I did just that, made 28 copies of clouds1.cld and renamed them to the original .cld file names. Save wouldn't load, game complained of possible file corruption - I'm guessing this is because sector data is also saved, and it's already got previous cloud data in there which no longer matches.
I don't think it's broken though, I think all this means is that if you do this, you'll need to start a new game. Gonna test that now.
Edit:
Yep, new game works fine. Jumped into other sectors okay. So the problem was due to saves "remembering" the old cloud data.
Update:
Probably should highlight this in case someone else later wanders into the thread and can't find how to do it.
How To Remove Dust Clouds Which Are Lagging Up Your Game
This mini-mod does not, of course, apply to people with good graphics cards. I'm talking about those of us who game on older machines - especially laptops, since those generally didn't get good gfx cards until recently. The game actually runs well on older computers, that is until you run into those dust clouds (or large battles, but it usually takes a really huge crowd to lag it up badly and that only happens in a few endgame scenarios).
1. Open folder
\Data\PFX\DustFX.
2. Copy down the file NAMES of all the
.cld files. Just write down the names somewhere, in notepad or something. There should be 28 of them.
3. DELETE all of the .cld files
except for
clouds1.cld.
4. Now make 27 copies of
clouds1.cld and rename them all with the names you copied in step (2) just now. Obviously,
clouds1.cld will already be there so skip that 1.
You're done. Basically, what you did was replace all the .cld files with a simple one that doesn't lag up your framerate.
WARNING: If you have savegames, they will not work. This is because saves also preserve information about systems you've visited - including dust cloud info. So the game chokes when it tries to load your save because all the .cld files now point to the same simple cloud type so it can't render the complex clouds remembered by the save. That's why you must do this BEFORE you start a new game.
Enjoy
