No problem Reb, and thanks to you and Davinci for your thoughts. This conversation is definitely helping my understanding.
Have done some tests. Pom's & Mark's substitute sprite mod uses a limited number of new sprites, and only uses 1.2 GB. So I’m not sure why this would crash.
Sometimes the timing of the animation cycles not jibing with the Unitmodel timings will cause crashes. I ran into this issue when I changed the infantry firing sequence so the firing sprite would show up in Advance and Withdraw sequences. The Unitmodel timings are obviously hard coded and the animation cycles in the gfx or gfxpack MUST fall within those set parameters.
The Flags & Sprites mod is a much bigger beast however. I had poor Pom working hard all summer, supervised by the 'friendly' Igor, and he has produced a huge range of fantastic sprites. At army level, the mod weighs in at over 3.2 GB of memory!
Yeah, I checked that out and was amazed that it actually opened up. Still, once movement happened FPS rates fell within unplayable numbers, under 5.
As well as including many more sprites (and flags), there are also a huge number of unit classes. Would that be an issue too, do you think? If so, is is possible to quantify it?
More classes allow for more stuff and more stuff requires more memory.
Whilst Pom & I would much prefer releasing a mod which never crashes, it looks as if we can only do that by not using most of the sprites. That's a shame when it is perfectly playable. I think the answer will be to issue it with caveats.
I was already planning to warn folks with machine limitations to play smaller battles, but an extra warning re game limitations is probably in order too.
Martin (J)
As far as I'm concerned mod crashes are unacceptable if played on a rig capable of handling their demands. Hopefully you guys can get your caveats down to just that heads up, so folks only concern will be FPS play-ability rates, not crashes.
