System Requirements

[06 Maestro]

Is the new game going to be similar to CotA in system specs? Will the need for ram be any high?

[Arjuna]

Good point. I haven't yet decided on what they should be. Basically the game will run on any machine that ran COTA. I still have my six year old dev machine ( now a very part time test machine ) and BFTB runs on it, albeit slowly. However, I would recommend a faster machine. I develop on a Intel Quad Q9550 2.83 Ghz box with 4 Gb of RAM and it runs just fine. We'll review the requirements in a few weeks time and let you know.

[06 Maestro]

Thanks for the response.

I'm upgrading an old laptop and was wondering if I could skimp on the ram. CotA actually runs very good on that 5 year old Fujitsu with its 256MB of ram (my vacation and back yard machine). It can hold 2 GB's of PC2700-I suppose I should fill it up.

Some of these new games use 10 times the ram as CotA-strange.

[Arjuna]

More RAM won't hurt. [:)]

[MarkShot]

My own quick testing showed that peak memory requirements are less than 100k which is nothing these days. I think the series has always been more CPU intensive than disk, RAM, or video card intensive.

My guess is that you are running XP. I have a 2004 laptop with 512mb of RAM and XP. It generates quite a bit of disk activity due to the low memory. I think 1Gb is the sweet spot for XP itself. Last I looked, you can get 512mb upgrades for a laptop around $30-$40. Of course, for $1000 you can get a new laptop which will exceed a five year old laptop in every way.

My own experience has been that simulation rate is directly proportional to the number of units on the map. So, there will probably be some smaller scenarios which will play at a good clip and larger which won't. I had the impression that I did some quick checking. I believe COTA's largest scenario had about 300 units and BFTB's largest hits around 600 units.

Maybe when we have an RC, I'll put it on my old laptop (2.53GHz Pentium 4/HT) and I will get you some simulation rates.

[06 Maestro]

Yep, its XP. I was surprised at the cost of laptop RAM-it is about double the cost of desktop types. To get the 2 gigs will cost about 100 bucks. I have already ordered a new battery which was about 110-with shipping.

There are supper deals out there for new laptops, but to get a good 17 costs more than I would like to spend right now. Its typically 3 to 4 hundred more for the extra 2 inches. Playing on a 15 inch screen does not sound good to me-so, I have to upgrade this old one. For a little over 2 hundred I will have a good laptop-the big question is how long it will last. The heat factor from the added ram is another reason I have been pondering how much to add. I just hope that the added heat from the additional RAM is a minor consideration when compared to the battery heat. The old one is cooking-lasts about 8 minutes after unplugging it.

I will most likely get the 2 GB's, just hope it does not melt the machine prematurely. With some luck, it will still be running when Battles from the Russian Front is released.[;)]

[GoodGuy]

ORIGINAL: 06 Maestro

I just hope that the added heat from the additional RAM is a minor consideration when compared to the battery heat. The old one is cooking-lasts about 8 minutes after unplugging it.

Get something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Antec-Notebook-Co ... 32&sr=8-10


Quote from a customer review:

"While the Antec cooler is a very good product it does not serve every notebook computer equally. Before you buy this product ensure that your computer exhausts the hot air to the bottom of the computer. My computer's 5 fans suck air from the bottom and exhaust the heated air to the sides and rear. The Antec only limited the airflow rather than increasing it and resulted in a cooked CPU and motherboard. I still use it to raise the computer up off the desk but do not turn it on."

So make sure you check where your laptop exhausts hot air (bottom? sides? back?), and try to find a corresponding cooling solution. There are plenty of online magazines covering (and reviewing) these kinda coolers. Don't trust customer reviews only, as with them it's like having 10 lawyers (so you have 10 different opinions .... a German saying :p), which may make it hard to find the best solution. In general, Antec makes some good products. But there should be plenty of other coolers with a similar quality level.

EDIT: One more thing...
Never put your laptop on your legs, especially with upgraded memory. I've heard about cases where ppl fried their laptops, even if the ventilation shafts resided at the back or the sides, not at the bottom. Depending on the mobo's layout, the RAM slots may just be above your leg. Use it on plain surfaces only.

[06 Maestro]

Thanks for that link Good Guy. I will get one of those models.

I actually never have used a laptop on my lap. I bought a big bed serving tray which I sometimes use on vacation to do some puter stuff on. That fan device would work well with that.

[06 Maestro]

Hey Markshot-I was about a thousand miles from this forum when this sentence just jumped right out of my memory-a couple of hours after reading it in your post.

I believe COTA's largest scenario had about 300 units and BFTB's largest hits around 600 units.

I do hope that was not a major security breech, but I have to just say that is just amazing. 600 units running under ai of which I suppose about half would be friendly will be a site to behold.

[Arjuna]

I'm not sure if we have 600 units on at any one time, though I had 500 on a scenario this morning. Richard would be best to confirm the largest unit count for any scenario. Some of thes escenarios are quite big and you do need a bit of grunt to run them at a reasonable pace. However, they will still run on older and less powerful machines just slower. ANd yes it is nice to see the AI mounting its operations and ordering its masses to sweep across the map. [:)]

[killroyishere]

Will this game take advantage of quad core processors? I have an I7 X58 motherboard and 6gb of 7 latency ram will that be ok? I never really understood ram speeds and latency can you inform me Arjuna? What's really the difference in 9 9 9 9 and 7 7 7 7 or 6 7 6 6?

[MarkShot]

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[Prince of Eckmühl]

ORIGINAL: MarkShot

postnumber.asp?id=2114111

postnumber.asp?id=2115002

Mark, those links don't go anywhere. [&:]

[MarkShot]

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[Prince of Eckmühl]

ORIGINAL: killroyishere
What's really the difference in 9 9 9 9 and 7 7 7 7 or 6 7 6 6?

In terms of performance, perhaps a percent or two, depending on the application.

[MarkShot]

Not one of my better days ... here you go. Yep, memory or disk is not really going to have much of impact. The game is CPU bound.

ORIGINAL: MarkShot

I am afraid I got heavily tied up today.

Now here is a little tip that I got from PG's Head of Engineering, Paul Scobell.

These days practically every machine you buy will have more than a single processor. I have a system with 4 processors from 2007. Normally (I tend to play very old games), I restrict my games to just P4 (as I have load balanced my system by hand). However, Paul says that BFTB will perform noticeably better if you allocate at least two processors to it, but beyond that there won't be too much of a difference. (I have to run some tests sometime to see this for myself. It should not be hard to do.)

It has always been pretty easy to see that this engine is multi-threaded. For you non-systems types, that means that the engine is almost like two separate programs (like running Word and Excel at the same time). So, imagine that the engine has almost like separate programs running in the EXE, but from time to time the two synchronize and become one briefly before they split off again and run independently. Now, RDOA was out around 2000/1. At that time, such a design didn't buy you much in terms of improved performance (only smoothness). But finally, most are going to benefit from it in terms of performance.

I said you can easily see this. Where? How? Well, the best place to look for this is during a replan. During a replan, the AI gets busy calculating a new plan (strategy and implicit orders) to achieve some objectives/tasks. With many units on the map, this can be very compute intensive. How do you know that this is happening? Well, usually the game clock just comes to a halt.

But because the engine is multi-threaded, even though the game clock has halted due to the replan, the map continues to move and scroll smoothly. That's because the UI is a different thread from the AI. In a less sophisticated design, the map rendering would be refreshed by the same thread as the AI. At periodic intervals, the main single thread would call a routine to render (update) the map display for the user. Thus, in such an outdated design, a big replan would result in the game appearing to lock up. Furthermore, when the game is computationally very intensive, the map would get very jerky and mouse movement too. Well, that's what makes Paul a skilled engineer, since he long ago (before duo core/quad core machines) anticipated these type of issues and built a forward looking design.

---

So, if you have been paying attention, then you may see a sneaky little game clue in this discussion. If you are playing and the clock seems to pause, but none of your forces appear to be propagating new orders, then it is likely that the OPFOR AI just did a replan in a big way. I suppose playing MP, you might take this that your opponent just radically altered his plan. (However, I would have to test this to be sure, but it should certainly hold for SP.)

See you thought there wouldn't really be a useful point in this post, but I got to it eventually!

ORIGINAL: MarkShot

I just wanted to say that I did confirm Paul's comments about one processor versus two. I saw a noticeable improvement in the clock speed on a test scenario of about total 700 units on the map. (This was with what we call the Release Build. We always get two builds a beta and release. Beta has more debugging code and additional beta tools. I think release code should be fairly clean of extra code.)

If anyone was curious, I was getting about 1 min sim = 1 sec real on an Intel QX6700 Quad Core OC'ed 3.2GHz. That's about an hour every minute. From time to time, there would be a clock pause for 5 seconds when like 18:00 was hit the supply system was kicking in.

This looked to me to be one of the larger BFTB scenarios (having more than double the number of units of COTA's largest). Now, of course, smaller scenarios seem to fly on this machine. However, I was pretty happy with this speed on a two year old PC. With this many units on the map, there were units everywhere and fire fights all about. So, it is not like if it is running a bit slower, I am going to get bored.

This is much better than my old P4 2.53GHz run COTA's 300 unit scenarios.

Actually, I am pretty impressed how well it played on this machine which it is showing its age. So, humongous conflict should be in reasonable grasp.

Memory usage was just under 100K which is nothing these days.

Note while running this, I had email, browser, firewall, AV, ... mainly running on other processors. The game was perfectly smooth and XP's other apps were totally smooth while running in background.

[oldspec4]

I'm running an old AMD 3000+ Barton w/ 2 gigs of ram and windows XP. This system has handled all Matrix/HPS/Ageod games to date w/ no problems. This includes HTTR and COTA, although I have noticed the replan slowdowns. BTFB may be the game that finally persuades me to upgrade to a multi core processor for a smoother game experience.

[MarkShot]

Oldspec4,

Given the separation of UI from the AI/resolution engine, the game will run smoothly on a single core ... if one defines smoothly as map scrolling without jerkiness. The real symptoms anyone will notice with a weaker system will be two fold:

(1) The rate of simulated time to real time may not be as fast as some would prefer.

(2) Although the game has 4 speeds (3 and Max with frame dropping), you may not notice it running any faster despite the speed you choose; meaning you have already maxed out your CPU at 100% utilization.

I hope that clarifies things.

[oldspec4]

Thanks Mark for the info. I'm gonna run BFTB initially on my current system but I'm also looking for a rational reason to upgrade in the near future.

[MarkShot]

Okay, I won't say anymore. I don't want to throw water on your sense of urgency for getting a new system.

If you need an official looking letter with the Matrix/PG letter head saying ...

"To whom it may concern, Oldspec4 is in dire need of a new computer. Without one, it is unlikely that he will be able to hold Bastogne and finally drive the enemy back. Please budget the acquisition of a new computer along with other essentials such as food, lodging, and healthcare."

... just let me know.

How's that?

I used to play COTA on Pentium 4/2.53GHz machine (2002). Now, I have OC'ed quad core from 2007. The additional CPU cycles are nice. It allows large scenarios to be played at more than a single speed. I like being able to run quickly through the night or when you are just waiting exit your force.