11 replies to this topic

[Twiggy12]

In some campaigns, for example Beautiful Mind, at a certain time a countdown timer starts. This runs too fast for me. In real time 1 second, the game strikes almost three seconds so this makes it very hard to accomplish the objectives.

 

Does anyone recognize this?

 

Running Mental Omega on Macbook 2011 on Bootcamp, Windows 7 64 bit.

[UNSC THE CHILL OF WAR]

Its fast no matter what pc you run it on. Vanilla ra2 and yr was fast aswell.

[Solais]

Yeah, this was always the case.

[GoodGame1324]

The timer in your game depends on the game speed in the setting, not in real life time. In campaign, the game speed is usually 4, hence the timer would be adjusted according to the game speed so it stays in proportion with the unit speeds. Otherwise, if timers were always in real life time, you would get more time technically if you played at a higher game speed as your units would move quickly, but the timer still is the same

[Handepsilon]

The ingame speed is usually much faster than real time. The setting is actually a Framerate cap

 

I think the one that follows real time second is gamespeed 3 or 2, but the campaign is locked on GS 4 (30 fps). GS5 is double that speed (60 fps). GS6 throws the limit out of the window and can reach up to 300 fps.

[Wayward Winds]

  Having gone and poked around in game...

 

  Gamespeed/framerate cap settings go from 1 (marked "slowest") to 7 ("fastest").  Gamespeed 4 is marked "normal", and is where the timer will actually match up to real life.  The campaign is (supposed to be) locked to gamespeed 5 ("fast"); that was put in place by Westwood, so it's the same for vanilla RA2/YR as well.

  The gamespeed slider is only accessible in skirmish/multiplayer.  There are ways to unlock it for campaign, but that's one steaming hot kettle of fish I'm not poking my toes into again.

 

  One thing that I've been wondering about though; if Westwood always intended the game to be played on "fast", then why didn't they make the in game timer match real life on that setting as opposed to on "normal"?  All it does is make people panic when/if they realise they haven't budgeted their time correctly because the mismatched timer is throwing them off.

[Handepsilon]

The fastest speed is 6, and I smell lazy coding involved in the timer

[Wayward Winds]

The fastest speed is 6, and I smell lazy coding involved in the timer

 

So just checking here; there are definitely seven points on that slider: slowest, slower, slow, normal, fast, faster, fastest.  Are you saying there's actually no difference between the top two settings?

(I'm not being confrontational here, I'm legitimately curious.  If it is a case of two settings being effectively the same, then yeesh, Westwood really did have a lazy coding day.)

[Oktavia]

The speed 6 is uncapped, which you won't notice if you cap your fps externally at 60 fps.

[Handepsilon]

Slowest is probably GS0 then, if such thing exists.

[AlexB]

Trivia time!
Internally the game speeds are 6 to 0, with 6 being the slowest. The fps are calculated by the remarkably simple formula "60 / GameSpeed", with the fastest GameSpeeds 0 and 1 handled manually: They mean 1 = 60fps and 0 = unlimited for singleplay, and 1 = 45fps and 0 = 60fps in multiplay respectively.
The normal game speed is 4, thus a game second is 15 frames or ticks or whatever you would call them.
All ingame timers are based on this, thus, if you use a faster setting, the clock will run faster, too. But units also move and reload faster proportionally, so it's still fair.

On the other hand, if you complete a mission, the timer at the end measures play time in real seconds, thus you can actually get sub par with faster game speeds, while you are penalized for using the slower game speeds.

[Starkku]

The normal game speed is 4, thus a game second is 15 frames or ticks or whatever you would call them.

 

And since the two are interchangeable using the ratio mentioned, this means that at constant 15 FPS, the game seconds are equal to real ones.

 

Internal game speed is locked to value of 2 for singleplayer missions when not using the command-line argument to unlock the speed slider in options. This sets the FPS cap for missions to 30, which matches the 'Fast' setting in MP/Skirmish.

Edited by Starkku, 12 January 2018 - 11:23 AM.