The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play

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All Forums >> [Current Games From Matrix.] >> [World War II] >> Decisive Battles: Korsun Pocket >> The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play

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The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play - 7/15/2004 3:55:45 AM

solops

Posts: 814
Joined: 1/31/2002
From: Central Texas
Status: offline

I love Korsun Pocket and Across the Dnepr.....but they will get little play time from me. Its not because I don't like SSG or the game style. Heck, I own every game they have published, back to the Apple II version of Reach for the Stars! and loved them all (except for the fantasy games; no joy there).

No, the problem with KP is the graphics. On my 17" monitor they are simply too blasted small to work with. And then after laboriously peeking and magnifying through a turn, the difficulty of seeing the map and units during combat replay takes away much of the enjoyment. The scale presented is too small to be easily seen, and the units and terrain all not all that crisp to begin with. (Rivers are devilishly tricky to spot between units). I have tried everything including a magnifying glass (a real one, not the one in the game) and seeing what is there is simply too laborious.

The game itself is spectacular. I cannot say enough good things about it. But never have I seen software more desperately in need of user-adjustable scale resolution. The magnifier in the game is nice, but ultimately of little use because it covers such a small area and you cannot issue orders in while using it.

SSG, please fix this and PLEASE don't let BIN out the door with the same problem.

Post #: 1

RE: The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play - 7/15/2004 5:38:42 PM

JSS

Posts: 781
Joined: 10/15/2003
Status: offline

solops,

Check out the Rommel Master of Battle scenario and see if you get any better results viewing the map.

JSS

(in reply to solops)

Post #: 2

RE: The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play - 7/15/2004 6:35:21 PM

wodin

Posts: 10762
Joined: 4/20/2003
From: England
Status: offline

I have a 17inch monitor and have no real problems, well not enough to stop me playing the game. The roads and rivers are the hardest to spot though.

(in reply to JSS)

Post #: 3

RE: The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play - 7/16/2004 1:45:04 AM

Gregor_SSG

Posts: 681
Joined: 3/6/2003
Status: offline

Battles in Normandy will support two resolutions, 1024*768 and 1280*1024. Everybody I've spoken to just loves the new map graphics, but this is an area in which it's hard to please everybody.

The terrain popup, accessed just by right clicking on the map, shows a very clear display of all roads and rivers in a hex, if there's any doubt.

Gregor

_____________________________

Vice President, Strategic Studies Group
See http://www.ssg.com.au and http://www.ssg.com.au/forums/
for info and free scenarios.

(in reply to solops)

Post #: 4

RE: The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play - 7/18/2004 8:30:14 PM

Arthurmoment

Posts: 16
Joined: 6/30/2004
Status: offline

Thank you for highlighting this problem. My question further down about trying to find a paper map was because of this. I agree with you - it cannot be difficult (for someone with the talent of this lot) to make the map graphics scaleable.
Please try.

(in reply to Gregor_SSG)

Post #: 5

RE: The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play - 7/24/2004 4:59:35 PM

solops

Posts: 814
Joined: 1/31/2002
From: Central Texas
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Gregor_SSG

Battles in Normandy will support two resolutions, 1024*768 and 1280*1024. Everybody I've spoken to just loves the new map graphics, but this is an area in which it's hard to please everybody.

The terrain popup, accessed just by right clicking on the map, shows a very clear display of all roads and rivers in a hex, if there's any doubt.

Gregor

I'm playing KP in 1024 X 768 right now. If that is your solution, it has already failed.

(in reply to Gregor_SSG)

Post #: 6

RE: The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play - 7/25/2004 4:04:34 AM

Fred98

Posts: 4430
Joined: 1/5/2001
From: Wollondilly, Sydney
Status: offline

I have a 19" CRT monitor. The game is beautiful. They only cost USD200 or less

My other PC has a 17" monitor and I have played the game on that at 1024 x 768. It looks fine. I wear glasses. Do you?
-

_____________________________

(in reply to solops)

Post #: 7

RE: The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play - 7/25/2004 11:51:47 AM

Dave Ferguson

Posts: 302
Joined: 9/12/2000
From: Kent, United Kingdom
Status: offline

At the moment KP and ATD are on my hard disk but I to do not play them because I cannot live with the graphics. I think there are two problems, one of which can be fixed and the other not.

1. The KP game window has a fixed resolution of 1024x768 pixels. This should display OK if your screen supports this resolution but what sort of screen? If you have a traditional CRT (cathode ray tube) screen you should be OK even with the larger 19" plus sizes. these screens will make a pretty good job of scaling the KP window to fit the screen, you don't see any more pixels, each pixel is just larger. If you have a LCD (liquid crystal display) screen you will have problems with screens over 15" because this screen technology only displays good quality images at its native resolution. Commonly the resolutions are:

15" - 1024x768
17" - 1280x1024
19" - 1280x1024
20" - 1600x1200

So running KP on the larger sizes gives you fuzzy images. This should improve with the new 1280x1024 pixel option which I presume will also be available for KP and ATD? If you are running a 20" LCD or one of the non standard resolution on some notebooks you will probably still have problems. The 'standard' screen is rapidly changing to LCD and even bargain PC's have these. Also, those large CRT screens are huge and heavy.

2. The second problem is not fixable, at least not without re-coding KP! This is the hex size which is set at 30 pixels? I presume this was chosen to allow for a decent size map in the map window. 30 pixels is not much to display terrain and unit icons and IMO a larger hex size would have been a better design decision. The style of the map graphics does not help either, being very 'busy' with lots of terrain rendering that detracts from reading the unit icons. There is a magnify option but his just enlarges the pixels and does not re-render the map at a higher resolution. In fact if KP was runnable in a resizable window this feature would not be required as windows already has a magnify application which works well. With some graphic cards you can even run two screens. One dedicated to the magnifier and the main one for the application. For people with bad eyesight like me this works superbly well.

The new 1280x1024 resolution should help but I presume this gives a larger map window and not hexes with more pixels. Another solution would be to have a alternative 'lite' set of maps which could be user generated?

Dave

(in reply to Fred98)

Post #: 8

RE: The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play - 7/26/2004 5:17:45 AM

solops

Posts: 814
Joined: 1/31/2002
From: Central Texas
Status: offline

I play on a two month old 17" CRT (.25" dot pitch) , 1024X768 in 32 bit mode running at 80 mHz, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro video card. One more time, the MAIN problem is that the hexes are TOO SMALL. The units are too small. Almost everything is too small to be seen easily. On my screen the hexes are 9/20 of an inch across from one side to the other (corner to corner) and 8/20 of an inch across from flat side to flat side. TOO SMALL. The units are even smaller. I want things to be BIGGER on the screen, even if that means seeing less area. The obvious answer (common in almost all games now) is a screen that is adjustable in "zoom" via the mouse wheel.

The secondary problem is the lack of crispness and definition in some of the terrain, particularly rivers.

If you cannot easily see the data, you can't play it easily. This is a simple problem, trivial even. And this is the only game I have seen in the last 5 years where this is an issue. Why? And why isn't it fixed?

And I have 20/20 vision in one eye and 20/25 in the other.

< Message edited by solops -- 7/26/2004 3:18:57 AM >

(in reply to solops)

Post #: 9

RE: The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play - 7/26/2004 8:53:57 AM

Dave Ferguson

Posts: 302
Joined: 9/12/2000
From: Kent, United Kingdom
Status: offline

If the type of screen you use is not the problem but the hex and counter size then a fix IMO is unlikely to happen soon. You could try using the built in magnifier or in desperation try sitting nearer the screen!. Your 20/20 vision will soon worsen. The best solution is to enlarge the hex size but this means making a completely new map and unit icons. For example, if the map is square and 100 hexes north to south that is a 3000x3000 pixel map image to handle. If you doubled the hex resolution to 60 pixels then it is 6000x6000 pixels which is 4 times larger. You might then run up against graphic display card memory limits and or have to have the map tiled. Simply, having large hex sizes may raise lots of programming issues that the designers wished to avoid. If I was in their situation I would probably think all that extra effort to get larger hexes was just not worth it to get a few additional sales. which brings us back to where we started, KP and ATD are idle on my disk because the hexes and unit counters are too small!

Dave

(in reply to solops)

Post #: 10

RE: The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play - 7/26/2004 1:01:07 PM

sabreman1966mcs

Posts: 180
Joined: 2/12/2004
From: Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Status: offline

quote:

Solops;

The obvious answer (common in almost all games now) is a screen that is adjustable in "zoom" via the mouse wheel.

I think this was fixed in one of the patches. I have tried using the Magnifier and then zoomed in using the wheel of the mouse, it's not perfect but it works for me.

_____________________________

Soldiers generally win battles; generals get credit for them.
Napoleon Bonaparte

(in reply to solops)

Post #: 11

RE: The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play - 7/27/2004 3:43:33 AM

solops

Posts: 814
Joined: 1/31/2002
From: Central Texas
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dave Ferguson

.... which brings us back to where we started, KP and ATD are idle on my disk because the hexes and unit counters are too small!

Dave

Ditto. How frustrating. The best wargame on the market and it's no fun to play because everything is flea-sized.

(in reply to Dave Ferguson)

Post #: 12

RE: The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play - 8/27/2004 6:38:09 PM

Ronn

Posts: 1
Joined: 8/27/2004
Status: offline

Thankyou Solops for your thread!

Same to me ...
Realy great game...
Bought it moth ago and update it to the little magnif. ...
Can't play it ...
Don't see roads, rivers, and don't see my units clear enough,

Tryed with and without glasses ...
Tryed with a big Fresnel-Lens in Front of the monitor (realy !)
Tryed Magnif-Software from other companys - but it don't work together KP

On my 17-Monitor all other wargames (HPS, TOAW, HTTR, ...) works fine.

I've NEVER (!!) had problems like this. And I am playing games since Enterprise on my TRS-80-L2.

Every month I made a new try.
Every month KP gets back in my boockshelf.

...
...

Ronn

(in reply to solops)

Post #: 13

RE: The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play - 8/28/2004 2:35:14 AM

wodin

Posts: 10762
Joined: 4/20/2003
From: England
Status: offline

When I first bought KP I had a 15inch CRT. It was hard to play. Since then I bought a 17inh CRT and I have bad very eyesight (I wear glsses) yet I can play the game the only problem is the rivers but its not major enough that I cant play the game.

My monitor wasnt expensive and I really cant SEE the problem. Hehe get it? Cant see?

I know, I know pathetic...........

(in reply to Ronn)

Post #: 14

RE: The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play - 8/28/2004 7:56:13 AM

dosmil78

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Joined: 8/28/2004
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The only advice I can give you is to BUY A BIGGER SCREEN. I admit the rivers are difficult to differentiate from their surroundings, but there are ways to work around this. Be creative, or just deal with it. I do believe you have a hard time seeing the game, then wear glasses or BUY A BIGGER SCREEN. I bought a 21" screen for $250 US, and it was well worth it for all reasons.

Why did you buy a 17" screen knowing that you had extremely bad eyesight?

(in reply to wodin)

Post #: 15

RE: The Greatest Game I'll Seldom Play - 8/29/2004 2:53:20 AM

wodin

Posts: 10762
Joined: 4/20/2003
From: England
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: dosmil78

Why did you buy a 17" screen knowing that you had extremely bad eyesight?

Is this directed at me?

If it is why? Im not complaining at all. Infact KP on my 17 inch as I stated is not a problem. I love the graphics of the game. The Maps and Units are superb.

(in reply to dosmil78)

Post #: 16