Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Kieran on January 12, 2002, 09:27:04 AM
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The full version of 1.50 is up on the ftp site. You still need to d/l the 1.51 patch and the Playgate, but it is there for the taking.
Downloading now...
http://ftp://downloads.wwiionline.com
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Tell me how to do it and i will.
DO i just DL all those damn files?
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Sets up smoothly once you get it downloaded, Chaos. My problem is is doesn't find my video card, message sends me to config utility.
I go to config utility. Only selection under Video TAB available for video card is, "Primary Display Driver - display"... I select that and try to run the game offline and get the same message "Unable to find video device" and it sends me to the config utility again.... sigh.
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Hey, I was waiting to answer Chaos until I had solved a prob I was having- the very prob you saw. What I found was this; 1.50 works perfectly, the patch for 1.51 on the ftp site does not. I think I will let the autoupdater do it for me when I try to log on.
Yes, I got 1.50 working. I like the feel of the planes a bit better now, and did notice you cannot knife-edge forever any more. That is a major step in the right direction as far as I'm concerned.
I also went to the live help when I had the error. Now, they didn't solve my problem, but they did act concerned and were helpful. Again, another step in the right direction.
I will post when I have actually gotten online to see how the flying looks. Hopefully it will be worth the trouble. :D
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Ahh, ok. Thanks, Kieren. Now I get to see what all the buzz is about... :)
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Is this the one-week trial program thing that I've heard about?
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Does anyone know how the trial works? Does it include the Beta testers who didn't sign up when it went pay-for-ctd?
I'd like to give it another try, and my playnet account is still alive. But I haven't heard how the trial 7 days goes?
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No, Oct, this is a bit different.
The "one-week" re-eval was changed to two weeks, starting this past Friday. Anyone that was formerly a player and still has a valid key can play during that period. The free download trial has not, as far as I know, started yet. Still, the full verison of 1.50 is up on the ftp site, and you can get an idea of what the planes and vehicles act like offline.
I will pop in the arena and fly a bit and see what I think, but I cross my fingers and hope the frame rate isn't as horrible as I remember...
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and the framerate is beautiful on my machine. maxed at 60 (due to bad monitor refresh rate). Athlon 1.2g processor w/ gf3 ti200. I didnt do much. I rolled around on the runway a bit. Throttle must not have been configured right.. it wasnt working. I'll expirement a little more later on.
oct out
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Bummer so that means I can't try it out.
In the past the offline performance had no bearing on the online performance. So checking out a 100Mb Offline demo doesn't attract me.
Oh well good luck to em, I just stick with AH.
Originally posted by Kieran
No, Oct, this is a bit different.
The "one-week" re-eval was changed to two weeks, starting this past Friday. Anyone that was formerly a player and still has a valid key can play during that period. The free download trial has not, as far as I know, started yet. Still, the full verison of 1.50 is up on the ftp site, and you can get an idea of what the planes and vehicles act like offline.
I will pop in the arena and fly a bit and see what I think, but I cross my fingers and hope the frame rate isn't as horrible as I remember...
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What a POS, it, all I get is:
3D initialization failed
How long until one of the WW2Doesn'tWorkOfforOnline fanboyz pops in here to tell me it's my fault? :p
No wonder the games a failure.
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>How long until one of the WW2Doesn'tWorkOfforOnline fanboyz pops in here to tell me it's my fault?
Buy more RAM! :cool:
Wab
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For those with the d3d initialization problem here is the fix.
DELETE the "Practice Offline" shortcut on the desktop, then go to the start menu and choose "Pratice Offline".
Pratice Offline must be FanboyzSpeak for play.
Click on it then wait 10 minutes for your hard disk to quit thrashing and the CTD to occur....then promptly uninstall and delete the 109mb of trashy coding from your hard drive. :mad:
No wonder the game and company are failing, 1100mhz, 256mb DDR, and a 64mb GF2 aren't good enough?
I fart in CRS and Strategy Firsts general direction, and no...it doesn't stink as badly as the POS they're trying to sell. :(
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Well, here's what I found-
Apparently my former account has been re-activated (even though I gave the game away and don't have the CD key). I was able to get in with nothing more than the big download and Playgate 1.60.
I was immediately updated to 1.51. A box appeared telling me my video couldn't be found (ala Gunthr's description). I went to the settings box and disabled the first two items it displays under video (no frame run ahead, no lock to refresh). With that I was able to run the game and play online.
I went German, as my particular plane of interest was the Stuka. The Germans had Mauberge, and as it looked as though there were bases slightly east being contested, I joined a mission for Stukas. Upon arrival at Berl, I saw a Somua running up the road. I dove, scored a near miss (which means you don't scratch paint) and continued to strafe for a few minutes. Realizing I was wasting time I returned for another load of bombs. Rinse and repeat.
I managed a sortie in a 110. It has lots of ammo, but it won't hurt a Somua. I used up 3 full clips in the radiator and turret ring- all wasted.
The Stuka handles wonderfully, turning on a dime. I still think I could dogfight in it, but time will tell. It definitely won't knife-edge forever now.
The framerate was good, but once again there was a near stoppage when I first approached Berl. It took about 15 seconds to cache all the info before I could safely approach the fight. I would recommend flying level over a city and using the views before trying to engage. Failure to do so is a sure auger.
My system specs are:
AMD XP 1500
20G 7200 HD
GeForce2 GTS 32MB
256 MB DDR (the real bottleneck; needs double that)
Cable connect
I was CTD'd on my last flight, and had been on a grand total of an hour (there were nearly 1,500 users on at that time). Preliminary results indicate it is indeed much better so far, but I have to get into a real mess over a city before I give a final evaluation.
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SNICKER This really adds to gameplay I'm sure. :rolleyes:
Vulcan grabbing a sheep.
(http://members.aol.com/subotai/sheep.art)
The sheep toejamting on Vulcan as he tries to bugger it. ;)
(http://members.aol.com/watchouthubble/meansheep.jpg)
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Actually, I first noticed the sheep while in a tank. Naturally I fired a round and got a nice red spray. ;)
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LMAO at the radio chat there...
hmm those graphics look like toejame. Specially the blood bursts.
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How did vulcan change from French to German so fast?
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My last words on this steaming pile -o- crap, don't be surprised if it uninstalls your video card driver when you uninstall the game, it did mine! :mad:
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D/L'd it, installed it. waited 10 minuets to get into a 109k4, spun around in circles on the runway, uninstalled it, deleted it.
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Not that it matters since you uninstalled it, but you should RTFM. "/" will lock your tail wheel.
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Well I loaded it all up and played 1 mission and quickly left!
It looked pretty much the same as before. My conx was a little better but not enough to make me want to stay.
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Spent all day downloading it on 56k,installed,found my video,spent an hour trying to get throttle working,mapped keys for it,etc etc,deleted,emptied recycle bin......what trashy coding :)
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I just played for three hours...
Opened with an all-out attack by the Germans on our airbase (I was British). Planes were swarming everywhere, but I managed to run the gauntlet and get airborne.
I spun circles for a little bit, looking for an opening to get out. I succeed, and am soon in pursuit of marauding 109's and 110's. I latch on the tail of a 109 and score some strikes, but you have to be close and lay the fire on them to kill them. We went round and round, with enemies and friendlies alike buzzing hither and fro. I landed a few more on him, he began to scissor, and we got pretty low. He made one final reverse and my plane skidded out from under me (with no warning, just gone). Oh well, was my first Hurri flight in months. It did illustrate the Hurri still has nasty spin characteristics.
Next up I bagged a couple, a 109 and a Stuka. Got another couple in the next flight, was hit by something the next, and so on. Was fun, but soon the trickle of planes ended.
Moved north to the next airbase and saw why- we'd managed to contest the airfield and it was closed. Found an Opel running for the city, nailed it, and the infantry that jumped off it. Got stupid and hit the ground flying in for a closer look.
Decided to try the new Somua. Took it for a spin and managed two panzers, but was hit and died one-shot by something (probably an 88 I didn't see). It was just bang-black.
Night fell, and we were defending Berl bridge from their assault. I waited most of the night for the rush that would come near dawn, and at 5am WWIIO time my joystick stopped working.
I can say I had a good time, but I am not sold yet. I can fairly say it is much improved from my standpoint, and is playable for me, but I need also say there is much room for improvement yet.
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Will download it as soon as I get home, I just hope WW2OL survives long enough to become the great game that it's got the potential to be! Woul dbe a shame to see it die before they can really get FM and everything worked out.
Not saying it should die after it's been worked out, that would be even worse.
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I'm only interested in the flight aspect of the game, and it's seen some improvement since the last time I've played, but overall, it still isn't ready. I don't have a killer rig, but it's decent. (900mhz athlon, 512mb PC133, gf2 gts 64mb). I get playable framerates for the most part in the air, however things get choppy over a big battle (where there's a ground war going on, and the air units are going at it overhead.) The absolute worst aspect of the battle is the fact that the game only can display so many objects. This is the case in all games, so overall, it's to be expected that things will vanish on you temporarily. However, when it's the 109 that you're following in your hurricane that vanishes, it's NOT a good thing. It's possible that the coding doesn't take account what aspect you're doing (inf, tank, air) and uses the same priority to "hide" objects from you regardless. In flight, the enemy planes should be the absolute last player controlled objects that vanish. Yet, when I'm chasing an enemy plane over a town, he'll frequently vanish, but I'll see lots of blue names (representing friendly soldiers or tanks) on the ground. The sad thing is that one 109 was seeming to do it on purpose, he'd just point at the town and fly over, not trying to strafe or anything, just trying to lose me in the lag. Sometimes it'd be nice and leave the icon and range still there, but just remove the plane object. I could at least kinda follow him then. It just looked funny seeing red and blue text and circles chasing each other at about 5-10 frames per second... :rolleyes:
The good aspects are there. Sometimes you get shot down or just die and never know what hit you. With no dead 6 view and no check 6 button, if someone gets in your blind spot in a fight, you're in trouble. The immersion of fighting over Europe and over ground units slugging it out are nice (as well as when you're on the ground and planes are duking it out in the air. I know some ground troops had a nice view of one of my kills, as the Stuka crashed about 100 yards in front of them!)
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I really dont need a lot of eye candy to be satisfied, waht matters to me is the 'feel' of it. The FM is.. well.. bunk IMO. I'm sure it could only improve. The feel of being a foot soldier is laughable after playing Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and RTCW. I'm sure this also can only improve from here.
Kieren, how will that one week trial work? Is it a definite to happen in the future? I'm eager to test this out online :)
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awesome..
i got a email from them today saying that it was free for me to play now.. im going to check it out tonight!
(ran great last time i tried 1.5)
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Oct-
All I know is they are supposed to open it to all sometime this month. You might try logging in occasionally to see what you think.
Am0n-
I'm warning you before you start; you aren't going to roll up kills like you do here, and the confusing nature of communications will make coordinating attacks difficult. You can play to live as you have noted in the past, but it is still something you have to get used to. I would also add you have to join missions to have access to the equipment you might want. Personally, I don't like that, but you may find it fulfills your desires as stated in an earlier thread.
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I just downloaded it, installed it.. went fine no probs..
I pressed 'practise offline' button - error message.
Ok, no biggie, I found the setup.exe and set the options to get going.. Still wouldn't run from the desktop icon though, had to make a new shortcut to ww2ol.exe.
Next, I jumped into a stuka.. Ok, nothing in stick works. No throttle, no hat switch function.. I quit the game and went to keymapper.. I mapped throttle, started the game and got to air (didnt even lock tailwheel or anything, just kicked the engine running and up it went..)
Stuka seemed to fly real well.. TOO well.. It went like on rails and hard pulls on the stick snapped the left wing to a stall. Continuous pulling resulted in fast rolls without losing stability on the plane though, just release stick and it went nicely forward. Tried pulling the plane nose-up to stall speed but it made no effort of any kind of a spin.
Bombed a bit on the target circle and was wondering where the heck the bombs went.. Later I found out that the small holes on ground were actually the bomb impact marks. I could see no puffs or explosions from the bombs during bombing. No sound either.
I then landed the plane, ran out of runway and because tailwheel wasnt locked I spinned around in the end. Nose touched ground, plane spinned around, wings touched ground - nothing broke though. Propeller was happily spinning inside the earth and later I found out to my amusement that you can retract and extend landing gear in any plane (except stuka obviously) on ground and it lifts you up like a hydraulic lift. No damage occurred. I couldn't get airborne with the spit or hurri though, for some reason the throttle I just mapped to fly stuka no longer worked and reattempt to map it failed.
Terrain looked fairly nice from air, cockpits were horrid, FM is definately easymode with a touch of keyboard complexity in takeoff..
Infantry mode failed to impress me.. Any FPS of the day beats it here and back. The functionality was at the level of the first DOOM etc.. Shooting while running gave exactly the same gun dispersion as if I was shooting stationary.. heheh.
The game still had so many bugs even offline that I really wonder how on earth ANYONE managed to get in the air with the earlier versions. I think I'll try it during the free weeks just for curiosity.
Getting it for free enables me to leave it with a smile.. I'm really happy I didn't invest my $$ in this product.
That being said, it HAS potential and in some aspects was interesting. If CRS some day over the rainbow manages to root out the bugs, I may give it a go. This just isn't the day yet.. And I don't even see the silver lining on the cloud yet.
Feel free to comment, was my €.02 worth.
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"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
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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.. :)
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From the WWIIO forum concerning "Blen Wrestling" (http://www5.playnet.com/bv/wwiiol/dg_message.jsp?group_id=8802&parent_id=76309&BV_SessionID=@@@@1725552557.1011049957@@@@&BV_EngineID=fadcdcjmfgkibjjcgmcggichhl.0)
I'm afraid this speaks loads about the supposed sophisticated damage model.
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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.
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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. :D
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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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I thought that WW2OL was supposed to be completely free of the update limitations..
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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
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i just ordered 512 more megs of ram..
:D
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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.
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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.
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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 :(
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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