What's your video setting?

[chikubi]

Under 1440 x 900 res, high setting, I just tried a custom battle with "253" units, 2 full stacks. When I reached 4000, it informed me that I surpassed my limit of graphic, I still got it over 8000 and it turned out to be laggy like hell. What's your limit?
My little PC: core i3 550, VGA GTS 450 Cyclone, Ram 4G.

[Paladin94610]

CPU - Intel Core i5 2.67GHz
VGA - 1GB
RAM - 2GB

Mine can handle 4000men at max setting (still a bit laggy)
9000men at min setting (may lag)

[Rhavanna]

I play on my laptop, (all I got), but I can run the game happily on max graphics 1080x1920 for a nice chunk of the early game. Once the battles start to be full stack vs full stack, I start turning everything down to medium.

In big battles, (with like 3+ stacks total), my poor little compy just starts laggin' up a storm. I probably should lower my resolution, lol.

[Ferdiad]

Max everthing.1920x1080 screen.No lag
CPU - i7 930 @ 4.00
Ram - 6 GB
GPU - Radeon 5970

[Amaranth]

Max everything. It's completely smooth, no lag.

CPU: QuadCore Q8300 2.5
RAM: 4GB DDR3
GPU: Nvidia GTS250 1GB

[wolfslayer]

SS6.3 (and 6.x) is chock full of massive video memory wasting textures, so it helps to have a high end sytem/vidcard. If you do, then you won't have any probs. The blood textures are ridiculously huge and will cause massive lag on all but the highest end systems. The fact that a huge amount of modded or new unit textures are in the wrong format (DXT5 instead of DXT1) is another major factor (DXT5s use 2x vid memory of DXT1s). The reasons for that would require a little more discussion.

[Caesar Clivus]

Everyone in the Mod Workshop has always said that textures need to be DXT5.

[wolfslayer]

Everyone in the Mod Workshop has always said that textures need to be DXT5.

NO. They are wrong.

DXT1's have no alpha channel. Textures that don't need an alpha channel should be saved as DXT1s.

Saving a DXT1 as a DXT5 creates an UNUSED alpha channel that increases video memory usage by 2x for that texture.

I'll explain in detail later..using one of the russian unit textures as an example.

[wolfslayer]

Everyone in the Mod Workshop has always said that textures need to be DXT5.

I searched around Mod Workshop and didn't find anything on that subject, do you know any thread(s) on the subject so maybe I can get a better idea of what's being discussed? Many thanks ;-)

[Caesar Clivus]

I searched around Mod Workshop and didn't find anything on that subject, do you know any thread(s) on the subject so maybe I can get a better idea of what's being discussed? Many thanks ;-)

Just do a search for DXT5. It gets mentioned a lot

[Ishan]

NO. They are wrong.

DXT1's have no alpha channel. Textures that don't need an alpha channel should be saved as DXT1s.

Saving a DXT1 as a DXT5 creates an UNUSED alpha channel that increases video memory usage by 2x for that texture.

I'll explain in detail later..using one of the russian unit textures as an example.

I agree with you, DXT 1 has no alpha channel and if a unit doesn't uses it then it's better to save as DXT1 it helps eliminate the the file size by nearly 50% that frees up the VRAM and game becomes more stable on mid end cards. Plus one can use this space to make a bigger canvas and add more pixels on it to increase the quality of the unit texture.
And i don't think any explanation is required here it's basic funda.

Just do a search for DXT5. It gets mentioned a lot

Yep do a search there are plenty of tutorials that brag about it. "make sure etc"

Edit
Pic:-

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[wolfslayer]

MY observation was mainly about the textures used in SS63 and ways to improve performance so it is more playable for a wider range of systems. I can see where the DXT5 saving comes up in the Modding forums as it is neccesary when designing skins, and most of the textures have to be in DX5.

Just 1/4 scaling (it took my about 10 mins to resize with DXTbmp and PSP8) the ridiculously huge blood textures I saw a jump in 10-15 fps in siege battles, the visual difference is quite negligible, and I play campaign and battle map in 1920 x 1080, normally, but have bumped battles down to 1440 x 900 temporarily (one of my SLI cards is having grinding fan noise probs and I've pulled it out to see if I can fix).

DXT1's DO, btw, support a pure black/white (0,0,0 - 255-255-255) alpha channel without any increase in video usage.

Maybe soon I might try to start a texture conversion project for ss6 if I can find time, it would have to be a team project though.

[Hrobatos]

yeah I'm wondering about that too, I was told that they have to be DXT5, that is written in every damn tutorial I ever read
how do you know that vanilla are DXT1?

[Pseudolivius]

VGA : Nvidia GeForce 8600 256 MB
CPU: AMD 64 Athlon X2 dual core 4400+ , 2,3 GHz
RAM: 2 GB Corsair
HD : 1 TB Western Digital
Config:Graphic options set high , unit size huge (like my ......... Box of beer )
It works prety good but kinda laggy on siege battles ( I know crapy PC dont remind me )

[Hrobatos]

this is some interesting stuff, I'll get sure that it gets done in Adriatic mod

[wolfslayer]

Thanks Ishan ( and everyone) for your interest:

I'll start a new thread early this coming week (the holidays are hectic here right now) in SS submods (I'll post link here) with a tutorial on how to find and convert the dxt5's that can be dxt1, then we can figure out who wants to work on what. After uploading to a suitable site, I will compile the whole unit texture conversions into an installable pkg.

Then next will be the settlement textures, I have a huge bunch of finished textures and sounds on a bad (but maybe fixable HD) so I am starting from scratch.

I have the 1/4 scale blood textures uploaded, with full credit to magus ("***ATTENTION DEVELOPERS, FEEL FREE TO USE CRIMSON TIDE IN YOUR MODS, JUST CREDIT ME PLEASE - PERMISSION ISN'T NEEDED***~Magus)

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...o=file&id=3119

Utilities needed for the upcomingproject (for now) will be 7ZIP (to back up blood texs and archive tgas)~ (google latest version) MWthumb and DXTBMP in my sig.

Subscribe to this thread if you are interested so you can be notified of new submod thread. ~Wolf

[Hauptmann6]

I have the 1/4 scale blood textures uploaded, with full credit to magus ("***ATTENTION DEVELOPERS, FEEL FREE TO USE CRIMSON TIDE IN YOUR MODS, JUST CREDIT ME PLEASE - PERMISSION ISN'T NEEDED***~Magus)

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...o=file&id=3119

Thanks, going to test it out.

I am running a 2800 Athlon with a gig of ram and a G/F 6600. Yeah, it's old.

[Black_ice_Spain]

maxed settings. except AA which its 2x, 4x... still testing... (at 4x its smooth, but dips to 20fps sometimes, didnt play a lot with new system)

Videocard: 6870 985/1145 @ 1.218 (1.175 default) 1gb
Processor: PhenomII 955 @ 3613mhz
Memory: 4gb Kingston 875 5-5-5-12

<-- Shudnt this able to play 8x AA? .-. some1 with a GPU between the nvidia 460 and 570 or ati 5850 and 6950 give his "opinion"/experience? :S



PD: Why at fullHD resolution the game looks bad? -.-, like not widescreen compatible (widescreen ticked)

[Ishan]

PD: Why at fullHD resolution the game looks bad? -.-, like not widescreen compatible (widescreen ticked)

You must be talking about the UI those are just pics that are in 1024x768 resolution so on HD+Widescreen mods they are just stretched so the quality of the UI seems rather odd.

[Black_ice_Spain]

You must be talking about the UI those are just pics that are in 1024x768 resolution so on HD+Widescreen mods they are just stretched so the quality of the UI seems rather odd.

also campaign map i think T_T.