https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/363233

here are most of the limits

mesh hardcode limit- 400

texture hardcode limit- 1000.

Holy shit... 400 meshes only!? What the... the vanilla+entrenchment meshes ammount to 378! That leaves only 22 meshes, that's not even enough for a single new race! How are mods like 7DS which add some 11 new races doing it, unless its all just reskins which I don't think so. How come they're not getting minidumps all over the place?

*edit*

I just checked, Entrenchment and Vanilla texture folders have 990 texture files, which means all my mods should minidump since I definitely have more than 1000 unique textures going when they're activated. Are you sure these hardcode limits aren't for the amount of files that can be loaded into memory at one time? And Sins is probably, like every other application out there, not preloading everything and its grandmother into memory, so what are the chances you're going to need more than 400 meshes loaded into memory (the only scenario I can think of is if you had every single structure and ship onscreen, which is pretty much impossible to happen).

A clarification would be nice. And thumbs up for trying to get the devs to up the limits, that's always handy.

stress, from the sins limits thread, the weapons limits as I understand them are 4 banks of 20 points per weapon with 3 weapons or 240 weapon points total from reading blair fraser's posts in the thread

harpo

Actually my mod is not so lucky - the main goal of the project always was to expand the Sins universe from the three races to a total of six, something which now looks impossible to do. The thing I'm worried most about is the mesh limit... I don't know what can be done with the textures taking up so much memory, but that at least can be dealt with by limiting their size and going creative with the UV mapping... provided of course they up the limit.

This really sucks. We've spent more than a year and a half working towards a certain vision for our mods, only to hit a brick wall which should have been made public when the game was published.

I find it strange that we all are just NOW finding out about these limits after spending almost 2 years into modding the game. When i was in the beta i inquired about any hardcode limits. Nothing was said about mesh, and texture limits. At least nothing specific that i recall. I figured there was a limit, but this LOW?

If a total conversion mod duplicates sins exactly in its file structure you only have enough slots (mesh, and texture) for only Three factions. Plus a pirate faction. Lets not go into the ridiculous amount of textures they used for the UI alone.

AFAIK if an entity is NOT in the manifest it will not load any of said entity's referenced files. Like meshes, textures, particles, etc. (I am awaiting confirmation on this). I am also awaiting an answer if sins loads "everything" including the mod folder stuff along with the vanilla game into memory. That would be insane if it did.

Ok here are some "workarounds". I am learning all this the hard way as i am rebuilding my mod, and awaiting answers about the manifest.

1) in order to stay under the hardcode limits, Vanilla sins components literally need to be Removed, and/or REPLACED. Just like we did it in Homeworld 1. I am rebuilding SoA 2 duplicating the sins naming conventions replacing "Psi" with "Fed", Tech with Klingon, and phase with Romulan. Overwriting all of the existing entitys in the manifest. Removing what is not being used. Nothing is added on. When i am done the mod should reference absolutely NOTHING that has to do with Tech, Psi, and Phase. Will do the same for the pirates too. The goal is to have NOTHING from the vanilla game load except for what is necessary to run sins itself. Complete, and total replacement. That will free up all of the original vanilla model, and texture slots to use for mod stuff. Except the planets, skybox's, asteroids, and other map items that are not going to be modded. This still may not be enough, because i planned on Five playable factions plus a pirate faction.

2) Be "cheap" with your particles. Dont make a new weapon effect for every single ship in your mod. If your mod faction has a theme like the federation uses phasers. You only need TWO particles to represent a phaser beam. The Corona, or Flair, and the Hit effect. There is no "beam" particle. In your ships entity you represent the beam with 2 textures the _Core, and the Glow. So that is 4 textures for one beam weapon. You can adjust the beam width in the ships entity file. So the ships can have a slightly different beam. But if your faction uses all beam weapons you only need the 2 particles. It frees up a bunch of textures by standardizing.

3) if possible have multiple units use the same hull (model) I know that sounds, bad and i cringe at the thought myself.

4) have multiple models share the same texture sheet. Someone else posted this idea, and it has alot of merit. A single 2048x2048 sheet can hold FOUR 1024x1024 textures. If you combine the four textures along with the data, and normal maps you free up TWELVE texture slots. Thats no joke. Same can be done with a 1024 texture with four 512 sheets. It will be a pain in the ass re-uv mapping the models, but this idea seems to have some weight to it.

There is more you can do but i am too tired to think right now...

I agree. There are many tricks you can do to keep your texture count low. Sharing is the best way. Many other RTS's do that, and they have about 3 times as many meshes in the game as sins. Total Annihilation, and Supreme Commander are perfect examples. They get away with all the meshes by texture sharing.

Regardless i am in whole hearted agreement to up the mesh limit.

The biggest "waste" i see in sins are the upgrades, and the UI. The starbases call for 5 separate meshes. 1 for each upgrade. Thats 15 upgrade meshes combining all 3 factions. They could have used just one mesh, and enabled hardpoints as the upgrades progressed. Same with the defensive structures. 2 extra upgrade meshes. one for the platforms one for the hangar defense. 6 meshes that really dont need to be there.

Even if the upgrade were a greeble it still counts as a mesh.

You make a good point about the planets. A planet is just a sphere. One sphere could have been used with a modifier that called upon whatever texture it needed to represent a particular planet type.

Homeworld shares textures left and right and it never had an issue with team color. Then again all of the textures that are shared are in the same faction. For example the 4 corvettes use the same base texture for its body, and only a few extra little textures to cover the differences. All can be combined into one sheet, and models re-mapped to use that one sheet. Same idea that relic had, but using sins system. if several ships are identical (like the bodys) then one sheet can be used to map multiple models. Saves textures and it saves memory. Sure the texture may be bigger but it is the only one needed to load.

The UI is the biggest waste IMO. Why do they need FOUR 2048x2048 textures just for the buttons when one texture would have been just fine. why do they need 3 backdrop textures? look at the UI textures and count em all up, You will be shocked.

I would have combined the UI into one or 2 simple textures if i knew the grid system the used or had a template.