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RiderRockon
RiderRockon
Join Date 01/2008
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Low-end mod??

Getting Sins to work fine on low-end machines

February 7, 2008 11:45:39 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
I was wondering...

I have an actual PC, and a lower end laptop. My PC is in my apartment (duh) and I take my laptop with me whenever I'm somewhere for longer then 24 hours (got to have that gaming )

Now my Laptop doesn't run Sins... but only barely. If they didn't stick in all those pretty graphics it'd probably run it (looking at the sys. requirements, the video card is where the bottleneck lies)

So I was wondering: Would it be possible to create a "low-end mod" that strips it's graphical prowess leaving just the gameplay?
modding
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RiderRockon
keithLamothe
Join Date 11/2006
+21
Reply #1 February 7, 2008 2:30:13 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
Theoretically we could replace all the nice ship and planet models with 4-triangle meshes of differing size and color Similar simplifications could probably be made for the particle effects (weapons fire).

Your video card wouldn't have much to do...

It'd just look terrible
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RiderRockon
lordkosc
Join Date 12/2006
+6
Reply #2 February 7, 2008 2:36:43 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
stop the pain ...
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RiderRockon
caseyphobic
Join Date 06/2007
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Reply #3 February 7, 2008 3:31:31 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
make sure you have bloom and anti-aliasing turned off in the mean time. these effects take a serious chunk of video memory and aren't absolutely necessary for a great-looking game.

if you have an nvidia card, you can use the nvidia control panel to manage your video card settings over any in-game settings you would be using. if you think this might help, i'll help you with which settings will make the biggest difference in FPS gain.
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RiderRockon
Major Stress
Join Date 05/2006
+161
Reply #4 February 7, 2008 4:07:25 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
The sins textures are pretty scalable. Like what was said though make sure your bloom, AA, etc. is turned off. Running at minimum resolution helps too (1024x768). Turning off the colored skybox, dustclouds, planet elevators, deep space backgrounds, and asteroids will help too. Less stuff to render.

If you still chug on low settings, and all that stuff disabled, then you may have a bit of a problem.

How "low end" are we talking about with your machines?

The only way to "nerf" it even further is to remove the main mesh's and replace them with "lod" meshes. They are supposedly in game, but i have yet to confirm it.
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RiderRockon
RiderRockon
Join Date 01/2008
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Reply #5 February 7, 2008 5:38:17 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
We're talking about 32MB Shared for the video card here.

So yeah, pretty low-end
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RiderRockon
Zentil
Join Date 07/2007
+1
Reply #6 February 8, 2008 3:05:46 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
humm can put really tiny 1 pixel model for ships, then change the range to show the icon.

Like when you zoom out it shows the 2d icon for the ship type. Think with just the icons and the tiny tiny model make it ok to play.

Looking at constants....
This is in the Constants file in Gameinfo

=========================================
VisibilityDistanceData
capitalShipRadiusMultiplier 100
entryVehicleRadiusMultiplier 50000
frigateRadiusMultiplier 180
planetRadiusMultiplier 130
asteroidRadiusMultiplier 200
resourceAsteroidRadiusMultiplier 200
debrisRadiusMultiplier 600
cannonShellRadiusMultiplier 600
starRadiusMultiplier 60
planetModuleRadiusMultiplier 60
fighterRadiusMultiplier 1000
maxFighterMeshDistanceToCamera 4000
mainViewIconChildrenPlanetRadiusMultiplier 130
mainViewIconChildrenAsteroidRadiusMultiplier 200
mainViewIconChildrenStarRadiusMultiplier 60
veryDistantIconFadeNearThresholdDistance 100000
veryDistantIconFadeFarThresholdDistance 10000000

========================================================================

This might be what you want to check into.
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RiderRockon
RiderRockon
Join Date 01/2008
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Reply #7 February 8, 2008 4:13:07 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
So Would I also have to change the model? Or would tweaking this be enough?

I'll probably play around with the values some this weekend, see what I can make of things
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RiderRockon
RiderRockon
Join Date 01/2008
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Reply #8 February 9, 2008 10:40:09 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
Alright, I tinkered with those values some, but I can't get any enhanced performance from it all. Methinks the models still get cached regardless and that's what's putting the strain om my (admittedly, somewhat shabby) video card.

I'll admit though, I'm not an ace when it comes to modding stuff like this...

Any other pointers would be highly appreciated
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