Rof Smackdown! A stress testing mission.

Salute!

Jason at GoGamer asked me to make a mission to stress test his highend rig. He wanted to get 2 doz or more planes into the air at once and see what happened.

Predictably, my rig floundered. *ÅÅ*Trouble4U has a high end rig and said that it was no sweat, and he immediately began adding more and more planes.

Anyway, if you want to see what your rig can do and fly in a big furball, then have a crack. It is not a sophisticated mission, just an ugly last-man-standing brawl.

You fly a DVII. If you want to fly the others (providing you have the rights) then just load up the ME and change the DV11 to AI and make the one of your choice the AI the player.

Good luck.

~E!~
D_T
Mission A: Flying the DVII

Smackdown! German

Mission B: Flying the Spad, thanks to Chipwich!

Allied Version

Ok, so what does one do with this file? What Dir should it be placed in?

Unzip and extract to your ROF/ Data/ Missions folder.

Hell of a fight Double Tap, a bit of stuttering at the first but very good indeed.

i7 2.67 Ghz
6 Gig RAM
Gforce 9800 GT

Joe

Thanks again Double Tap. Great to see how it looks.
I still haven't completed Warfusee prorperly, I keep running out of amo before I can stop the train

Extract it into C:\Program Files\Rise of Flight\data\Missions

Oops, too slow

The main thing Highfox is to come home. There will always be more trains.

Works pretty good on my system. Stuttery at the initial merge, then smooth.

Map is stuttery too, but it always is regardless of the mission.

Thanks for making the mission, it's fun!

E6600@2.8ghz
Evga 260 GTX 896mb
3 gigs RAM
XP pro

What FPS are you blokes getting in the mission?

Pretty much the same results here.

I enjoyed seeing the sky full of aircraft.

I think a few user made campaigns ( can we do that? ), and missions will really help create the experience we are all looking for.

BULL

Not that I know of. A string of missions can be nested in a folder, but they would all be exclusive with results having no impact on the following missions.

It did run surprisingly well. Some slowdown in start then very playable until I got shot down.

My system:
E8400@3ghz
ATI 4870 512mb
4G mem
Vista 64bit

Well killed my system stutter stutter dead, guess need new mobo and processor? Me supid me have superb gfx card but old crap dual core processor......

My system:

Athlon dual 5200+ @2,7ghz
Nvidia 285 gtx 648m 1 gig ddr3
4 gig mem
Vista 32bit
Trackir 5
Creative fataly xfi soundcard
Creative fataly usb headphone

Thanks for the mission Double_Tap, a blast to try a real furball at last, and I thought it worked well and realistically.

I normally get around 50-60 FPS on 1:1 type dogfights, and just flying around. Vsynch is on, at 60 for my monitor.

Dogfight was 30-50 FPS continuously, very smooth, so very good given all the planes. Several times however the FPS dropped for a second (at most) to 5-10 FPS in a 10 min dogfight. More just an very minor annoyance then anything else. Couldn't really determine what caused that.

i7-920@3.5Ghz
Nvidia GTX295
3Gb 1600Mhz RAM
1680x1050 22" Monitor

Edit: Good system I suppose, but all settings are on high except Landscape at Medium, with AA at 8 and AF at 2. No post effects.

Thanks for the mission. I am looking forward to trying it. I will post results after a few trys.

thats the best one iv played no probs here ran fine GIVE me more.im running a i7-920 quadcore,6 gigs ram,ati radeon hd 4850,vista 64 bit

Very good thanks Smosh, video of it nearby, can't see how to make the FRAPS fps counter visible overlaying the video but it was 30fps most of the time as you'll see, no stutters and all-action

Ming

The Mission ran well on my old quad. Some studder the first 30 seconds or so but after that it ran well until a enemy AI ran into me.

The mission is fun. Thanks again for doing it and taking the time to learn to use the ROF Mission Builder.

Do you have any notes or comments you can share on the Mission Builder?

GREAT IDEA Double_Tap!!!

...could be used as a general benchmarking utility as well.


KUDOS!

<S!>

Hi DT,

Sorry for the question but I just do not see how it works.

I just want to change the players A/C to the Spad13 as that is what I have been training on.

Buddye1,

I do have a few things that I was going to post about the Mission Editor, but since I heard a 150 page manual was on the way I wasn't going to worry about it.

The Beta testers who were keen on learning the ME tended to pool the knowledge and post things on the Beta forum. I posted some rudimentary guides that I could probably put here. They are not a simple cut and paste as the images from ME that I uploaded are stored on the NeoQb server and I cannot link to them.

I will see what i can do tonight.


As far as changing the player a/c here goes:
1) Find the DVII that is designated the player. I think it is in the second group of four from the top. You need to click on the advanced properties tab (the > link to the right of the name) and look at the AI box. It has options of Normal/Ace/Player

2) Change the Player to Normal

3) Find a Spad then change AI form Normal to Player.

Hope that helps,

D_T

Cool, can't wait to try it out and see how it is on my rig. Thanks for doing this!

Thanks DT,

I did not know how to get the list of 12 German and 12 British A/c to show up. I think I clicked on the yellow circle and they appeared or a "+" appeared next to the mission and I clicked on it

Anyway,I changed all the Newport17 to Spad13 and switched the player. I am also going to experiment with the skill level of the AI and see if I can determine the differences (Low,Regular,High, ACE, I think).

It all worked for me and I am flying the 24 a/c mission in a Spad13.

This Mission Builder looks good (maybe super good after I learn it) and I am looking forward to the 150 page manual. I got to stop having to say looking forward to.

Why did ROF management release the Mission Builder without the manual as is just another frustration for the players.

ROF will need a in game FPS counter,I think, to show Max, min, ave FPS. Fraps gives you only average FPS (which is just a estimate depending on the time for the average) and we need Minimum FPS to really work on performance testing, benchmarks, and performance analysis.

Thanks again for doing this and spelling out how to switch planes. I flew in a Spad as I enjoy that plane more right now.

Using Fraps, I started out in the high 50s-mid 60s and then shortly went to 1 fps as things spawned. Then I was back up to mid 40s and then in a short while they went down to about 10 fps. Then the Great Furball began. FPS at this point were in the mid to low 30s, never saw anything lower than 31 but they were usually about 34. Once I shot some planes down and others thinned out I was in the 40s-50s. I managed to shoot down 4 planes but would have gotten 2 more if they weren't stolen from me. I think I also scored a friendly kill as a Nieuport looked a lot like this zebra striped Fokker I was going after and as I dove down from 300m to the deck and let loose his plane blew up. Once I couldn't find any more planes to shoot at I headed home looking for an airfield to land at and was in the mid to high 80s, a couple times I hit 91. I never got to land as I experienced my 2nd ever issue with RoF and crashed to desktop. The other time was with another user made mission where it just locked up. But I plan to fly this one some more as it was a blast! Thanks once again for making and sharing this with us!

I would rather have the ME and no manual than neither. Its like trying to do the Pravda cryptic crossword with no knowledge of Russian. Call me a masochist.

Translating a 150 page manual from Russian to English and keeping the logical syntax would be an enormous challenge.

The Beta testers had a pre-build manual to work with. Just a few pages of commands with basic explainations. The Russlish could be taken to mean many different things and was a nightmare to try to fathom.

Of all the things we have to wait for, the ME Manual is the one thing I don't mind waiting for so long as it is done well.

~E!~
D_T

The mission ran very well on my machine.

Bagged a N17 and a N28.

Core 2 Duo E8500 @3.16ghz.
BFG 280GTX OCX
4gig ram
Soundblaster XFi Fatal1ty Gamer.
XP Pro 32bit.
TiR 4 w/Track Clip Pro

Well could someone in the know tell me should I or shouldent I be able to run this on my machine? Does not look much worse than yours ELAurens? IS my precessor really that crap? Or is there an issue with something else?

Athlon dual 5200+ @2,7ghz
Nvidia 285 gtx 648m 1 gig ddr3
4 gig mem
OCZ Vertex Series SATA II SSD 120gig
Vista 32bit
Trackir 5
Creative fatalety x-fi soundcard
Creative fatalety usb headphones

Your setup looks like it should be OK.

I know nothing of AMD processors as I've never had one.

What monitor and resolution are you running?

Do you have the latest Nvidia drivers?

Everything else turned off? (No DL in progress, etc...)

I got 20 fps at start with all the planes in view then it quickly crept up over 35 fps then continued increasing until about 45 fps. It would have reached 60 fps if I didn't die so soon.

E6600 oc'ed to 3.15 ghz
FSB oc'ed to 1400 Mhz
4 Gigs RAM DDR (but of course XP only used 3.25 gigs)
8800 GTX
Audigy 2
TrackIR

Vsynch on
all settings at high
bilinear
no antialiasing
post saturation
drops
blood
1920x1200
32 sound count

Finally. Got my first 2 kills. Edited it as directed to fly as Spad no. 2 in the second flight. Bagged 2 x Albatros and headed home. Not much ammo left and glad to get out with my hide intact. What fun! Thanks for the mission Double Tap.

I've uploaded this for you blokes who want to fly as Allied HERE.

Thanks for saving us the effort, Chips!

~S~

Nice work Chipwich! I have amended teh first post to include both. Much obliged.

~E!~
D_T

Thanks a bunch for the mission. Worth replaying over and over. Runs pretty well.

Thanks Chip!!!!


<S!>

I added 8 balloons and copied all of the enemy plains 3 times. This slowed my system down a little but was totally playable.

It did however cause my first ever crash with RoF after about 7 minutes. It was fun up till then. I had about 15 planes on me. I must say though that the AI, however their skill was set... suck at shooting me down.

One thing about the mission editor that took me a long time to figure out... The balloons are called Aerostats. Have fun with your modding.

Finally downloaded and tried to run this, completely kills my machine

Framerate never goes above about 12 (more often than not it's around 5) and there are lots of pauses of up to 5 seconds as it sputters along.

E6850 @ 3 GHz
Asus P5K Deluxe
4 GB Corsair Dominator (1066 DDR2)
GTX 280 OC 1 GB

Graphics settings make no difference so I guess it's mu CPU.

It might be.. That video card should hold up nicely.

Strange...The mission runs well, it doesn't stutter, except in the first few seconds...But then, I get some kind of laggy movement...You know like, i take a turn, and the plane remains stuck turning for 2-3 seconds...Same when i shoot sometimes. Goes on shooting even when i release the trigger. Still, it doesn't freeze. Just like lag in a MP game...Any idea?

EDIT: i lowered the settings to everything low/off, and does exactly the same, while being at at least 35 FPS...So it just can't be my rig, let's be logical ^^

Oh and it behaves exactly the same as when i'm in time accel and i try to move...Plan movements do not correspond to what i do...It's always like that, even in a free flight mission...Except here it does that without time acceleration.

Outstanding missions DT! Had a blast -literally!- flying these.

As others noted the initial merge is a bit stuttery, but once everything is loaded I had no troubles running the missions. 30-40 FPS most of the time on my rig. Got four kills while flying the DVII, and survived the mission with a good landing in an open field (couldn't find an aerodrome nearby... LOL!)

/edit to see if an updated sig will show my computer specs

/edit2 : evidently not, so here they are:

Intel Core2Quad Q6600 @2.40GHz | 3GB RAM
BFG GTX285 OCE w/1gb; nVidia drivers v. 186.18 | Dell 2007WFP @ 1680x1050 resolution
Sound Blaster X-Fi | Windows XP Pro SP3 32bit | Cougar HOTAS | TIR-3 Pro + VE

Anyone got an idea?

Here are my specs, i really would appreciate to have the opinion of someone, since what i am encountering is really atypical.

Intel Core 2 Duo 2ghz,
3Go DDR2-SDRAM memory (DDR2 667 - PC2-5300)
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650
Video memory 512 Mo

It's a laptop, and YES the game runs great on it in settings all high except land. And bloom, DoF, Post saturation turned off. AA=off, anisotropic x8

The first thing I would do is install the latest video driver after using a driver cleaner program to ensure all traces of the old one are gone.

I would expect your rig to strain a bit with this mission, but if you are getting 35 fps then it is probably something else. Why not post the issue over at the official forum and see if the can offer something?

well maybe not 35 fps but it was a way of saying it turns smoothly enough to my taste, and to be more than playable...So i should be able to enjoy this mission, if there wasn't this strange thing happening!

I'll try to update drivers later this afternoon!

Okay now that's nasty!

You know what? When I play normal speed, it makes all the strange things i previously described, plus sound bugging.

BUT, when i play in SLOW MO, it runs just FINE! No matter the number of planes or whatsoever. Sound is fine, and I could shoot down 6 planes just 3 minutes ago....

Can anyone just make a quick estimation, with his knowledge in computer stuff, to tell me what could possibly cause problems in normal speed, and make the mission work just right in slow motion?

Can this possibly be my hardware?

Sounds like a CPU bottleneck to me.

What are you running?

Well yes it might be a bottleneck, since my CPU isn't really top-notch at all. But i'm very surprised by the kind of problems it triggers. I would expect the game to stutter, and i would be ok with that. But it just behaves strange while being relatively smooth. And it's just fine in slow mo.

I'm not expecting something great with that much planes at the time in the sky, but i had never seen this kind of thing.

My specs are in one of my previous answers here

I have to buy a real desktop for gaming anyway. I'm still glad my laptop can run the game perfectly smoothly with 5-6 planes in the sky.

How can i see my actual fps in this game?

Arrow, my game behaves excatly like you described when there is more planes than ~8 around. It is CPU problem. FPS actually are quite high (around 30 with max settings) and then game just stops for short while. Slow motion everything is very smooth (But I feel like I cheat then as it is much easier to shoot planes down)

Forlindon: Use fraps.

Actually, if people would overclock their CPU... they would see as much as 15 fps more....
Especially Core2/I7......they're meant to be overclocked...
FPS with 24 plane IS limited by the CPU.... there so much calculation to do. Just with Il2 you can see a huge difference with higher clock....wich was with one core. Now, imagine 1GHZ more on 2 or 4 core.....
My 2 cent

Yeah i thought about overclocking my CPU, but being on a laptop, i think it's impossible

gaming on laptop is no go...

What are these questions about why it runs much better in slow motion? Of course it does, your computer has much more time to calculate everything

I know gaming on laptop is no go......

Anyone have a working link to the Spad version of the mission? Looks like it got taken down. I'm finally updating my site, so I'm uploading the missions to my server as a mirror

here try this:

http://www.filefront.com/14175583/Smackdown_Allied.zip

Thanks Gustang, Initial post amended.

I'm quite surprised how well this runs on my hardly bleeding edge system. With everything on high, 8xaf, 4xaa, I get playable (20+fps) all through. C2D 8500 3.16ghz, 8800gt 4gig ram XP. Maybe the relatively high ghz of the processor is helping even though its only dual core.


I just tried to open the allied version smackdown in the ME, I get "error reading mission file" Anyone help.

That is interesting. I have Vista 64 bit, E8600 3.3 ghz, 4GB ram 800 FSB and a Geforce 9600gt 1mb and playing Smackdown with maximum gfx setting gives me FPS of 15 and Lower.

Reducing the gfx settings improves the FPS very much (25 FPS and higher).

So the RAM and the gfx card may turn down performance on my end.

Love it! Goodbye Russian Roulette. This is my new practice mission.

Runs fine other than the stutters at spawn. Pretty basic system:

Apple quad zeon 2.8
NV 8800gt