Scourge of War Boards

Hi
as trees seem to impact the FPS a lot, is there a mod that improves the FPS while still maintaining a good look and a plentiful depiction of trees?

I don't know of any mods that actually improve fps, but there are some tree settings in the config menu that you could play with (you've probably tried this, but I thought I'd mention it).
Also, if you hit the 'T' key that takes away some of the trees/terrain detail in incremental stages which improves fps.

Sorry, I guess you have to pay for more detail in fps terms, and it's not always an option to splash out on expensive computer upgrades!

David(jolly)

I've often wondered was that possible - high, medium and low quality trees - rather than changing the density (t key) or distance (options setting), which i find less visibly pleasing.

I guess it could be modded in some way - a lot of work involved though!

Hi all.
Lowering the density (directly from BMP maps?) while grouping several trees together, could maybe benefit the framerate a little bit?
In the case of woods and forests at least, you may gain some speed and keep the visual appearance acceptably consistent...
Don't know if it'd work equally well with isolated ones.
And interpenetrations of large "clumps" would need further tests for sure.
The count of sprite instances rendered looks to me like the single major performance factor when it comes to trees here.
Not textures detail per-se, imho.
If anybody will ever try this, I'd be glad to profile the results.
Best regards and thanks as usual for the hard work.

A simple mod could be created that includes a modified version of the map CSV file with the tree density turned way down.

I don't think that the trees are the real problem, as I am only seeing a gain of two-FPS with the trees removed.

Now, if I removed the trees, and all of the fields of crops the gain is plus twenty, but this gain will drop as soon as both armies start moving.

The biggest impact on FPS is the road-calculations, and then the LOS calculations.

My Opinion Only!

I also agree with "r59" combining the trees into a single texture doesn't seem to affect the FPS. So, instead of showing one tree, you could use two trees per sprite. I don't think that it changes the file size either.

The Simple Fix : Change the "D - Column" in the mapname.csv - to a higher number, since this affects the density of the trees that will appear on the map.

davinci

We cannot expect big gains by tweaking just vegetation files, unluckily.
I'd also say +5fps, at best?
The translucent quads sorting occuring under the hoods (on CPU) is also a limiting factor, performance-wise.
Maybe with ATOC (order-independent transparency) things would improve slightly, but who knows.
The real "meat" of graphical state changes comes from units sprites, however.
Giant numbers involved there. Whether it be good or evil (the first I think ).
And also tempting paybacks by managing (even minimally) redundant situations, on paper...
There exists well-known solutions for these problems: sorting by state-keys in queues, batching, etc.
Improving pathfinding and LOS, on the other hand, is a more time consuming affair, normally.
Because recognizing the bottlenecks and planning workarounds, require a broader understanding of game-specific problems.
Both plates are a bit too much overweighted right now, imho.
And everything coming mostly at the expense of CPU cycles (GPU seldomly works).
It's easiness of solutions that are different, though, as said above.
Many oldies (wargamers, history enthusiasts, etc.) won't be able to play SOW decently with their even older rigs.
This is the only clear fact!
I've said countless times to my dad (and friends) he doesn't know what he's missing. :whistle:

Thanks for the feedback.
Makes me wonder what system one should have to have all the eye candy and still good FPS.
My graphic card is surely outdated and if the prices wouldn't have run that silly in the past 15 months I likely would have upgraded long ago, my CPU(Ivy 3570) seems still good just like 8GB of RAM still look good enough for almost everything.

Improving pathfinding and LOS, on the other hand, is a more time consuming affair, normally.
Because recognizing the bottlenecks and planning workarounds, require a broader understanding of game-specific problems.

I don't think that this is possible with SOWGB - this is "Hard-Coding" into the game.

The Previous Game of TC2M used a different type of path-finding, the units marching would stay completely on the roads, even if the roads turned.

This game doesn't do that, the code was changed to increase the FPS which causes the units to swing wide leaving the road-system.

Now the Flag-bearer and the units closer to him will stay on the road, but the end of the columns will serve off of the road on curves.

This Game is all about "Giving and Taking" and for the most part it works alright.

I doubt that a Mod will work since everybody has a different configuration such as CPU, GPU, Memory, etc...

So, the best way around this is to increase the number in the "D-Column" in the Mapname.csv file.

Now, adding more than one tree to a Sprite will work at times, but the downside to that is that this will draw trees where you don't won't them, such as on roads and such!

davinci