. Somehow I think it relates to the screen resolution more than anything else but so far that hasn't worked. I tried Commander: The Great War and that seemed to work just fine with no lag at all. I looked at the route or whatever and it only showed the default switches (as in no switches at all). That's a more recent game but for those of you who can delve into deeper layers of code or whatever can find the clue that lies down there.

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Shot-in-the-dark ideas:

- if you have been playing the game for a while, issuing orders and visiting lots of bases and units, RAM gets overloaded with data that has been retrieved and kept in case you need it again. Once RAM is overloaded things like clicking on a new base suffer quite a bit of hesitation getting the data to present to you. The cure for this is to save, exit the game and restart. I have a screamer Alienware machine with 8 gigs of RAM and this still happens to me.

- having the hex sides highlighted adds a lot of work to the graphics card. When you scroll one hex in any direction the entire screen has to be redrawn, so scrolling is greatly affected. Use the F6 key to turn it off until you really need to see the hex side control details.

- graphics cards have specific native resolutions that they are optimized for. If yours has , say, 1600X900 as one of the standard settings and you go with 1600X1000 in the game start menu, the card has to calculate everything it does rather than access whatever shortcuts are in the optimization. Right-click on your desktop to access the properties and check out the settings your graphics card presents to you as available.

The problem is a bug in DirectX. AE uses some old legacy calls that were designed for single processors. With multi-core processors, there are calls that call another thread in DirectX and it waits for a return. On a single core, the other thread can't run until the first thread gives up control, but on a multi-core, the other thread can return with the answer before the first thread even thinks it should start waiting for the answer. Both processes sit there staring at one another until the first one asks for the data again, whereas the other thread says, "hey dummy, it was there all along!" and things continue.

This problem is compounded with some video card drivers which are also multi-threaded and they end up tripping over themselves.

We provided as many switches as we did because these problems manifest differently on different machines, so people have to play around with the settings to find which ones work best for them. The fact -deepColor works for a lot of people with Windows 10 tells me there is something new in the graphics library that is also causing problems.

Bill

[Uncivil Engineer]

ORIGINAL: spence

I've tried all kinds of switches along with compatibility with Windows 7 and Windows 8. Still have a very pronounced lag in the game...any magic bullets?

Don't know if this will help your situation, but when I removed the -SingleCPU switch my games ran faster, not blazing fast, but with that switch every mouse click encountered a 1-2 second delay.

Problem I'm having is with window size - even though my 25" monitor setting is 1920 x 1080, the -px1920 -py1080 switches don't work and the best I can do is 1440x810 !?

[Admiral DadMan]

ORIGINAL: Uncivil Engineer

ORIGINAL: spence

I've tried all kinds of switches along with compatibility with Windows 7 and Windows 8. Still have a very pronounced lag in the game...any magic bullets?

Don't know if this will help your situation, but when I removed the -SingleCPU switch my games ran faster, not blazing fast, but with that switch every mouse click encountered a 1-2 second delay.

Problem I'm having is with window size - even though my 25" monitor setting is 1920 x 1080, the -px1920 -py1080 switches don't work and the best I can do is 1440x810 !?

Are you running windowed or full screen, and/or using -deepColor?

[spence]

I assume that "-w" means run the game in Windowed Mode...maybe not...essentially I have no idea what any of these switches do...it's all been 'monkey see, monkey do' as far as switches are concerned...I've tried lots of different combos but none seem to do anything.
"-deepColor" has not accomplished anything with or without additional switches.

[Uncivil Engineer]

ORIGINAL: Admiral DadMan

ORIGINAL: Uncivil Engineer

ORIGINAL: spence

I've tried all kinds of switches along with compatibility with Windows 7 and Windows 8. Still have a very pronounced lag in the game...any magic bullets?

Don't know if this will help your situation, but when I removed the -SingleCPU switch my games ran faster, not blazing fast, but with that switch every mouse click encountered a 1-2 second delay.

Problem I'm having is with window size - even though my 25" monitor setting is 1920 x 1080, the -px1920 -py1080 switches don't work and the best I can do is 1440x810 !?

Are you running windowed or full screen, and/or using -deepColor?

Windowed (otherwise why would I specify the window size?)
Not using -deepColor and not sure what it does.
Thanks in advance for any additional advice.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Uncivil Engineer

ORIGINAL: Admiral DadMan

ORIGINAL: Uncivil Engineer




Don't know if this will help your situation, but when I removed the -SingleCPU switch my games ran faster, not blazing fast, but with that switch every mouse click encountered a 1-2 second delay.

Problem I'm having is with window size - even though my 25" monitor setting is 1920 x 1080, the -px1920 -py1080 switches don't work and the best I can do is 1440x810 !?

Are you running windowed or full screen, and/or using -deepColor?

Windowed (otherwise why would I specify the window size?)
Even in full screen you might specify the resolution to make things work as you want them to.
Not using -deepColor and not sure what it does.
It affects the way graphics are handled internally and on many Windows 8/8.1/10 PCs it speeds things up dramatically or even. Just try it, you can always take it out if it does nothing or you don't like it.
Thanks in advance for any additional advice.

[Admiral DadMan]

Windowed (otherwise why would I specify the window size?)
Not using -deepColor and not sure what it does.
Thanks in advance for any additional advice.

Sorry, brain dead.

As witpqs said, try -deepColor which Enables 32 bit color.

Also try -dd_sw which handles DirectDraw via software

[witpqs]

To reiterate, full-screen can be done at different resolutions. Any of the resolutions that the card supports natively, which means you can choose one that is less than the maximum. So, sometimes a person will specify a resolution even when not in windowed mode (meaning when in full screen mode).

[decaro]

What, if any, is the difference between -cpu4 and -dual.

I have a quad core and assume that it corresponds to -cpu4, i.e., two dual cores, but I'm not certain which switch is preferred.

[spence]

I got the scrolling on the map to go faster/better by using a -cpu4 switch since I saw somewhere that I have a quad core. The scrolling seemed to go better regardless of other switches. Still a 1-2 sec lag when moving from base to base or unit to unit. With those kinds of delays this game becomes unplayable.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: spence

I got the scrolling on the map to go faster/better by using a -cpu4 switch since I saw somewhere that I have a quad core.
-SingleCpuOrders might address this one too.

The scrolling seemed to go better regardless of other switches. Still a 1-2 sec lag when moving from base to base or unit to unit. With those kinds of delays this game becomes unplayable.

[Uncivil Engineer]

ORIGINAL: Admiral DadMan

Windowed (otherwise why would I specify the window size?)
Not using -deepColor and not sure what it does.
Thanks in advance for any additional advice.

Sorry, brain dead.

As witpqs said, try -deepColor which Enables 32 bit color.

Also try -dd_sw which handles DirectDraw via software

I've added -deepColor - hasn't changed anything; tried it with 1920x1080 and got a full screen with parts inaccessible to the mouse, so went back to 1440x810 (1600x900 didn't work right either).

I've been using the -dd_sw switch; still have both of these in the command line.

Thanks again to both of you.

[spence]

I give up trying to make this game work with Windows 10. Whatever improvements it claims to have are not apparent to me. Is it possible to "downgrade" back to the Windows (8.1) I had before? How?

[decaro]

ORIGINAL: spence

I give up trying to make this game work with Windows 10. Whatever improvements it claims to have are not apparent to me. Is it possible to "downgrade" back to the Windows (8.1) I had before?...

There's a refresh option, but it will probably take you back to windows 8.

I wish I had recorded my settings for 8.1 because it worked like a charm. However, 8.1 was somewhat unstable.

[koniu]

ORIGINAL: spence

I give up trying to make this game work with Windows 10. Whatever improvements it claims to have are not apparent to me. Is it possible to "downgrade" back to the Windows (8.1) I had before? How?

On 10 November, if MS don't delay it again, there will be major update to W10.
Lot of changes, compatibility and stability fixes. If You can wait few more days maybe after it You will be able to run game on W10

There is an option to revert back to old system. Look there Settings--->Updates and Security. but to do that You need to have old Windows files on HDD. If You deleted them You will need to do clean install from DVD or USB.

Also I am not sure but after free upgrade reverting back is only passable for 30 days after first W10 installation. After that time Your Win7/8/8.1 key will work only with with W10 and will not activate older systems. But i am not 100% sure

[BBfanboy]

see following post ...

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

ORIGINAL: spence

I got the scrolling on the map to go faster/better by using a -cpu4 switch since I saw somewhere that I have a quad core. The scrolling seemed to go better regardless of other switches. Still a 1-2 sec lag when moving from base to base or unit to unit. With those kinds of delays this game becomes unplayable.

wdolson mentioned in post 104 of this thread that there is an issue with the old legacy game engine working with modern multi-threaded processors and O/Ss. He described how sometimes two of the multiple processor threads are pointing at the same thing and get stuck on which one should go first. This sounds like the 1-2 second delay you describe. Eventually something else cues the processing to proceed and you get the base/unit info you clicked on.

I get this issue running Windows 7, but only after I have been in the game for a while clicking lots of things and using up (I think) RAM space. When this happens I stop, save the game, exit completely and then restart. Only takes a few minutes and save a lot of frustration. Everything runs almost instantly after the restart.

Edit: changed the credit for the info about stuck threads.