Unfortunate problems of a surprising nature

[tinkthank]

After having read the "Tuning Your Machine" section thoroughly, and have tried the tutorials to both WW2 and MBT, and liking a lot of the ideas of both games -- I like detailed tactics mixed with light strategy, I do not require up-to-date graphics or sound, the community here seems very very nice -- and I want to like them more, but so far, I am unable to enjoy the game for technical reasons.

That surprises me, since it seems that the game should run much more smoothly on my machine than it does.
My machine isn't great, but it does run other games which seem to require more resources (like F.E.A.R., for example) very well, and runs all Shrapnel-type games (that is: more content, less bling) like a charm. It is a Pentium M 1.86 Ghz with 1gig Ram and a Radeon X700 124MB video card. Nothing wonderful, but gets the job done.

Playing the DL version of the game so far at 800x600 resolution in both fullscreen (to test if it was any better) and windowed mode (my preference), I found that the game bogs down after about 15 minutes. When I click or hit a keyboard hotkey, it can take up to 3.5 (three and a half) seconds for a reaction from the game -- this means that I have been spending nearly 15 minutes just trying to find my units and getting them to move.
This is for both MBT and WW2.
I don't see anyone else with this problem posting here.
I don't really understand, either, since the game doesn't seem to require huge amounts of resources other than RAM, and I should have enough of that.

Any suggestions?
thanks so much

[Mobhack]

Hmm. That sounds very strange, indeed.

So - what you are saying is that your experience is that it plays fine, but after 15 minutes, starts to bog down for some reason?. Most folks who have problems have them from the start, not after 15 minutes play.

I would suspect your hardware then, if it initially plays fine.

Your sound card and/or installed audio CODECs may be the problem. Try turning all sound off (including the keyboard mouse click), and see what happens.
- In the game Options programme, turn mouse interface click off on the misc tab
- In the game itself, in the preferences screen turn both battle sounds FX off and sound FX off.

Then try the game.

However - most folks with sound lag problems due to the card or CODEC get these straight away. So my suspicions arise from memory - perhaps a bad RAM chip (you would need a utilty like Norton to check that), or more likely you may have a disk that needs defragging and/or lost clusters fixed, so a run of scandisk may be a good idea?.

Cheers
Andy

[DRG]

Did you run DXdiag and check that Direct X is operating correctly?

Running OK for 15 minutes then bogging down is not normal game behaviour that anyone has reported before. I'm running the game with an 800mhz P3 with 128mb of RAM and a 128 video card so you have way more RAM than I do and I have frequently, during game development, for long stretches, run the game, Paint shop Pro, MOBHack and stayed connected to the internet at the same time. The game runs marginally slower when I have "the works" going but nothing like you describe. ( actually... EVERYTHING runs marginally slower with the works going not just the game.)

Don

[tinkthank]

THank you.
I did have the GG open (for the tutorial), so that may have been something, and I am sure I was connected to the internet as well, and may have had a notepad open and Outlook Express as well, although I am sure I shut that. I did, however, make sure to start the game FIRST (as indicated in the "Tuning" section) and the other applications afterwards.
I notice no slowing in general with other applications when I have demanding things going on; I usually have iTunes open and listen to music when gaming (must ... hear ... music), or Pandora (streaming radio), but it is SPww2/mbt which bogs down, not the other apps.
thank you

[Mobhack]

well - having a DirectShow (used for the sound) game which is wanting to play real-time sound, in competition with other application(s) which are also wanting to play real-time sounds at the same time is likely your problem.

We already say this in the GG as paragraph 1 of the "Tuning your machine" section:

The game wants as much real memory as possible, so for optimum performance, especially on lower end machines, try to run the game with as few other windows programmes running in the background as possible. Also, since many other programmes will fragment the main Windows memory, it is often a good idea to reboot the box and start the game as the first thing run. Do not run it in paralell with any other games! - only windows desktop type applications.

"Windows Desktop Applications" are things that do not compete with DirectX/DirectPlay games in real-time for game hardware. So Word, Excel, Borlands C++ Builder and email apps etc, and not other games, or game-like applications (like music and video streaming) that compete in real-time with the game for the same critical game resources (video and sound cards and DirectX COM objects).

Try playing without the sound or video streaming apps, and see if everything works OK in the game when nothing is competing for the sound card?.

Cheers
Andy

[DRG]

tinkthank said:
THank you.
I did have the GG open (for the tutorial), so that may have been something, and I am sure I was connected to the internet as well, and may have had a notepad open and Outlook Express as well, although I am sure I shut that. I did, however, make sure to start the game FIRST (as indicated in the "Tuning" section) and the other applications afterwards.
I notice no slowing in general with other applications when I have demanding things going on; I usually have iTunes open and listen to music when gaming (must ... hear ... music), or Pandora (streaming radio), but it is SPww2/mbt which bogs down, not the other apps.
thank you

If you read the "Tuning Your Machine" section then you read this line at the start....

"The game wants as much real memory as possible, so for optimum performance, especially on lower end machines, try to run the game with as few other windows programmes running in the background as possible."

Although your machine may not exactly be "lower end" you have problems running the game that no one else has.

We do recommend people "run the game with as few other windows programmes running in the background as possible"

So turn off all the other things you are running and see what happens.

Andy asked if you had defragged your HD lately.......have you?

He also asked you to try turning all sound off(including the keyboard mouse click)to check if this may be a sound card issue..... did you?

I asked you to check DXDIAG........did you? It's possible you may need to make adjustments. What version of Direct X are you using?. I told you my machine will start to bog down when I'm running a lot of things as well as the game but that's MY machine and it runs with far less RAM than your's does AND the game, even at it's slowest, does not even remotely behave the way you describe yours does after 15 minutes.


Run the game and ONLY the game and NOTHING else and see what happens

Don