Creating a World - Reduced City Textures for EBII

[Gigantus]

Intro

Following previous instances of reduced settlement textures and rekindled by this thread, I herewith present the reduced settlement textures for EBII. Textures related to barbarian settlements larger then 2MB have been reduced to the size of 1024*1024 pixels which have resulted in files of 1.3MB - 38 files were resized.

Current version: EB 2.2

Download updated, 15th July 2016 (EBII blockset a)

Instruction

1. Make a back up\copy of the data\blockset folder, just in case something is messed up or you don't like the results
   
2. Extract the download into the EBII\data folder

Note

• This is a untested WIP, simply because my machine has no problem with the original textures. I will require feed back from those that need it in order to improve the installation where necessary.
  
• Once the result is satisfactory I will put an installer together that makes this easier.

[Roma_Victrix]

Awesome! I can't wait to try this out. I'm downloading it now. I'll let you know if it works. Just to clarify things, I'm using v. 2.2a...not sure if that makes anything incompatible or if this is only for v. 2.2b. I'm assuming there's no real difference, although I noticed right away that my "blockset" folder (that I backed up as suggested) is 1.42 GB, not 1.38 GB. It seems like some sort of small change was made already between versions 2.2a and 2.2b!

[Roma_Victrix]

UPDATE: sadly, for me at least, your fix does not work. I just started a random siege against a Greek city, not even a Barbarian one yet, and this is what the battle map looks like:

Somehow the textures got horribly corrupted. I'm glad that I backed up my blockset files! I had to delete your folder and paste the old blockset folder back into the main data folder to fix this. Hopefully you can figure out what went wrong here, but until then I'd advise others not to use this!

[Gigantus]

Damn. That's weird, I 'll get in touch with some guys to see what happened. Did the frame rate improve at least?

[Roma_Victrix]

The frame rate was never a problem for Greek cities, or any other settlement type aside from the Barbarian settlements. I did not get a chance to test the Barbarian city with your reduced texture sizes. To be honest, you didn't really need to replace the entire blockset folder, just the Barbarian textures within it that are problematic.

[Gigantus]

I am thinking of identifying those textures and then resizing them manually - give it a day or two.

Edit: I had some time on my hands - try the updated download. I only converted files in the main folder - the variants are untouched.

[Roma_Victrix]

Cool! I'll try it later today.

[Roma_Victrix]

Hi again! So I recently did a siege of a Greek city with your new download. It looks just fine! And plays as fine as it used to. Then I did a second siege of a Barbarian Celtic settlement. That's where the problems still lie. It was performing a little better than usual, with several frames per second once the fighting on the walls began. It was lagging only a tiny bit, almost unnoticeable. Then, as soon as the bulk of my forces rushed through the open gate knocked in by my battering ram, that's when the lag became slightly severe, almost as bad as it has been before I applied your blockset download. It seems like the frames per second had a marginal improvement over the way it was before the download, but it's far from perfect.

It's such a shame, too, because it's one of only a handful of things about this mod that truly sucks and inhibits game play. Ever since I applied that RAM fix to dedicate all my 6 GB of RAM to the M2TW exe file instead of just 2 GB of RAM the game has been very speedy and far more pleasant than it ever was. Yet this remains the one thing where everything comes to a grinding halt. Your patch helped a bit, but it's simply not enough. It's more like a bandaid on the problem of how the huge textures, polygonal walls, and pathfinding of the settlement were designed in the first place.

[Gigantus]

It's a pity - looks like a job for our 3D guys, reducing the poly count and then integrating it back into the IWTE set.

[Dooz]

How would this?

Then, as soon as the bulk of my forces rushed through the open gate knocked in by my battering ram, that's when the lag became slightly severe, almost as bad as it has been before I applied your blockset download.

be related to this?

looks like a job for our 3D guys, reducing the poly count and then integrating it back into the IWTE set.

I ask because I don't know anything about any of this stuff, and I'm curious what the interaction between the movement of units and the steady unchanging number of polygons and other graphical elements might be which causes this lag. As opposed to, say, pathfinding (or otherwise AI, movement, CPU-related things), which seems to have a more immediate connection to the instant lag is introduced.

[Gigantus]

It's not the movement of units but where the camera is situated in this case. You should have a reasonable frame rate outside the settlement (eg pointing away from it), but the wall for example has all those 'logs' sticking out of it (large city) on the inside, which are all polys that do not come into effect until the camera enters the settlement.

[Dooz]

Hmm, interesting. But requires the assumption that anyone who's ever encountered this issue has at the time also had the camera pointed at these trouble spots. Roma_Victrix, could you or anyone else who experiences heavy lag confirm that it only happens when your camera is pointed at the gates or thereabouts while soldiers are streaming in, and not when you move the camera away? Or during other moments, perhaps related to the hillfort and movement in that area which I think I recall seeing posts about causing lag, if the camera is pointed at the gates still when the lag happens or not? Or similarly, if moving the camera in and around the gates before any units are in the area at all causes lag or not. If the units and their movement has nothing to do with the lag, and it's just the correlation of a player likely having the camera pointed where they are and some of those spots a player might have the camera pointed having graphical issues causing the lag, then just pointing the camera at those spots without the corresponding units and movement should reproduce the lag consistently and we'd be one step closer to figuring out exactly what's going on.

[Gigantus]

I am reflecting with my observation back to when I had a machine that lagged on the strat map over areas of too much dense forest or high mountain. Both elements contain poly extensive 3D elements. The fastest scrolling was over water, obviously.

[Dooz]

I am reflecting with my observation back to when I had a machine that lagged on the strat map over areas of too much dense forest or high mountain. Both elements contain poly extensive 3D elements. The fastest scrolling was over water, obviously.

I actually have a pretty decent machine and still lag scrolling over the dense forests of Western Europe (and not just with this mod). There's no doubt graphical overexertion can and does cause lag in many cases, it's just that in this particular case with the settlements and units and lag only being introduced during certain moments/movements and not when paused and all the other circumstantial observations by people, while reduction of graphical fidelity can improve performance just because that would be the case in any case, it seems like there's something more to it with this situation and there's something else going on that might be worth looking into.

[Gigantus]

We had discussions in the team and it would appear that it is indeed the poly count that is causing this lag. Have a look at the wall of the large barbaric settlement inside the city - those little logs sticking out represent a huge number of polys, simply removing those is very likely to make a good difference.

[Dooz]

Oh man, that'd be pretty fantastic if it's as simple as removing some graphical elements. Although the nice little detailed touches would be missed, but that's obviously a worthy concession for the huge performance impact.

[Gigantus]

Hopefully it will be as simple as editing a unit model in that respect - although those models are within the settlement set up which is an IWTE issue (never got my head around THAT).

[Gigantus]

Update: the extensive poly count issue has been resolved (not long after the last post).