[Rewrite] Reducing battle ambients for smoother battles

[FactionHeir]

Hello.

This is a rewrite of my original topic in the Citadel on improving field/siege battle performance by removing ambients. The steps to do so are very simple:

This removes some eyecandy from the battlemap but it will make battles run more fluently, especially in city battles, although to really take care of siege battle lag, you want to check my other tutorial out here.

These changes will also affect a running campaign, i.e. are retroactive

The below is especially effective for improving slow performance in night battles.
What you have to do is really simple. Create following files in your data directory:

descr_campfires_brasiers.txt
descr_burning_building.txt
descr_chimney_smoke.txt
descr_structure_effects.txt
descr_torch_fire.txt
descr_engine_torch_effects.txt
descr_water_effects.txt

Now, you don't need (and shouldn't) write anything into those files. Just create blank, size 0 text files.

To make the game recognize them, use the io switch to activate the data folder read-first. If you don't know how to do it:

Create a shortcut to your medieval2 executable. The shortcut's target should read as following:
D:\Medieval\medieval2.exe --io.file_first

Where D:\Medieval\ is obviously your medieval2 folder (not the data folder, but the medieval2 folder)

Enjoy your game without torches, water splashes, chimney smoke, and city building ambient sounds/effects.


If you have any problems or questions regarding this tutorial, please post here or PM me.

[~Isabella of Castile~]

I messaged you about all this, and got your PM, I did everything you told me to do, but I see torches still and the lag is still horrendous. can you help? I know it's probably something wrong in my M2 files, it's just that I don't know what it is

[Roman_Man#3]

If you talked to him over pm, I don't think there is much anyone can do with out further information sadly .

Are you using them in a mod folder? are you using the file first command? And make sure you have M2TW properly set up for modding. https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=76289
That thread should help you a lot, and step 4 should help you. If you have done all that, check logs/system.log.txt for errors.

Good Luck,
RM3

[~Isabella of Castile~]

there's no mod on my M2 anymore, and I'm posting here because he isn't on MSN much, and plus this topic is here for the purpose of help, so I'm using it.

[Roman_Man#3]

well, sadly, you didn't answer any of my questions, so there is nothing I, or anyone else can do unless you do answer them. Even if there isn't a mod on your M2, you still need to properly set it up for modding before you can do this.

[FactionHeir]

Pretty much what Roman_Man#3 said.
I gave you all the instructions in this topic and via MSN that can be given and walked you through most the steps. If it doesn't work, then its either a problem with implementation at your end or one of the settings you got is not supporting this method.

For the record, this also works on my new rig, so it can't be the method itself I think...

[John_Longarrow]

~Isabella of Castile~

On your shortcut, please make sure that the "Start In:" line contains the full path to the directory where your MTW2 is located. As an example, my command line is

"c:\Program Files\Total War\MTW2\medieval2.exe --io.file_first"

My Start In line is
"c:\Program Files\Total War\MTW2"

If you are accidentally starting the game in the wrong location you get all kinds of wierd results.

[Red Spot]

Simple yet effective, I like it .. :)

Do you, or anyone else for that matter, know about what else can be done to smoothen out siege battles a bit more without reverting to making large settlements show up as small ones, as is when Denmark sieges me with 4 armies things get a bit .. er .. unsmooth when my retinue longbowmen open up fire or things get hectic at a breach(lots of animations going bezerc at 1 spot), once missile-fire is off and/or there is no fighting in breaches its all fine (enough)

Anyway thanks for the tut.


G

[FactionHeir]

I'd imagine turning down textures, unit size and unit details would help with that (and of course AA and shader).
Beside that, nothing I can think of, save manually working on the low detail textures making them even lower in detail.

[Red Spot]

I've turned down the shader version to v1 as that gives the biggest boost with the smallest effect on how well everything looks (do note I dont mind the loss of shadows, I've seen them before ..:P)

Anything else isnt worth turning down imo(except ofcourse AA and antrostropic filtering(?) to ~4 as minimum)

Anyway thanks again as your tut. makes my 5 army sieges go from just barelly playable at times to "playable with low FPS moments", wich imo is just about the boost that was needed in my game/for my rig.



G