The Official Supreme Commander Thread

JonnyGeee · 3 Jun 2007 at 12:33

I had problems with that patch at firs,t reinstalled and it works fine now.

topgun06 · 3 Jun 2007 at 13:00

MODIFY 'bin\SupComDataPath.lua'
Error Old File not found. However, a file of the same name was
found. No update done since file contents do not match.
System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Specified argument was out of the range of valid values.
Parameter name: i
at System.Text.RegularExpressions.CaptureCollection.GetCapture(Int32 i)
at System.Text.RegularExpressions.CaptureCollection.get_Item(Int32 i)
at GPG.Globalization.LocalizeString.Get(String data, Object[] paramdata)
at GPG.Globalization.LocalizeString.Get(String data)
at GPG.Patch.StringTable.get_Abort()
at GPG.Patch.RTPatchAPI.Start(String options, String updateDirectory, String patchFile)
at GPG.Patch.ApplyPatch.ThreadMethod()
Access to the path 'C:\Program Files\Games\THQ\Gas Powered Games\Supreme Commander\bin\patchw32.gpg.dll' is denied.

Thats what I get... i take it the patch hasn't been installed then?

Tunez · 3 Jun 2007 at 13:10

i just bought supreme commander! so i will be joining u all soon... has it been improved much since the beta anyone? i have heard the performance has degraded, is this true?

i had a difficult choice at the time when supcom came out... whether to go for armed assault or supreme commander, i made the wrong decision i think. lol

HighlandeR · 3 Jun 2007 at 13:25

Tunez said:
i just bought supreme commander! so i will be joining u all soon... has it been improved much since the beta anyone? i have heard the performance has degraded, is this true?

i had a difficult choice at the time when supcom came out... whether to go for armed assault or supreme commander, i made the wrong decision i think. lol

If anything it was unplayable at 1st, the new patch that came out 1-2 weeks back is a major boost in performance, loading times have decreased no more jerky performance. People with single core cpus can now run the game and play it on medium settings !

I would say performance went out 20-30% easily.

topgun06 · 3 Jun 2007 at 13:28

Tunez said:
i just bought supreme commander! so i will be joining u all soon... has it been improved much since the beta anyone? i have heard the performance has degraded, is this true?

I've heard the opposite. I didn't play the Beta but i have herded that performance has got better. I would be worried if performance has decreased... with any beta.

Everyone seems to have their own opinion regarding what makes Supreme Commander work best and unlike many games available today, Supreme Commander is dependent on just about everything. The more processing power you throw at this system the better, though I do not agree that multi-core processors ensure excellent performance. I ran a few tests using Core 2 Quad and Duo processors and noticed that the second, third or fourth cores did very little when compared to the first. In the most intense battles the first core would operate at around 90 ~ 100% where as additional cores worked between 20 ~ 50%. Of course this helps, but evidently Supreme Commander is not designed to fully utilize multi-core processors, or at least we have not seen it do so.

The graphics card is obviously another key component to improving performance, though unfortunately the latest and greatest solutions again do not guarantee stellar performance. Having said that, anything less than a Radeon X1950 Pro is going to make life difficult when playing on the larger maps with more than 2 players. In fact, using the low quality settings at 1280x1204 saw the X1950 Pro render just 24fps on average. The ultra powerful GeForce 8800 GTX was not a great deal better, producing an average frame rate of just 31fps. The maximum in-game quality settings saw the 8800 GTX fall to an average frame rate of just 22fps.

Based on the results we recorded it is clear the GeForce 8800 GTX is being limited by something else, most likely the processor. Looking at the high quality Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 results we see that anything faster than the Radeon X1950 Pro (7900 GTX, X1950XTX, 8800 GTS and 8800 GTX) benefits greatly from higher processor frequencies. The average frame rates continued to climb when using these four graphics cards, as the processor frequency was increased. The very same thing, possibly to a greater degree, was found when testing the AMD Athlon64 X2 processors.

Therefore, it is clear that this game is heavily reliant on raw processing power, probably more so than rendering power, though they are both very important. What I did notice; and for those wondering why we only tested with 2GB’s of DDR2 memory and did not use 1GB and 4GB configurations, please let me explain. In the past we have tried to prove the worth of 2GB memory kits when compared to smaller 1GB kits. While we could physically tell the difference when playing games, the average frame rates never really seemed to change, at least not enough to justify the added cost. Unfortunately, when moving from 2GB’s of memory to 4GB’s with Windows Vista, the same problem presents itself.

Nevertheless, using Windows XP first I did test Supreme Commander with 1GB of memory which was just plain awful and then 2GB’s which, was a vast improvement. However, after having measured the performance with 1GB and then 2GB’s of memory, I noticed the frame rates hardly changed, with results increasing as little as 2 ~ 3fps. Therefore, I did not want to include more pages of graphs that show near no difference in performance and rather decided to discuss this issue. After testing these two memory configurations in Windows XP it was time to compare 2GB and 4GB memory configurations in Windows Vista.

The difference was very noticeable, as the 4GB configuration was far superior, though again benchmark results failed to prove this. With 4GB of DDR2 installed the memory usage went from 1.8GB’s to 3.0GB’s once the action began. With literally thousands of units on the battle field the system did slow down but it did not become choppy like the 2GB memory configuration. While the units did move noticeably slower, scrolling around the battlefield watching everything take place was much smoother. This made playing Supreme Commander much easier and more importantly far more enjoyable.

So while I am yet to upgrade our test systems with Windows Vista and will not be for some time, I have found Supreme Commander to work best on our Vista computer. The game not only played much better but there were no compatibility or stability issues found on our system. The game has been left playing for over a day now without a single crash and there are also no graphic or audio problems that we can find with this full version copy. The only disappointing aspect of the full version is the lack of support for SLI, or at least GeForce 8800 GTX SLI cards.

Found that on a website... it might help you. Haven't read it all myself, but it seems to give an overview of the performance in SupCom.

Finally, you made the right decision, if you enjoyed the Beta, once you get it up and running you'll be laughing

HighlandeR · 3 Jun 2007 at 13:40

Lots of gamers with Vista and 4gig/Quad cores have said it shows a good performance increase... with Quad core it only really shows the benifit during the battles with 1000s of units on screen..

Overall though id say most will be fine with a dual core cpu and 2gig of ram...

topgun06 · 3 Jun 2007 at 13:50

HighlandeR said:
with Quad core it only really shows the benifit during the battles with 1000s of units on screen..

Jebus, i really need to get playing more!! I'm missing out on these huge battles. I don't think i've battles with over 400 units at once... terrible i know

PinkFloyd · 3 Jun 2007 at 13:54

After playing this game with the Quad, yes there is a HUGE boost with lots of units

Selling my quad now though, gonna miss it over the summer

Tunez · 3 Jun 2007 at 14:12

yea, when playing the beta i went from a single core @3.4ghz to an e6600 and noticed a massive improvement... I have an e6600 and 4 gigs of ram and it played the beta pretty smooth unless i was playing with 8 players with 1000units plus each.

I will be building a new computer soon and will hopefullou have a quad but might only have 2 gigs of ram (due to restrictions on budget)...

Cant wait to get stuck in now... i remember gettin pretty decent during the beta, will have to play the demo to get back into the swing of things!

manoz · 3 Jun 2007 at 14:24

topgun06 said:
Jebus, i really need to get playing more!! I'm missing out on these huge battles. I don't think i've battles with over 400 units at once... terrible i know

Yeah but if you can complete a game with only 400 units what's the point in wasting time making a thousand?

topgun06 · 3 Jun 2007 at 14:33

Thats true. I suppose i meant i havn't had any large epic battles on multilayer.

Curio · 3 Jun 2007 at 16:06

Quick question. Is there a way of resetting all your waypoints - or even just removing one waypoint? Thanks.

theo · 3 Jun 2007 at 16:49

ctrl+rightclick on a waypoint will get rid of it, and to reset all waypoints select the units on that waypoint and give them a stop order, they will disappear then

Curio · 3 Jun 2007 at 17:35

theo said:
ctrl+rightclick on a waypoint will get rid of it, and to reset all waypoints select the units on that waypoint and give them a stop order, they will disappear then

Thanks

Gashman · 3 Jun 2007 at 20:38

if you want loading times to be 2 or 3 seconds download the No-CD.exe, i did and the loading time is astonishingly quick, i mean a second or two

Squark · 3 Jun 2007 at 22:26

When my new kits arrives I'll be installing SupCom, where might I find this noCD?

Gashman · 3 Jun 2007 at 23:38

Squark said:
When my new kits arrives I'll be installing SupCom, where might I find this noCD?

at a place i don't think im allowed to link to, type 'supreme commander no-cd' in google, first page listed has it on, you need to patch supcom first then replace the original .exe with the modded one, works fine though

Sem · 4 Jun 2007 at 01:54

whats with all this talk of a no cd

one of the early patches removed the protection and cd check

taz488 · 4 Jun 2007 at 09:51

^^

i dont use a cd with mine and loading times are not a couple of seconds, maybe thats because i have a 3800+ :S

schnipps · 4 Jun 2007 at 11:05

Sem said:
whats with all this talk of a no cd

one of the early patches removed the protection and cd check

Yeah i think the first patch removed the cd check, but you need a legit version of the ganme to get onto gpg to get the updates so people using the no-cd's must be naughty

The *Official* Supreme Commander Thread

The Official Supreme Commander Thread