Adding planets and lag issues....

[SWLunatic]

Sorry in advance if this is the wrong board.

 

Hi - new to the boards as well as to the modding world.

 

After getting EaW and realizing the great potential I've seen to edit the game into something even better, I decided to start modding, by learning how to edit the text in the various xml and txt files. My first project was to tackle the lack of planets as I saw the galaxy.

 

Using a combination of the New Essential Chronology and a couple of online maps, I began adding planets and organizing them in such a way as to portray the SW galaxy as it appears. I enlarged the scale of the galaxy background map, reduced the size of the planets, and then began adding many, many, many planets. I know, nerd, huh?

 

Anyway, I would say I had added around 100+ planets to the already existing 44 or so. After I added each individual planet, I would check in-game to make sure I had no crashing issues. I could freely move the camera back and forth to any spot in the galaxy without any lag problems.

 

Where my problem arose, was when I started trying to play a GC and realized how much lag I had built up when I tried to simply move the Emperor from one planet to another.

 

My question through all this is:

 

Is the lag produced from adding planets affecting my PC memory or my video card's memory? I have about 256mb of video card memory and 1.5gb of PC memory.

[Mike.nl]

It's probably not a memory issue, more like a processor issue.

By adding that many planets the AI has to check a LOAD of options and alternatives in order to determine where to send its forces.

I haven't really added planets myself, but from what I've heard and what I know, this is the problem.

 

The solution? Besides from reducing the amount of planets, it might be worth a shot to reduce the number of connections between planets, so the AI's options don't exponentially increase. Or maybe the AI algorithms can be modified in the LUAs. These are just educated guesses on my part, however.

 

Someone with experience in adding planets should speak about this.

[scott2978]

I'm in the process of doing just about the exact same thing. Since the fine folks over at Strategic Improvement have given us the green light to use their galaxy map, I'm trying to add it to my own in-house only mod. I'll let you know if I experience the same problem.

 

 

Scott

[atreus]

I still experience some minor lag on a Map of 100 planets (planning to add more), and I am running a new Dell 400 XPS gen 5 3.2 Ghz Dual Core with 4 Gig of Ram.  I think lag is inevitable, but there may be things we can do to reduce it.  If so, I'd love to learn to code more effectively.....

[scott2978]

Atreus, what kind of video card you running?