Matrix Games Forums

Dear All,

I have a new PC windows 8 from 7 all the games copied across ok. I was surprised I did not have to re install?

I have it on a wide screen setting as before with no problems. All looks very nice.

The replay and main menus are fine but clicking on any menu boxes inside the game gets a severe delay in opening the box - the map scrolling is also painful no matter if you set it at 0 1 or 9 its all the same.

I have no idea what maybe be wrong and I was hoping someone here may have the nswer or heard of this before.

Regards
Michael

This is my switch line ( seems from other posts this may be the issue? - forgive me I am only moderate at pc problems

"C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe" -px1920-py1080 -nofire

Michael

There is a readme.rtf that is leftover from the latest official patch in the game's main directory. I wonder if any of the following might solve your problem. I would guess that you need to add -dd_sw to your switches, but the other flag might be useful as well.

-SingleCpuOrders
Starts the game in single CPU mode and stays in single CPU for the orders phase, switches to multi CPU mode for running the turn, then switches back to single mode for the next orders phase. We’ve found this to be useful on some multi-core systems, especially AMD processors. Use this or –SingleCpuStart, not both

-dd_sw
Handles DirectDraw via Software. We’ve found this can make a huge difference on many systems as far as reducing interface lag and making button clicking in-game more responsive. On a few newer systems this can cause some visual glitches and slow combat animations though, so give it a try and remove it if it’s not ideal on your system.

Even in Win 7 I've found this switch mandatory:

-dd_sw : Handles DirectDraw via Software. We’ve found this can make a huge difference on many systems as far as reducing interface lag and making button clicking in-game more responsive. On a few newer systems this can cause some visual glitches and slow combat animations though, so give it a try and remove it if it’s not ideal on your system.

Also check the CPU switches if you have a multi-core. See the readme.rtf file in the rot install folder for details on all switches.

The -deepColor switch fixed all my slowness ills in Win8. I was also experiencing the slow menu interface opening.
It works like a charm now and playing on my laptop is great fun now. Getting ready to spend my lunch hour issuing orders.

Thanks guys for the quick replies, I am running an older patch. I am on the R9 patch - everything was fine on the previous pc.

Hans sounds like you had similar problems to me when you say add - deepColor can you show me how I add it in or do I just add it to the end of the existing line???

like ... what does -deepcolor actually do!

"C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe" -px1920-py1080 -nofire -deepColor



Nervous to change anything unless I am sure of the new commend line...

Thanks M

I can't think of anything that goes on the command line that would do any serious damage. The worst that could happen is the game runs worse and you change it back.

The problems all stem from multiple processors and a number of DirectX calls the game makes. There are newer DirectX calls that don't have those problems, but there were some technical hurdles to change to them. There are also some problems with video cards and multiple processors with those DirectX calls too.

Essentially the processor hands off some processing to another processor core and because new processors are faster than when that code was written, many times the answer comes back before the processor doing the bulk of the work is ready for it and it has to sit there, time out waiting for something it doesn't realize was already sent to it, and try again. This is the reason for the long delays.

The -cpu0, -cpu1, etc. calls tells the game to run everything on one core only and ignore the other cores on the system. The other switches tell the game to only use 1 core for certain things because depending on the architecture of the system, you may be able to get away with using multiple cores for some things.

All these switches were put in for Patch 1 back around 2010. They aren't in the main manual, but they are described in the supplementary material and there are many threads about it here.

Bill

The switch -deepColor enables 32bit color.
The colors on screen (the map) blend more smoothly.
This switch also seems to enable faster gameplay when used with Win7, Win8 and Win8.1.
No negative side effects known (as far as I am aware of or heard of).

The real culprit is DirectDraw.
 
Older games which use DirectDraw or basically any DX version older than 9.0 run extremely slowly due to the way DirectDraw is emulated in Windows 8/8.1. 
 

From what we learned working with the command line controls and some research on game developer forums, the problems started with multi-core processors. The problems existed on multi-core machines running XP. We see them more with Win 7 and 8 because just about all newer PCs are multi-core. I don't think you can buy anything less than 2 cores.

Bill

ORIGINAL: cavalry

Thanks guys for the quick replies, I am running an older patch. I am on the R9 patch - everything was fine on the previous pc.

Hans sounds like you had similar problems to me when you say add - deepColor can you show me how I add it in or do I just add it to the end of the existing line???

like ... what does -deepcolor actually do!

"C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe" -px1920-py1080 -nofire -deepColor



Nervous to change anything unless I am sure of the new commend line...

Thanks M

Your example is correct. It is just another command line switch added with a space and a hyphen.

Others have explained why -deepColor helps better than I could have.

I simply learned about it in another thread and gave it a try.

Hans and all,

Thanks very much the -deepcolor line seems to have fixed it - thanks.

I'm having similar issues on an ASUS T100, which per it's specs is based on an Intel quad core.

Two problems:

1) I'm having trouble making sure I'm adding the switches to the .exe as program files doesn't work like it used to. I think I'm adding the switches to the correct .exe (not the desktop shortcut) but I'm not sure it's right.

2) For an Intel quad core setup, what is the best set of switches to employ?

FYI, I resolved my issues. If anyone else has a quad core Intel or specifically an ASUS T100, here is the way to fix it:

1) Make a separate short cut off your executable. As the manual states, working off the default shortcut won't do it. However, when you right click the executable itself, there is no command line to alter.

2) The switches that worked for me are: -SingleCpuOrders -Cpu2 -multiaudio -dd_sw -deepColor

Works so fast now I'm thinking of setting a delay. [:)]

Thanks to everyone. I was like Calvary in that I was afraid to make changes to the command line. This has made a huge improvement for me.[&o][&o][&o]