Efficiency Mod--already done by someone?

[7thGate]

Hi everyone!

Recently, I started to get interested in Civ 4 modding. Downloaded the SDK, got it compiling and started poking around in the code a bit, and I had some ideas for a mod I would like to do, but I don't know if someone has already done it. I have always wanted to play on a truly huge map (like 400x300 or 1000x1000), and I know that some mods have been built to enable such things. The problem with that, however, is that such a large map would require far too much in the way of system resources to run given the data structures currently used. My idea is to rework the underlying data structures for the game to make them space efficient enough that such truly huge maps are possible on a fairly slow/RAM constrained system. Before I put a ton of effort into doing this, I tried to see if someone else has done this and couldn't find anything. Does anyone know if someone else has done this already? I don't want to spend a ton of time reinventing the wheel if I can help it.

Thanks! And if I put this thread in the wrong place, I apologize. I am new here.

~7thGate

 

[Rorybob]

I'm not sure entirely what your saying, but from the way I see it, no, no-one has done so.
Not to the best of my knowledge.
Welcome, by the way.

 

[mechaerik]

Other than that, there are other problems...

I've seen some mods with new map sizes, but for some reason it screws up the mapscripts. For example Grave's History in the Making, my favorite mod, has a PLANETARY (yes, all caps) size, but the map is just solid land and ice, with no ocean.

Welcome to the forums 7th Gate

 

[PieceOfMind]

7thGate,
To my knowledge no one has created a mod like this. For Warlords there was something called Speed Mod but I don't think that's anywhere near the scale you are talking of. It simply removed some unnecessary code - no optimisation was involved I don't think. BtS is probably more efficient than both vanilla and warlords anyway.

 

[primordial stew]

Someone did put in a different savegame mechanism that wrote only a stub for the main save, and then a compressed file with the real data. I don't recall which mod it was in.. This is closely related to the MAF problem a mod runs into when it gets large enough. For the most part people just do this: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=224178
and that is good enough until we all get i7 machines with 64bit windows and 6G of RAM

I also recall a thread by someone who did some traces and found that a lot of time was spent pathfinding, esp in certain circumstances (eg a boat). I don't know if it went anywhere though.

 

[7thGate]

Alright, I'll keep looking into it then. Thanks everyone! This should be fun; I don't know if I will ever succeed, since these files are BIG, but I sure will have fun trying. So far I have been digging through CvPlot; I figure that the biggest problems from large map size will either be in AI algorithms or memory use from storing all the plots, and I think optimizing the memory use will go better. Might as well start with CvPlot and see where it goes; I think I can probably free up about a gigabyte of RAM on that would be needed for a 1000x1000 plot map with 50 civs (chosen for nice round numbers, not necessarily because that is a sane size for a map...although if I can ever load a map that size, I'll be one happy programmer ).