SW3 - remove dust clouds and/or further reduce the graphics

Thanks, I didn't think of checking neighbouring system names Ya, I saw in RandomObjects that CreateCarcass() isn't the one I was looking for. Do we need to comment out entire functions? I thought it's safer to comment out the line which does the actual LoadCloud() call.

I'll edit gefest location script and start a new game to check.

Edit:
Ok, weird. I thought the nested loop in function CreateRandomCloud() was responsible for spawning all that crap, right? But commenting them out didn't help. Turns out the culprits are the 3 LoadCloud() calls in section "--CLOUD", lines 63-65, which call LoadCloud() with "huge_cyl.cld". Huh. I thought that was a debris reference. Commenting these 3 lines out caused the laggy fog to not appear. Great. If all systems follow the same convention, then simply commenting out the LoadCloud() calls under the "--CLOUD" section will stop fog from showing up.

@lanelor:
The pitch black effect is used sort of like a scene fade out. Something like "come closer and let me tell you about it", then the scene fades to black. A few seconds later normal lighting is restored. Only seen it used in the InoCo endgame missions though.

Edit 2:
I've found a better solution than having to manually edit every single system script. Simply rename/delete the "huge_cyl.cld" file and the game won't draw anything since it can't find it. All done, no more laggy fog now. Does anyone know what format the .cld file is? Is it an image or something? It may be a better idea to replace it rather than just delete it.

Edit 3:
I cloned medium_station_ora.cld and renamed it huge_cyl.cld. Game didn't crash, but it didn't show anything strange as I was expecting either. There were smaller than normal patches of fog though. Replacing it with a copy of clouds1.cld simply showed nothing. So I guess you can either replace huge_cyl.cld with a copy of clouds1.cld or simply delete/rename it to get rid of the fog.

Caution, I haven't tested in other systems. I think there's also fog somewhere in Debris 1 and the Precursor map.

[Goblin Wizard]

Originally Posted by Trucidation

So I guess you can either replace huge_cyl.cld with a copy of clouds1.cld or simply delete/rename it to get rid of the fog.

This is probably the fastest solution which generates no errors. Just replace all cld files with cloud1 and give them proper names. Cloud1 seems to be a blank file or a very small cloud.

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

[Sing_In_Silence]

Goblin Wizard, Trucidation, thank you.
Very helpful.
(And combat tends to go better, now that I don't need to switch to map mode )


Shame, though, as space loses some atmosphere (nyuk nyuk), but hey, eventually I'll get a better computer, so whatever.