I am having a hard time getting Combat Commander to work on one of my computers. The computer is a bit older has a slower processor, and doesn’t have a lot of memory.
Truth is, I also don’t really like all of the calculation that the computer does for you. Maybe I am a bit old school in that I like to use my mind to do the calculations and to not have to select all of the various functions to get it to display the right number. I think I am also hoping that if it doesn’t do all of that stuff it will also be faster on my machine.
My friends and I play with VoiP so it is easy enough for us to just explain what we are doing and work together to get all of the modifiers and such.
I am wondering if there a dumber edition can be made for use with older machines, and or people that like to use their minds to do the calculations.
Not to take anything away from your main point – about not wanting
the automation – I don’t think any calculations that are being done
will really slow things down. Although I haven’t looked at the
module, I can’t imagine that it is really doing anything that would be
likely to make the module run slowly. Slowing down a computer
typically takes things which demand lots of resources, which usually
means graphics and images. A few computations to get modifiers
wouldn’t slow down the computer. On the other hand, if you end up
having to enter a lot of information to get this to happen, it could
easily slow down the user.
It is the graphics (lots of them) that slow it down on older machines. Basic
automation calculations that do things like add 2+7 in realtime don’t even
make the mod blink
Maybe we could precompute all of the integers we plan to add and store them
in a lookup table? Ha!
Tim’s correct: Anything that the module is computing for you is something
that you could compute in your head, so it’s taking the computer basically
no time at all. Conversely, anything which would actually tax the computer
(e.g., calculating large factorials or the Ackermann function) are things
which would also make a game unplayable by people.
Actually, in this case hockaday is correct. The Combat Commander module is incredibly over-engineered and innefficient with each gamepiece made up of literally hundreds of Decorators. It really does bog down due to lack of CPU on lower end machines!
If that’s the case, then there are many calculations being done which aren’t
needed, and they could be optimized out. The calculations which are actually
needed to play the game are just some simple arithmetic and shouldn’t tax any
computer still in use.
I second that emotion. Even with a faster machine, the features that are supposed to help you are merely confusing, if you’re not interested in that sort of help. I was thinking aloud about the problems with this module this morning, so you can see my full comments here.
It’d be nice if there were a “Light” version, without the rules enforcement features. I’d be happy just to have the cards and pieces.
It is unsupported and will not be supported further so do not ask for
anything more of it. This is as plain Jane as it gets and what you
explicitly asked for.