Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: HintJ

Okay, I'm a slow player, in turn 8 right now, but I think I've played enough to make some serious observations:

The message box and progress bar:

This message box is awesome! I usually keep it off until I've watched the replay from most views. Then I turn it on and expand it all the way. If I click on a particular message, every other message that involves that unit is highlighted. Great idea! I can even scroll back (using the mouse wheel if I want) to the very beginning of the game. This is excellent; I look at all the boldfaced messages and I have a historical log for that particular unit all the way from the very beginning. Wow! Shift-clicking is also a very useful feature--extremely useful.

I think perhaps a smaller font (maybe because I play at 1024x768) and a timestamp could make this feature even better. Perhaps a timestamp is superfluous, but still, the more detail the better.

The blue bar is just as great, especially since we now have the time displayed and the option of rewinding to a specific part of the action. The only suggestion I have is if I press the rewind button, please have the game first pause at the beginning before playing. No big deal, I can just quickly press the Spacebar right after I hit the rewind button.

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

I don't know I don't see any difference with or without grass. I get the same kind of smooth performance with PCO that I get with even a FPS shooter like Guild Wars or something like IL2. But I wouldn't even know how to check for FPS on them. It's never been an issue for my machine.

Good Hunting.

MR

I don't really notice anything running in a jerky fashion. Am I just visually challanged?

ORIGINAL: diablo1

Down near the bottom right hand corner of Guild Wars main player screen is a little dot and it will show your FPS if you scroll your pointer over it and also your ping is shown down there as well. I get 60-72fps with maxed out graphics playing Guild Wars and I get around 29-30fps down to 24fps with PCO maxed out and zoomed in all the way to ground level. Grass off and it's back up to 50-60fps. That's a big hit to FPS with all this GRASS. While the performance at 24-30fps is acceptable there is definitely a difference in the scrolling and movement of the camara as it's more jerky and not what I would call "smooth" at all. Cutting trees down to min also boosts FPS by 14FPS. I like trees though so I leave them on but grass go bye bye every game.

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

ORIGINAL: diablo1

Down near the bottom right hand corner of Guild Wars main player screen is a little dot and it will show your FPS if you scroll your pointer over it and also your ping is shown down there as well. I get 60-72fps with maxed out graphics playing Guild Wars and I get around 29-30fps down to 24fps with PCO maxed out and zoomed in all the way to ground level. Grass off and it's back up to 50-60fps. That's a big hit to FPS with all this GRASS. While the performance at 24-30fps is acceptable there is definitely a difference in the scrolling and movement of the camara as it's more jerky and not what I would call "smooth" at all. Cutting trees down to min also boosts FPS by 14FPS. I like trees though so I leave them on but grass go bye bye every game.

If you aren't into the immersion factor of the grass you can easily turn it off. The game reads the LOS obstructions either way. So whether you see the grass or not the effects of it are still in the game and affecting your play.

Good Hunting.

MR

ORIGINAL: HintJ

Here a cool pic of hiding in the grass w/the grass turned off!

I'm glad we have the grass, because my units can hide in it, but you better believe I'm turning it off! I'll turn it on to make sure it's there, though.

ORIGINAL: AstroCat

My experiences with PCO graphic performance are like diablo1's and I have feeling are going to be pretty much the same across the board for people as they get the game. It might be a good game but the graphics engine isn't the most efficient and it shows.