Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Vulcan on December 31, 2002, 10:18:05 PM
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Heres an update ladies: I was again suffering AH burnout (all that stamping your feet at moderators, yelling and screaming at La7 dweebs, it wears you out). With the 'Welcome Back Soldier' offering I decided to once more delve into WWII Online and see how things have progressed.
I downloaded the latest version, 1.73, installed it and away we went. The first few days was really getting re-orientated and getting my controls setup.
First points are good. One of my criticisms of ww2ol was the razor-blade terrain - long rows of razor thing grass good for cover from one angle. I was happy to see not only have they fixed this with 'bookends', ie chunks of cover at each end perpendicular, they'd also added top horizontal cover. So now trees for example, cover in all 3 dimensions. This puts the cover not on par but a bit better than games like OFP.
The game also looks a lot prettier, with better hi res textures. The long distance views are really nice. The only thing really missing is a bit of depth fog. There is depth fog right at the edge of your range of vision, there should be more closer in. At the moment you can see sharply for a good 3km.
I played only Axis, and focussed primarily on the ground war. I flew a few air missions and quickly decided that this wasn't the part of the game for me.
After a while you realize there a few key points where the battle tends to 'rage' back and forth. For me this was the front at Flavion. Flavion was occupied by the Allies and to its East were 3 towns occupied by the Axis. After a week of hard out playing (and nearly getting divorced) I started to get a good grip on the game. So its a good idea to find a spot like this, then you learn the terrain, layout, and really enjoy yourself.
The game has, imho, taken a turn for the better. The gameplay is there, the graphics are coming together as is the terrain and the vehicle set. Whats more a smart thinking ground pounder can do exceptionally well. The cover the new graphics provides allows for effective ambushes, flanking manoevres and all sorts of fun. Axis tanks have speed, manoeverability, but not the armour or firepower. Allied tanks are slow beasts but tough. Playing Axis my hit and run fighting worked extremely well (ie setup ambush point, hit the close from behind, make the kill, pull out setup new ambush point). You can really enjoy yourself, theres nothing quite like ambushing a couple of allied tanks from behind as they roll past you.
There are still so extremely dweebish things, just like AH has, and also some real issues CRS need to fix.
First of and most frustrating is the mission structure and rank. To earn rank you must complete missions, basically for a tank this means spawn, be out at least 10 mins, make a couple of kills and rtb. You can't post missions until you reach a certain rank. You can spawn a limited set of gear without missions, but usually this is useless gear. And if you spawn non-mission you don't seem to earn any rank points.
Which is OK except, say you're on in the wee hours, the Dinant Firebase is getting attacked, no senior guys are around to post a mission, you can only spawn crap armour to defend it (if any), and even if you do a good job you don't get recognised for it. Theres also a bug, once you hit Sgt you get limited to a small number of tanks and infantry you can spawn as. Theres a 'cheat' though, apparently if you spawn a heavy transport and sit in the garage for 10 mins then despawn you get rank points. Theres similar bugs for the airforce too.
Next major gripe, the damage model. If you guys think AH is bad, whoa horsey, you ain't seen nothing yet. I am of the firm belief CRS has some old croney reading tarot cards out the back to calculate damage. I have ambushed allied armour, like Chars and S35's, hit them with the Stugs 75mm AP from 200 yards, 6 times, and the buggers have driven off like nothing has happened. Similarly you might be driving along the road happily humming away then whack whack whack - your engine is dead and you see a D520 buzz past. Yes an aircraft with a single 20mm Hispano and 60 rounds of HE ammo can take out any armour the Axis put up with ease (even from shallow 20 degree attacks).
Then theres the Panhard, this little armoured car wields the power of an M1A1 MBT, not only does it have the most amazing gun (supposed to be 25mm but I swear its got a howitzer), it has a bug where if you kill it the gunner doesn't die, so CRS have enabled a server forced despawn 20 seconds after the commander dies. That 20 seconds usually allows the uber-Pan to obliterate you as revenge. One would think with such major issues this vehicle would be disabled, but alas no. Currently the Axis strategy is shoot the panhard, stop firing and hope he doesn't see you before the 20second auto despawn activates.
Infantry is ... interesting. Most uses I saw of infantry were, ummm, one way missions. Basically storm the enemy town, grab the CPs, rush the bunker. If we die oh well grab another Opel and do it again. In fact 'organised' in WW2OL seems to only refer to this - either an organised FB killing run, or an organised Bunker rush. I saw no use of infantry in say like OFP ways, ie patrols, combined armour moves etc. Which I found a bit disappointing. What I also found annoying was the netcode sucks when it comes to infantry. The update speed is bad, so bad it makes proper infantry and squad combat 'flakey' at least. Trying to track guys with SMGs is a joke.
Having seen the bad side of things, its interesting to note that I've gone from slamming the game engine to actually exploring the gameplay. Which says a lot about how far the games come. Which is good news. But CRS really need to ramp it up, on my list of to do's for them I'd put:
- the need to look at their netcode, especially the infantry sid
- they need in game vox BADLY, this game is all about teamwork and relying on 3rd party product like RW doesn't help
- they need some fog/weather effects a la OFP. Distance viewing is just way to sharp.
- if vehicles are obviously bugged they need to disable them til they are fixed
- they really need to rework the rank/mission system. Honestly they need to take a peak at AH's perk point system
- I'd also like to see a semi-auto driver a la OFP, where u can order the driver to stop, turn left right go forward etc from the gunnery position
- they need to sort out the server lag (especially vehicle lists in missions)
One thing I did notice, around 25% of the people I came across were trying the game out again. Either on free trials or reactivated accounts. I also noticed a lot of squeaking, covering ALL of the above. If CRS want to keep these people they need to work on it fast.
I'm 50/50 on whether to stay or not, which is a big turnaround from my last view of the game. I'll stay til the freebie ends then review it at that stage.
Let the flames begin...
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If you think theAxis have it bad against the D520 you should try playing as the brits.
A couple of days ago for the first time i got into a mission and we all formed up ready to advance together etc... About 5 mins after leaving the FB, two 110s arrived and slaughtered us all. I was waiting around for ages waiting for people to join in the mission- and we lasted all of 5 mins.
I've given up on the a13, i brew up with 1 hit everytime. I mainly use the vickers now and go hunt infantry- killing infantry boosts my ego.:) Although it's sooo slow, i can't get it out of 2nd gear offroad. If i shift it into 3rd the revs slowly die so i have to travel everywhere in 2nd gear with the engine going nuts with the high revs. I also like hiding in some bushes gunning in a 2pndr, that's usually fun.:)
The rank thing to post missions makes me laugh sometimes. There can be a town under attack maybe 2 towns away from an airfield but no-one has enough rank to post a mission to defend it. All these guys are asking for air cover but it was pointless because planes came into defend it in drips and drabs. If someone could have posted a mission to defend it, it coulda stopped the town from falling.
I quite enjoy the tank aspect of the game, the infantry aspect is nothing special and the flying part of the game is pants (due to the FM being somewhat half complete).
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I've had about the same experience as you Vulcan. I recognize the improvements, and the game is much better, but it's still not where it needs to be to keep me around.
The biggest improvement I noticed was the sounds. Now they are actually somewhat accurate in regards to direction and distance. The ambient sounds are a nice touch too. Still, there are too many warts for me to pay anything for it.
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I've been meaning to take up the welcome back offer, not that I've got a puter to properly handle it...but I'm buggered if I've got the time....
Tronsky
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Oh yeah forgot to mention, 512Mb ain't enuff.
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Vulcan, ive been playing WW2OL in the welcome back soldier promo for about 2 weeks now.
Here's my views:
Air War: As laughable as it was the day the game was launched. Views are horrible, the keymapper is so buggy I can barely map my MS FF2 stick (it wont map my throttle stick nor rudder pedals correctly, it detects them as the same axis *sigh*). I do LOVE their icon system and the "feel" of flight the pilot's bobbing head effect gives.
Right now theres a horrid bug that allows german planes, namely the Bf110C4, to take all ammo from any allied plane in hits at point blank range, have its engines smoking and the plane on fire and the 110 will fly and fight as if nothing had happened. Think of the AH Zero on fire, but this one dont blow up after a little while, it actually keeps fighting AND outruns any allied plane to boot (110 outrunning spitfire? huh???). CRS has posted a "we fugged up, sorry, but you can still kill a 110 if you hit its pilot!" post :rolleyes:
Oh and the FM sucks so bad it hurts.
Btw, the 520 with the hispano will kill pz2 and armored cars from any angle, the P3 and 4 require from-top hits, just like the 109s and 110s need from-top hits on allied tanks. There is an issue with the HE working vs tanks, just as inf. grenade's HE blast goes through the armor and hits the crew inside. Its also on their to-fix list. Now the 520 will only have this HE bug kill the crew if the hispano round lands right on the location of the crew (which with a fast firing cannon is not hard).
Ground:
Tank Vs Tank is a game of luck. Ive played both axis and allied gear, the axis has a HUGE advantage with their optics. Allies have Char and Matilda which are comparable durability-wise with the Pz4. I drive mainly the A13 (i love that cannon buggy), and ive sneaked around and PARKED myself bumper to bumper on a pz and put 12 rounds into its rear engine and turret and what not... pzr turned turret, kilt me with 1 shot and drove off. After that I quickly learned that since CRS is utterly incompetent, I should instead take advantage of their FUBARS.
So vulcan my boy, whether you play axis or allies, shoot the enemy tank from LONG range so that your shells arc and land on a TOP ASPECT on the enemy tanks. With the minimal armor they have up there, even an A13 will 1-hit kill a Pz4 if you lob a shell that way. :D
Infantry is the saddest part of the game. CRS has forgotten the foot soldier. Towns and terrain are actually designed for TANK fights, no matter how much they claim they added cover for infantry (in fact the added cover benefits tank far more than infantry!). The only, the one and only role, purpose and job the infantry does in the game is to capture flags. They cannot attack, cannot defend, cannot dig in or anything of that sort. Rifles are bugged in that they cant kill at short range (thus most german riflemen run around with their luger out), SMG's are quake and sappers, now being the only unit that can blow FB's, are nothing but suicide bombers. Added to their woes is that infantry are extremely easy to spot even when "in cover" thanks to what i call the "blinking pixel" effect. Even at 900m range, without binocs, a rifleman or tank can spot a single infantryman in cover. Why? the moment that enemy infantry (Ei) rotates to scan its surroundings, his pixels overlap with terrain pixels. Creating a blinkblinkblinkblink pattern that screams for attention. In the case of tanks, see blinkypixel, aim blinkypixel, spray blinkypixel with MG, get kill. Scan for more blinkypixels. repeat.
Oh, and tank MG's have minimal dispersion up to 1000m range, you can easily expect to put 95% of bullets through a building door at max range (CRS has said MG bullets dissapear at 1000m).
Overall, WW2OL ground war is fun..if youre a tank. Air War is fun if you dont know better.
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My spit out turns 109s. I'm surprised you didn't get the keymapper to detect correctly. Did you switch to JS Axis and manual map them to your Z and Z rot+-?. I have my pedals mapped to steer the tank and track tow-ers. Throttle is mapped the center brakes when off and throttle when on. Engines on the multiengined AC seems to work correctly. They lose power over time and if not landed they will fall out of the sky. Fuel tank fires are another matter. You can't visually see the difference. Killilng at short range for inf, you should aim at their pelvis. Guns are Battle Sight Zeroed for 200 meters. I don't play INF enought to be familiar with any problems. No 110 has ever out run my spit. Max RPM settings will catch em every time but you have to watch the heat buildup. Hurris cannot catch them. If you are in when I am there, give a holler and will do a mission to Glitze and see what the problems are.
HC
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The 110 does die, I flew it a few times and took some hard damage.
Interesting to hear the other view of the ground war. I have exactly the same problem, 1 shot kills my gunner/commander etc in PIII or PIV. Especially hits from the Pan.
I probably won't stick around. Theres a lot of unhappy axis players with the historical aspect, apparently the Hurri IIC is coming. IMHO this is just plain stupid, the RAF already has the Spit which was actually held by from France by the RAF. Then theres the Pan, rumour is its getting the 40mm (2lber?) gun, which never saw action. And it looks like the 520 armour killing ability isn't going to be fixed.
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vulcan, hard damage from what?
AI AAA is the ONLY thing that has ever brought down my 110 from damage (non-pilot damage that is).
Ive had 2 spits on my 6 shooting like madmen while I plinked them with my tail gun.. I shot down 1 before I went to return to fly the 110..and found my pilot so wounded I could barely see through the haze. Plane on fire on both wings and fuselage but I still rtbd and landed.
On the hurri I do get control surface damage, which is neat.. but ive never ever ever ever ever have had it in the 110, and when you got multiple cons firing at something AS big as the 110 chances are they hit the wing far more than the fuselage, and yet, no control surfaces lost. ever.
Oh, and in WW2OL, HO's rule. Ho anything, a 109, a 111, a 110... kill the pilot if you get a little stream in his face. Ive started to give up on saddling on 6 and just HO everything I see. mwhahaha.
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Umm I think it was a H75 or mebbe a D520.
WW2OL has such a simplified FM its like playing Tie Fighters vs X-Wings.
I'm there for the ground war too. But seeing Panhards at about 2:1 vs all other Allied tanks combined makes the game a bit sad.
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I suspect you're wrong, Vulcan.
HC
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My experience says differently on the flight model. Rick hates playgate. Most ppl do.
HC
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Man I hate to punt his and continue the point of the 500 post, but one of my X-mas software gifts like the Janes’s Naval pak with F/A18 right out of the bargain shelf, was also the WWII ONLINE “Readers Choice Edition”. Fair enough, I asked for any software that was cheap and had anything to do with WWII. Had to laugh though, I can only imagine they stock old titles like them kinda like the “bin shoes” in K-mart where they bind those super sporty tennie boppers with a piece of plastic tie and you have to dig through the bin for your size.
Anyway, it was several days till I got to loading it, as I mentioned F/A18 patched on high graphics turned out to be quite good present. But I did finally load it.
This is as fair as I can be, and with all of TC’s posts since I loaded my first self bought $40 copy, I was not excited, but intrigued(?) I guess.
After loading what “the readers choose” as the new version, I set up my free trial. Then proceeded through at least ½ hour of patching. One, after another, after another. Would 6-10 be fair to say? Hell, I don’t know, but as annoying as it was, I was thinking patches are good and didn’t mind. AH guys half crap themselves on the mention of patches, so this was just bonus stuff I guess.
When prompted for at least the 3rd time through out the patch process, I chose MAX graphics just to get the goodies, thinking I would tweak it later if it was the RAM pig slide show of the original version reared it’s head again. That wasn’t necessary. When I finally got in the game, it was really smooth. Cool. So off I went.
The interface for a noobie left a lot to be desired but I tried a soldier. I couldn’t find anyone, so set out towards the nme lines. I loved the vastness of the map, and it felt like you were in the country. About 15 minutes later of running like I was a marathon champion with only my finger going numb, I realized 2 things. The graphics were hideous, and it was boring. Well, I’m being fair, so it’s actually 3 things. You have to know the game to have any fun at all. I finally ran into a field and died. A slow, painful death, I sat with a black screen for awhile from something I have no idea what. Chat, and kill messages weren’t really appearent. Finally I got back to the menu, and tried a tank.
Now tanks are cool. Still look like toejam and aren’t as easy and fun as BF1942, but I loved the hint at realism, gears and speed. Off I went. Had a plane strafe me, and with the limited graphics, this still looked cool. Then a gun from way out ( I think) shot tracers at me and I diverted off the road. Then sat in a red, then black screen. Hmmm, must have to learn the game, because the graphics suck so bad, guys are good and Im missing the gameplay.
So off to offline mode to try aircraft. Hey! It is BF1942 without the fun!
Then I deleted my free trial 2 hours into it.
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Thx for sharing. Nice read.
I think I'll wait just a weeeeeeee bit more. ;)
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You should have d/l the full install from the D/L page. That cd is a least 4 update behind. Spawn in a town with a fight can save you a run. Tune the OOB frequencies that are on the OOB page. 55 is brig air, 5 is ground,there are others, axis has similar set freqs. Ask for a ride is you manage to spawn at a FB near a city fight. Sorry you didn't have any fun. Graphics seem fine at 1024 with all the bells and whistles turned on, but to each is on. Have fun with 42.
Gee toad..a newbie who didnt have a clue posts his lack of gameplay and you take that as a worthy critique. I think you really don't intend to play anyway.
HC:D
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Stand down from this one Toad, I could almost have wrote tardcase’s response, and knew he’d miss my entire point. I thought it would be quick, but didn’t know he’d be waiting on it like a organ donor. I’m about 7 minutes behind. (I did enjoy the sobbing cynical “newbie cant play, neither will you” sarcastic touch I couldn’t have hoped for any more)
TC, I shouldn’t have downloaded anything. I bought the first disk long ago, and smashed it, reasons apparent, no need to rehash. But this was a Dec 24th store copy.
So lets go from a new users standpoint, and not consider I’m not completely retarded and have played sims for 13 years, but still a buyer that would be attracted to the boxed $14.95 “Reader Choice Edition” of WWIIOL.
I should have know to “ d/l the full install from the D/L page. That cd is a least 4 update behind.?
Really? You explain that to the buyers of that new disk, no sense me pointing out how ridiculous that is.
I could have lengthened my post to explain that a newbie WOULD be completely miffed, and I was, and that left a lot to be desired to keeping a players interest, at the critical stage of introducing a game. A pay to play game at that. But I left that out just so you could point out WWIIOL misses the mark entirely in this aspect. It’s kinda the point.
And we won’t argue graphics, your opinion just doesn’t correlate with mine, which is fine. I’ll have fun with BF1942 other than it’s aircraft section, because regardless of complexity, it delivers interface that’s fun, user friendly, and intuitive. Aside from the toejam samich graphics, WWIIOL with that going for it might be terrific. What a concept.
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Originally posted by Vulcan
WW2OL has such a simplified FM its like playing Tie Fighters vs X-Wings.
Shame on you Vulcan! You should know by now - as Hardcase has tirelessly repeatedly pointed out on this board - that in any area where ww2ol physics and reality differ, it is reality that has got it wrong. Presumably we all just have to hope our stupid universe will get it right in the next patch. :D
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Oh, I HAD intentions of playing, back when I was a WW2OL beta tester.
But some of the very things Creamo just mentioned irritated the dew out of me back then.......
............and I see they are STILL present like the trip to the 8th dimension purgatory after you die. In those hideous old days, it always made me wonder if WW2OL had locked up my machine again. Maybe THAT was the excitement......
Like I said. Maybe I'll wait a weeeeeeeee bit longer.
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Stand down from this one Toad, I could almost have wrote tardcase’s response, and knew he’d miss my entire point. I thought it would be quick, but didn’t know he’d be waiting on it like a organ donor. I’m about 7 minutes behind. (I did enjoy the sobbing cynical “newbie cant play, neither will you” sarcastic touch I couldn’t have hoped for any more)
Anyone can throw barbs, but few do it with such panache. As for the rest of the debate, no thanks. :D
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Graphics seem fine at 1024 with all the bells and whistles turned on
On my system (1.2GHz 512mb GF3 64mb) it barely runs satisfactorily at 800x600 @ 32bit and often drops to low single fgures when there are a few vehicles in view. Considering the dated looking engine I expected better performance.
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It looks dated because its online. The budget of Polys is tight. Did you run it with High Performance checked? Few other tweaks can be done. It needs all the free ram it can get. PPL runing say XP lose more than 100+ megs just loading the OS. Datter is running ww2 with almost that same rig and flying. Give a post over at the community forums and maybe we can up the fps for a few. BTW, Nvidia is optimized for 1024x768x32.
HC
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Tried it again (I was a subscriber for a good few months but when I cancelled my credit card and ordered another one, I couldn't be bothered to tell playnet).
Played for about an hour, before deciding I had more interesting things to be getting on with - I managed to read a few more pages of Antony Beevor's 'Stalingrad' whilst taking a most satisfactory dump.
Apart from the brief interlude with WW2OL, it was a most pleasing day.
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"Tough crowd, Tough crowd!"
:D
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I think Warbirds III has shown you don't need low polys just because it's an online game. It looked dated the day it launched and I still find much of the terrain has a washed out look. I've tried running it at various settings and still not got a satisfactory detail-performance ratio. Is the free trail still running? I cancelled my account in November and briefly tried online at the start of the trial period. I have a HOTAS Cougar profile to test. The memory requirements are still laughable IMO considering the dated look of the game, newer more detailed sims run just as well on lesser machines. One other aspect I find frustrating is there not being much of a visible indication of hits on AC, all you get is some hokey looking smoke that changes colour, no debry or hit sprites. They have also made the radio system overly complex and the documentation for the whole game is very poor.
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How many cities does WB3 have? Bridges, trees etc. It is not just the polys on the ac in ww2ol taking up the budget. Frying Tiger is not a slouch at coding graphics, it is a lack of budget so that ppl with p3 800s can play with a decent Frame Rate. Graphical damage is wanted by everyone. It is on the front burner and I am looking forward to its implementation.
HC
I know ww2 will never look like a standalone or 32 player peer to peer game. Just the nature of the beast.
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What do you regard as a decent framerate? I very much doubt someone with a P3 800 would get a respectable frame rate, at the moment (been online the last hour or so testing my Cougar config) I'm getting lots of stutters and the whole interface seem to lag at the start with key presses not being reported in the game. FWIW the cities in Warbirds look much more realistic particularly from the air and the ground clutter is not all that special in WW2OL, they are like carboard cut-outs like walls etc and hardly beyond either Warbirds or AH's engine I suspect. Graphical damage is definately needed, just ended a tank mission in a vickers (think it was anyway) and got credited with damaging an me110 but had not clue I had done it whilst in action.
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Ok now some questions...
Hatch control (key 'h') does'nt seem to do anything on the vehicles I've tried so far (key 'h' is also to hitch field guns so is this an error in the keymapper?)
Also mixture control, is there a visible clue to what setting it is at or does it even work at all as so far it does'nt seem to do anything (Left CTRL-M, Right CTRL-M and Left SHFT-M)
Also jettison bombload, open bomb doors and deploy weapon all mapped to 'd' key?
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I think the point that the fan boys are missing is this: They say that in order to enjoy the game you need to play it long enough that you know what you're doing and aren't a newbie.
Well....in order for that to happen, the game would have to be interesting and good enough to hold my interest while this process takes place. The game is a boring turd....
Little catch 22 there eh
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Actually all you have to do if find a fight and finding a fight is not that hard. Once you take a mission you are tuned to the mission and the objective channels and from there you just play on. Being a newbie is not a problem, not trying to even begin to play is the problem. Walking for 20 mins is silly, then blaming the sim.
HC
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The O key opens hatches and cockpits. H is used to hitch towed guns. The ' key toggles the three settings up and the ; key drops them down. Econ, continous and Max rpm settings are avliable. Can you fight in any wb3 city, get into the bildings? You are comparing apples and organges.
HC
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I fired it up and tried it again. After about 1 hour I decided I'd rather be reading "The Bear and the Dragon". Those that have read the book know exactly what I mean.
AKDejaVu
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I would'nt want to go into any of the buildings in WW2OL the paper thin walls ruin the immersion in an instant and the FPS component is very poor at best.
So what does the hatch control do? it's in the keymapper is it there by error?
I have the RPM controls mapped to my stick already but it's the mixture settings that don't seem to actually do anythign in the game, is this another feature not yet supported or an error in the keymapper? The sooner I can nail down these spurious keys accounted for the sooner I can get my profile done and I'll post it up for others.
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Tried WWOL again(4th time?) and I finally thew the box in the trash!
Biggest waste of time and money I've ever seen!
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I believe the only engine controls at the moment are the RPM speeds. The Hatch=H..beats me. I have H mapped for towing, the O opens cockpits and hatches on tanks..door on trucks, does other things on other type vehicles.
HC
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Mmm what I thought just an anomally in the keymapper, just wanted to be sure they did'nt actually do anything before removing those commands from the profile. Spent somemore time in a tank trudling around Gent, did'nt have a clue what I was doing and the players not very helpful apart from demanding alift then not actually saying which direction they wanted to go...ah the life of a taxi driver in WW2OL. Still have very unstable FPS, it can be around 45 one moment, then back to 25 then to 2 for no apparent reason and all the time still stuttering even when at best FPS. Clouds not the big problem they used to be although my FPS went from 35 to 15 diving back down from 13k.
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I was actually having a little fun this time out but with the next to last patch, continuous CTD's. The last patch didn't fix anything so...going to try again tonight, if I CTD, I cancel my account and throw the the thing in the garbage.
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FWIW, my last attempt this time around ended in CTD. Just sayin'.
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Let me know when they offer a free trial pass for a couple of weeks, I'll try it out then. The whole "Battle Crusier 3000AD" aspect of the launch has left a pretty bad taste in my mouth for rewarding them with any cash before I personally feel it is fully justified.
Charon
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Not so much a nobody but squads tune out default radio freqs and they simply don't hear you. You should have been tuned to the mission freq and the objective freq. As to where you were needed...Gent:-). Someone computed that we spent 5k ppl defending it and depleting the 3 towns next to it. That thingt you didnt see could have been and probably was some air assets, Stukas are a bear on infantry. I drove a Matty 25 mins from an outskirt town to have my engine damaged by that 109. I was about 2 mins from Gent when the engine gave out. War is Hell. I'm sorry you didn't get hooked up with a squad. You were in the thick of things at Gent. We finally lost it last night.
HC
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Missions are usually just objective bound. You launch and head for the fight. You should be able to get a ride from a busy launch point to the objective. This will tune two radios to mission and one to objective. The objective freq includes any air, land sea otw to that particular target. Grab a mission and just expect to be in a fight. Some ppl post more info on a mission but most are minimal on info. They assume you will get to the fight and see what is needed. You can put a timer on launching a mission so that ppl can bunch up, but once it begins, ppl stragle in unless they are fairly well organized. Alone is just a really tough way to play.
HC
The air war is picking up. More ppl able to play further down the processor line. I got that 109 but someone got me from in town. Some AAA guy.
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Each time I launched it was in somebody's mission and each person that received a lift from me on my Vickers 'herrock' and 'king163' were both on the same channel as I, enough to ask for a lift but not to actually explain what we were going to do to capture or make and progress, infact 'king163' openly called me an idiot because he was killed by an AI guard tower. There were many more tanks and troops aroudn Gent who never answered my pleas for help even though they freely chatted amongst themselves on the same radio channel.
WW2OL's communication system is clunky enough without the community doing it's best to ignore new players (or in my case old timers returning and learning the ropes again)
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Rats agree on the comm being not up to what they want in the final analysis. You gotta remember, most ppl don't have an idea of a big plan and just arrive and kill stuff and try to take back flag points. Hell, you step up and decide what to do and take command:-) I bet lots of ppl would enjoy having someone lead em. If you are ever on at night, tune to my ID, and we will get into something.
Just for giggles...My High FPS settings.
High Performance
Nvidia are optimized for 1024x768x32
Some ppl have to go to 800/600x16..play with 16 and 32 bit settings
NoLockToRrefresh is checked
2d and or 3d sound settings..test for best fps
Sound Driver is for your Card and not Generic d3d
slider to midlevel
Depending on the number of voices your sound card can produce in hardware, voices seem to work best at 16
All LOD boxes checked, shawdows to none, bullets to 16
Only box checked in Textures is reduce textures.
This is pretty much the fastest settings you can have.
HC
HC
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CRS should give the code out to the community.
Falcon 4 was a bug ridden POS piece of software (due to the publishers idiocy, not the programmers) until the community got hold of the code.
It's taken years, but now it's in a state that's quite good. PLUS it's evolved from being an F16 only sim to one where you can fly loads of aircraft (including my favourite; the F4 Phantom, still waiting for the F5).
There are people in the community that are better at what they do than are the CRS. Plus, Open Source means the best code/design for a particular task is chosen; it is not just given to a person who is reasonably good at it and will give it a shot.
WWIIOL looks dated, yet performance is horrible. With F4, it took a couple of years before the average machine could run it satisfactory. WWIIOL is following the same path, only doing much, much worse.
Now I have to go to the bank to lend money so I can pay my rent. Toodlepipski.
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I tried it again....seemed better than before.
The truth of the matter for me personally, is that I just don't have the time to invest in learning another sim. Maybe ina few when I retire.
As to HC's cheerleading, I respect and admire his love and loyalty to a product and team...in the final analysis, if he is having fun, that's what it should all be about.
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Well, after re-joining WW2OL during the last "Welcome Back, Soldier" promotion, I took another shot at trying to learn and love this game.
Alas, it was not to be. I just can't fall in love with an online game like this where interaction between the combatants is non-existent. I'm one of those who think that WW2OL could use an open radio buffer. I guess I thrive on all the different personalities you meet and kill online in games like AH. In WW2OL, it is difficult to meet anyone, even people in your own country!
I've tried twice now to like WW2OL, but both times I've found myself bored and lonely. I just cancelled my account again for what will probably be the last time. I don't think I'll be trying it again.
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Originally posted by Vulcan
Next major gripe, the damage model. If you guys think AH is bad, whoa horsey, you ain't seen nothing yet. I am of the firm belief CRS has some old croney reading tarot cards out the back to calculate damage. I have ambushed allied armour, like Chars and S35's, hit them with the Stugs 75mm AP from 200 yards, 6 times, and the buggers have driven off like nothing has happened.
Infantry is ... interesting. Most uses I saw of infantry were, ummm, one way missions. Basically storm the enemy town, grab the CPs, rush the bunker. If we die oh well grab another Opel and do it again. In fact 'organised' in WW2OL seems to only refer to this - either an organised FB killing run, or an organised Bunker rush. I saw no use of infantry in say like OFP ways, ie patrols, combined armour moves etc. Which I found a bit disappointing. What I also found annoying was the netcode sucks when it comes to infantry. The update speed is bad, so bad it makes proper infantry and squad combat 'flakey' at least. Trying to track guys with SMGs is a joke.
75mm AP only penetrates like 40mm at 200 meters and Char B1 has wee bit more armour and S35 has pretty good armour as well.
So you would have to learn how to deal with them in order to kill them.
With the Char B1, you must aim for the "grill" on left side or side/rear turret to kill gunner.
S35 again needs to be hit in the side between engine and crew compartment, or side armour around the engine.
Frontally has to shoot at the drivers viewport or bottom front hull where is rounded armour.
S35 has same turret as Char B1, so side/rear turret shots works too, but with lesser guarantees.
Infantry *do* have some excellent use.
They're one of the best tank killers in the game for the Axis side.
If gets to sneak up on allied armour and puts satchel in the correct spot, they're dead easier than with the tanks or guns.
Other fun use is to go distract attacking enemies - set aside road in bushes and wait some truck full of inf drive past you and throw a grenade on it or shoot the tires.
Whats more delightning than to see a Laffly truck full of infantry spin out with a tire blown up and hit a tree by the road :D
Grenades works very good on armoured cars as well.
netcode indeed could update more often.
It's such a pain to see them moonwalking and zip zapping around :(
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Well I've just about given up on it now, got my profile set up but I won't be staying on there it's still soo incomplete. My frustration reached new heights today again over Gent. Ignoring the immersion ruining flashing building tops I engaged in a fight with a 110 that suddenly appeared infront and below me. My framerate jumped from 35-18-2-15-28-15-3-9-12 and it just got frutrating. Climbing up again my framerate improved and I looked for my prey. Again he was below me but his icon appeared then dissapeared and I manouvred into a position to pounce. In and out went his icon and with the limits of the graphics engine planes without icon are almost impossible to see. I dived down as I saw his icon, got in close and he pulled up, I watched him by looking up and forward but his icon again dissapeared then re-appeared. I climbed to relative safety again to reaquire. Again he was below me icon flashing on and off seemingly at will. I dived again and the mixture of poor framerate and the icon dissapearing on and off made me again break off the attack and climb to safety. Turning to track him my framerate dropped again then again until in frustration I headed home remembering all the times past my squad night AAR's in WW2OL were filled with myself and squad mates 'KBF' killed by framerate.
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Revin, what is your systems specs..cpu vid sound ram and what Settings are you running in ww2ol. Just flying into Gent, loading the ground stuff and the ac stuff does bad things to the fps if your cpu/card cant punch em fast. I get the drops but nothing as low as yours. Post the info, might be able to find some fps. It is always best to load a big city first before engaging some bad boys.
HC
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Actually not just their icon winks out, the plane does too. I've been close enough for a really good firing solution several times and the con vanished just prior to my popping a cap on him.
I raised that very same issue several time on their bbs. Apparently there is a 64 person limit, though why the enemy closest to you is the one to disappear is beyound me.
The very issues you raise, are why I canceled my account with them two days ago.
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banana, did you take a mission near or at a contested city? You would be tuned to both Mission and Objective and should have had a bunch of text scrolling by and rides or missions galore. If you didnt take a mission and didnt tune to the Side Default Frequencies..ie..55 is Brit Air, it can indeed become kinda lonely for a newbie or a returnee. If you decide to give it a try, give a holler on my ID, if I am there I will give you some guidance. Try to team up with a squad. Most are more than willing to take the new under their wing.
HC
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AK, i would like to see a toggle to select what you see. As a furballer I would turn off all ground incons and take my chances getting shot down not seeing that pesky AAA gunner.
HC
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they have terrible system for selecting what to render in areas that exceed 64 players. Your experience is typical almost with everyone elses who I have read post about the airwar on this board. The Con in front them dissappears while you can still see ground units rendered. The air war there is a complete waste of time.
Nothing has been fixed from the last 100 plus post thread. Pistols still are the weapon of choice, grenades still kill the entire tank crews, inf still crawl underneath a tank and kill all the crew with their pistols by clipping. The 64 limit is still fediddleed.
Good to see thre rats are well on their way to making the game better.........:rolleyes:
As I said before I am a gluton because I keep re trying the game and still see the same ole crap. To be fair though 3 of my squaddies are digging it. For the tank war though. But they switched to the allies.
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A few updates from me as well.
There invisible 'bugs'. I was inf @ Anhee with about 12 other guys. One guy was running round in circles screaming Char Char firing into the air. I decided to go over and have a look. It was wierd he was running around shooting at a nothing. In fact I walked right through where he was shooting. Then guy #2 near us pipes up and says to guy # 1 "yeah theres nothing there". Then guy #3 whos on hilltop in an 88 says no theres a char there. Then all of a sudden whack whack whack I'm killed by the invisi-char's front Mg. Our of 12 people 3 could see it 9 couldn't, at mixed distances.
Yesterday had a similar thing again. I sat and watched our aircraft over our firebase, and not 50 yards from tracer fire eminated from NOTHING. I'm hearing more of invisible units from other players. Some have also hinted some level of cheating goes on using speedhack. Sad news.
I believe the invisible units relate to the server. Which seems to be shocking at times. When searching for missions the server can take literally minutes to display them. And then the vehicle spawn choice list takes just as long to come up. CRS pop on every now and then to reset the server. More bad coding.
Then theres the uber-Luger. I reported this last time. Well hello, I made it to captain and got myself binoculars. While regrabbing flags in Gent I spotted a brit sniper looking over one of the flags. As a sapper I only had my trust luger, so I thought what the heck. Well one 300 yard shot later one dead sniper. Yes the Sniper-Luger is still there.
Framerates, I also suffer here. I have a XP2100, GF3Ti200, 512Mb DDR SDRAM, and my framerate goes all over. Its pretty simple, watching the HDD its when the game loads up objects. For example, the first time you spawn at an FB, you can watch your fps crawl while your system loads the terrain textures and models nearby. I've tweaked my swapfile as per the postings over there, it made minimal difference. This game NEEDS 1Gb of RAM. End of story. Well screw that.
And more on the comms system. I was part of a mission to the Anhee-Flav FB. I had plenty of ammo left after it was blown without resistance. So I scooted over to Flavion. The guys I was with went back to Profondosomething. Anyway, I couldn't talk to other axis players in Flav. Why, because radio has origin (where u spawned), target, and mission channels. There is no Ch#3 like in AH. What a handsomehunk setup.
Nope, CRS won't see me (and a lot of other trial users) paying, why:
- the overmodeled undying Panhard bug
- the 110 flame bug
- the uber-luger
- the Damage Model run by a Californian 0900 Psychic
- terrible fps
- bad comms system
- some serious
- server problems (lag, invisibilty, menu lag)
- possible cheating
- non-historical setups, ie Spit and soon to be Hurri IIC in France
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I mention my specs previously AMD 1.2GHz (266FSB) 512MB GeForce3 latest Nvidia drivers from their site an a SB Live 5.1 soundcard. Tried various settings of detail and graphics, for the above sortie I was in 1024x768@32 Bit.
What do you mean 'load' a big city? you mean fly by it first and let the system load textures etc? or is there a config file you can edit like WBIII? If it's the former the you have to blow your advantage to fly over the city? that's not a very good system.
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A flyby to load cities, nothing you can to in settings. etc. I lose my icons in air it seems when they dive toward the ground and pull up. Usually when we are co alt they seem to stay just fine. Every bug you have seen has happened to every Rat also. If they were at a point of just fixing bugs, then you would have BF 42. Rats have to add stuff, find bad stuff, fix bad stuff, add stuff, upgrade visuals and audio, add stuff, fix stuff. The cycle is never ending. Fixing stuff..there was a time that having 64 ppl in a fight was a rarity. As the sim improves, stuff that could wait, can't now. ...ie..there is a bug, tied to the physics loop of 50hz. The first person to get 50fps consistently got the bug when flying. The fuel cycles empty to full at 50 FPS or better. It is an annoying wind sound that sounds like a bad rifle firing. I have had it for a year or more. Was it front burner stuff, no. Has it moved up, yes. The sim also drives the bug squishing.
HC
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Revvin the framerate issues in WW2OL relate specifically to it loading textures and possibly models for objects in game. The first time you hit an object load it slows your framerate down. If you have sufficient memory it will hold it. If you move to another area and that memory is required for another object then the framerate goes down while the new object is loaded. If you go back to the original object whammo it gets loaded again instant fps hit.
If you have 1Gb of memory you can hold more of this in ram, hence it cures most of the problem (except the initial object load).
An object could be a town, city, port, or vehicles even. One dead giveaway enemy is near is when you look in a certain direction and your system furiously hits the Hard drive.
One good example of this is 'preloading' @ FB's. When I first spawn, I spawn as a riflemen. Why? Well, you can't tell easily if an FB is camped, and it often takes a minute or two after spawning for the game to finish loading textures. In the meantime you've spawned and are sitting the looking like a handsomehunk unable to do anything because the FPS had dropped to 0.6. Then despawn, choose your tank, and spawn again. 2nd time around instant spawn and you're away.
Basicalyl WW2OL gives new definition to bloatware.
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Sure, half scale map of Europe with increasing number of villages, towns, cities, roads, bridges, castles,air bases, fire bases,vehicles and all the other stuff in there, does make loading stuff problamatic. Either, it loads totally in your system..and that is a huge map and you access from your several gigs of ram, or you load it in as needed. BF42 probably can load its entire game map in ram and chug along easily on 256 megs. Essentially you're a playing in one "Zone". WW2OL doesnt have that luxury
How is this bloatware?
HC
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Most of the textures are extremely repetitive. From treelines, to buildings. If you are repeating textures then your statement relating to the size of the map doesn't hold any water. Take a medium to large sized town, most of the buildings occur several times. Essentially WW2OL is a mass of flat surfaces with textures applied. Theres nothing wrong with that, I think its quite appropriate for the game.
Compare it too say OFP which is very similar (uses a lot of texture mapping to flat surfaces), huge maps also, doesn't require 512Mb even, let alone 1Gb. It acheives good framerates and has to do all the thinking for the AI as well.
WW2OL coding is bloated, end of story, theres no denying it.
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Killilng at short range for inf, you should aim at their pelvis. Guns are Battle Sight Zeroed for 200 meters.
Aim at his pelvis to hit what?
Using PMC 170 grain power soft point (the cheap stuff:)) for target shooting and the most you'd have to compensate for a target at 100 meters would be about 3 inches. War issue was much hotter than I'm shooting too and would probably be even less. Regardless I'm pretty certain an 8mm bullet ought to bring down a target regardless where ya hit it.
btw I'd also like to add I use a K98k and a K43 original German WWII issue firearms each having 200 meters as minimum settings in otherwords anything inside that and kentucky windage applies.
Does it make me an expert? heck no! but aim for the pelvis? c'mon