Zero Hour and Optimization

Rodman49 · 09-25-2003, 11:36 PM

After checking out the front page . . .

Quote:

"The whole thing has everything that was lacking from Generals in the first place - its well polished, stable and theres a noticable difference in gameplay speed and how much is going on since the engine has been significantly optimized."

I was totally amazed to see this on there. How much more optimized is the game. Does is significantly increase the FPS (I had a P1.8Ghz, 512 RAM, GeForce 4 ti 4200 and was running the game at a horrid 25 FPS)? And does it significantly increase the netcode (previously the netcode was bad enough to make me cry, well at least when compared to any other RTS)?

This could be the break my mod team was looking for, beforehand we were looking at modding NWN or WCIII but if Zero Hour improves gameplay greatly we might stay in the C&C series (at least until I the new LotR game comes out).

Kyp678 · 09-26-2003, 02:35 PM

I take it you haven't picked up the game yet. Honestly, it's hit and miss with everyone's PCs. Some say it runs great, others on high end machines with good video cards still run into problems. I've had mixed results, ranging from ZH running as smooth as a baby's behind to having more crashes than most cars at a demolition derby. In theory, you should be ok with the specs you provided, but people have been posting on ea's board about ti 4200s dealing with the microwave tank effect. Give it a try regardless, there's a lot of new things in the game that I do like and the opening scene of mission 4 (think it was 4....) is straight out of World War II: D Day with the paratroopers.

mastermind2003 · 09-26-2003, 05:55 PM

Yeah, it seems a bit odd on my 4200, the game will lag and bump in odd places (main menu), and I'm at the recommended (or near) for regular Gen, so I don't see any reason why it should. I've also had a pair of random crashes to the desktop that didn't terminate the application, so the processes were still running, but Windows had just lost the game.

Kuja · 09-26-2003, 07:53 PM

Has been running perfectly here on my 4200.. no oc or anything... Hasnt crashed, or spontaniously exploded or anything.. (for now)

My friends where complaining that their zero hour hard crashes (as in it crashes, and doesnt want to start up again, aka, have to restart comp to play game) when they finish a Direct Connect game hosted by me (having the most powerful comp in our little circle, i always host)... strange...

mastermind2003 · 09-26-2003, 10:32 PM

Hmm, mine does hard crash, but I use task manager to close the processes, and I can start it again. I've also noticed that it is mainly jumpy in very high poly situations, and cutscenes, so I think that the massive particle count is getting to my card, and I need to tone back the settings a bit.

smurfbizkit · 09-26-2003, 10:46 PM

I just got it today...works just as well as generals did, well except my vid card or something won't let me run it on a higher reso than the 2nd one

i really wanted to see how it looked at 1600x1200

Opals25 · 09-26-2003, 11:05 PM

I've ran it with no problems as of yet. Little slow menu, and kills the computer afterwards (though it doesn't take to lone to get o its feet again) The actual game runs a bit better for me, medium with 1024x768.

Rodman49 · 09-26-2003, 11:48 PM

Hmm, it seems the opinions are mixed . . . Can anyone compare their framrates from Generals to Zero Hour?

Curator · 09-27-2003, 12:34 AM

The game runs without a hitch for me. Generals ran a tad slow sometimes beforehand, now I have everything maxed and the game runs about 10-20 fps faster. I'm greatly pleased with it. It no longer has the stuttering problem either. It's probably partly due to me having a Radeon 9500 Pro. Love that card.

Vengence · 09-27-2003, 08:00 AM

My specs are 1065mhz AthalonXP cpu, 64mb GeForce4 (can't remeber the last part of the name) 256mb of RAM and Generals move choppy in SP with graphics set to maximum and smoothly in skirmish with same graphics, would ZH work on mine?