|
Zorachus99 -> Windows Graphics Driver Observations (3/20/2015 1:28:23 AM)
|
I recently did some inadvertent testing and ran into some real surprises with MWIF:
I've been running MWIF on ATI graphics cards for a long time. ATI is very responsible with their graphic card drivers as they are in a war with NVIDIA for the desktop gaming market; and as a result do extensive compatibility testing with in-market video games. To say the least, I've had less problems than some, who have had major problems.
Recently, I thought I would install MWIF on a dedicated VMWare machine, so that I could browse the web while my opponent did their boring CW naval movements. What I found out was an important take back. The behavior of the game was different as a virtual machine. In particular, after a recent update, all US Entry rolls were rolled for twice. I had to terminate playing the game in a virtual machine and chalked it up to a Virtualization problem, as the issue never manifested on my main system.
So even more recently I was given a brand-new laptop from work. I decided to install MWIF for the exact previous reason, so I could use my main machine to browse the web wile my opponent did his thing. The behavior of MWIF was... horrible. The CPU was an Intel i5-5550 with 6GB of ram, and a SSD. Frankly, the game crashed where it never had before, I could not load saves without crashing, and stability was a complete carpshoot. Now, the Intel 5550 is a new chip released in November, and is still on A00 Drivers for the *ON-CHIP INTEGRATED GRAPHICS*. In general I'm sure Intel is playing rough and dirty to deal with 2D bugs, and doesn't test it's chips for *games*. A guess is that the libraries being used are 'optimized' and causing grief.
I went back to playing with my ATI card, and simply deal with my opponent having control of my best, and main computer while he dawdles with his ships, deciding to undo-all after confusing himself, or finding that things must move in a order of 'just-so'.
TLDR: The takeaway is that your graphic card driver is a huge determination of whether MWIF works.
|
|
|
|
