Share the love of SupComTalk this holiday season
Forged Alliance came out recently and we have a great new crop of writers working on SupComTalk. The only thing we need now is more readers! That’s right, Supreme Commander has seen a bit of a resurgence with the release of its expansion, but shocking as it may be, many of the latest generation of SupCommers aren’t even aware of SupComTalk! So do your patriotic duty this holiday season and let them know about it. I’m not giving to give out any specific ideas as to how (such as the official forums or the GPGnet chat lobby). I trust you all can figure it out yourself.
And incidentally, I know one blogger who’d love to receive Forged Alliance as a holiday gift. He might even have to go to the trouble of writing up some blog posts about it were that to happen.
December 11th, 2007 at 1:21 am
Cyde Weys id love to send u a copy! but im straped for cash ATM and to be honest ive had the game for over a month (special order from the US) but i STILL havent played since the beta! maby we need a donate button! “FA 4 CW Donate Paypal Here!” anyway WHEN/IF i get some time id like to post up something as well :)
December 11th, 2007 at 1:31 am
I got my copy, but I’m waiting for a new computer to play it. I just ordered my 8800GT last night so… soon I shall be playing! And with high details! Finally! My current computer is so old high details weren’t even an option (literally, they weren’t available in the lists) in SupCom. :[
December 11th, 2007 at 2:19 am
Sorry T2A – even an 8800GT won’t make all the difference. Oh, it helps a lot, sure, but you won’t be running Sup Com on high if you want consistently more than 15 FPS with lots of critters on screen.
My critical specs:
Intel Q6600 @ 4 x 2.5 GHz
2 Gigs of Corsair ram
Zotac 8800GT 512 MB
I get 5-60 FPS on high details, depending on number of units and zoom level. Some of it could be CPU bottleneck, but it’s a fairly fancy cpu, and a fair amount of ram. Incidentally, the process manager says that Sup Com only uses one core of my cpu – I thought it was meant to be multi-cpu enhanced? Is there an option somewhere that I have to enable?
Mmmm anyway, enough tech talk – happy holidays to all. Cyde Ways – I’d donate to your Christmas present if I could – you’ve done an excellent job on this blog. On the other hand, as an electrical engineer, you should be raking in the cash, so you should be able to afford $50 for FA.
December 11th, 2007 at 4:09 am
k
December 11th, 2007 at 4:19 am
anyone else here notice the gradual trend in declining posts? it seems everyone has forgotten about sup com talk! we need a few knowledgeable people here writing posts on the new patches and whatnot! (i would not really consider myself knowledgeable, as you can see from my posts. im just an idea/critique kind of guy) a few people writing a post or two about a unit or replay would be good (think im gona try my hand at that too, but don’t make me do all the work! try and get your ideas on “the front page” too!)
December 11th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
@T2A and Widjet: The 8800GT should be more than sufficient to run the grahpics side of the game at fairly high detail (great choice by the way! Fantastic vid card for the price). 2GB of RAM is also sufficient on the memory side. The primary bottleneck is indeed CPU. Widjet, I would say the problem with your system is that the Q6600 is a quad core with relatively low clock speeds (compared to, say, a high-end dual core). SupCom is notorious for not using quad cores very efficiently, so I would say that is probably your issue. If you haven’t tried it yet, I would say try the Core Maximizer by MadBoris, it spreads the CPU load more evenly and quad core owners tend to have the largest gain. My system has an E6750 which provides a lot of dual core horsepower and really performs well, I typically have at least 20-30 FPS even in the most dense situations. For graphics I have an 8800GTS which is more than sufficient.
Back to the original post by Cyde Weys, one thing that would be nice would be feedback on what kind of articles you guys want. As I suspected real life has gotten a bit more busy limiting my writing time, but I am still interested in both helping with site management for other authors and with writing a few articles. If there is something you really want to see an article on, or a general topic you want to see more written on, let me know here.
December 11th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Or overclock your Quad … I have got mine running at 3.4Ghz :)
December 11th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
ive got a Q6600 and 4GB of ram running @ standard clocks and im running medium fidelity (the man GPU killer) and high details (oh and low shadows) and i keep @ a constant 10-25FPS (10FPS is a little bit low for my likeing but it does the job) and im running on a little 8600GTS 256mb factory overclocked running dual screens @ 1280×1024
and yes core maximizer is a good ap ive got it ive never realy used it more then testing in MOST cases i find other PPLZ PC’s slow down the game wayyy before mine does!
December 12th, 2007 at 12:16 am
I’m getting an E6850 to go with that 8800GT. I played with sub-20 FPS (which usually dropped to less than 10 in battle) on lowest details with SupCom the entire time… I’m sure what I’m getting will handle FA just fine. :]
December 12th, 2007 at 10:59 am
T2A, you will have an almost identical system to me! I built my system basically to play Forged Alliance and it runs beautifully. You will have an even more powerful video card so it should run beautifully.
Wow, no one has any article suggestions? Do you guys want to read more map reviews, unit discussions, strategy articles, etc? People must have some kind of preference…
December 12th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Maybe replay reviews, like what Cyde weys did back in the day.
December 12th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
I really like your map reviews and in-depth articles about specific unit tactics, Engineer; they’re entertaining to read and provide a lot of information concerning the inner workings of SupCom’s game mechanics.
Personally, I prefer articles about updates/upgrades/tweaks to SupCom and FA…I really like following the development of video games, and to some extent, I follow them more than I play them (it’s a problem, yes, but one I can live with :D).
Unfortunately, I haven’t really gotten into competitive multiplayer yet (I’ve played ten or so custom games, though). I suspect most of us who read this gem of a website are likely in the ranked lists, making replay reviews more practical…it’s just that sometimes they’re harder to appreciate because A) whenever SupCom/FA are patched you can’t re-watch them anymore, and B) you can’t read the review while you watch the replay.
On a separate note…are there any large modifications out yet? If there are, then some articles about mods would be interesting to include (I remember this game being toted for its modability, but have yet to see any massive total conversions…no Star Wars, modern warfare, WWI/WWII, etc.).
I have at one point considered writing small articles about unit design concepts and/or the SupCom storyline (which isn’t all that great, but offers some potential), but now that school’s started, it’s extremely hard to motivate myself to type out a decent analysis, especially after multiple AP Art History tests and English essays…maybe over winter break, I can look into it, though. Just throwing that out there.
December 12th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Personally I’m a sucker for strategy, that’s what attracted me initially to this site. I only have so much time to play, but have a little time to read as well, and have found replay reviews very helpful, as well as map strats. More strategy! That’s my recommendation. The GPG forums are full of WAAY too much chaff as far as strategy goes, and I think quality strategy arcticles should be a main course here, IMHO.
Keep up the good work!
December 13th, 2007 at 1:23 am
Gonna have to agree with the strategy thing. Stuff about news and updates is fine and all, but those will be covered in depth by other sites, so they shouldn’t really be the focus here. Reviewing replays, looking at certain units in detail, analyzing the latest trendy tactic on certain maps (remember when tac-missile sniping was still a new thing in SupCom?), etc. are great things for SCT.
December 13th, 2007 at 1:41 am
I noticed the built-in AI now tac snipes.
December 13th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
I have been mulling over a few of these in the back of my head. unfortunately i do not play competitively, and rarely get online for a game. i would be happy to bring up some of my observations on tactics (mostly UEF) but im not sure how much value they would be. i have also been thinking about getting together a 4 way ffa, and doing a replay on that, but that is far off down the road when i can find time for it. what do you guys think? care to have a noob bringing up the obvious for discussion? or leave the strat to the pros?
December 13th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
I don’t get to play very often, so I really enjoy posts about Strategy, as well as tactics used in replays that may or may not have worked.
Posts about the intricacies of different units, how they are used most effectively, best teams/groups with them, things to avoid, those always help.
Off topic, and nobody cares, but I am running an Opty 170 clocked up from 2 Ghz to 2.7 Ghz. 2 Gigs Corsair Ram, 8800 GTS 640. Win XP. Played a 3 player coop comp stomp last night against 3 AIs, and I ran at about 17-20 fps on average, when I checked. I think the unit limit was set at 500. We were toying with the AIs, so it took a while to play, and at the end I was running -1 sim speed. I play with everything high, but no AA.
Something interesting is that after the latest FA patch, unless I am running the Core Maximizer program, my game will lock up about 10 minutes in. I have no idea why, and I don’t have the problem when I run Coremax. I think maybe the last patch booped something…time for a clean install.
December 13th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
FA runs pretty good on my mother’s PC on 20k maps + 250unit limit. Most of the video options are med/low. It’s only an AMD 2.2 ghz + 2gig ram, 256mb g-force 7600GT, but I was suprised with the performance. She also got a good frame boost with the /nosound option on the desktop shortcut. On my PC the game flies. Yay.
December 17th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
id like to see a by or tri weekly game orginised, FFA or teams, and then reviewed by serveral of the players from multi angles and point of views
that would be nice….
also more map reviews and unit strats etc etc
December 17th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Wow that core optimizer works wonders! I wish I’d tried it earlier. The game just doesn’t slow down anymore, even several hours in.
Unfortunately, since I upgraded to my new video card, my computer locks up sometimes after a few hours of sup com. It could be overheating, but sup com is the only program that makes it do that (even Prime95 doesn’t expose any problems). Bit of a nuisance – I might have to run some temperature tests.
December 17th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Widjet, congrats on core optimizer but that is unfortunate about the lockups. I have read that the 8800GT can have cooling problems, since it is only single-width it doesn’t have as good of a heatsink. Hope you can get that figured out, but it doesn’t sound to bad. I rarely have time to even play Supcom for more than a few hours.
January 2nd, 2008 at 7:36 pm
hi. General question?
I have a custom Build Computer and even i cant figure this one out.
Im running Off a ASUS 4 core motherboard. (only running a dual core Intel Pentium D [3.2 X 2])
CPU[3.2 x 2]
Ram [2 GB]
Graphics [Radeon X1650 Pro Series] – Turn off ATI Software to stop the 5 Min Crash effect (thanks NVIDIA)
But the Problem i am Having is the Game would run Perfectly fine if it Ran off Both Proccessing core.
i watch Task Manager as the game is in windowed view and it only uses the first core and the second core runs at 0-5%(idle) all other games i run balance the Proccesses to both core but this is weird. it will only uses the first core.
Has anyone ever herd of this or know a way to fix this problem? I would be very greatful thank u
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Shadow000, try using the core optimizer mentioned above. What it does is distributes the various parts (threads) of the game so that both/all cores get used more evenly. If you don’t use the core optimizer, the game just fills up one core and then starts to fill the second, which doesn’t make good use of the two cores in a dual core machine.
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:58 pm
I’ve been doing a lot of testing (after a clean reinstall) to try and optimize how well FA plays on my machine. I’ve found that the core maximizer program increases the framerates, but at about a ten point hit to sim speed, at least on my machine.
Even with the lower sim speed, having fluid motion on the screen makes the game much more wonderful to play. Just wish I could have that plus massive 1000 unit battles at the same time without the game running at, oh, -7 or so. :)
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Speaking as the owner of a quad core, the core optimizer has very little effect on my sim speed (up to about -2, maximum, so I can still run it at +8 if need be).
January 6th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
anyone think they can drop me a direct link to the core optimizer software? i can easly find AMD core optimizers but no intel. or at least the site where to find it?
January 7th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
It’s on the gpgnet forums: http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=15556
May 25th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Reference dam quad core technicalities *always something blowing up haha* anybody have any ideas what is causing me a huge core temperature increase early on in game.
Its almsot as if creating 20 or so air units ups the core temps by 20 degrees, fromt eh 34-36 primary core temp im used to up 2 like 50 almsot on each(speedfan sensor reading)
Running two machines at the moment both with the same stutter issue, even low texure settings and fidelity off arent much help.
Both are q6600 quad core 2.5ghz 4gb ram 8500gt on vista x64 and 32x respectively.
Im thinking that perhaps excessive video stress is over pressurizing the cores as the temperature recorded is rizing to stupid levels…not to mention it feels dam hot.
I have stress tested it with FA cheater ai x 4 and core temp can be over 50c in a few seconds of game play with fps hitting 30 or lower from a starting 90+
Im not exactly a hardware buff so any help would be appreciated.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
I have a major problem with my online Supcom as whenever I load up GPG net all the options to join game, host game, join ranked game ect ect are faded out and I cannot click on them, also if I join a chat channel it instantly bans me from the general chat, I also cannot download patches, replays, mods, maps ect ect. Could someone please tell me how to solve this as I really would like to play my favourite game online.
September 26th, 2009 at 8:28 am
people pass the responsibility to qualified writers because they miss the ability to compose a good paper about SupComTalk so the reason why students need to use plagiarism check, but such guys like composer don’t do that. Thanks for the knowledge
December 22nd, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Supreme Commander should have had an 800×600 mode, if it did so it may not have recieved so much critisism for being unplayable on most average computers. I hope Supreme Commander 2 developers have the sense to include an 800×600 screen mode