New mod for M2TW, or perhaps Medieval 3 suggestions

[Askthepizzaguy]

I've seen it referenced in quite a few different threads..but a quick search of the mod forum brings up this, which implies there also may be a limit on the number of provinces..

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...on+slot+limits

if those two things are true, it seems unlikely your grand plan could be achieved by way of a mod using the existing game engine

which is an unfortunate thing, but bear in mind I could be completely wrong

Ok, maybe that's true. Looks like this would have to be M3TW, then.

The computer can do pretty much anything you program it to do, limited only by hardware. It seems a simple problem like faction slots or a glass ceiling for provinces is a stumbling block easily fixed by the proper programmer.

[Guyus Germanicus]

Here's my rebuttal:

At first it sounds rather true, but then I thought... well, wait a minute! I can save about a billion save files onto my hard drive. I'm no technical expert, but the space it takes to save one .tga is infinitely larger than the space it takes to save your game progress. That means that the campaign map, while large and beautiful, (and not loaded to your screen all at once, to save space) with all of the little stacks and characters and buildings and roads and everything represented by the game, it all gets saved into a very small file which simply makes a note of the changes to the map. I believe it is a text file like descr_strat.

Your save files are primarily pointers or symbols representing larger entities. They are a snapshot of a moment of time in the game. That's why they don't have to be large like a graphics/.tga file. And when you save them, they're on your harddrive. They represent a 'remembered' position, AKA freeze frame of a moment in time in the game. A symbol representing an image, or pointers, are tiny compared to the images and real time positions on the game map that they represent. Harddrive space is not the same thing as core address space that Windows allocates to the game's driver program to process (play) the game. When you're playing the game in real time, you're not using pointers, you're using fullsize representations of the game itself, real images.

The game's driver program, when he restores your 'snapshot file', knows from a preplanned template where the pointers will actually point to on the template (game map) when they are restored to real time game action. Now I'm speaking in theory to some extent as it concerns TW games because I'm not a programmer who designed and worked on them. But I understand how the principles work. You literally use symbols or address locations to reference larger entities without actually having to reproduce the entire entity itself. That's how computers solve their "space" problem manipulating entities such as those in a game without having to drag around fullsize items. It uses symbols and pointers that can be restored to a template so that their original value and position are represented at game time. Make sense?

So when you're playing in real time, in the campaign mode, you dealing with the full-sized representations of the game. The more you conquer and the more the AI develops the factions it controls, the more items of the game have to be represented in real time. That requires a lot of addressable space in core. And all the more paging is done bringing things in and out of memory. (Sophisticated graphics require huge amounts of memory. That's why CA recommends that you set your graphics resolution to a more modest setting so that you don't run out of memory, say, in a combat scene, where your combat could slow down to snails pace, or you get thrown out of the game altogether.)

One of the ways the PC world has solved addressability problems for sophisticated game graphics is that your video card comes with it's own store of memory. (My NVidia 7950 GTX comes with 512 Meg of storage.) That helps the resource problem some.

The first release of CIV IV had a memory leak. I don't know exactly what THEY meant by that. But one thing that can happen is your operating system managing the game starts running out of memory to address new active entities of the game and starts writing over top of addresses of things that are currently active in your game. He simply he doesn't have anyplace else to record your new activity. That's when your game starts acting weird or you get thrown out of the game altogether.

Just FYI, PCs also use virtual memory which is similar to real memory except that it is resident on the C drive rather than in the actual DRAM/core memory of the computer. Virtual memory is accessed just like it was real memory by the Operating system, in this case Windows. So that increases your practical memory store amount.

I just think the scale of your idea may be problemmatic at this point in time. But given how PC techonology is advancing by leaps and bounds, it may get resolved in the not too distant future. So I'm not writing off your idea, I'm just saying that appears to me to demand more of the technology than can be delivered at the moment. These games are pretty sophisticated applications. They get very busy. And AI requires a lot of core too, I would imagine.

I need to knock off 'cause I have to go to work in the morning. I would just say to you: be not discouraged O Great PizzaGuy. I don't think we can truly imagine how fascinating the gaming future will be. The technology keeps improving, and we'll get there eventually.

[4th Dimension]

About faction limit.

I remember Duke of Serbia making an article where he explained that he found a way to add unlimited number of factions.

[Askthepizzaguy]

About faction limit.

I remember Duke of Serbia making an article where he explained that he found a way to add unlimited number of factions.

Sounds reasonable.

The only reason why there would be a limit is not because of hardware concerns, but because of the programming.

If the program is changed, you get more factions.

For the sake of modding, I think perhaps it could be done in such a way that you just have a Europe-Asia expanded map, and perhaps cut off the Americas (they are useless, in my opinion, if there are only a couple provinces there and an Aztec faction added as an afterthought)

I just want to conquer Asia and then rampage all the way through Europe like a horde. Or change history and clobber Asia as a Caliphate and bring civilized thought to Europe.

If anyone saw my England thread, they know what I am talking about. I did a Mongol invasion in reverse.

[ForgotMyOldNick]

PhonisMonkey: I think the fellow who made the BigMap 1.3 mod which you can find here states he 'added' two factions to his latest version.
It can be found here :
http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/m...ategory41.html
Through 'Regions and Provinces'.

I Just wanted more regions not too much else modded so I downloaded another one but haven't used it yet due to time :(


PizzaGuy: Geeez you don't ask much of a man's weekend do ya? lol I didn't even get to try out that Crusade exploit with my French game yet heh...


Orb: Great stuff, I am going to formulate your comments into my next post if that's ok with you.

I just need to work out a format that is more presentable and retains any really original comments or ideas and still keeps it presentable. This is why I used a thank you list at the beginning (PizzaGuy grrr :P ). Plus it's what I want in a new version so... But I want to keep it balanced, and appealing.

Anyway gonna grab a beer and see what I can do with this mess lol!

[Askthepizzaguy]

Ok how about this: Instead of the dream game I envision with all the fixes I want, how about we aim lower:

-Just Asia and Europe/north Africa (no Americas)
-A couple tweaks to the Ai to make it so that some factions are more aggressive than others, to make it more realistic/challenging
-New factions in Asia

We limit the mod to just these changes. How about it?

[Nikos_Rouvelas]

I have an idea for a new game. How about another Orthodox faction like Serbia or Bulgaria?

[4th Dimension]

I have an idea for a new game. How about another Orthodox faction like Serbia or Bulgaria?

For that you will have to wait for mods. Like Feudalism.