Turn off grass for huge FPS increase

**durango** · February 18, 2006, 01:57 AM

Maybe this is just my comp, but zooming in on a battle seemed to really make my system chug along (and its a pretty solid 3gig). When I zoomed out the battle ran much smoother, which still sucked since it's fun to watch everyone kill each other up close.

Anyway, I experimented with tweaking some of the visual settings--and for whatever reason the grass feature made a huge impact. I don't mean setting it from high to low, which didn't too much for me, I mean just turning it off. The difference between turning it off and turning it just to low is so great it's really surprising. Maybe the grass density is too high? I don't know, not a modder myself, just wanted to let people know.

**funkb** · February 18, 2006, 02:06 AM

I noticed the same thing.

**Trajan** · February 18, 2006, 02:08 AM

Yeah, this is a known issue. Having more grass on the field does decrease performance in slower rigs.

**lt1956** · February 18, 2006, 02:17 AM

Yes and I did increase the grass amount in the file. So removing the grass Helps also for Lowend systems and vid cards.

I'll have to make a tips section for increased Performance with 6.0 and lowend systems.

**Cybvep** · February 18, 2006, 02:29 AM

We can just change grass spacing from 0.1 to 0.5 and everything will be fine. I personally don't like new grass settings, because huge amount of grass in RTW looks just ridiculous...

**backman** · February 18, 2006, 04:34 AM

My system specs:

PIV 2,8GHZ
RAM 1 giga
ATI RADEON 9600XT 256mb

Using SPQR I have to turn off grass to run well un huge battles.
Also I turn off High Quality Shadows.
Set options to medium, except land detail which I set to maximum

**jegui** · February 18, 2006, 04:46 AM

Originally Posted by Cybvep

We can just change grass spacing from 0.1 to 0.5 and everything will be fine. I personally don't like new grass settings, because huge amount of grass in RTW looks just ridiculous...

Which file and setting do we need to change in order to do this trick? I set my grass setting to LOW and and everything else to LOW/MEDIUM and the zoom in action lags like hell... I can't watch my battles properly anymore

but I quite like having some grass on the battlefield

**Lucius Claudius Durus** · February 18, 2006, 05:15 AM

You would make the changes in the Descr_grass.txt file

**lt1956** · February 18, 2006, 05:15 AM

What system do you have?

I suggest taking the vanilla Grass.txt file and overwrite SPQR's ;-)

Also always keep High unit settings, everything else can be low or medium and remember 1.5 patch is going to be more laggy anyway because of those accursed shadows! ugh....

**Lusted** · February 18, 2006, 05:20 AM

I turn shadows down to low, really helps performance,

**wipeout140** · February 18, 2006, 05:25 AM

I just turned off all shadows. and helps alot, 8k battles run better

**InferiorBeing** · February 18, 2006, 08:40 AM

Awww no... are even the great LT powerless against the 1.5 shadows who's name shall forever be cursed? Surely, these are dark times for all of us...

**jegui** · February 18, 2006, 01:49 PM

I changed spacing from .1 to .5 in descr_grass and disabled 'HIGH QUALITY SHADOWS'... the lag has gonne :-) even in river and night battles... my spec:

P4 - 2.6
1 Gb mem
128 Mb Nvidia FX5200

**LuiSius_ScutaRuS** · February 18, 2006, 02:26 PM

Originally Posted by jegui

128 Mb Nvidia FX5200

we have the same videocard jegui, but i only have 520mbs of RAM

i also turn off grass and anti aliasing, shadows on low and no dust/smoke, effects on low and building on low too.
take out splashes (rain drops on froor)
and well.... even with that, sometimes in big battles, when i zoom in i get 5FPS (im talking about SPQR 5.0.--- im going to play 6.0 tonight.... lets see if it gets worst or not...

**jegui** · February 18, 2006, 05:48 PM

Originally Posted by LuiSius_ScutaRuS

we have the same videocard jegui, but i only have 520mbs of RAM

i also turn off grass and anti aliasing, shadows on low and no dust/smoke, effects on low and building on low too.
take out splashes (rain drops on froor)
and well.... even with that, sometimes in big battles, when i zoom in i get 5FPS (im talking about SPQR 5.0.--- im going to play 6.0 tonight.... lets see if it gets worst or not...

I think that 500 Mb extra may help since XP itself needs 256Mb min... anyway I think u might struggle with version 6 since I had to lower most settings I had previously customised in SPQR 5... I can play battles up to 7/8K with minor or no lag... here is a copy of my preferences file to help you out:

SAFE_REFRESH:TRUE
USE_TRIPLE_BUFFER:TRUE
USE_WIDESCREEN:FALSE
SUBTITLES:FALSE
MORALE:TRUE
FATIGUE:TRUE
LIMITED_AMMO:TRUE
SUPPLY:TRUE
FOG_OF_WAR:TRUE
RESTRICT_CAMERA:TRUE
DEFAULT_BATTLE_CAMERA:RTS
EVENT_CUTSCENES:TRUE
SMOKE:TRUE
DESYNC:TRUE
SPLASHES:TRUE
GLINTS:TRUE
REFLECTIONS:TRUE
SHADOWS:TRUE
VEGETATION:TRUE
DETAILED_UNIT_SHADOWS:FALSE
GLOSS_MAPPING:TRUE
STENCIL_SHADOWS:TRUE
MULTI_TEXTURE:TRUE
AUTO_SAVE:FALSE
SHOW_BANNERS:FALSE
UNIT_EXPERIENCE_UPGRADE_EFFECT:TRUE
UNIT_SIZE:160
MASTER_VOL:100
SPEECH_VOL:100
SFX_VOL:100
MUSIC_VOL:70
CAMERA_ROTATE:50
CAMERA_MOVE:50
CAMERA_FOV:75.000000
ENABLE_AUDIO:TRUE
ENABLE_MUSIC:TRUE
ENABLE_UNIT_SPEECH:TRUE
DISABLE_BACKGROUND_FMV:FALSE
DISABLE_ARROW_MARKERS:TRUE
AUDIO_3D_PROVIDER:Miles Fast 2D Positional Audio
CLOUD_TRANSITIONS:TRUE
GRASS_DISTANCE:20
AA_QUALITY:AA_LOW
STRATEGY_RESOLUTION:1280x960
STRATEGY_MAX_RESOLUTION:1280x960
STRATEGY_32_BIT:TRUE
BATTLE_RESOLUTION:1024x768
BATTLE_MAX_RESOLUTION:1280x960
BATTLE_32_BIT:TRUE
UNIT_DETAIL:SUPER_HIGH
BUILDING_DETAIL:HIGH
TGA_CAPTURE_WIDTH:1024
TGA_CAPTURE_ASPECT:1.333333
TGA_CAPTURE_INPUT_SCALE:1
TGA_CAPTURE_RESERVE_SPACE:FALSE
LABEL_CHARACTERS:FALSE
LABEL_SETTLEMENTS:TRUE
MINIMAL_UI:FALSE
CAMPAIGN_MAP_MAX_SCROLL_SPEED_MIN_ZOOM:30
CAMPAIGN_MAP_MAX_SCROLL_SPEED_MAX_ZOOM:30
FIRST_TIME_PLAY:FALSE
ADVISOR_VERBOSITY:0
MUTE_ADVISOR:TRUE
BLIND_ADVISOR:TRUE
CAMPAIGN_MAP_CAMERA:FOLLOW_AI_FACTIONS
CAMPAIGN_MAP_SPEED_UP:FALSE
CAMPAIGN_MAP_GAME_SPEED:10
DISABLE_EVENTS:0
MICROMANAGE_ALL_SETTLEMENTS:FALSE
ADVANCED_STATS_ALWAYS:FALSE
UNIT_USE_SHADERS:TRUE
TERRAIN_QUALITY:HIGH
EFFECT_QUALITY:HIGH
VEGETATION_QUALITY:MEDIUM
KEYSET:0
UNLIMITED_MEN_ON_BATTLEFIELD:TRUE
CAMPAIGN_MAP_CAMERA_SMOOTHING:TRUE
CHAT_MSG_DURATION:10
USE_QUICKCHAT:FALSE
GS_PIDS:FALSE
GS_PIDS_FULL:FALSE
GS_PIDS_CUR:TRUE
ALWAYS_LOGFILE:FALSE
TIMESTAMP_LOGFILE:TRUE
32BIT_UI:TRUE
GS_LOG_RESULTS:FALSE
CHAT_COLOURS:name=ffffa0,private=ff7707,game=94aadc,public=fff777,system=ffffff,lobby=fff777,setup=94aadc,playing=ff0707
EDIT_SETTLEMENT_NAMES:FALSE

**panasonic** · February 18, 2006, 03:08 PM

which grass.txt, i found 17 in my vanilla folder? thx in advance

**LuiSius_ScutaRuS** · February 18, 2006, 03:33 PM

rometotalwar/data/descr_grass

im 95% sure :sweatingb

**Lucius Claudius Durus** · February 18, 2006, 03:57 PM

Its the one named just like in my post above in red..

**Shuriken** · February 18, 2006, 05:54 PM

coming back to the grass issue. There was grass in the first install of RTW (1.0) and from time to time it would chug, but once I installed the official patches there was no grass and things ran as smooth as cream

**MasterAdnin** · February 18, 2006, 06:33 PM

How do you take the grass out like the original poster said? I'd like to do that to make SPQR run faster, although it already runs at a good speed. But a question, I know SPQR has a lot of grass, and that helps velites, will taking away grass stop them from hiding?

Adnan

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