For those interested in WWIIO

[K West]

"cockpits were horrid"

 Do the various parts of the cockpits shake like Katheryn Hepburn to you?  For me all the cockpit rails/bars, the guages and the dash have this small but very perceptible "shake" to them.  Just sitting there it and does it. Don't need to be moving, engine on or off. cockpit open or closed.

 The wings and other constantly static art do not.  While any rail/bar part of the opening cockpit that may be in any view does.

 Westy

[mrsid2]

No, cockpits were solid for me.

Of course the infamous gauges were unreadable.. But otherwise just ok. About the level of Warbirds 2.72 (cockpit support bars at 2D level though..) when I started my online simulations..

[Kieran]

From the WWIIO forum concerning "Blen Wrestling"

I'm afraid this speaks loads about the supposed sophisticated damage model.

[Am0n]

holy toejam batman, im hooked on WWIIOL! lol..



im a dweeb i know it but that is one fun frigging game.  NEED MORE RAM! Im buying some today...

Last night i played for over 4 hours and didnt have a single lock up, CTDT or any problems other than my puny 256 megs of ram not being able to handle the work load at times.. That i like, i like a game that makes me have to upgrade, normaly means your getting into a game like no other you've played.


Anyone who complains that the graphics are not top notch needs to stop playing quake and realize that games like this that have 1700 people playing and not some stupid death match where the most surfaces that can be on the screen are very low so that it can support "good graphics".

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Kieran my first flight last night i killed a 109, and damaged a h110 pretty badd before i lost him in the lag, im assuming it was hardware related.

But air to air combat is pretty scarce, hard to find a fight and the quality of pilots from what ive seen is pretty poor. These guys didnt seem to hip to BNZ tactics either lol.. found many just flying in circles.



To bad we dont have a game that has AH for flight and something like WWIIOL for ground war and graphics. I only say that because i'll have to choose eventualy, i wont pay for both.

[Nifty]

I doubt very seriously it's hardware related, am0n.      It really does have to do with the way server sends you game updates.  I wish I was savvy enough to record what I see to an avi or something.  Last night was just like the previous attempts in the free trial.  Planes disappearing left and right, yet ground troops are still there (mind you, I can't see the TROOP itself due to it being so small in relation to things, just the troop's name).  I was following a 110 around for awhile where the text and range circle were visible, but the 110 itself wasn't, for at least 30 seconds.  Now, this only happens over big ground battles, but hey, that's where the air support is needed.  The LW planes will harrass the ground units unless the Allied planes engage them.  

I don't really like kill stealing, but dang it, I had to do it.  There was a 109 being chased away from the fighting.  I had to jump in just so I could engage at a decent framerate.  

Finding the big air fight is relatively easy.  Log on and go to the map screen.  Find the airbase you wanna take off from (Lille and Vitry are English as of last night, Cambrai was the last French field, all others were German controlled) and look for the nearest CP that's under contention (look for the explosion icon instead of country icon).  There will either be planes there, or planes will get there, almost every time you check a contested CP out.  If that fails, just fly to the enemy airfields and catch a plane leaving or RTBing.  

I'm gonna keep tweaking my wwiiol.cfg file.  Maybe I'll be able to get the LOD stuff to work right, I just have a feeling it's nothing I can change in the settings.

[Mighty1]

Amon the idea that a game is good because you have to upgrade your system is nuts!
The reason you have to upgrade your system in WWIIO is because of the bad code.

WWII online can be fun when it works but for me it still has to many bugs to make it worth $10 a month.

[Am0n]

No way mighty one!

Doom one when released i had to buy 4 more megs of RAM for my DX2@66.. played it for years. (still do occasionaly)


Ultima online when released was absoultely awesome, had to upgrade my CPU and mobo, plus ram for that one. Played it for 2-3 years.

Now we got WWIIOL.. we'll see, i need the upgrade anyhow


You cant say a game like this doesnt need a LOT of RAM, there is so much going on around you, the terrain alone needs it.
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Nifty do you know any tweaks for that cfg that you could give me? Also heard of one for the system.ini file that chaged the way it allocated memory, would love to get my hands on that one to see if it could help.

[K West]

Nifty, that is the limitation of the 64 con thing. IMO the true Achilles heal to WW2O and any other MMPOG that wants to have so many people  interacting in a small proximity.  

 The host will only send you the coordinates and other info for the nearest 64 contacts.  Any more than 64 and you see nothing from the host about them.  This has been acknoleged by Killer but it's not something easily solved in the leaste.  In the past however CRS has said they needed to work on the bias for those cons to help out.  But obviously there's still a lot of problems and I'm not sure they indded made any changes as they've had larger fish to fry.  (The bias being what 64 contacts the host sends you information on. The host should set priority? But what is it? Info on... Enemy? Friendly? Ground, air or sea cons? )    Otherwise you'd have seen that 110 and any other airborne hostiles versus any ground troops or vehicles.

 64 cons will be the one, continuous gripe players there will have to contend with until such day as CRS ups the limit. And if they do then the dial up subscriber will get screwed as any increase in the client-host data stream eats up the bandwidth which dial up players don't have much of to spare.

So...  Come on broadband!!!

 Westy

[mrsid2]

I thought that WW2OL was supposed to be completely free of the update limitations..

[K West]

No way.  Even Killer acknowleged the problem before the WW2O release in June when there were questions about it (due to leaks from closed beta testers who publicly and privately talked about the problems WW2O was having and the shape it was in).  He basically said that's just the way it is and that everyone (they and the players) will have to live with it.
 
 Many fan boi found it hard to believe it would be a problem.  Even when confronted with an easy example using two medium opposing forces, say, meeting at Dunkirk.  Imagine two dozen bombers with thier escort fighters flying above four or five dozen friendly ground vehicles, boats and troops all facing a similar enemy force.  In an arena designed to hold thousands the meeting in battle engagements of 64 and more was bound to happen virtually eveywhere.  The problem begins when you're unable to escort the bomebrs because you cannot see them any more as the host has deemed the enemy cons as priority.  Or your the third Allied tank sitting in the sights of the 65th Axis anti-tank gunner. That Allied tank will not have seen who shot him because, well,  he could have with him being the 65th Axis con.  Where as the Allied tank being the third con closest the Axis most Axis saw him and he simply never stood a chance.  So the 64 con limit means that bombers end up being unescorted. Bombs cannot cause FF because if the bombers cannot see friendly troops why be penalised.   Heck, you'll never see the enemy on your flanks you because the host is already sending you the max info on the 64 cons in your emmediate threat vicinity. There's no bandwidth available for info on any other enemy cons even a mile further away trying to get around behind you. Well, until they become the higher priority biased cons and suddenly the enemies in front of you just plain old disappear and the new enemy winks in like something straight out of Star Trek.  It also means if you are a ground force person, be it in a truck, tank gun or as a soldier,  then the back end of your forces is the best place to be as the odds you'll be seen are dramatically lowered. You can literally snipe away with impunity because all the friendly forces out in front of you are causing the con limits for the enemy to be maxxed out.  Vice versa.  
 Sure some say use the radio. But you know what?  Watch how fast the WW2O buffer rolls. Even if you narrow down your choices of channels to listen to you'll miss a lot. Your eyes can tell you things faster than a warning message on the radio buffer can - especially one you never read. Plus you can trust your eyes and not someone you don't know situated off to your left flank is who might be reporting new enemies... or maybe he sees the ones already in front of you you're trying to fight.

 Moral?  Never be the standard bearer yelling "CHARGE!" as that is a guaranteed shot between your eyes by 64 enemy gunners.

  Westy

[Am0n]

i just ordered 512 more megs of ram..

[Kieran]

What I have found is that the 64-player limit gives the advantage to the attacker.

Take a Stuka and attack a city. If there are enough people there you will not be shot down. Why? All you have to do is keep flying towards the middle of the action. Even if the enemy gets on your six, he will lose you in his forward view when you pass over the city. You will not be visible until you leave the proximity of the people on the ground.

Now I wouldn't gripe about that if it wasn't for the fact the Stuka is 200 yards in front of me while the nearest ground troop is 3K below me. So far, the code does not properly prioritize what is viewable to anyone at any time.

[Nifty]

Westy, thanks for pointing out the actual limit.  To be fair, they've got a bigger one than Aces High (supposedly 32 here) but they've got a LOT bigger battles.  It's the bias that's the problem.   ONE enemy plane in the area when I'm in a plane should never ever disappear.  But they do.  

hmmph.  "deal with it" is what they say, huh?  Naw, they can deal with me doing the same thing I did last time the trial ran out:  not subscribing to their service.  

Amon.  go with 16bit color unless it's night time.  then you need 32 bit if you want to see anything.  same with texture reduction.  I have no eye candy turned on, everything is off (muzzle flashes, shadows, etc, anti-aliasing)   I tried the suppress ground clutter and other stuff, and it helps frame rates, but it's awful in the air.  tree lines basically blink.  lol.  Honestly, they don't seem to know how to do LOD (Level of Detail) reduction.  Look at Aces High when you're in the air.  The ground textures are only good near you, they are fuzzy farther away.  The WWIIOL ground has the same clarity out to the extent of your visual range.  I wouldn't be surprised if this is the same with all objects in the game (meaning a plane right in front of you, and one 1000 yards away would have the same number of polygons to draw)

anyways, in 1024x768x16 (and texture reduction) I was pulling 40fps in flight with no one else around me.  In Aces High I pull the same fps in flight with several planes around me in 1280x1024x32.  It boils down to efficiency of code, and that's not a CRS priority at the moment.

[Udie at Work]

Originally posted by Nifty
Westy, thanks for pointing out the actual limit.  To be fair, they've got a bigger one than Aces High (supposedly 32 here) but they've got a LOT bigger battles.  
 

 Actually that's not true.  I'm not 100% what the limit is here, I think it's 64.   I have counted over 50 cons before though.  I had a film of myself and Nath leading 109's and 190's into a bomber formation escorted by p51's.  At the first con I counted the dots w/ Pyro standing next to me.  There were 52 if I remember correctly, unfortunately I lost the film

[K West]

Udie  I believe in AH you will show only 32 icons with 32 plane shapes but all other cons, no matter if friend or foe, will be visible dots. Which, imo, is better than nothing as you can at least see a dot and be ware of the presence.

 Westy