Quick question about max battle points - Page 2

DRG · #11 March 6th, 2017, 08:31 PM

post a screen shot of your misc screen in game options and if you are trying to run the game fullscreen PLEASE STOP and run windows..if you are running windows I will be interested to see what number you have in Misc.

*I* have no problem whatsoever scrolling the map. It does nothing like you describe and we really don't need a youtube video of our game running like that when that is NOT how the game runs for most people

Wdll · #12 March 6th, 2017, 08:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RightDeve

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wdll

I tried the game again, I even switched between the Intel gpu and the Nvidia. The lagginess persists. You can see it clearly in the video (when it will be up). The map struggles to scroll more than 9 or so hexes before it stops and then continues. The units when sent to move more than a few hexes, stop every few for a ms then continue.
Also as I mentioned earlier, there is an overall lagginess in the gui within the battle. I am going to try to find if there is something specific that is responsible. I haven't updated my GPU drivers for few months now, and I will double check if there is a conflict somewhere.
I have no doubt it is something about MS Windows that is responsible, but anyway.

Are you using Fullscreen mode? Maybe try this little trick: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=51247

FRAPS is notoriously slow, that's why I switched to MSI Afterburner for recording on-screen vids. Instructions here: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=373159

24GB is a lot. You can try compressing the raw file using MP4 with H.264 codec. The key to achieve a small video but decent quality is in the "bitrate" setting (find the sweet spot). You can try a popular converter program called Format Factory.

I have to use fullscreen, better screen quality for the recording.
I don't use FRAPs for this game. I use an external capturing device which doesn't connect to the laptop at all other than through a splitter (gets the signal).
24GB is a lot, but it is necessary for the approximately 90 min footage to not look like crap on youtube. There is a lot of tiny fonts (for video purposes on youtube) which can barely be seen if the bitrate is any lower. 24GB is the final video, up...rendered if you wish, to 50M. The actual captured video is about half that (bitrate and size), but because there is some loss first when encoding and then when youtube re-encodes the files, it makes it painful to watch online.
Unfortunately the capture device I use (and have to use as anything else I have tried before just doesn't work for me for this game) only captures at about 24-25M bitrate. If it could capture at say 50M or even higher, then I could have a final rendered file much smaller.

Regardless, the size isn't a problem, I am a video editor after all, my main issue is with performance. I am thinking of installing the game on one of my other computers and see if the problem remains. At least that will help me a bit. I hope lol.

I will check the link you provided, but I will do it later (as any testing) as it is late and I don't want to do any mistakes which will eventually just slow me down. (heh).

Thanks again.

Wdll · #13 March 6th, 2017, 08:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DRG

post a screen shot of your misc screen in game options and if you are trying to run the game fullscreen PLEASE STOP and run windows..if you are running windows I will be interested to see what number you have in Misc.

*I* have no problem whatsoever scrolling the map. It does nothing like you describe and we really don't need a youtube video of our game running like that when that is NOT how the game runs for most people

I don't remember who said it, but someone here told me to use fullscreen if I want the best viewing quality, and use desktop resolution. In my case 1080p.
It does help a lot with the visual quality of the captured video. A lot.
Going to windowed mode will make the footage unusable as the text will be unreadable.

Here is the screenshot you asked.

free image hosting

DRG · #14 March 6th, 2017, 09:52 PM

Fullscreen DOES NOT give the best viewing quality, Windowed Desktop does for normal game operation. I have no knowledge of this software you are using for this video. You might want to try turning your unit move delay down to 50 but how that affects fullscreen IDK. We do not support fullscreen any longer and only leave it in because some still use it for reasons that mystify both Andy and I

Don

FASTBOAT TOUGH · #15 March 6th, 2017, 10:51 PM

Don,
Sorry not much on the "screen shot thing" (That's for another day-maybe.) and I couldn't copy the images either.
So by the numbers top to bottom as you're looking at the screen. Always in Windowed mode and both games are fully updated CD versions. My Keyboard and Mouse are matched set gaming ones w/o CD software (Plug n Play for Windows.) hope it helps. Ready to be schooled on the settings. I too noticed the big difference between the two games in scrolling in particular.

WinSPMBT: 12/200/NO/METRES/50/ON/40/50/ON/ON/105%

I to have minor scrolling issues especially in deployment phase with the map.

WinSPWW2: 16/35/NO/METRES/50/ON/20/20/OFF/0N/100%

These are my current numbers for the above but to be honest I haven't touched or played it in years.

Regards,
Pat

DRG · #16 March 7th, 2017, 12:11 AM

I cannot recall how each game was originally set up but these are the default settings we are using in the latest CD installer for both games

but everyone's computer is different which is why those controls are included ....so people can experiment and fine tune the game to THEIR particular machine

Mobhack · #17 March 7th, 2017, 01:36 AM

If you are running in full screen mode on modern video cards, them a lot of these will produce laggy scrolling. Modern video drivers simply do not support 256 colour palletized modes with much success any longer.

On top of that, if you are using full-screen in order to run at say 1024x768 then that is a non-native video mode for most modern cards, and in addition its a "square" resolution on (probably) a wide-screen monitor.

Use Windowed Mode - the graphics drivers handle the 256 colour to high colour extremely fast. So Full Screen mode is redundant, and as Don stated we only have that there now for old machines or whatever. It is obsolete.

If you want a smaller desktop then use Windows itself to temporarily reduce the desktop size:
- Right click on the Windows desktop, and choose screen resolution
- Set the new desktop resolution using that tool
- Now fire up the game in the smaller desktop (=bigger text, smaller map)
- Once done playing the game, right click on the windows desktop and restore the original settings

You will need to play around with the various resolutions offered in order to find one that does not stretch or squash the icons and also perhaps is "crisp" enough. Modern wide screen monitors dont play well at any other resolution than the native one, unlike good old CRT ones.

in the worst case - say 1080i is way too large (text too small) and the other resolutions using that monitor dont look good (squishy or not crisply defined) - then you may perhaps consider finding a cheap (second hand shop, the kids one etc) smaller monitor with less pixels than 1080i. It can be run as a second monitor and the game set to run from that (I think - I dont use 2 myself). But I might do that myself as the eyesight gets worse in the next few years

!

(I do have an old 1 tonne Ilyama CRT sitting in the spare room but haven't used it in a decade or so, the connectors probably dont match up to my modern box, so its off to the recycling centre for that soon I think

)

Andy

Wdll · #18 March 7th, 2017, 04:47 AM

ok, I have an update.
I tried windowed mode, desktop resolution (1080p) and the scrolling issue is gone.
I have to auto-hide the taskbar to not get in the way although it does mean I have to be careful with how much I move the mouse down as to not move outside of the game window and make the taskbar appear as it hides a tiny part of the game window. Not important part, but still it annoys the hell out of me.
Then I thought to also change it to mini size (taskbar option).
This time the game came up with a warning that auto-hiding may cause issues. Which it did as the game window appeared all squeezed. I disabled mini size and...the problem remained. I found it strange as the first time I set the taskbar to autohide it didn't cause any issue and only happened after I set the size to mini. I now have the size to mini and NOT auto-hide. The game loads fine. Weird lol.

I don't know how good it will be for the recording footage, which is the most important thing.
As I mentioned earlier, the fullscreen provides the best visual quality of the recorded footage. Having said that again, I haven't tried recording desktop resolution AND windowed mode, so I will check it out later to see how the final video looks.
Thanks for the input.

As for the uploaded video, I am telling you, it doesn't want to go up there lol. Before I went to bed I set the computer to shut down after 2 hours, having completely forgotten I was uploading the file...
Anyway, will see.

RightDeve · #19 March 7th, 2017, 08:48 AM

Have you tried the link I posted before? If you insist on doing Fullscreen (like I do), it's about the bestest solution: you'll have seamless windowed performance yet the game is in fullscreen.

DRG · #20 March 7th, 2017, 09:08 AM

I had tried that program RightDeve mentioned when he first posted the link and it does work very, very well. You get the fullscreen effect some people like ( for reasons I don't understand but that's another topic.. ) but it's run in windows mode which suits both the game and the OS. So you get, for some " the best of both worlds" ( but for me having the bottom toolbar exposed while the game is running is the #1 reason I love windowed mode )

Don