How to remove/simplify "flames" effect? Unplayable lag.

[Deon]

Greetings!

Today I wanted to play as Hyborem. It was my first real game as infernals and I enjoyed it very much but I spawned next to Varn Gossam's desert vast empire and now I can't make a normal turn because all these Desert Fires kill my laptop's videocard (which runs Oblivion on medium by the way).
This is the quick and nice fix I've found:

If you don't want to swith the flames' animations completely off try the next action:

Go to /assets/xml/art/CIV4ArtDefines_Feature.xml, find there ARTDEFINE_FEATURE_FLAMES
and change
<ModelFile>Art/Terrain/Features/Flames/tribalvillage.nif</ModelFile>
to
<ModelFile>Art/Effects/cities_irradiated/fx_cities_iradiated.nif</ModelFile>

also don't forget to change <fScale> from high number (like 45) to 1.0.
It looks nice and glowing.

 

[cabbagemeister]

Flames are indeed a graphical hog, even the new flames that .33 introduced (they're better now than they were, but they can still be rough). I suggest going into WorldBuilder and manually deleting the flames. You'll probably have to do this every 20 turns or so, which is a real pain.

I wish there was a startup option to remove flames (or at least to give them a static graphic or something) without removing hell terrain, which IMO is one of the incredibly cool ideas of this mod.

 

[Deon]

I'd live with "smoke" effect, it doesn't cause any lags, Maybe a bit different color... But not this huge fire blob. Which file is this effect, I'd like to try to tweak it with some 3deditor.

 

[Deon]

I've got it!

And since I see no answer for it via search there's a quick and rough solution if the game becomes unplayable:

Go to /assets/xml/art/CIV4ArtDefines_Feature.xml, find there ARTDEFINE_FEATURE_FLAME and set <bAnimated> from 1 to 0. It makes flames invisible but the game is playable again.

 

[Sofista]

Spasiba, Deon.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

you should also try updating your video card drivers... flames would kill my framerate before I did that, now they just lower it : it doesn't look great, but it's playable.

 

[Wauthan]

Thanks Deon. My graphic card breathed a sigh of relief.

 

[Fafnir13]

My comp has been handling the flames fine thus far, but my friend had to engage in a santify/spring combo to clear the equivalent of the sahara which was being overrun by hell terrain just so that his comp wouldn't lag so much. Given that flames occur so regularly, I'm thinking that something "in mod" should be done so that people don't have to resort to the latest quick-fix they can find. I know my friend would certainly appreciate it.
In the mean time, I'll just forward him the quick one. Thanks, Deon.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I think it would be nice to have an alternate graphics for the flames that stands still, so that you can still see them but they don't move i.e. no lag. I'd be really grateful to the team if they added this

 

[Domingo]

Likewise. I play on a laptop and the flames make my little machine sound like it is about to burst into flames as well.

 

[Deon]

I think it would be nice to have an alternate graphics for the flames that stands still, so that you can still see them but they don't move i.e. no lag. I'd be really grateful to the team if they added this

Well, actually in non-animated state the flames are not always invisible. Sometimes, when you go to city screen or scroll out to the world map their tiles are updated and you see a single frame from the animation sequence which is immobile. It doesn't look too great so I'd like Kael to add an alternative graphic. Maybe someone pro at nif making could do that as a modmod .

you should also try updating your video card drivers... flames would kill my framerate before I did that, now they just lower it : it doesn't look great, but it's playable.

It's ATI mobility Radeon X1250 and I have the latest catalyst avaliable, I don't know what can I do more about drivers. In small amounts flames are ok for me but when they take half of a game screen the game plays very "unsmoothly" .

 

[Kael]

Try unzipping the attached into "..\Fall from Heaven 2 034\Assets\Art\Effects\Flames\" (it should replace a file there) and see if performance improves.

 

[Deon]

Thank you very much! Can you add this to the FAQ for others with a problem like me please?

 

[Kael]

Thank you very much! Can you add this to the FAQ for others with a problem like me please?

If it tests okay it will be added to 0.34. Its an animated version, its just had the smoke emitter removed, which was a lot of animation.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

awesome, I'll try it out as soon as I get a chance. thanx a lot Kael

edit: btw, does this only disable the smoke effect from the flames, or does this disable smoke entirely (i.e. the one from the blaze spell for example) ?

 

[Deon]

It doesn't replace the file there because the NIF you've added is fx_fire_campfire.nif but the game uses tribalvillage.nif (why tribalvillage?) .

EDIT: I was wrong, sorry. However why is there

					<FeatureArtPiece>
						<ModelFile>Art/Terrain/Features/Flames/tribalvillage.nif</ModelFile>
						<Connections></Connections>
					</FeatureArtPiece>

?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

because those flames are actually the ones you see in goody huts, only much much bigger

 

[Kael]

It doesn't replace the file there because the NIF you've added is fx_fire_campfire.nif but the game uses tribalvillage.nif (why tribalvillage?) .

EDIT: I was wrong, sorry. However why is there

					<FeatureArtPiece>
						<ModelFile>Art/Terrain/Features/Flames/tribalvillage.nif</ModelFile>
						<Connections></Connections>
					</FeatureArtPiece>

?

short answer: Its complicated

long answer: The flames graphic is actually just a scaled up version of the campfire in the middle of the goody hut graphic. The goody hut graphic is all of the huts and an attachable that calls out to an external fire to get the flame graphics. The tribalvillage.nif i use in the flames directory is a special one that has the huts removed and calls out to a different attachable. The attachable is where all the real work is done, which is why the fix replaces the fx_fire_campfire.nif instead of what the xml points too.

 

[Deon]

Well, even the provided file causes major lag...

However I've replaced flames with "fallout" graphics and they run smoothly and beautiful, while being animated and glowing. Can you spend some time on flames later, improving them, please? For now they seem to be VERY resource-consuming.

 

[Nimbus]

I tried the attached file tonight and noticed a small improvement, but not enough to really make it playable. I swirched to Hyborem and one of my 4 cities is in the desert and whenever I go to that city or the units in/near it. The screen slows to a crawl(stopped before) until you get away from that area again.