Login and multiplayer play

[Garnier]

I have not tried pausing the game to see if FPS goes back up on those machines, but will find out. I tried it on my machine with the saved copy of the game we played last night and I went from 45-168. Least it will narrow down what we are looking for.

From your post about the troops beginning to move, it sounds like the game/ai calculations are the issue, but the pause test will prove that.

I have a decent machine (i5 @4ghz, 16gb ram) and when I run a ~30,000 man battle with AI, I get ~10 FPS. Pausing the game gives me 60 FPS, so it's obviously the game/ai calculations in that case.

Of course, if I play one of the maps with huge wheatfields like McPherson, and look at all the wheat at once, my FPS drops really low just from that, and pausing has no effect.

Performance varies hugely depending on what exactly you are doing.

[Olszowy]

okay, checked with both guys. One machine ran 3-4FPS then when paused, only went to 11. The other ran 7 FPS went to 11. Tried with mods on and off, same results. FPS on both machines does increase slightly when looking at simple graphics like ground or just trees. When they pan over troops or troops/veg mix, lugs back down into 5 range. Both have brand spanking new NVIDIA cards. Mine will do the same, pan over something complex and it drops down anywhere from a couple FPS to a coule dozens and bounces back. But when you start at 50 and drop 20 it does not hurt the performance. When you start at 11 and drop it lags fast.

[MarkT]

Jim, Little Powell,

I found something that you can pass along.

1. The 1.5 jump does increase requirements and causes performance issues.
2. This increase seriouly effects multiplayer (especiall large OOB)

In a nutshell, through the natural process of computer upgrades, a generation of machines will drop out and people will have to upgrade.

BUT!!! I have discovered that many motherboards and possibly many retailers sell their product at DEFAULT settings. I have an ASROCK N68C-S UCC Motherboard and an AMD QUAD Core Chip. The boards default setting is DUAL-CORE. There is NOTHING documented that says it is not running in Quad Core... But Sure enough, after reading all the fine print in my manual, I found the setting. It was NOT labeled well, so there is no reason to toggle it on or off.
But this fixed the issue. My system is screaming.
This could be more a common issue than one might think.


I would like to ask one thing. Before you consider tweaking performance issues, Test it in MP with large OOBs and see if is choppy. Some of us play out there....

And before you jump up and say "we test everything" or the masses start jumping up and defending SOW, consider how you test and what you test. And more importantly what you do about it.
1. The MAJOR omission in the Antietam OOB (S.D.Lees missing Artillery battalion)
2. The "realism" buttons aren't.
3. Detach and transfer buttons above brigade level NEVER worked. Either fix it or dump them. It is a 2 minute job if that. And I have check many versions back.
4. A new one. At the start of the Antietam multi player game. 6 AM in the morning, General Hancock and his brigade are maching accross the battle field between the Sunken road and Antietam creek. They didnt arrive till later AND he didn't get to that position until assigned to replace Richardson of the Second corps n the afternoon.

This is NOT a condemnation of your testers. Just a matter of double checking material. Crossing the "t" and dotting the "i"s.

I you do not think it is important, shame on you. I know and like all of you. I would hope this is not the case. It is a frustration to have to MOD this game to make it historical.

Well for the most part it is good news.

Mark

[norb]

We have repeatedly tried to recruit an MP testing team to no avail. We will keep trying. But I agree that MP needs to be tested better. I hope that someday we will have a dedicated team of MP players that schedule weekly games and are part of our testing team. We do what we can, but I agree that it can be much better.

[Jim]

The Dev teams for Antietam and CV were around 1/2 the size of the group that did GB. It is very hard to recruit and keep good quality testers and developers.

We will be trying to add testers for the next major release. We will be looking for people who have the large amount of time it takes to test and the passion to make this game series even better. They also must get along with the rest of the team and be willing to recognize that compromises are required to end up with a balanced game at the end of the day. Stay tuned.

-Jim

[norb]

These problems that you describe are hard to nail down. We have a lot of players that are having no issues at all. It's running great for them. When we are faced with situation like this, where it's hard to recreate the errors, then it takes a lot longer to find a fix. Mainly because we need to see the issue before we can fix it.

[Saddletank]

Jim and Norb. I was completely unaware that you needed MP testing people. I saw no requests on the forums for such players. I am sure if you'd made a public request many would have responded. I certainly would be willing to test MP play.

[norb]

We've posted a few times to get a team together. We want to get at least a small team that plays regularly and is under NDA so that they can access our servers and bug database. With no worries about giving them testing builds. They need to be willing to put in the time to try and recreate any issues that come up and get us the saved games required. They also can only play with very minimal mods, nothing that affects gameplay. We need the stock game tested. It's worth trying again, so maybe if we get enough volunteers here, we can start this up. Very important, of course, is that the time zones match up so that it's not a huge hassle for the regular games.

[Beef Stu]

We've posted a few times to get a team together. We want to get at least a small team that plays regularly and is under NDA so that they can access our servers and bug database. With no worries about giving them testing builds. They need to be willing to put in the time to try and recreate any issues that come up and get us the saved games required. They also can only play with very minimal mods, nothing that affects gameplay. We need the stock game tested. It's worth trying again, so maybe if we get enough volunteers here, we can start this up. Very important, of course, is that the time zones match up so that it's not a huge hassle for the regular games.

BS , Many GCM players have offered ,even begged to be able to test MP . We have 8-20 players on every night that would love nothing more then a perfectly tested MP experience.

[Garnier]

Beef, the kind of testing Norb is talking about is work, not just playing and reporting a problem.

There have been announcements in the NSD forum asking for testers in the past. Very few people are willing to make the long term time commitment to it.