[MOD TC/AP] Combat Mod 4 - v4.16 17/06/13 - AP 3.0 Compatibility

[Spectre01]

The FPD slowdown effect is good already. Just did OFF mission where you need to defend the military base from khaak captials. I have FPD at the front of my odin. Once it starts fire, the destoryer remains at 0 speed for the whole barrage until FPD and PSP drain all my laser energy, then it starts moving.

Anyway, is there any more room on improving beam weapons? It still lags like crazy with the hit effect. It's not just khaak's kyon emitter, those commenwealth beam weapons lag too (some xeaon K had it it seems). And another laggy weapon is that pirate flame thrower...Plasma burst generator or something. My fps dropped to single digit during that mission I mentioned due to massive beam spam from khaak.

I'd suggest you to try to remove the beam hit effect completely and see how it goes. I remember back then there was a performance mod that removes most of the weapon hit effects, which made the combat frame rate increased significantly.

Anyway, looking forward for the next update as well as the finished SRM trail park

[Cadius]

how bout try removing the beam ambient sound? I noticed the flak ambient sound causes some lag if you're near enough to hear it, maybe the beam has a similar issue.

EDIT:
Just to clarify: I mean the Ambient sound attached to the Bullet, and not the weapon firing sound.

[paulwheeler]

I definately think there is some kind of bug in the sound system in X3. Many of the lags seem to be caused by sound effects - especially when they overlap in quick succession, like with the vanilla flak explosion effects.

Really, modern games should not struggle with playing multiple sounds simultaneously.

I think the beam ambient sound though is just one looped sample so would not cause issues. Its more likely something to do with the beam model or the actual rendering of it.

The beam hit effects have already been removed except for the Gamma Kyon as I thought this was really needed to be kept for asthetics.

[Spectre01]

No wonder I don't lag much when facing khaak fighters and covertte, but get massive FPS drops when facing destoryer and carrier.

I still believe the hit effects are causing more lag than other thing. Because I noticed weapons that have "continuing hit effect" such as Ion Disruptor, Plasma Burst Generator and the Gamma Kyon is the major FPS killer.

I will try to remove those weapons myself and see how it goes.

[killerog]

I wouldn't be surprised if the hit effect is being called constantly instead of once with regular weapons, causing the lag. Again a nice bug that's never been fixed.

[paulwheeler]

I wouldn't be surprised if the hit effect is being called constantly instead of once with regular weapons, causing the lag. Again a nice bug that's never been fixed.

That's exactly what it does.

[Spectre01]

Well, I removed the Gamma kyon hit effect all together, but it still lags when they fire the weapons (on a side note, I got pwned in the last OFF mission in my odin. I think I'm gonna cap a tyr :V). It must been hit detection been calculated thousands of time with the beam to cause this kind of lag.

edit: I changed the gamma kyon ambient sound to 111, which is the same as alpha/beta kyon. And it seems it reduced the lag significantly. And at the same time, I removed the gamma kyon hit effect. Those two combined make the gamma kyon lag free. I'd suggest you change those datas too in the next cmod release for more performance gain (especially against khaak).

[powerbrite]

hi there great mod ,but starting to have screen freeze in large battles think its the shokwave genarator but not shure seems to be capitals ,ok

[paulwheeler]

All weapons that have repeated hits like PSG, the beams, PBG etc. cause lag in their effects. This is due to the game having a buildup of effects and sounds which uses up memory and buffers. My guess is that the game engine simply runs out of buffers for these effects and so lags.

There isn't much I can do about it if you want to keep the nature of these weapons how they are without altering the game engine itself - which is certainly beyong my abilities.

I will have a look and see if I can shorten the length of the effects and sounds to reduce the load. This may help eleviate things.

[Gazz]

MARS compatibility note.
Might want to note this in the second post or somewhere.


MARS automatically detects CMOD4 and will then read the TFile 7049 instead of 7047 (vanilla).

This event is triggered by
- TLasers having more than 41 lasers
- Laser subtype 41 having a name that matches Text ID 17 / 80212.
(meaning it will work in every language release even though it's a string comparison)


The laser data TFile from your first post is now included (renamed) in the MARS download.
Your version is no longer required until you change the laser data.
Even then, small adjustments are irrelevant if the general role of the laser stays the same.

[paulwheeler]

MARS compatibility note.
Might want to note this in the second post or somewhere.


MARS automatically detects CMOD4 and will then read the TFile 7049 instead of 7047 (vanilla).

This event is triggered by
- TLasers having more than 41 lasers
- Laser subtype 41 having a name that matches Text ID 17 / 80212.
(meaning it will work in every language release even though it's a string comparison)

So does that mean my CMOD4 MARS data file should be 7049, not 7047 as it currently is?

[Gazz]

Correct.

7047 is the vanilla file and co-exists with the CMOD and XTM versions.
All 3 are included in the download.

[paulwheeler]

OK I'll alter that now.

How will this affect OOS Rebalance though? I know that uses the MARS data file. Will it pick up the altered one too?



EDIT - MARS Data file is altered in the main post.

For cmod4.4 this file is not necessary as it is already included in the MARS download.

[Gazz]

How will this affect OOS Rebalance though? I know that uses the MARS data file. Will it pick up the altered one too?

OOSR directly accesses the MARS data array after the MARS setup has parsed it.

[bounty_hunter66]

Im wonderng.....Have you ever thought about turning Cmod into someting else? And make race specific weapons? The fact that all races use those yellow PPCs is just dull and plain stupid.

What were the guys at ego thinkng? Did the members of all five races AND xenon went to the same school or something?

Race specific weapons would be a good start. For example, the current gamma PPC's should be used only by Paranid(since theyre yellow). The CIG by Argon, the HEPT by Boron etc.

Split up the weapons into 3 main types for each race. Or at least 2(Capital ship guns, and fighter guns). And sort them by color of the race.

I did this kind of thing in my own mod back in the X3:R days. Also made capital ship lasers much larger and made them so you can hear them from greater distance

[darkalor]

For some reason, MARS in my game dislikes the new FPD weapon and keeps telling me "laser not available". I have the latest CMOD and MARS versions.
Anyone has a clue what could be wrong?
CMOD is installed as an SPK in case that matters.

[paulwheeler]

Im wonderng.....Have you ever thought about turning Cmod into someting else? And make race specific weapons? The fact that all races use those yellow PPCs is just dull and plain stupid.

What were the guys at ego thinkng? Did the members of all five races AND xenon went to the same school or something?

Race specific weapons would be a good start. For example, the current gamma PPC's should be used only by Paranid(since theyre yellow). The CIG by Argon, the HEPT by Boron etc.

Split up the weapons into 3 main types for each race. Or at least 2(Capital ship guns, and fighter guns). And sort them by color of the race.

I did this kind of thing in my own mod back in the X3:R days. Also made capital ship lasers much larger and made them so you can hear them from greater distance

I have done this to a certain extent with the Ship Rebalance Mod. The X3TC weapons are already split into races, its the ship compatibility thats all over the place. I have made the loadouts far more racial in the SRM. There are a few weapons that are universal, like PPC, HEPT and CIG. However, creating a lot of new weapons really means doing a total conversion mod like XTM which is somthing I've been trying to avoid.

I have increased the sound effects distance with the CMOD a bit already. The problem is, the further the distance, the more sounds are playing at once. The sound system in X3 is not exactly state of the art and tends to cause lag if lots of sounds are called simultaneously. I will look into increasing the distance perhaps for just the really heavy weapons like PPC and PSP.

[paulwheeler]

For some reason, MARS in my game dislikes the new FPD weapon and keeps telling me "laser not available". I have the latest CMOD and MARS versions.
Anyone has a clue what could be wrong?
CMOD is installed as an SPK in case that matters.

Did you download the latest MARS release (released yesterday I believe)?

If it doesn't work with that try installing the MARS datafile in the main CMOD4 post. That definitely has FPD in it.

[bounty_hunter66]

Well then why not edit Tcockpits and tships so that they only mount those certain lasers. If you add just one compatible weapon for each ship then the ships will spawn with that weapon automaticly.

I dont see whats the problem.

And by the way, im not saying you create alot of new weapons, im saying you could use the existent ones and sort them to 3 MAXIMUM weapons per race. No universal ones. There are alot of weapons to make this job possible. No need for creating new ones

[darkalor]

For some reason, MARS in my game dislikes the new FPD weapon and keeps telling me "laser not available". I have the latest CMOD and MARS versions.
Anyone has a clue what could be wrong?
CMOD is installed as an SPK in case that matters.

Did you download the latest MARS release (released yesterday I believe)?

If it doesn't work with that try installing the MARS datafile in the main CMOD4 post. That definitely has FPD in it.

Latest latest, and tried your file as well. So honestly, no goddamn clue whats wrong.
Just in case this is what i got installed http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/936/clipboard01rii.jpg, though i cant really imagine any of that conflicting with cmod or mars.