Hi Dinga,
Couple of other ideas you may want to try. If the problem is specifically a drop while attacking ships you may find it's the AAA causing the problem. Try adjusting the rate of fire in the campaign settings in DCG. Other ideas are to reduce the density of static objects in your campaign as there are over 2000 static objects in the campaign. Likewise try reducing the action radius to a lower number, basically the action radius also has an affect on what locations get populated with static objects.
If you have massed bombers turned on then you will always get a full squadron of level bombers for each active squadron regardless of your changes to the number of flights in each squadron and the number of aircraft in each flight in DCG setup so perhaps try turning that off too.
I can't remember for sure but I may have mentioned to you in a PM that ATI cards using a particular dirver set also had issues with morning mist and fog for some of the playtesters - I got around that for our test online campaign by changing the possible start time in DCG to be late enough in the morning to avoid the situation. I gave the settings used for our online campaign in the readme - have you tried those to see how the fps is? Can you give some idea of your set up specs so I can get an idea of how they compare to my machine and our playtest settings and try to tailor my advice a bit better for you?
I'm not sure if there are any map specific issues for your particular PC's set up but I do know that Neil Lowe is working on an update to his first version (have a look in the maps thread for some WIP screenies) and I am working on a updated version of the campaign myself to correct some bugs I've found or been told about since release. However I don't think they are related to frame rates only campaign issues. It should be ready in about a week depending on how work treats me.
Cheers,
Stonehouse
Thanks for your help Stonehouse.I have a Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz 8mb level 2 cache 1066 MHz FSB and a 9600gt ASUS Black Pearl Nvidia card.Running XP with 2 GB Ram
I do not have mass bombers set.The rate of fire is set at 0.9.I will try reducing radius and density of static objects.Currently they are 100kms and heavy respectively.
Ok that is very strange. I believe I do have a slightly faster cpu and a 9800GTX but with the same system memory and XP with the last service pack but on the whole your performance should be pretty close to what I get. Try the suggestions from today and let me know how you go and I'll have a think and a chat to some of my squad mates to see if they have any ideas. I'm assuming you've kept pretty up to date with graphics driver and DX9 updates? I only ask that to find out if I'm comparing apples to apples and trying to eliminate differences not because it should affect greatly an older game like IL2.
Cheers,
Stonehouse
Just for a benchmark my current settings for the online campaign are:
Sqd density = heavy
Column density = full
Stat object density = Dense
Action Radius = 250 k
1 flight per squadron
flight size = 4 for both sides
Axis ship skill = veteran
Allied ship skill = rookie
Ship ROF = 10
I have 2 squadrons of SpitVc, P40M,A20C always active so human players have a good chance of an aircraft.
Options are
Acitve front, delayed start times, island palm trees (which doesn't make a difference I think in this case), linked maximums to flights, massed bombers,no transfers, online briefing, primary objectives, noseart, single map, squadron management, track plane losses, track online players
Weather is always clear and the earliest start time is 8:00am and I've turned off clouds in the il2 preferences.
Just wanted to advise that I've sent a new version off to Lowengrin and asked him to give it a once over. Assuming he doesn't see any glaring problems it should be released soon. Generally speaking the fixes are to correct a bug in my road routes that was preventing the Japanese army getting off the beach and a bit of tweaking to the ground unit OOB. Suffice to say it will definitely be a different campaign and you will need to help your ground forces if you don't want Darwin to eventually fall. I did also fix something that was obvious in hindsight, the sea route finished at Pt Charles and as a result Japanese ships would drop their units and then be beamed home to Timor ;D They now do it the old fashioned way by water, letting you have another crack at them. Of course it also means they are available to give AAA and shore bombardment support to their units. Unfortunately there is still a problem that rarely occurs that I haven't fixed, in that due to the small area of ocean available it's hard to fit a carrier patrol box and a seperate sea route on the map. I've tried to optimise things but you occassionally get the two Japanese fleets crossing each others paths resulting in collisions. I'm hoping to fix this when Neil releases the next version of his map which will hopefully give a bigger area of ocean.
Cheers,
Stonehouse
Ive been playing this dcg campaign of yours not stop, i love it, but i also noticed the jap ground forces just blunder around the lighthouse and never advance, hopefully thats fixed in the next one. Also ther is a bizarre thing with B25s if you are playing as a p40 or spit, they just do runs over the jap carrier like straffing runs, non stop end to end until they get destroyed or damaged.
Ive found I prefer this campaign if I change the front to Beach Pt Charles, its even better if the Japs hold the island but Ive only managed that in DCG campaigns not Dgen campaigns
Yeah the bug in the roads file is the causse for the IJA sitting on the beach getting a suntan. It definitely goes away with the fix. The A20s are very strange critters and we've watched them in our online campaign do the same. I have the AI mod in place as host so I didn't know if that was the reason for it but since you've seen it too perhaps it's just A20s....you could try tweaking waypoint settings on the waypoint settings panel (second last button on the right in the DCG UI) to see if changing the IP distance etc makes a difference or perhaps the default transit altitude in the class settings. They seem to want to work their way up from the rear of the fleet until they are slightly ahead and then turn in for a beam attack. Which is fine other than they basically overfly the japanese fleet to get into position which means they tend to die. We aim for the same firing position but get there from much further away outside the flak range so at least we get to launch our torps even if not enough hit to sink. Really wish damage carried over from mission to mission.
Very glad to hear you're enjoying it though warts and all, makes the effort setting it up worth while.
Cheers,
Stonehouse
PS if you have transfers turned off (ie you don't change bases until you are overrun) make sure you leave the island before the Japanese get too close or it will be too late. Once you have a couple of DDs and a BB sitting in the island harbour plus some tanks and enemy AAA at the shipyard you don't have time to take off before getting killed.
Ive had a couple of campaigns where the next mission I cant take off from the island because of enemy ship gun fire destroying me or if I have managed to get off usually the rest of the flight doesnt make it, DCG needs a restrain fire delay setting
If you are still watching this thread Neil please please please remove those damn trees from the approach to Parap_Airfield! DCG always makes the AI land at the tree'ed end, resulting in all AI lost on landing
Problem is if I remember correctly is that I've made the aircraft at Parap take off to the south over the inlet to avoid the trees - obvious other side to that is they land from the north over the trees (I'm at work so my memory may be tricking me). However I believe Neil has already done something to correct this and a similar issue at Darwin in his new version. Neil please correct me if I'm wrong ;D
I will have another look at what I've put in airfields.dcg but I think it really needs a few chainsaws to solve the problem.
Cheers,
Stonehouse
Just a small update. Neil caught me by surprise with v1.1 of the map, so I contacted Lowengrin and as he'd not got around to releasing the updated campaign I mentioned in an earlier post I asked him to hold off and I'll try to check/update things in the next week so it works reliably with the 1.1 version of the map.
Cheers,
Stonehouse
Ok a news update. I've test run the campaign with the new map and all looks good so I've sent it off to Lowengrin. He'll do a quick health check (ie installs and runs) and then should post it up for download. So all going well you should see the new version in one or two days.
Cheers,
Stonehouse
Sorry!!