OH!

GIMP?

I compress the textures that I make. Is .dds more compressed than .tga?

I suppose I can compress things sometime soon.

Expect an even smaller mod.

BTW, Particle effects CAN increase the memory usage, but not through the effects themselves. (I can have a 2Kb effect file that produces 10000 particles. Of course that is overboard, but it is a great example of odd usage.) From what I can tell, effects use the VRAM more than the RAM. I don't think that effects use very much RAM themselves. Please tell me if I am wrong...

syneptus, as far as I know TGA is one of the LARGEST file formats other that BMP, what you can do to test this is to save a image in each of the file formats and compare the file size, then you will know.

harpo

Photoshop and the Nvidia DDS plugin can also be used to convert from TGA to dds.

For the Maelstrom mod I have saved 400-500 MBytes by doing the above conversion for particle files and the UI, as advised by TSOP.

TSOP focused on three ways to optimse the original Sins particles. Quoting TSOP ...

"Constant with ALL of the particle files:
 1) ALL TGA format textures have been replaced with DDS format textures. The Optimization Project does NOT use TGA textures.
 2) ALL Folder\File path entrys have been removed. Only the textures, texture animation, or effect mesh names will be in the "textureName/textureAnimation/MeshName" lines.
 3) ALL Non Existant texture references corrected for miss-labeled references, or removed if no texture exists at all. Notes will be made for which particles have bad references."

I have done 3.

2 will be a heck of a job.

1 is somewhat easy.

Thanks to the both of ya. I will use GIMP .dds plugin to convert my .tga files, remove the filepaths from the particles, and sort through my emitters. With luck I bet I can lower the mod's size to 4Mb! I use a ton of .tga's.

With the right tool 2) is the simplest and easiest of the 3 items.

Have a look at "Useful File Utilities", it is a batch file text search, find and replace tool.

See http://www.replsoft.com/

My filepaths are different for each effect!

The filepaths referring to your textures should not have a filepath as they will be in your textures dir (i.e texture name only), which is the first place Sins will look ... hence optimized.

I understand that.

The filepath is not something uniform throughout my effects...

It differs between sources and emitters.

BTW, You are talking to someone who has played with effects for two years...

I just have to delete close to 10 lines per effect, 786 times...

That is alot.

How many filepath variants do you have?

It's not about how many particles you have or lines to replace, its about how many unique filepath names in all your particle files.

I have used filepaths from at least 12 different areas. Maybe more.

I suppose I can try your idea. No guarantees that it will work 100%.

Thanks for your help soase-maelstrom.

Send me your files I'll do it for you ... it will take me less than an hour.

I've recently gone through the process for the Maelstrom Mod for all 6 races and for the 4 different mods, i.e 800x4 particle files. Yes, as you can imagine there were a number of different unique path names in the collection.

It is in the download link, I didn't even bother to convert the latest batch into binary.

Notepad++ is another option for searching and replacing across multiple files.

Oh yeah!

FACEPALM

Hi Syneptus,

Had a quick look at the Entrenchment version of your mod ... no surprises.

If you can wait a day or two I'll do the optimisation for you: both for filepath removal and tga to dds conversion (Entrenchment and Diplomacy). You can do something more creative in the interim.

I'm all setup to do both, so it will be quick ... unless you want to go through the process yourself?

Just say the word ...

Oi, I had to go off to school before I could reply...

Sure, if it isn't too much of a problem...

I concluded as much.

I'll crank the handle.

You have 3 .xcf files and 2 jpeg files in your textures dir, for both the Diplomacy and Entrenchment versions of your mod.

I can't find any references to them anywhere within your mod. Before I delete them can you confirm you don't use them. I wasn't aware that Sins could use Gimp (xcf) or jpg formatted texture files.

Also, unfortunately, you use a number of textures from Sins that aren't in your textures dir. Hence I will need to check all your particle files, find, copy and convert (if necessary) the referenced textures that aren't in your textures dir. This will take longer than anticipated.

The referenced textures change NOTHING. Leave them be.

THe .xcf and the .jpg were there for no reason. You may delete them.

The problem is that I can't use batch texture replacement (i.e tga to dds). If I do then your particles will look for dds files that don't exist and I assume the Emitter will be blank.

Most of the referenced textures are in tga format also. So if you want to optimize you need to convert them also.

PS: to give you some idea: you have at least 311 particle files that reference non-optimized (Sins reference) textures. Of the 60 files I've looked at so far there are 60 unique non-optimized textures (tga)

heheheheh

sounds like a huge job.

I will try to do something about it... um, soon.

Sorry.

thanks for the attempt.

No attempt ... mostly done.

PS: your Diplomacy mod references 219 tga files

Even better.

Karma for you.

There is a potential problem with some of your meshes in your particle files.

Here is a list of meshes with (erroneous) filepath names

Weapon_TechCruiserMissile
StarBasePhase
CapitalShip_PsiBattlePsionic
AsteroidSmall05
rock
AsteroidSmall02
TechDroid2
TechDroid1
StarBaseTech-TradeWeapon2
CapitalShip_PsiColony
CapitalShip_TechCarrier
PlanetModule_PsiOrbitalAntiMatterRecharger
Weapon_TechSupportMissile
Weapon_PhaseCapitalMissile
EffectMesh_RazePlanetShell
PlanetModule_PhaseOrbitalMissileDefenseUpgrade
CannonShellPhase
skull
Weapon_PsiKinetic
Weapon_TechCapitalMissile
Weapon_TechNukeMissile
Weapon_TechNukeMissileSmall
PlanetModule_TechOrbitalGaussDefense
PlanetModule_TechOrbitalGaussDefenseMissilesAndRailGun

Now most of them will be found (eventually in the Sins mesh folder), but here is the problem, some of the meshes have the following filepath names

C:\Documents and Settings\bailknight.GC-DCIS-2\?? ??\SinsModPackageIncomplete\ParticleForge 3\Mesh\
Ability_AntiModuleTorpedoesTravel.particle
Ability_DirectionalShield-Buff.particle
Ability_MeteorStrikePlanetTravel.particle
Ability_MeteorStrikeShipsTravel.particle
Flair_PhaseStarbase_core.particle

C:\Documents and Settings\Paul\Desktop\stuff\ForgeTools1.1\ParticleForge\Mesh\
Ability_ShieldRestorationStarBaseClaw.particle
Flair_PhaseCannonShellTravel.particle

C:\Documents and Settings\Staraptor\Desktop\Stuff\Stuff\PF\Mesh\
Ability_DominationActivate.particle
Ability_SpreadWeaponDamageActivate.particle
Buff_InstantBuildFighters.particle
Buff_PlanetShieldSelf.particle
CapitalAbility_AntiMatterRechargeModuleActivate.particle
Flair_PsiPlasmaCore.particle
Weapon_Tech_OrbitalDefense_Bullet.particle
Weapon_Tech_OrbitalDefense_Muzzle.particle

these meshes don't exist in your TotalEffects mods directory, so if found they will come unmodded from the Sins mesh folder. Of course one of the reasons to edit a mesh is to add/orient a particle effect via a nullpoint.

Can you clarify?

These meshes are used in effects from the sins directory.

The filepath matters not.

The effects use them, and it would be difficult to do nullpoints for what I am doing with these effects.

These references can be deleted entirely, as they are not loaded or used:


StarBasePhase

CapitalShip_PsiBattlePsionic

StarBaseTech-TradeWeapon2

CapitalShip_PsiColony
CapitalShip_TechCarrier

PlanetModule_PsiOrbitalAntiMatterRecharger

PlanetModule_PhaseOrbitalMissileDefenseUpgrade

CannonShellPhase

PlanetModule_TechOrbitalGaussDefense
PlanetModule_TechOrbitalGaussDefenseMissilesAndRailGun

The following is useless:

Ability_ShieldRestorationStarBaseClaw.particle

thanks again.