Performance

[mjk428]

I've tried the first tutorial on two different machines and two different OS on the same rig. For whatever reason the game seems to perform best, even if not completely smooth, with Windows 8.

1st installed on i7-2700K, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Geforce GTX 670, Win 7. After the install and a reboot I was informed that NETframe 4.0 needed to be repaired. 4.0 & 4.5 were previously installed but I left the boxes checked. The game ran choppy but was near-tolerable. What's not tolerable is disappearing units, non-responsive units, and freezes. Also, game saves went to documents folder but when trying to load there was no way I could see to change the path. This machine dual boots to Win 8 and so I tried it there (128GB SSD) and no NETframe repairs were needed after installation. Still a little sluggish zooming/scrolling but much more stable. No lost units. Able to complete the first tutorial without losing any units because they chose to hover over SAM sites instead of RTB. Game saves/loads work intuitively.

For fun I tried installing on my HTPC/Minecraft server PC. i3-3225, 8GB RAM, Caviar Black HDD, HD 4000, Win 7. 1st tutorial runs as good/bad as it does on my higher end game machine in Win 7. Sluggish and unstable. Also needed to repair NETframe. Game saves to documents folder and could not load.

This is only the first tutorial and I expect I'd see a difference with a better processor and graphics card on large scenarios. Could also be that I just got lucky during the brief Win 8 playthrough. Most of my time was with the first install in Win 7.

[NefariousKoel]

ORIGINAL: JOhnnyr


Pip,

Just FYI tried these steps and didn't seem to have any effect. I set frames ahead to 1 (lowest) and vsync to on. GUI is still slow to respond, and units movements are very jerky and inconsistent even at 1 second.

I just finished trying both, separately, and had the same results. Little change, if any.

[thewood1]

For giggles, I fired up Harpoon ANW. Just eyeballing it, Command map zooms and scrolls, along with unit movement, is very similar to Harpoon. That was built to zoom in steps and units move in pulses, I think. It was eerily similar. So maybe my expectation was zooming like in other wargames.

[NefariousKoel]

ORIGINAL: thewood1

For giggles, I fired up Harpoon ANW. Just eyeballing it, Command map zooms and scrolls, along with unit movement, is very similar to Harpoon. That was built to zoom in steps and units move in pulses, I think. It was eerily similar. So maybe my expectation was zooming like in other wargames.

I'm finding it difficult to quickly keep up with events while waiting on my zoom command to process for 2 seconds. It's becoming frustrating, the more I wrestle with it. [:(]

[thewood1]

It is disconcerting. It makes operating at faster cycles difficult. Funny thing is everything else is fine. Its only the zoom et al.

[JRyan]

I have a Win8 Laptop with Intel/Geforce. Running the Geforce did nothing more for me so I just run the intel and it is fine. I however do have a slight pause but I move very quick and see it in windows all the time /Less so with Win8. I too think this is a driver issue. Maybe some in game settings etc would help?

[thewood1]

I did now notice that on 1:1, larger scenarios are taking about 2 sec to process 1 second. If I just move the time to 5 sec., it goes along just fine. I have Win8, btw.

[NefariousKoel]

ORIGINAL: thewood1

It is disconcerting. It makes operating at faster cycles difficult. Funny thing is everything else is fine. Its only the zoom et al.

It's also slowing down overall UI speed the longer a scenario runs on, or the larger it is, for me. The way units move on the map start to get jerky. So it's ends up being an overall thing.

I just tried turning multi-threading off in the gfx options and forcing only one cpu core to run the game, but it didn't make any difference.

[K 19]

It's not a hardware or driver problem. Too many people are having the same problems. The game needs the optimization fixed.

[montanaza]

@devs, is optimization high up on the priority list for the first patch.?

[Dimitris]

If you are referring to the map zoom/pan issue, yes (1st or 2nd update).

[ComDev]

ORIGINAL: thewood1

I did now notice that on 1:1, larger scenarios are taking about 2 sec to process 1 second. If I just move the time to 5 sec., it goes along just fine. I have Win8, btw.

A fix for this is currently undergoing testing. Will probably be included in the 2nd update as we need to make sure the mods don't result in new bugs.

Thanks! [:D]

[montanaza]

How long till 1st update?

[adek670]

Feels a bit - beta launch

[Dimitris]

ORIGINAL: Reaper
Feels a bit - beta launch

We beg to differ.

[thewood1]

I wouldn't say beta at all, but I do hope the optimization fix is less than a couple weeks away. It is very playable, but rather odd in how it manifests.

[thewood1]

If it helps...

I just loaded up a large scenario after turning Windows Defender off. The game seems to load a lot faster. But I still have the same performance issues in the large scenarios. I did watch HD activity. There seems to be a lot of activity, to the point it is overloading disk access times. I have 8Mb of RAM. Does it use all of what ever is free?

[Floyd]

This might be totally unrelated, but in the Falcon BMS simulation people
told about stuttering related to a "processor parking" feature(?) with
newer processors. Here is a link to some more info:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/mattmcspirit ... ction.aspx

[thewood1]

I did some CPU monitoring...I have an AMD A8-4500M (four cores) and 8Mb RAM. I confirmed all four cores are used to some extent. My CPU is not a screamer, but should be able to handle this fairly well. I did 1 sec, 5 sec, 15 sec, and 5 min. For some reason 5 sec and 15 sec seem to be the optimum. 1 sec is taking 2-3 sec to run a sec off the game. 5 min is taking about 10-15 sec to run off the 5 min in game time. 5 sec and 15 sec run very well and smoothly.

Paused core util. - core 0 about 15%, core 1 about 10%, core 2 about 10%, core 3 about 10%
1 sec. core util. - core 0 about 30%, core 1 about 80%, core 2 about 20%, core 3 about 25%
5 sec. core util. - core 0 about 35%, core 1 about 50%, core 2 about 20%, core 3 about 25%
5 min. core util. - core 0 about 90%, core 1 about 90%, core 2 about 90%, core 3 about 80%

My conclusion is that something is going on at 1 sec. game speed. Core 1 is close to overloaded, while the other cores are just maintaining. It gets better at 5 and 15 seconds (5 and 15 were basically the same), but something is still a little out of balance.

Also, any map scrolling or zooming spikes all four cores to 90-100% utilization. Whatever is happening there is just chewing up the processor. Disk activity was only a factor a few times.

[JOhnnyr]

Unfortunately I think I'm done attempting to play the game for now. It's simply too unresponsive to be enjoyable. Anything but 1 second is completely out of the question, as the units simply disappear and re-appear in their new position. Perhaps this is by design, but I can't see the point unless you don't care to see what is actually happening during that time. Anything above 30 seconds results in me waiting 10-15 seconds to see any kind of movement, sometimes longer, it isn't at all consistent and isn't useful for anything but waiting for units to cross vast distances. (And again, the ticks take forever)

A one second setting results in at least a semi-playable state, but the UI lag, coupled with simulation seeming to slow to a crawl with a lot of units on screen(On any scenarios other than the tutorials) makes it also pretty unenjoyable.

I'm really disappointed that for the moment, I don't have a playable game. I wish I had put my money towards something like Command Ops, something I know runs smoothly. Instead I have a $80 piece of software that is useless to me at the moment. I'm only getting more frustrated the more I try to play it, which is pretty unusual for me, as I haven't come across a game that I wanted to like so badly, but am unable to due to technical reasons.

Is there any way I can request a refund, or at least store credit? I don't feel like I received a working product for my $80. =(