Cavalry, Artillery, Commanders - Re-textured and 4K Packed

[RebBugler]

4K Packed Artillery, Cavalry, et al

Includes:
- All SOW Commander and Infantry Officer units
- All SOW Cavalry units
- All SOW Artillery, Horse Teams, Mule Teams and Wagon units

IOW, every unit except Infantry. To make the 4K Packed bundle complete I suggest trying out the TC2M SOW Infantry Mod. For the last month or so I have been testing and playing with these mods together and the 4K Packed size has smoothed out some former lag spots experienced in big SOW battles. Considering in that twelve new uniforms are added, I'm finding that the performance is unquestionably boosted. With the additional variety of sprites and adjusted textures this 4K packed bundle is now my preferred SOW experience, eventually I'll merge these two mods, forum availability TBA, depending on feedback.

All horses and mule teams have been re-textured in various shades of brown and black.
When relevant, units are Death sprite enhanced, reflecting the bloody realism of warfare.
Enable this mod for Sandbox or User Scenarios play.

Unzip and copy to the Mods folder:
4K Packed Artillery,Cavalry,et al

This mod is compatible with 'True Ground SR1' battles when activating the included 'TC2M SOW Infantry SR1' mod.

[Davinci]

Reb - Hey, how is the great state of Arkansas !

Hey, you have really been on a mission with all of these Mods lately.

I'm starting to wonder if you have time to actually play the game anymore.

davinci

[Chamberlain]

Great job Reb

Keep them coming !!!

:cheer: :cheer:

Chamberlain

[Marching Thru Georgia]

It's great you are taking the time to upgrade the game's graphics. But there may be a problem. The sheets are not square and many are not sized as a power of two, (e.g. 4096 X 4096 or 8192 X 8192). This may cause problems with some graphics cards. Some may not be able to use them at all, and some will be slowed down by the need to do extra calculations.

[RebBugler]

Reb - Hey, how is the great state of Arkansas !

Hey, you have really been on a mission with all of these Mods lately.

I'm starting to wonder if you have time to actually play the game anymore.

davinci

Arkansas is good right now, a relatively mild summer, probably the same with Tennessee, your great state...
Hey, I play, or I should say play-test...LOTS :woohoo:

It's great you are taking the time to upgrade the game's graphics. But there may be a problem. The sheets are not square and many are not sized as a power of two, (e.g. 4096 X 4096 or 8192 X 8192). This may cause problems with some graphics cards. Some may not be able to use them at all, and some will be slowed down by the need to do extra calculations.

Thanks for weighing in about this grand experiment, when all the 8K modules are completed and tested we'll see if this effort was worth it. Although better performance is the main goal here, at least the 'orange horse genocide' will be complete...those orange horses have always messed with my immersion.

Regarding the oblong texture sheets, I don't think this is an issue for most folks on relatively up to date rigs. Because, one of the stock portrait sheets (US lvl 4) is 1K x 2K, and, for the last 2 years I've introduced oblong sheets of flags with B&F and have heard of no issues...just a couple of issues about 4K sizes, but that was to be expected.

Furthermore, why would the Texture Packer app allow oblong sheets to be created if this was not the 'Accepted Norm'? I just can't rationalize holding back progress for folks that are clinging onto their ancient rigs. And, I wouldn't think the Established MP groups would accept these folks for very long since their rigs alone would slow down MP games for everyone.

Since you mentioned this I would like to lodge a question. Why can't the texture packer publish (it packs but gets real slow toward the end) full 8K x 8K sheets? I wouldn't have the oblong sheets if this would work correctly. I've tried numerous times to pack full 8K sheets, but the publisher always gets hung up, and after a half hour or so I just give up and abort. So presently I'm settling for 4K x 8K sizes which publish in a couple of minutes.

[Davinci]

Why can't the texture packer publish (it packs but gets real slow toward the end) full 8K x 8K sheets? I wouldn't have the oblong sheets if this would work correctly. I've tried numerous times to pack full 8K sheets, but the publisher always gets hung up, and after a half hour or so I just give up and abort. So presently I'm settling for 4K x 8K sizes which publish in a couple of minutes.

Reb - I'm not sure if this will help but didn't the Texture Packer have an update several months ago.

I haven't downloaded the update since I haven't used the TP program in the past year.

davinci

[Marching Thru Georgia]

Since you mentioned this I would like to lodge a question. Why can't the texture packer publish (it packs but gets real slow toward the end) full 8K x 8K sheets? I wouldn't have the oblong sheets if this would work correctly. I've tried numerous times to pack full 8K sheets, but the publisher always gets hung up, and after a half hour or so I just give up and abort. So presently I'm settling for 4K x 8K sizes which publish in a couple of minutes.

I do not have that problem. It may be that you are using an older version of the program and an update fixed that issue.

[RebBugler]

Thanks for that info MTG, I kinda figured so, glad you could confirm.

[Saddletank]

Pleased to see all this visual quality update work from you Reb, especially when you're already busy with the new game. Thanks.

[RebBugler]

Consolidated thread, Commanders added, production halted...because,

...after finishing the infantry 8K pack and testing all four modules I am finding only a minimal performance boost.

Maybe it's the oblong sizes as MTG suggests, maybe it's my graphics card, but this experiment performance wise is a bust on my end. At least maybe the texture treatments are a positive feature here and some folks can use them. Test if you want, sure would be nice to hear that this effort is a performance boost for some folks. Upon request I'll make the infantry 8K packed available, but for now it's just a long upload that I'd rather not deal with.