Hi, I downloaded CC a while back on build 19 but didn't feel like buying it until after build 21 was released.

While I had some concerns about buying a game that was incomplete, it seems that development is constantly ongoing and the mod scene is active enough to provide plenty of content for now.

I think the whole idea... physics based 2d combat, custom base building, carnage, ETC is incredible. The implementation is pretty sweet too. Even though at this point in the development cycle I can tell Datarealms is still focusing entirely on making the engine as perfect as possible, they've still got an impressive product on their hands.

Now that I've had a chance to play the game for a while, I can think of a couple things that might make the experience better in terms of interface and ease of play. I'm by no means an expert in design in any way, but I figure the developers might like to hear constructive ideas from time to time. If not of course, can always just flame me or ignore me or whatever =)


1: Savable buy menu presets! A few tabs where we can save our favorite craft+crew+gear loudouts on the buy menu would free up time for killing.

2: Easier movement. Perhaps this is something people may not agree with me on, but in general the act of walking in CC feels very slow and awkward. If something could be done in the engine to make it smoother and faster, i feel it would be an improvement. I don't know how hard it would be to implement faster/smoother walking within the engine though. Also it seems like actors, especially heavily armored ones carrying lots of equipment, sink into the ground and the wreckage covering it with every step. It makes the already painfully slow walking even worse. It would be nice to walk around without feeling like the entire scene is made out of quicksand.

3: An in-game method of choosing enemy spawning behaviors. I want to fight a huge army strictly composed of AK-toting fleshy clones that arrive in pairs via a Teleport Pod every 5 seconds. It would be very nice to do this without having to do a bunch of complicated file hacking that I can't figure out and makes my brain hurt. An in game method would allow players to try many combinations of enemy assault forces against different defensive configurations easily and quickly. This would do wonders for replayability and would be a major incentive for players to buy/register a copy!


Additionally, is there anything I can do to make the game's performance a bit better? I'm running a single core 2.4 ghz AMD 64 right now. I'm figuring this game is very CPU intensive, which is why i get a lot of slowdown. Would a multicore processor help? I know I'm not running the best computer in the world... 2 gigs ddr2 ram, an ATI x800, and that single core AMD 2.4ghz. Is there some way to make less gibs or particles or something so my matches aren't always running at a crawl? I see a variable for particle count or something in the settings.ini. Will altering this improve my performance or just ruin my install? lol

I figure that making it so enemies arrive by teleporting pods or something that can't explode and leave tons of debris everywhere would probably help my lag problem a lot, but I just want to know if there are any other optimizations I can make so I have a smoother experience.

Thanks for any suggestions. I look forward to (maybe?) being a part of the CC community.

Darkstorm Mod has droppable pods that kickass for enemies. They look cool, explode after they land, and leave little to no debris! I highly recommend it. Presets would be nice too.

Welcome to the team!
I definitely agree walking is too slow. It should probably be 2x as fast to be practical in comparison to jetpacking. But then it looks really strange and the actors have a tough time with their feet catching on debris- it looks like they are trying to run on ice.
As for optimization, I don't know if there are many options open to you. The most important thing is try to run as few mods as possible. Judging by the extensive memory usage, it has to keep all your weapons and such in memory to some degree like all the time. There is an option to turn off glows in the settings I believe, and running on normal resolution is a good idea.

For mods, I recommend Klone Soccer, you, two morons, vs, three morons, actors equal destructible Klones, fun.

There is much potential for fresh meat... Like Gotcha, he became a well known map maker. And DMSK2, you know, DSTech.
There is a hidden message.

I actually just found the answer to my performance issue! I went into my settings.ini and changed my Particles per Meter to 40. For some reason, this made characters stop sinking into stuff constantly. The system calculating the physics for every actor/debris sinking into the ground simultaneously was lagging me up really badly.

I tried this after setting it to 5, thinking a lower number would mean rendering less particles or something. Noooo. My clone hit the ground and immediately sunk through it out the bottom of the stage! Not to mention the lag...

Setting it to 40 allows me to run a huge base on Crossfire with tons of actors in pillboxes and a large invading force with hardly any lag. Woot! Not to mention I'm running Pelian faction, Crobotech faction, DarkKlones, DarkStorm, and bunker tile mods.

Now I just need to figure out this activities modding business so I can have pelian infantry and coalition infantry teleporting in en-masse. No wreckage, lots of gore, WOO!!

I'm really glad I paid for this game right now, fixing the lag made it so much better. Not to mention this also fixed the sinking-feet issue, which simultaneously fixed the movement issue. Rough terrain is still a bit wonky but otherwise it's great. My DarkStorm Shoguns trot merrily along now!

Hmm, I'll be wanting to play around with this later. Thanks for the tip. And welcome aboard.

Ok, so suddenly some dude comes in and says he's a newb and then brings in the cure to the lag problem.

Well f*cking thank you man, been waiting for this along time!

Nice tip as the others said, and as for your activities file, the hardest part is finding the instance names of the actors you want the AI to have. Grif has a tut on the wiki, and using search of activities yields some good results. I've mad an activities using the Darkstorm mod, and if you get confused on a part feel free to post it here.

I've made a crazy activies mix in one of my CC installations. It brings the pelians, crobos, TTRs, and the default stuff invading at me. I want to expand it with DSTech as soon as DSMK2 makes an activities.ini for them.

And I fight all that with AAL. Nothing can stop it. : )

I give your MPAM rifle (whichever one is under the shotgun in the buy menu) to regular infantry for mobility. Shooting it doesn't give enough recoil to kill them like most of the other weapons, but enough force to propel them away from what they're shooting at. Hovering in the air only by means of shooting people on the ground = win, especially for the Shogun DarKlones, who don't have a constant jetpack.

I was just thinking about that. Either that or make page-down and page-up cycle through menus faster.

*gentleman voice* I just thought of the most excellent thing.
Instead of having "Misc" in the buy menu, replace it with "Preset Loads".

Yeah... that lag fix works great... for fixing lag. My game got REALLY ♥♥♥♥ up though. I'm talking dropships slamming into the ground because they fell too fast, and the AI walking around backwards. Also all the particles go further than they should. And the AAL pilots jetpack is too powerful. Too bad it has all the downsides...

You increased the number of pixels per unit, of course they go farther. Now all the speeds apply to the newly expanded unit, so everything goes faster.

I know that. I'm saying that sure, it fixes lag, but it also causes a bunch of it's own problems.