Question

[HercMighty]

Playing the TSATC Demo and the game as it plays feels jerky and kinda slow. Is this how it is supposed to be, or should it be flowing better?

I beat the system specs by a lot so I am assuming this is the way this game is.

Thanks

[Pat Proctor]

I am not sure about "jerky". I would need a more little information to make a determination on that.

But, as for slow, I guess it depends on what you are expecting. Vehicles move at realistic speeds. Since the squares in the game are 1 km X 1km, it will take a wheeled vehicle about 2 minutes to cross a grid square.

If the pace is too slow, you can always speed up the clock to up to 8X by using the "compression" sub-menu of the "time" menu.

[HercMighty]

Seems like when a battle starts to rage and vehicles exchange fire, it will happen, pause, more firing, pause and so on.... That is what I mean by Jerky. The pauses seem unatural, like the computer is having a hard time staying up with the game.

Just seems a little different than what I am used to in other games and this just might be they way it is. Just doesn't seem to be as smooth during combat as I would expect, but I guess this could be the game letting you see what is happening? I am running at 1:1.

I do notice that my 2.5Ghz P4 laptop with 1.5G Ram is being taxed a lot during play. CPU is hitting 82C so the Game is using a lot of horespower.

[HercMighty]

Nevermind, seems to be okay. Just a new game that I need to get used to.

[CPangracs]

I thought the same as you at first, James - then I realized exactly how many calculations must be made for each vehicle every cycle or every other cycle - you have speed, elevation, terrain modifiers, sighting, spotting, weapon choice, weapon firing, hit/miss,...and those are just a few for each vehicle! Take all of that real time and compare it to, say, a 1 minute TacOps turn (not to pick on TacOps, but it has been compared with the ATF engine). TacOps can actually take LONGER than one minute to complete a 1 minute turn because it does things sequentially - ATF and other "real-time" games and simulations do it all on-the-fly.

I believe Pat once told me that there is 1 MB of data (text) produced for each minute of game time! Correct if I'm wrong, Pat. I work with some of the biggest military simulations out there, and they are not even close to that much data/minute. I'm not saying that's good or bad, just kind of amazing that it all even works - I'm kind of a programming dummy, so I guess I'm easily amazed.

[Pat Proctor]

I am not sure what the actual count on data produced every second is. 1 MB sounds about right though.

The issue is the maps. The maps are WAY more detailed than any other wargame on the commercial market.

For a battalion-level game, the BIG hex map would be, maybe 50 X 50 hexes and maybe 2 or 3 elevation levels. That would cover about 5 km X 5 km. Most ATF maps are AT LEAST twice that size in coverage (10km X 10 km), and will have 4 X more elevation data points. It will also have litterally HUNDREDS of elevation levels. It also does interpolation so, really, for a 10km X 10km, there are, for calculation purposes, over 10000 X 10000 data points. None of this includes the roads and vegitation simulated on the map, which are 3D objects rather than just hexagonal regions.

Your CPU is cranking out a TON of calculations every second, just to determine LOS. This doesn't include movement and firing calculations.

That having been said, the game should not be too jerky. It scales to fit the computer it is being played on. If you are seeing excessive stuttering, let me know and we can investigate further.