Art and Music

[The Almighty dF]

Capo, was thinking.
I think this might work better as the Modern/Future flag for Arabia.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Coat_of_arms_of_Saudi_Arabia.svg

It's Saudi Arabia's coat of arms.

 

[The Capo]

I have something I am going to use already, something different from what I posted previously.

 

[Omega124]

Any words about my flag?

 

[The Capo]

Any words about my flag?

Xyth summed it up pretty well, since I am not going to change France's secondary color to red that flag wouldn't look right. It would just be a half blue/half yellow flag. Wouldn't make much sense.

 

[The Capo]

This is not related to what we have been talking about in this thread, but I figured it is more appropriate here than in the Playtest Feedback thread: Basically the mod isn't performing like I want it to. Obviously, with a mod this big there were bound to be MAF issues, but they are pretty bad right now. I think one area that I can adress is the unit models used. For many units there are three different models rather than one model. I think what I should do is cut back on these emmensely. I know, it makes the mod look really good, but I'd rather increase performance. The units look good anyway if you ask me.

I am not including Unique Units in this list, but I think only a few select units should get multiple model groups. Which would be the following units:
-Warriors
-Swordsman
-Horsearchers
-Maceman
-Knights

Beyond that, I think they should all be the same model in the group. I will make special exceptions for certain units (like Vietnam's Elephants), but in general I think if I only mixed these mesh groups I can cut out a lot of extra memory.

What do you think?

 

[The Almighty dF]

This is not related to what we have been talking about in this thread, but I figured it is more appropriate here than in the Playtest Feedback thread: Basically the mod isn't performing like I want it to. Obviously, with a mod this big there were bound to be MAF issues, but they are pretty bad right now. I think one area that I can adress is the unit models used. For many units there are three different models rather than one model. I think what I should do is cut back on these emmensely. I know, it makes the mod look really good, but I'd rather increase performance. The units look good anyway if you ask me.

I am not including Unique Units in this list, but I think only a few select units should get multiple model groups. Which would be the following units:
-Warriors
-Swordsman
-Horsearchers
-Maceman
-Knights

Beyond that, I think they should all be the same model in the group. I will make special exceptions for certain units (like Vietnam's Elephants), but in general I think if I only mixed these mesh groups I can cut out a lot of extra memory.

What do you think?

Sounds like a good idea. It might also help to both the Flavian (which is kinda neat, but given the callbacks for it... it's not worth it) and the Olympics.

 

[Xyth]

This is not related to what we have been talking about in this thread, but I figured it is more appropriate here than in the Playtest Feedback thread: Basically the mod isn't performing like I want it to. Obviously, with a mod this big there were bound to be MAF issues, but they are pretty bad right now. I think one area that I can adress is the unit models used. For many units there are three different models rather than one model. I think what I should do is cut back on these emmensely. I know, it makes the mod look really good, but I'd rather increase performance. The units look good anyway if you ask me.

I am not including Unique Units in this list, but I think only a few select units should get multiple model groups. Which would be the following units:
-Warriors
-Swordsman
-Horsearchers
-Maceman
-Knights

Beyond that, I think they should all be the same model in the group. I will make special exceptions for certain units (like Vietnam's Elephants), but in general I think if I only mixed these mesh groups I can cut out a lot of extra memory.

What do you think?

I think reducing most units to a single model each is a good idea. Unfortunately most such units are early/midgame and late game is where the game uses the most memory. I'd suggest vehicles such as tanks as being a good place to make reductions: firstly they get built a lot and secondly, many are the same model but with a different paintjob or emblem on them - yet in memory terms they are counted as completely different units. In my opinion it is not as important to customize vehicles as it is human figures and realistically not that many civs make their own tanks/planes/etc, they obtain them from others.

Also I think I mentioned already that Zerver's modern units could be removed or at least have all their textures resized. Some of those units are as large memory-wise as leaderheads!

Btw, while Python code and callbacks affect game speed, they are extremely unlikely to have any effect at all on MAFs. MAFs and slowdowns are two different issues.

 

[The Capo]

Well, most of the mixed units are in the early ages of the game, so they are the easiest to at least eliminate whole units with. I will try to resize texture files on the Zerver units, but I'd still like to use them. I say this all the time but I am a graphics modder, so graphics are important to me. I'd rather go with a quality unit over a shoddy unit, which I'm sure is obviously the way most people think, but sometimes I'm willing to overlook a little extra file-size to do so.

 

[The Capo]

I'm in the process of cutting down the amount of models used for units in the mod as well as the texture sizes, so hopefully this can cut down a major chunk of the art in the mod. I'm hoping for a sizeable decrease in the size of the unit art for this mod. That should hopefully help performance a bit.

EDIT: Alright, I streamlined the meshgroups, now I'm going through and making all of the texture files 128 x 128 (or smaller where appropriate). This will make some units look a bit less polished, but I don't think you can really tell that well unless you are in NifSkope. This is extremely time consuming and tedious work, but hopefully it will be worth doing as it should, in theory at least, make the game run better.

 

[The Capo]

This is going to take a long time.

Basically what I am doing is going through every single unit (and I mean model by model, folder by folder) and resizing the textures, deleting frivilous parts (I removed the sword on the Babylonian Cannonier for example) and unnecessary texture files that exist. While this is going to take forever there are a few positive things for not only this mod, but the community. The main one I can think of is the optimization of Zerver's modern units.

So far it seems to be taking around an hour (a little more or a little less depending on the civ and the units it has) per civ to accomplish. I would REALLY REALLY appreciate help with this if anyone wants to I can send you a couple of civs with some instructions on what exactly to do. You will need NifSkope (or something similar), GIMP (or something similar), and DXTbmp (again, or something similar), to effectively do this. If there are any takers on this I would be very appreciative.

 

[mamba]

Basically what I am doing is going through every single unit (and I mean model by model, folder by folder) and resizing the textures, deleting frivilous parts (I removed the sword on the Babylonian Cannonier for example) and unnecessary texture files that exist. While this is going to take forever there are a few positive things for not only this mod, but the community. The main one I can think of is the optimization of Zerver's modern units.

So far it seems to be taking around an hour (a little more or a little less depending on the civ and the units it has) per civ to accomplish. I would REALLY REALLY appreciate help with this if anyone wants to I can send you a couple of civs with some instructions on what exactly to do. You will need NifSkope (or something similar), GIMP (or something similar), and DXTbmp (again, or something similar), to effectively do this. If there are any takers on this I would be very appreciative.

Not volunteering, but I did the same thing already in my mod, i.e. resizing of oversized textures, not changing nifs though. So you might want to grab them from my mod.

 

[Xyth]

I can probably help out a bit after the weekend.

 

[Vortilex]

I'm afraid for now I'm going to have to keep playtesting and modding to a minimum right now, as I have a month before SAT's and I need to start studying. I'll still be checking in on the forum and offering advice, but I won't be able to play the current playtest or devote too much time for the mod. I'll be back playtesting etc. after June 5.

 

[The Capo]

I'm afraid for now I'm going to have to keep playtesting and modding to a minimum right now, as I have a month before SAT's and I need to start studying. I'll still be checking in on the forum and offering advice, but I won't be able to play the current playtest or devote too much time for the mod. I'll be back playtesting etc. after June 5.

That's cool man, do what you gotta do. Thanks for helping out so far, I really appreciate it.

 

[The_Coyote]

only 4 month passed and i had the time you make a first check - i shouldn´t accept such jobs (<- text only to have 5 char )

 

[mamba]

only 4 month passed and i had the time you make a first check - i shouldn´t accept such jobs (<- text only to have 5 char )

Hm, no idea where these belong to, could you post the entire units

 

[The Capo]

They belong to the Legionary, Legionary Centurion, Norse Missionary, and Nordic Great Prophet from my mod, which is a work in progress.

 

[The_Coyote]

seems sometimes and rarely i´m able (as long as i don´t confirm that i even accept the job) to be a bit quicker and don´t need some months

added an activation sequence to the worker.kfm (should be played similar to the activation of the great people), used the worker build animation (more or less only build start, the other 50 frames i did by hand) as base for the slave builds building animation. The kfm and the new kf attached (tested the kf itself in game [as replacement of the fidget sequence], but not if and how it works as activation animation), all other regular worker files are also needed

 

[The Capo]

Awesome stuff Coyote, thanks a lot. I'll have to see if this works out in game.

Well, I'm still waiting on the code guy to finish up the next patch, I think there are two more after that and the next playtest will be ready. In the meantime I started working on some ethnic Great People, and I know you guys like previews so here are a few of them so far...

...I am going to reskin the Asian Great Merchant, but so far I think they look pretty good, they are all simple model swaps right now. What do you guys think?

(they are a Native Scientist, Native Engineer, Asian Great Artist [I will replace the skull with the thing from the Confucian cutscene], Asian Merchant and Asian Scientist)

 

[The Almighty dF]

Lookin' good. The merchant's camel isn't permanent, right?