Small tip on sprite Draw distance

[zax]

Simply, if you are annoyed with this short sprite draw distance in battles, want to enjoy beautifuly crafted TA soldiers and highest Unit details setting is not enough for you, you can increase draw distance by editing battle_models.modeldb file. located in:
Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age\data\unit_models

First: backup battle_models.modeldb !!!!!!! no matter what, make safecopy, just do it !!!!!!
seconds (did i mention to backup?)
1) open battle_models.modeldb with notepad (preferably notepad++)
2) hit Ctrl+H (find and replace) to replace ".mesh 10000" with ".mesh 200000"
3) hit Ctrl+H (find and replace) to replace ".mesh 6400" with ".mesh 10000"
4) save
5) you did make backup? right??

you can fool around with greater values than 200000

Do not use any text in this post as copy reference. Just select part of text inside your file battle_models.modeldb

Because of increased distance from which sprites will be generated, more gpu power will be required. USE IT ON YOUR OWN RISK

I do not take any responsibility for your hrdware/software/medieval 2/TATW. YOU DO THIS ON YOUR OWN RISK.


AND BACKUP !

[glassakias]

and?

[Mr. Tornado]

Thanks for the advice, I won't be using this but it will definately be useful for those who have the powerful CPU needed to do so. +Rep

[StealthFox]

This sounds promising. The short draw distance is annoying. I think my computer can handle this, but I would like to wait and hear from others and what systems they are running first. So, if you get this to work can you post your system specs?

[KnightsTemplar]

It might lag alot in M2 since the bastard engine problems

[zax]

So far all is cool, no CTD or other. highest detail level, huge unit size
System:
IntelCore2 Quad Q8200 2,33GHz
4 Gigs ram
Radeon 6850 (1Gig)
Windows 7

Gets a bit choppy whith 6k men battles with permanent arrows.

[StealthFox]

I went ahead and tried it. So far so good with no noticeable lag, but haven't had any battles over 2,000-3,000 men.

System Specs:
AMD Athlon II X4 620 2.60GHz
8 Gigs RAM
Nvidia GeForce GT220 (1 Gig RAM)
Windows 7

[CoolPotato]

That looks great, Will try, Hopefully you can do it on ETW, NTW and STW as I have short range sprite problems on them.

[A Goon of Sparta]

What does this even do?

[old_dude]

What does this even do?

When you zoom away from a unit the high detail model will be replaced with a sprite. A sprite is a low quality version of the same model that allows for more soldiers on the screen before lag occurs since sprites are less resource intensive.

This appears to let you zoom away rather far before the good looking model is replaced. I haven't tried it myself, yet, but I will next time I give TA a go.

[Sandos]

This appears to let you zoom away rather far..

Like 20 times as far as before if you follow the instructions. Which is about as far as you can go and still see a difference, the models become so small there really is no point in expanding further. (At least on the resolutions this game supports)

[zax]

You don't have to type "200000". You can try less until you find best setting that satisfies you.

[smitty]

I forgot this was even possible; this could be the single best upgrade to my TW experience in a long time. Going to test it this week and let you guys know how it goes, thanks.

[Filo90]

you can do this simply changing "unit_detail = higher" to "unit_detail = highest" in medieval2.preference.cfg in the medieval2 folder, the game has bug on the unit detail, even if you put highest in game setting it doesn't apply it, you must change it in the file

[Rubini]

you can do this simply changing "unit_detail = higher" to "unit_detail = highest" in medieval2.preference.cfg in the medieval2 folder, the game has bug on the unit detail, even if you put highest in game setting it doesn't apply it, you must change it in the file

Yes this also works. Just don´t forget to make the medieval2.preference.cfg file read only; if you don´t do this, it can be overwrite again and will returm to "unit_detail = higher".

But... even in a good rig, the above (cfg solution) will make the game run slow when you have a lot of units, becomes unplayable at some times. I will try the solution on the first post and will report back, as it seems that you can control the sprites distance what can be enough and then adjustable for each one.

Update: Yes, it works as the first post suggested. I set mine for 94000(6400) / 95000(10000), less than 5% FPS drop and no more sprites (this is in a huge amount of big units (4 armies) in a big siege. In "normal" campaign battles i have no fps drop . Very good, thanks zax!!

[Roboute Guilliman]

you can just aswell delete the sprite lines in the battlemodeldb, and sprites won't be used at all. But I am wondering if your game doesn't lag during huge battles. And if it doesn't please tell me what cpu you are using.

[smoesville]

Personally i've never noticed any lagging when i removed the sprites, i'm using the i5 2500k. Also just as important imo is that i have the Geforce 680 GTX aswell and 16gb of ram The whole rig is probably a bit over the top for such an old game.

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

Personally i've never noticed any lagging when i removed the sprites, i'm using the i5 2500k. Also just as important imo is that i have the Geforce 680 GTX aswell and 16gb of ram The whole rig is probably a bit over the top for such an old game.

How do you guys removed the sprites totally from the game???
I want to do it for ROME 2
Could you please help me???

Cheers...

[Roboute Guilliman]

I think medieval only uses one of the cores, not sure tho.

[smoesville]

Yes, it's not built for multi core cpus. That i think is what makes the gpu more important.