Patch 07 - Unofficial Public Beta & UI Suggestions

[Dauntless42]

Since you seem to on a roll, Michael...

If there is room to add it to the screen, it would be really nice to see all the friendly base fortification levels (with a "b" for "building") on the Base summary screen. For the Japanese player, this becomes a major focus after the initial expansion, and a big potential waste of supplies if you forget to turn off fort construction in a few bases.

Thank you for all the great updates!

[RichardAckermann]

Thanks for all the advice. My hard disk is actually already corrupting a file now and then. Backup is already on stick.

There are a few new things I consider to be nice to have, so here's another 2 cents of mine.

First, I'd love to be able to rename airgroups. Adding new location or whatever info I want to tag onto them.

Second, I'd love to have a button to remove AC from a group, just like the reserve can be taken back to pool.
I frequently run low on some airframes, but a lot of 'em are still locked up in rear area units.
As of now I need to wait for production or totally disband a rear unit, just because I need 10 out of 45 planes somewhere else right now. If possible, make redistribution of AC more flexible. Let me take the operational craft out of groups back to pool without disbanding the entire unit.
A few days of delay would be OK.

This one just got into my mind, so I could be wrong about this, but I think patrol planes (Mavis,Emily) cannot do ground attacks, but they can use bombs. Would be nice to be able to use them in that bombing role.

With the last thing I am not sure if my idea is sane at all, mostly because of balancing.
I noticed all AC are worth 1 VP, but would the loss of a 4EB not be more critical than, say, a SBD Dauntless in terms of industry and crew? After all, ships are already scored on actual value.
What about making AC worth their engine count in VP? Would that be a good idea or just imbalance the score system?

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

The slow down problems have some relation to OS, but it's more hardware than anything else. If you can upgrade your memory, I'd recommend it. Crucial has a memory selection tool, you can enter information on your system, but it can scan your system too if you want:
http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/systemscanner

Crucial is one of the most reliable brands out there. Additionally I've never had a problem with their recommendations, and I've installed a lot of memory. For an older system, the memory is probably going to be very cheap. You should be able to get at least to 2 GB, and most motherboards of that vintage could go to 4 GB. If the system doesn't have enough RAM, it swaps stuff out to disk which is a lot slower than RAM. If you have enough RAM to hold the entire program at once, you won't have to swap out to disk.

AE is very memory intensive, if I remember correctly, it takes about 350 MB to 400 MB of RAM. The OS also takes some memory, so 512 MB is marginal.

We were up to close to 1 GB of RAM at one point, we had to unload a bunch of images from memory and just load them as needed, but a lot of the art needs to remain in memory all the time. The database also needs to reside in memory and it takes up a lot of RAM. This is a very data intensive game.

Bill

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna
I've seen mine go over 600MB.... but it's not an issue for me.

Newer OSs take up more memory. Additionally how much memory is used by the OS is going to vary depending on what is installed in the OS.

ORIGINAL: RichardAckermann

Thanks. I will take a look at it. I noticed my HD is quite loud with this game.

If you mean your actual disk, then this would imply to me that your OS is accessing the HDD a lot in order to do one of two things: 1) load/unload/reload items for the game as it needs them, or 2) creating and using a large page file. A page file is essentially HDD space that is used as RAM. It is highly inefficient compared to actual RAM. I'm not sure if Win2K does this - I only used that OS for about six months back in 2002.

If by HD you mean your computer (fans and such, not disk "clicking" and "whirring"), then it would say to me that the machine is struggling overall. RAM almost always helps with this.

It's almost certainly the swap file getting hit because it's running out of RAM. Internally Windows 2K and XP were virtually identical, the internal version number of 2K was 5.0 and XP was 5.1. Xp just added support for some new hardware that came along after 2K was introduced and some changes to the user interface.

The game does load and unload image files on the fly, but there is nothing in there that's going to sense how much RAM you have and get more aggressive about it.

As for working faster in windowed mode, I'm not surprised. DirectX has windowed mode for debugging games and most game programs don't make it available to the end users, but it kind of creates a pseudo virtual machine for debugging purposes that probably bypasses some of the hardware problems with DirectX that are slowing down the game.

Another possibility might be the way newer monitors work. LCD screens work best at their max resolution and the graphics card has to do extra work to step the image down to a smaller resolution. The game is designed to run in 1024X768 mode, though the command line switches allow you to adjust this. If you set the command line switches to the max screen resolution and then ran in full screen it might run as fast, but it still might not. Old CRT monitors didn't have the same quirk with resolution.

Bill

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: RichardAckermann

Thanks for all the advice. My hard disk is actually already corrupting a file now and then. Backup is already on stick.

There are a few new things I consider to be nice to have, so here's another 2 cents of mine.

First, I'd love to be able to rename airgroups. Adding new location or whatever info I want to tag onto them.

Second, I'd love to have a button to remove AC from a group, just like the reserve can be taken back to pool.
I frequently run low on some airframes, but a lot of 'em are still locked up in rear area units.
As of now I need to wait for production or totally disband a rear unit, just because I need 10 out of 45 planes somewhere else right now. If possible, make redistribution of AC more flexible. Let me take the operational craft out of groups back to pool without disbanding the entire unit.
A few days of delay would be OK.

This one just got into my mind, so I could be wrong about this, but I think patrol planes (Mavis,Emily) cannot do ground attacks, but they can use bombs. Would be nice to be able to use them in that bombing role.

With the last thing I am not sure if my idea is sane at all, mostly because of balancing.
I noticed all AC are worth 1 VP, but would the loss of a 4EB not be more critical than, say, a SBD Dauntless in terms of industry and crew? After all, ships are already scored on actual value.
What about making AC worth their engine count in VP? Would that be a good idea or just imbalance the score system?

If you have Player Defined Upgrades (PDU) on, you can downgrade a rear area group to another plane type and then when the freed up planes show back up in the pool, you can use them on front line aircraft. You can also disband or withdraw a number of air units to free up airframes. You have to make sure to answer the question correctly when removing groups, you can permanently remove them for PP or remove them for a period of time where you don't get any points, but the planes end up in the pools. Units that are slated to permanently withdraw are lost though.

Patrol planes in the bombing role can be used for anti-shipping strikes.

Bill

[RichardAckermann]

Downgrading would remove all AC from the rear unit, and use up some other AC to take their place.
Disbanding is not an option mostly, as I may need to use those groups in the near future. They are rear area reserve, but not obsolete.
For example I have 45 Nells on naval search, I need 10 of them to replace frontline losses.
Up or downgrade will take them all offline for search for a while, disbanding is even worse.

Thus I would love to be able to get just a few planes back to pool without temporary disabling the entire group.

[BBfanboy]

You can also split a group, and if the group was unrestricted, send the portion forward to do ops.

I believe the groups that are permanently restricted were made that way so that the player has to maintain a home defence even if there is no apparent threat for a few months of the war. Since that Allies must do the same, it is all balanced out.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

ORIGINAL: wdolson

The slow down problems have some relation to OS, but it's more hardware than anything else. If you can upgrade your memory, I'd recommend it. Crucial has a memory selection tool, you can enter information on your system, but it can scan your system too if you want:
http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/systemscanner

Crucial is one of the most reliable brands out there. Additionally I've never had a problem with their recommendations, and I've installed a lot of memory. For an older system, the memory is probably going to be very cheap. You should be able to get at least to 2 GB, and most motherboards of that vintage could go to 4 GB. If the system doesn't have enough RAM, it swaps stuff out to disk which is a lot slower than RAM. If you have enough RAM to hold the entire program at once, you won't have to swap out to disk.

AE is very memory intensive, if I remember correctly, it takes about 350 MB to 400 MB of RAM. The OS also takes some memory, so 512 MB is marginal.

We were up to close to 1 GB of RAM at one point, we had to unload a bunch of images from memory and just load them as needed, but a lot of the art needs to remain in memory all the time. The database also needs to reside in memory and it takes up a lot of RAM. This is a very data intensive game.

Bill

ORIGINAL: RichardAckermann

Thanks. I will take a look at it. I noticed my HD is quite loud with this game.

If you mean your actual disk, then this would imply to me that your OS is accessing the HDD a lot in order to do one of two things: 1) load/unload/reload items for the game as it needs them, or 2) creating and using a large page file. A page file is essentially HDD space that is used as RAM. It is highly inefficient compared to actual RAM. I'm not sure if Win2K does this - I only used that OS for about six months back in 2002.

If by HD you mean your computer (fans and such, not disk "clicking" and "whirring"), then it would say to me that the machine is struggling overall. RAM almost always helps with this.

It's almost certainly the swap file getting hit because it's running out of RAM. Internally Windows 2K and XP were virtually identical, the internal version number of 2K was 5.0 and XP was 5.1. Xp just added support for some new hardware that came along after 2K was introduced and some changes to the user interface.

The game does load and unload image files on the fly, but there is nothing in there that's going to sense how much RAM you have and get more aggressive about it.

As for working faster in windowed mode, I'm not surprised. DirectX has windowed mode for debugging games and most game programs don't make it available to the end users, but it kind of creates a pseudo virtual machine for debugging purposes that probably bypasses some of the hardware problems with DirectX that are slowing down the game.

Another possibility might be the way newer monitors work. LCD screens work best at their max resolution and the graphics card has to do extra work to step the image down to a smaller resolution. The game is designed to run in 1024X768 mode, though the command line switches allow you to adjust this. If you set the command line switches to the max screen resolution and then ran in full screen it might run as fast, but it still might not. Old CRT monitors didn't have the same quirk with resolution.

Bill

The loud HD also means it is getting full.
The RAM issue causes the computer to go to the HD but the lack of space on the HD causes extreme splitting of files.
On a disk with lots of space the O/S will try to store all the sector-sized chunks sequentially in the same track if possible. When there is not enough space to store all that stuff for the swap file, it must store it wherever it can find unused sectors, over several tracks. The CLUNK you hear is the stepper motor jumping from track to track to find those chunks of the file to read/write.

You can reduce the amount of HD noise by running a defragmentation/disk optimization to reorganize all the files on the HD into sequential fashion. There must be some free space to do this because you can't temporarily move a file unless there is someplace to put it. So the first step is to purge any files no longer used, or easily retrieved from other media. Uninstalling games you are not playing ATM (and putting the saved game files on a DVD or memory stick) is a good way to start. Same goes for picture and video files you seldom access.

EDIT: I looked up how to find the defrag program on my Win 7 system.
Close all programs. Open Windows Explorer ( Windows button + E). Right Click on the C: drive to bring up the properties menu. See the attached pic.

[witpqs]

You can try some HD maintenance/recovery software, such as SpinRite (www.grc.com). It will cost ~$90, but the license is good forever for the current version and AFAIK the next version.

[RichardAckermann]

I do not think fragmentation can be an issue. I did a fresh formatting on starting to use it and there's only 5 GB of 40 used. So there should be enough space in a row to store even large files. It's still about 10 times louder than the HD I have my OS on. Puts the entire computer on vibration, too.

I already ordered 3 GB of PC/2100 DDR RAM. The topmost parts my board will be able to handle, according to crucial.com (Special thanks to wdolson for the link)
Hope they fit and help.
Somehow, reading on system specs of players here makes me feel like a caveman every time...
Hmm , I'll think about it while I polish my wooden club.

[cohimbra]

Previously, when I looked at Air Database ingame, if I click on (example) p-47D I go to the dedicate page;
then if I clik again on P-47D string (in yellow) I returned to the air list at the p-47 point;
after new beta, when you included a new 'back' button, if I click again on p-47d string I returned to the air list, but at beginning and not to the p-47D point.

I know, my english is very bad but I hope you understand what I mean. If not, I try to be more clear.

Regard.

[michaelm75au]

ORIGINAL: cohimbra

Previously, when I looked at Air Database ingame, if I click on (example) p-47D I go to the dedicate page;
then if I clik again on P-47D string (in yellow) I returned to the air list at the p-47 point;
after new beta, when you included a new 'back' button, if I click again on p-47d string I returned to the air list, but at beginning and not to the p-47D point.

I know, my english is very bad but I hope you understand what I mean. If not, I try to be more clear.

Regard.

The 'back' button was added to you back to the previous screen rather than press on the plane's name again. That should return you to the list at the p-47D point.
I am trying to make the screen more consistent with other screens where there is a 'back' button.

[cohimbra]

ORIGINAL: michaelm

ORIGINAL: cohimbra

Previously, when I looked at Air Database ingame, if I click on (example) p-47D I go to the dedicate page;
then if I clik again on P-47D string (in yellow) I returned to the air list at the p-47 point;
after new beta, when you included a new 'back' button, if I click again on p-47d string I returned to the air list, but at beginning and not to the p-47D point.

I know, my english is very bad but I hope you understand what I mean. If not, I try to be more clear.

Regard.

The 'back' button was added to you back to the previous screen rather than press on the plane's name again. That should return you to the list at the p-47D point.

This don't work for me, both choose back or press on the plane's name again bring me back to the top of the database list. Not a big issue, obviously, just to let you know it.

[m10bob]

Suggestion for MichaelM....It would be really nice to have a single button which would allow both functions for "Send ships to", and "setting home port".
So often when a new ship arrives at Balboa and we are assigning it to Pearl or Auckland, etc, it presently requires the 2 steps.[:)]

[michaelm75au]

ORIGINAL: cohimbra

ORIGINAL: michaelm

ORIGINAL: cohimbra
Previously, when I looked at Air Database ingame, if I click on (example) p-47D I go to the dedicate page;
then if I clik again on P-47D string (in yellow) I returned to the air list at the p-47 point;
after new beta, when you included a new 'back' button, if I click again on p-47d string I returned to the air list, but at beginning and not to the p-47D point.
I know, my english is very bad but I hope you understand what I mean. If not, I try to be more clear.
Regard.

The 'back' button was added to you back to the previous screen rather than press on the plane's name again. That should return you to the list at the p-47D point.

This don't work for me, both choose back or press on the plane's name again bring me back to the top of the database list. Not a big issue, obviously, just to let you know it.

Yes, you correct; it was working. The ship database view works as expected, and the aircraft one is based on that. I'll have a look on the weekend; I may be setting the wrong variable in the aircraft view.

[Yaab]

Can we have a "Re-create TF" button?

Here is my story.

Played a grand campaign Da Babes 28 C game as Allies vs Jap AI. In the DEI/Malaya area I have set up probably a hundred TFs (resource/fuel/oil movement, AMc, ASW, PT and lots of shakedown TFs). All of them were given very detailed names, waypoints, escorts etc. All was well until late December 1941, when the KB raided the Java Sea. Since no LRCAP was available for the TFs and rerouting them was too time-consuming and cumbersome, my best bet was to quickly disband all the endangered TF in ports under weak CAP umbrellas and some AA cover on Java. The raid still sank several ships, and then the KB went away.

Unfortunately, once the KB left, I just could't muster enough mental energy to re-create dozens of disbanded TFs, with a view that the raid can be repeated at any moment and the TFs would have to be disbaned again.

So, I thought, maybe we can add a "Re-create TF" button to ship screen? Basically, a carrier raid comes in, you disband a TF, a raid goes away, you select a ship, and hit "Re-create TF" button and the ship, plus any other ships from the disbaned TF, are recreated with the same mission, destination, waypoints etc., albeit with a different TF number.

What do you think?

[michaelm75au]

Once a TF is disbanded, there isn't anything to look at to recover it.

[Yaab]

You mean the game code does not keep track of the TF record of a given ship,right?

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Yaab

You mean the game code does not keep track of the TF record of a given ship,right?

Sounds right to me. Tracker can, though.

[Mundy]

This is probably waaaay out of scope.

What would be nice is that if the Japanese player is bringing in advanced aircraft at a very early date, the Allied production would respond up to a point to accelerate the arrival of new aircraft.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Mundy

This is probably waaaay out of scope.

What would be nice is that if the Japanese player is bringing in advanced aircraft at a very early date, the Allied production would respond up to a point to accelerate the arrival of new aircraft.

I'd actually like it if Allied "R&D" factories actually contribute R&D points, but you would need to split them apart so that acceleration wasn't guaranteed. Basically, instead of having (for example) a size 30(0) P-38L factory at the start of the game, split it into 3 that started at 0(10). That way, they'll repair up to maximum by the time of the scheduled arrival date anyway, and it could provide some variability in when certain models arrived. Obviously the factory split can be done in the editor, but having the factories actually produce R&D points would be a code change.