[Religion and Revolution]: General Questions and Discussions

What card do you use?

Schmiddie said:

What card do you use?

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On my business laptop, where the game is really racing:

NVIDIDA Quadro NVS 160M
(3GB graphics memory and 2GB system memory on a 64Bit system)

Hey guys,

I just realized, we are going towards the One-Year-Anniversary of Religion and Revolution.
(It was September 1st 2011, when Robert and myself officially started this project.)

A lot has happened till then ...

• The team has grown enormously.
• We have implemented an incredible amount of new features and improvements.
• Lots and lots of great discussions and ideas.
• We have made many new contacts and have found many new partners.
• ...

It is really an incredible coincidence, that we will probably release the first time almost exactly one year after we started.
(Release date will probably be 2 weeks after Release of TAC 2.03, which is supposed to be end of next week.)

I don't get tired saying it:
It is absolutely amazing how well this project was going and how much we have accomplished.

It is an honor working with you guys and I really hope, we will continue working like this for a long time.

Something should be done about Washakie - looks like a she-male...

The leaderheads do not have a top priority at the moment! We have discussed a lot about good leaderheads, but it is very hard to find good and appropriate ones.

Feel free to build a new one...

Hi guys,

I am not so sure about creating an FPK for our Release 1 anymore.

Reasons:

1. Graphics will be accessible easier for other modders.
2. There is always the chance, that we need to fix a graphic and without FPK we could deliver a small hotfix download.
3. I have even read reports, where FPKs caused worse performance.
4. The team and the partners would not work / test / play with the FPK version anyways since we cannot create a new FPK after every change.

---------------

Thus I suggest, let us deliver Release 1 without FPK and think about that again at a later phase of our project.

I don't really care about FPK for release 1
As you said, it's easier to fix/mod/test without it

But for a more final release I definitely suggest using it
I can confirm that it significantly helps performance in Civ IV mods

AbsintheRed said:

But for a more final release I definitely suggest using it

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Well yes for a final release ...
But we are planning to be working on this mod for a while.

AbsintheRed said:

I can confirm that it significantly helps performance

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The question is not that easy to answer.

1. Amount of graphics actually needed in a game

See, we have 24 Native Nations with UnitArtStyles, CityStyles, ...

Large map however will use only 12 Native Nations.
So the game would only need to cash graphics for these 12 Native Nations.

However, when we have everything in the FPK we will force the game to cash the complete FPK with the graphics of all 24 Nations.
(At least that is how I understand it.)

2. Size of FPK

Our FPK would really be big.
(I am not sure, if it helps to split in different smaller ones.)

All other FPKs I have seen so far (for CivCol) were a lot smaller.

Maybe this will cause problems.

3. Experience Reports

I have read several comments of people about FPKs.

Most people said, "It does improve performance."
Other people however said "For me, it made performance worse. When I unpacked everything, it was much better."

----------------------

Summary:

Currently we are just guessing / believing, that an FPK might improve the situation.

We did not yet really try if it improves or worsens the situation.
(And I do not have the time to do so for Release 1 ...)

At the moment I do not even really understand what the FPK will do to cashing ...
I did not find anything that really gave a technical explanation or details.

I simply don't want to take any risk now.
(We need to get more information and experience with that topic and our own fpk.)

I only suggested to use FPK for a more final release, not for Release 1
Anyway, if you choose to go with it eventually, definitely split it into smaller files

Hi guys, TAC is awesome, this seems to be awesome too!
Did you consider include the BUG mod for Civilization? Not sure if it can be adapted to Colonization, just an idea

Regards!

@team:

I have tried 2 times to upload the mod.

1. AtomicGamer
2. Gamefront

Both times, the upload itself was complete, but then a failure message was displayed and no download link was returned ...

So I have wasted many hours of uploading for nothing ...
(The zip is almost 300MB and really took a lot of time to upload.)

I will try one more time tomorrow night.

It would really be great, if some of you could also try to upload and
then send me the the download link in a private message, if you succeed.

If this will not work, well I guess, we will not have a release this Sunday.
(I simply cannot and will not spend hours and hours of uploading just to get a failure message at the end again and again.)

Best regards,
ray

You should also consider using a P2P upload with torrent. Since many user will be downloading the files, sharing them will be trivial and therefore uploading/downloading will be faster and easier than any other solution.

EDIT: An example of this is C2C from BTS. The file size is +500 MB but using the torrent link it takes minutes to download.

Isabelxxx said:

You should also consider using a P2P upload with torrent.

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Peer2Peer is somethig I will not use myself.
I will give it another try with a filehoster today, but I really hope, that somebody from the team will try as well ...

Finally !!!
This time the upload was succesful.

Hello I'm posting to check in! I'm still around but will have to be traveling alot for work for the next months and can only do modding on a very intermittent basis. I'm glad to see the mod still progressing & Release 1 ready. I will still hope to continue to make some more events though it will have to be very sporadic.

If you want a mirror for downloading the mod I recommend trying weplayciv , if you post here and ask nicely to put up a mirror they'll be happy to do it.
http://www.weplayciv.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?2-Site-Feedback-amp-Community

orlanth said:

Hello I'm posting to check in!

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Good to hear from you again.

orlanth said:

I'm glad to see the mod still progressing & Release 1 ready.

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Of course we are still around.

orlanth said:

I will still hope to continue to make some more events though it will have to be very sporadic.

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Sounds great.

orlanth said:

If you want a mirror for downloading the mod I recommend trying weplayciv ...

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The issue is already solved.
(hotfile works really great and I can see very interesting statistics.)

@team, partners and community:

Still could not find anybody who could explain me from a technical perspective if it is better to have:

A) One single FPK for the graphics
B) Several FPKs for the graphics
C) Not to use FPKs at all
D) Only some graphics in the FPK and others in normal folders

I also want to know under which conditions one of these apporaches is better than the other.
(Considering performance / caching / graphic cards. Usability for modders is obvious.)

I am not really interested in

• I believe that it could ...
• Simply do it like ...

I want to understand this and thus I am looking for a real explanation from a technical point of view.

Is there anybody who can give me some answers ?

Edit:

I have asked for information about this in the Civ4 modding forum as well.

Edit 2:

Topic is resolved. (see here)

@team:

Our mod got a 99% !!! (of 100 of course) rating from infracta.
(Sorry, the review is written in German.)

Our mod was described with words like "Gigantic", "Beginning of a Mod-Legend", "Ultimate CivCol-Mod", "Absolute Top-Mod" ...

And the test was related to Release 1.0.
I am just wondering, what the reviewer would have said if he had played Release 1.2 ...

And no, the review was not written by myself ...

Where do we discuss strategy for playing this mod? You do not wish us to post a new thread and I don't see an active place where people are discussing their game experiences and how they are playing it.

alatari said:

Where do we discuss strategy for playing this mod? You do not wish us to post a new thread and I don't see an active place where people are discussing their game experiences and how they are playing it.

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Here you go.
(Just created a thread for that.)