Optimizing the Game Content

[embraceunity]

I am a huge Elder Scrolls fan, and one of the more popular mods is to optimize all the models using this open source tool called PyFFI.

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/in ... timization

I thought this was incredibly sweet since it optimized all the models in the game without any quality loss. Granted, the high polygon counts of Oblivion made the performance boosts quite significant, and this particular route might not be that useful for Nexuiz which typically has much lower polygon counts. Furthermore, to use this specific tool, we would have to convert the files from SMD to NIF and back, which may cause quality degradation on its own. This is something that should probably be kept in mind for future Alien Trap releases. Or perhaps this could be used on some of the most complex models just to test.

Another weak link that could cause stuttering in many games is footstep sounds, and turning it off can sometimes show impressive performance gains. I don't know if this would help for Nexuiz as my sound is actually not working at the moment, but replacing such files with blank 0 byte files could prove if this theory is correct. I don't know what files these are. Would be nice if there were more options so that we could turn off things like footsteps.

[Mizu Kitsune]

dont count on this. nif's are animated differently, for example to make a female for oblivion your data structure would look like this:

Code: Select all

Basedir/
         |
         +meshes
         |        |
         |          +characters
         |                     |
         |                       +_male/
         |                                -femalefoot.mtl
         |                                -femalehand.mtl
         |                                -femalelowerbody.mtl
         |                                -femaleupperbody.mtl
         |                                -femalefoot.nif
         |                                -femalehand.nif
         |                                -femalelowerbody.nif
         |                                -femaleupperbody.nif
         +textures
                   |
                   +characters
                                  |
                                  +argonian
                                  |           |
                                  |           +female/
                                  |                      -footfemale.dds
                                  |                      -footfemale_n.dds
                                  |                      -handfemale.dds
                                  |                      -handfemale_n.dds
                                  +darkelf
                                  |         |
                                  |         +female/
                                  |                    -footfemale.dds
                                  |                    -footfemale_n.dds
                                  |                    -handfemale.dds
                                  |                    -handfemale_n.dds
                                  +etc\


thats just the nif's not including the .kh animation files.


and for nexuiz it would be:

Code: Select all

Basedir/
          |
          +panimations
          |              |
          |              +carni/
          |                       -zmodel.exe (or dpmodel.exe)
          |                       -carni.cfg
          |                       -anim1.smd (this is just for show there isn't an anim1.smd)
          |                       -carni.zym
          +textures/
                     -skin.tga


as for the foot steps, they are currently server side but can also be toggled on/off in the menu, please look through settings and such first.

[Morphed]

I didn't read whole article but it looks like it fix problems with exporting model from max to oblivion where exporter creates more polygons that are needed. Nexuiz doesn't have such problem, It doesn't add additional polygons on exporting or converting. Anyway I optimized all player models for next version and it will degrade polycount of players with a distance.