WIP: Natural Diversity

[Abandoned]

@tanypredator , up to Bartender, yes of course.  I think he is going to be a little busy with this lag problem.  We shall see.  NatDiv and New Flora both great mods. 

[Bartender]

Regarding the compatibility with New Flora, we'll look at that when this version is finished. I think a patch or compatibility version might be the best indeed, so that people can choose. If you feel like making one yourself that's also fine with us @tanypredator .

As for the lag, that's a bit of a difficult one to tackle.. I've done various tests on my own system, and I simply can't reproduce it. Even on a large map, with highest graphic settings, I'm getting a solid 30 fps even when completely zoomed out. Ofcourse this number gradually decreases as I start building my city, but such is the way of things in the world of Banished.

To really understand what's causing the problem, I would like to receive some more information about the lags.
- Are they lag spikes or is the game consistently slow?
- If it's mainly lag spikes, what are you looking at when they occur? Are you zoomed in or zoomed out?
- what are your graphic settings?
- which other mods are you using?

Receiving some answers to these questions would be a great help in understanding where the problem comes from . If we're to do some more optimizations then it would mean that we'll have to do some concessions on the visual aspect of the mod, so before doing that we should be absolutely sure that what were doing will actually have an effect.

with the extreme slow down that this brings,is a lite version planned?it is odd that the upgraded version affects the forget about orchard mod but the original did not. any chance the reed fix can be added into the original version as it is it knocks out all reeds?

The plan is to release a 'light' version in the same fashion as for v1.0, so one that only changes the look of the existing natural resources. If it turns out that too many people are having lag issues, we could think of an actual light version of the full mod.

It's not odd that the update affects the orchard trees, as those have received a 'rebellious crops' functionality. This will conflict with other mods that alter the growth behaviour of the orchard trees.

Adding the reeds to the old NatDiv version retroactively is not something I would personally want to do. They would not be functional without the associated buildings, and keeping too many different versions of the mod would get messy very quickly.

[Gatherer]

A little thought on the lag issue. Is anyone experiencing it also using minimize mods for town halls and trading posts?

[tanypredator]

Do you all mean a lag when playing at x10? Because I'm using minimize mods, but hadn't any such troubles, but I'm always playing x1. The only problem I've had is when a game is loading very long, if I use big mods, such as DS Village.

[tanypredator]

Regarding the compatibility with New Flora, we'll look at that when this version is finished. I think a patch or compatibility version might be the best indeed, so that people can choose. If you feel like making one yourself that's also fine with us @tanypredator .

I can make NF+branches, as a quick solution, while you are working on other things. The reason why I suggested to join mods is that I actually don't like my gathering buildings very much (especially first ones), and because you have added manual gathering tools, that are doubled now if one plays both of our mods. And also the resources are now doubled to achive compatibility.

[Abandoned]

@Bartender I am playing a small map, the mods I am using are listed at beginning of blog Meadowbrook story.  I notice the lag during rain or snow or when moving the camera view to a different section of the map especially over an area of vanilla trees.  I use game speed 1x, when moving the map it helps to pause first.  No difference when zooming in or out.

The only time I ever experience any lag was when trying CC Journey and not only did it lag, it completely froze up.  I have been using minimize buttons but have used before on non-cc maps with no slow down whatsoever.

I will load a beginning save game and see if the slowdown occurred before planting the cropfield, could the problem be cause by the rebellious  crop and orchard respawning?  Three extra cabbage makes little difference to the food supply, seems unnecessary. Perhaps make into a separate mod.  I am using Better Fields mod. Others mentioned no problem with earlier version of the mod. I had no problem with the light version and would like it if the branches could be added to it.

[brads3]

changing graphic settings had no affect.i am using the new pine mod with it.zoom didn't seem to help either.what was strange too i normally minimize my screen and let the game run a bit.with the game not on screen normally i gain a ton of speed.i can plan a few buildings or clear land,minimize the screen,and in a minute or so pull the window back up and the work is done. the game will progress about a season by doing this. with the new nat div it does not help. even with the window off the desktop i do not gain speed,it crawls.the workers were starting to skip and stutterstep instead of walk.it does seem to get worse the more you build.i always play at 10x.i am not using any minimize townhalls.doesn't seem to be related to just graphics. i have a feeling it has to do with the rocks in the water.don't know why though.

[Abandoned]

More info regarding lag, hope it may help shed light on cause of problem.  I played map a bit more without making any changes.  I cut a group of trees and set garden shed forester to cut only, this helped the speed in that area somewhat. The bannies were still moving slower than normal.  I moved the camera view to an area with some buildings, some trees, some meadow, the river and brook with rocks and watched.  The bannies were moving slowly already so when it rain there seemed to be less of a slow down, the big difference was when the leaves fell off the trees and the snow covered the ground.  The bannies returned to normal 1x speed even when the snow began to fall again.  When spring came and the trees got their leaves, the bannies slowed down again but not as much as before and not as much when it rained.    

[Abandoned]

@Bartender it was bothering me that the lag problem in Meadowbrook was not getting increasingly worse as I continued building and expanding.  Had it been a video card problem the lag should have worsened leaving me to believe it was the mod itself or a conflict.  My guess was conflict.  I decided to start a test map exactly the same as Meadowbrook but disable one mod at a time to see what I could find.  My first test map before starting Meadowbrook I had New Flora above NatDiv and got no branches spawning.  When starting Meadowbrook I put New Flora after NatDiv and got branches but no New Flora at all. I left it that way.

Now, I disabled New Flora and began test map otherwise exactly the same as Meadowbrook and no lag whatsoever, not during rain, not during snow, not when moving the camera over the forest.  New Flora seems to be the culprit.  I am wondering if @The Pilgrim and @brads3 had New Flora enabled on their NatDiv maps when they experienced their lag problem.

I would not have used two such mods together on the same map, preferring one or the other on a map for variety.  I would not like to see them combined.  Both mods are beautiful in their own right. 

[The Pilgrim]

@Abandoned   I don't use the new flora mod.  I would agree that a conflict is just as likely, but i will say that I had a similar problem before NMT and CC optimized their poly counts way down. 
As far as conflict goes, my guess (and that is all it is is a rather undereducated guess) is that it may be the maritimes trees mod as they have to be placed into a certain order (trees on top i believe) so as not to cause a crash.  I will test this theory as soon as I can.

[Abandoned]

@The Pilgrim , disabling New Flora seems to have solved my lag problem.  I did not have any of the Maritime mods enable. So it may just be the size of NatDiv and I had one too many mods. Mine was on a small map.  I will have to read up on Maritime again before I try those, I thought the load order problem was solved.  I don't think Brads3 came up with the cause of his NatDiv lag, I believe he said he had no problem with the earlier version.  I hope it gets solved, it is a great looking mod.

[Bartender]

Thank you for the information, it's helping a lot in determining the source of the problem . Unfortunately it seems like it's indeed just a 'general' overload of the game having to handle too many things at the same time, which ofcourse is likely to happen faster in combination with other mods.

The mod is currently optimized as much as possible without losing any visual quality. @despo_20 and I are currently looking into making a 'performance' version, with slightly lower visual quality but a better optimization for those who need it. That way everyone would be able to use the mod, but we wouldn't have to compromise on visual quality for those who don't have any problems running it.

[brads3]

with all the mods i run,this mod did slow dramatically when i moved the forget orchard and forever tree mods.the higher in the order i placed the nat div the slower the game ran. when i moved it above the orchard i saw i huge slow down. i can run any other mod including the original version without a problem.i even run the pine mod.i am not using the new flora either. never seen any mod slow down a game like this did.
   the original version shows no conflicts with the orchard mod. it seems to be the changes that affect the tree mods. not saying the conflicts but whatever those files are is where it seems to be.

[Abandoned]

@Bartender and @brads3 my best guess is still that it is a conflict caused by other mods that spawn, like new flora, test map removing that mod worked just fine.  I would think Necora's pine set would definitely be a problem. Like you said, Bartender, too many items.  I don't use all that many mods on a map at the same time so have very few problems or load orders to worry about.  I could run cc Journey without noticeable slow down, it just froze up on most map start choices.  I know I will use NatDiv or the light version often, I hope others will be able to also. 

[brads3]

i ran a test of this mod by itself. without any other mods this 1 mod slows my game down father than all my other mods combined. when i took it out and ran vanilla it was like the workers had super speed.