Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: fscott on June 07, 2001, 09:58:00 AM
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FOr you fellas interested in an objective online report.
I happened to be one of the few 300 late last night that actually was able to play online - for 1 1/2 hours straight. Here's the deal, once you get online, there is hardly a smidget of a hiccup, the problem appeared to be registering and getting logged on.
I flew a Spitfire from Cambrai to the front and strafed two tanks before running into a tree! I didn't kill anything, but the "atmosphere" was good enough to keep it entertaining.
I then jumped into a Mark IV A13 Cruiser tank and traveled about 10 miles to a small battle in some unknown town along with 5 other tanks. Put 8 rounds into a Mark IIIF before he even saw me shooting from the bushes. The objective was a bridge and town beyond. I went up to the bridge and observed to my amazement infantry running towaqrds me in open terrain. I proceeded to use the coaxial mg and strafed killed 3 soldiers. My goodness it's hard to kill soldiers. They are so small targets from 300 meters. We then meticulously inched our way across the bridge keeping an eye out for hidden anti-tank weapons hidden in the bush up along the hillside that backdropped the town. We didn't even run into anything. Proceeeded across the bridge and observed a few other infantry sneaking and hiding behind buildings within the town. We made our way up the hill, and into the outskirts of town. I couldn't see a dang thing out of my gunner position so I switched to commander view and ubuttoned the copula. I tuck out my head and immediatley heard little whizzes past my head. Before I could get buttoned back up my commander got hit and died. Got back into driver position and found the little bastard hiding in between some crates. Finally got him with a well placed HE round. I could hear the firing from a distance as my other buddies were taking action and shooting at something I couldn't see. That was about it, the town was clear, and we ran into hardly any resistance. I couldn't imagine what would have came of us if we ran into some enemy tanks.
As far as warping I saw none at all. It's very stable once you get online. And for the guys who kept saying wait and see what happens to your fps when you get online, they are partially correct. After the patch added new things to the graphics and terrain, my framerate dropped to around 30-40fps at 1024x768x16. During online flight my fps would drop occasionally to around 20 fps when entering a town area. But it remains pretty stable. It is very flyable and usually remains at 30 to 40 fps average. When flying high and in the clouds I get 50 - 70 fps. Down low when you go to strafe some enemy units with detailed terrain and trees, I would suggest a hefty system. I hit the high teens, like 17 -19 fps. But I really can't see where online play affects my framerate at all, or very little, I think it's just the numerous units that the system has to keep processing and especially when loading in new units or new terrain. For land combat, it feels very smooth.
A very enjoyable experience with the edge of unpredictability. Heck, I was scanning the skys for an aircraft or two, but never came. The neat thing is, next time, there just may be an aircraft ot two diving down on you. The world is HUGE and has that feeling of being an open, unpredictable combat environment. Personally I doubt anyone is going to go into rambo mode. It just takes too dang long to get into action oriented territory to go recklessly putting yourself in harm's way.
My rig is an Athlon 1.5ghz, Geforce 2 GTS, 256 MB RAM.
fscott
[ 06-07-2001: Message edited by: fscott ]
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Here is a quick review of my infantry "sortie" last night.
I spawn at an army base. Eventhough I am German, and spawned at what the map told me was a German base, all of the flags on the capture-able buildings have French flags on them. None of the defending AI is firing at me. I run into one of the buildings to capture it ("taking the table"), but the flag does not change.
I run around the base some more, and one of the defending AI gunners starts to shoot at me (the others don't). I circle around the gunner and put some rounds in him, no effect. I go back to my previous spot where he starts firing at me again and I put some rounds in him....no effect. I try and capture other buildings, flags don't change. Another friendly player spawns in a tank, defenders don't fire at him. Tank is able to kill AI defenders but my rifle has no effect. The other player and I are unable to figure out why we can not capture enemy buildings. Other player leaves.
I spend some time praticing the movement keys and firing at buildings when an enemy armored unit appears. It's one of those open-wheeled 6 tire thingys. I shoot some rounds at it as it tries to navigate the front gates into the base. My aim looks true but I see no indication that I am hitting it and I hear no sound. Then a head pops out of the top hatch. I put a half dozen rounds into his cranium, no effect. I move into a building and fire at his head through a window from about 10 feet away, no effect. I move and stand directly behind the vehicle and put 10 more rounds into this vehicle's commander, no effect. The player turns the turrent and kills me.
Has anyone else played a trooper? When I do, I CONSTANTLY hear vehicle engines, even if none are around. Vehicles on the distant horizon are just as loud as ones on top of me.
The game manual makes no mention of calibrating joysticks. Has anyone figured this out?
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You have broadband?
Do you know anyone playing with a 56K dial-up?
Where are the servers located anyways? Curious, just because it may be a long distance for me... and 56K + distance + lots of data= very bad.
EDIT: I'm only interested in the flying aspect.. heard reports of poor physics modelling in the air (AGW).. Is the flight modelling aspect done or are they going to continue working on it?
-SW
[ 06-07-2001: Message edited by: SWulfe ]
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Thx Fscott, can't wait to give it a go tonight. :D
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Sounds great - but the frame rate is a real downer.
I have a 1.2 GHz Athlon , Prophet II Pro and 256 CAS2 Crucial RAM - I guess I would get similar frame-rates to you FScott. But is 17 FPS acceptable, considering the fact that you haven't really seen one of the much touted 'battles'? Also, me having a 56k modem isn't exactly going to help.
To me, it is not. I hope this is something they work on with the highest priority.
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30-40 fps for an Athlon 1.5Ghz Gf2 setup means most likely that about 10 000 people will try the game and log off in disgust. Come back later when they can afford to completely update their system. I seriously doubt the majority of players out there have anything higher than 800Mhz Gf2 or Gf1 systems. Some are playing even with less.
Doesn't sound good for the company - they should have optimized the code more.
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Forget to mention that I'm on cable modem, so that helps with several things as in load times. I typically have to wait 1 min to 1 1/2 min for loading times. And I notice that my activity light on the modem stays on solid sometimes. Perhaps this is why some are having cases of low fps. I would venture to guess that a 56k is only meeting system requirements rather than recommendations.
fscott
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I ending up buying it last night. I could have registered, but I decided to wait for the weekend to do that.
I did download the patch and play around in offline mode. Here is what I though of it:
My System specs:
Athlon Classic 700
256Mb PC133 RAM
GeForce 2 GTS 32Mb
Soundblaster Live! Platinum 5.1
Windows 98SE
DirectX 8
Latest nVidia reference drivers as of 6-6-2001(downloaded and installed them on 6-6-2001)
Offline Performance: I hovered around 35fps. I'll see how it does online this weekend.
Graphics: The graphics are lackluster but serviceable. It is understandable why the graphics are they way they are given that they are trying to display it all from so many different perspectives as well as the scale of the terrain. The color pallet could be descibed as having an "olive drab theme" (colors are all flat greys, browns, green-browns and greens, there is nothing shiny). The models for the tanks and aircraft seemed quite nice.
There is a very annoying polygon that flashes in front of the right side of the Spitfire's cockpit.
Sounds: Given how much I had heard about the sounds, I was quite dissapointed. The sounds seemed to quiet and muffled. They shots weren't "sharp" for example.
Unit Handing: The Spitfire's rollrate seems way too fast. It is a fabric aerilon MkIa and it out rolls the Aces High Spitfire MkIX by a good bit, and as we know the Aces High Spitfire MkIX out rolls its historical counterpart by a bit according to the NACA data.
The tanks seemed very nice. They came accross much better than the Aces High Panzer IV H. It is VERY easy to see the difference between the HE and AP rounds when they hit.
Infantry are very awkward with the default keymap. Once I've reset the keys I'll have a better idea of how they are.
I toonoticed that things spun out on grass too easily. In tanks it was manageable by turning against it, but in the Spitfire it was very easy to get into and difficult to get out of.
Conclusion: It seems to have potential, but there are definate issues that need to be addressed.
Those are my first impressions.
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Cable does help on the load times but does not seem to be a factor while actually connected. A squad m8 (with 56k) and myself (cable modem) while talking on RW see approximately the same fps, with the same class of hardware. Being one of the "Damned 200" I have to say that the groundwar is all I can play with any reliability. In the air its 30fps while tooling about, but when near a battle or multiple A/C I still drop into single digits and fraction land.
A great idea and with more time a great game I am sure. But AH is still THE Air Sim and where I will keep my hat.
P3-750
512MB Ram
GeForce DDR
SoundBlaster Live
Quantum 10k Harddrives
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Originally posted by JimBear:
Cable does help on the load times but does not seem to be a factor while actually connected. A squad m8 (with 56k) and myself (cable modem) while talking on RW see approximately the same fps, with the same class of hardware. Being one of the "Damned 200" I have to say that the groundwar is all I can play with any reliability. In the air its 30fps while tooling about, but when near a battle or multiple A/C I still drop into single digits and fraction land.
A great idea and with more time a great game I am sure. But AH is still THE Air Sim and where I will keep my hat.
P3-750
512MB Ram
GeForce DDR
SoundBlaster Live
Quantum 10k Harddrives
LOL Jim, ain't that some label we got in Beta? I concur with your post jim, same prob here (PIII-800EB, 256k RAM, GeForce 2 PRO 32 meg.,overclocked)
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Why were you called the 'Damned 200', out of interest? I was under the impression there was several times that number in CB.
Too critical of the game, perhaps? ;)
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This is where I learned of them. http://www.lumthemad.net/news/2021.php (http://www.lumthemad.net/news/2021.php)
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Nice review Karnak.
Thanks :)
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Haven't played on-line yet, but the above assesments seem to be fair.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned, that I feel merits it, is how WW2Online handles NOE flying. Any ground very close to your aircraft has VERY high detail. The feeling of velocity is unlike any I have seen in a flight sim yet. I beg for HTC to ummm... try to emulate this concept :)
Its the first thing that made me say "whoa.. cool".
AKDejaVu
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AKDejaVu,
Yeah, that's right on. I noticed that too.
It was actually a little alarming.
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Has anyone read the forum they out up while the 'high traffic load' is happening?
I've looked at it a couple of times today; one moment the 'I want CRS in court tomorrow' crowd seemed to have the upper hand; the next moment the 'Burn the Heretics! And give your money CRS NOW!' crowd was winning.
Interesting reading, and I wonder how many of the people there are actually adults.
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I noticed the same thing Deja.
The NOE sensation of speed is spot on. I hope HTC gets us there too.
Cobra
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Originally posted by Dowding:
Interesting reading, and I wonder how many of the people there are actually adults.
Looks like AH's UBB then doesn't it ? :D
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True,
Planetside, Neocron and all the new MMOL games have persistant terrain. It's the future, the Rats are just the 1st team to do it. Boy, does it take some 'puter power, but the results are amazing. Now that MMOL games include ground vehicles and soldiers, solid trees, bushes and grass will be the norm.
Without them, ground tactics are not accurate. And the gravy is low alt flying. Whew. Nothing like looking up at treetops, heheh. Don't catch a wing! ;)
Cya up...Braz
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Originally posted by Staga:
Looks like AH's UBB then doesn't it ? :D
Eh, I was reading the WWIIOL BBS for entertainment.
Even at the worst moments of the AH BBS, the WWIIOL BB, in terms of WWII knowledge and maturity level, was about 1000% times worse.
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Difference is there kids act like kids but here grown-up adults act like crack-wh__es.
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I noticed the its our 'Cisco switches fault'. Thats utter BS. When I logged in finally yesterday the server threw up a max user error at 500 users.
Peak throughput requirements for 500 users would be around 25Mbps. Thats hardly gonna put stress on a switch. And switches don't drop packets like that. I believe it was an excuse thought up by some non-technical pleeb who doesn't know the difference between a switch and a router.
Looks like a lot of red herrings are being thrown around. Suspect many of the 'CRS' posters are in fact cheerleaders posing as CRS people.
Originally posted by Dowding:
Has anyone read the forum they out up while the 'high traffic load' is happening?
I've looked at it a couple of times today; one moment the 'I want CRS in court tomorrow' crowd seemed to have the upper hand; the next moment the 'Burn the Heretics! And give your money CRS NOW!' crowd was winning.
Interesting reading, and I wonder how many of the people there are actually adults.
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Vulcan, Killer (who made the announcement of their hardware problems) has probably forgotten more about networking than you'll ever know.
You should know who you're calling 'BS' on.
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The WW2OL customers must be the most gullible target group on this planet!
I wish I could get a list of their addresses so I could start selling them false promises $5 a piece :D
They are paying to betatest (ww2ol site says there will be _several_ server resets during the next few days.) and there still are people who praise the game and are happy. Without even 1 hour of online time on them.. LOL.
Everything bad that was projected on the beginning became true.
CRS is probably just now building the clusters that they promised to have.
CRS conned people big time.. Because if they would have betatested the game with 2000-5000 players like everyone were ranting, all these problems would have been solved 1,5 years ago.
What really strikes me is that most of the people still don't see the light. They tried the game, found it unplayable fps wise even offline. Failed to log online after hours and hours of attempts - and even if they succeeded the servers were reset regularly.
After all the flaming I got for warning them on the CRS BB, I feel rewarded now in a weird sorta way :cool:
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Originally posted by Dowding:
Why were you called the 'Damned 200', out of interest? I was under the impression there was several times that number in CB.
Too critical of the game, perhaps? ;)
Not too critical of the game.
There were more than 200 testing.
One bad apple can spoil the whole barrel.
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MrRiplEy the CRS have at least the balls to start such a hughe project,
unlike all the other wise people on the Forums who can only b*tch around *g*
We all know they have not finished their product, should we let them die now ?
or what do you mean with "not see the light". There are enough People
who will support CRS, because they SEE the light :)
Regards
Gh0stFT
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Please take your flames about WWIIOL elsewhere. It's bad enough we have flames about AH here. ;)
Now if you want to objectively post about WWIIOL, that's great! In fact, it's highly appreciated by some around here. However, we (well, I anyways) could do without the juvenile methods used on the Playnet forums. Thank you, and have a nice day! :)
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You've got three sides on the entire thing:
The side who bought the game, believing it would be semi-complete.. They are screaming the loudest with the most asinine threats.
The side who bought the game, knowing it was incomplete and are sitting around patiently (why?) waiting for the game to be brought up to atleast half-assed complete.
The side who didn't buy the game, knowing it was incomplete and wouldn't be anywhere near complete for atleast 3 more months after the release and are reading the above two sides go at each other's throats...
Over a silly game, that you wasted 40$ on. Later on down the road when it's closer to complete, it will also be closer to 20$ in a bargain bin... hell it might even be closer to 10$... Then everyone who didn't buy it will log in to *MAYBE* a better game and have a very good laugh at the two sides above.
Ahhh... it will be sooooo sweet.
:p
-SW