WIP: Natural Diversity

[brads3]

here is some pics of the mod in game. notice there isn't much grass at the start point but is reeds.maps do vary some.
http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=1808.msg36575#msg36575

[embx61]

I have no grass at all at the start. No rocks in water either.

I see branches though and slowly more mushrooms and stuff is spawning but no grass/reeds unless I place a building what seeds them.

I try a new Medium instead of large map and see if it makes a difference.

[brads3]

does your map setting say (nat div)?? it should

[Bartender]

Thanks for testing embx ! You're indeed supposed to see the natural resources straight away. The newest version was compiled with the latest beta version of the mod kit, and you need to choose one of the NatDiv starting conditions to see them (they replace the regular easy/medium/hard). With that, everything should work.

natdiv and natdiv2.pkm

Not suppose to run them both enabled are we?

Definitely not, I wouldn't be surprised if that's a big part of why it's running so slow for you brads . This beta version is a stand alone, it doesn't need the old one and they would duplicate a lot of things if you have the two enabled at the same time.

[brads3]

no i only run 1. i was answering which versions i have. i even tried earlier with just the new version mod with NO other mods installed.

[embx61]

LOL

I first started a new game and then enabled the mod.

But of course after loading Banished FIRST add NatDiv as a Mod and then start a new game with the mod enabled
Then I saw the Nat Div conditions

Well, we can tell I do not play Banished anymore since I started Modding as I do not even know how to load a mod properly anymore 

game is loaded and I see now the rocks in the water and several grasses.

No mods besides NatDiv and debug. Valleys, Large Map. NatDiv Medium. Fair.

Up to do a test drive

[embx61]

My conclusions so far.

This is just a fast overview of what I experience so far after about 40 minutes (1 year) in the game.
First I want to say what a beautiful job Bartender and Despo did.
Yes, I saw the screen shots but never saw the action life in game. one word comes to mind: Stunning!!!!

The reaper boat what also act as a bridge is a very clever design as I first wanted to build a bridge next to it but saw just in time a Bannie walking across the wooden boards

A lot of verts and triangles are loaded (That is one of the reasons I have Debug loaded so I can check that stuff  ) but no slowdown on my AMD 8 core 4000Mhz CPU. 16 Gig GSkill RAM, and a NVidea video cart with 6 Gig RAM on board.
This is not top of the line but it is fairly close. (I always about 2 years behind the newest stuff as I not going to pay $400 for a CPU when the price is dropped to about $150 a year later.
And all the newest stuff is IMHO only nice for those people who measure speed/FPS with all kind of measuring software.
Believe me, our mindset will not see any difference between a CPU what came rolling of the assembly bench yesterday then the one what rolled of the bench a year ago 

Tried all the speeds a bit zoomed in and out a lot and only the FPS goes from 60 to about 53/54 if I zoom out all the way.
This of course is logical because way more triangles (Poly's) and Vertices are in the screen on complete zoom out)

I zoomed in and out as fast as I could on huge patches of grass but just a little FPS drop to 53/54 FPS before going back to 60 if zoomed back in.

I will test way more then this because IMHO this mod deserves to be accessible for everyone so I hope we can come to the why it lags for several people.
I still think that the lots of poly's because of the spawning and/or other mods loaded together with NatDiv are the cause of the lag on certain systems.

I plan to do a about several 40 minutes (About 1 year) sessions everyday when I need a break from Modding for a while and the town will of course be growing.
If I reach about year ten I will start adding mods to see what happens.

I not planning running a beautiful stunning town as Paeng. Not looking at the numbers and values of production either. I leave that for our dedicated number crushers like Nilla

Just plop a bunch of stuff down, assign workers and let the game run at several speeds and keep an eye on FPS/lag/ other maybe issues.

So far NONE to report. It runs so far fine on my PC but I have a pretty decent one though.

I have the Town Hall inventory menu open while doing all this messing around.

At 1 year zoomed out on a certain area more then 13,5 million vertices and about 7 million triangles were loaded in the screen
At zoom in it dropped to about 75/80% of those numbers.

The engine can certainly handle lots of poly's pretty well it seems and so I retract my words that the engine maybe was also part to blame.

More to follow.....

EDIT:

I like to add that at 10x speed all the way zoomed out the FPS still hovered around 36 to 37 FPS.
Not bad at all for 10x speed all the way zoomed out and inventory window of the town hall open.

The more I think about it the more I believe it is just a certain combination of mods loaded together what is the culprit as so far NatDiv runs just fine by itself.

Also the specs of some players their PC's/laptops are maybe not up to the task of loading all those extra triangles and vertices what a mod like Natural Diversity need to look beautiful.

I understand that some want it all but I say, "sure, but you can have it all, but not all at the same time" 

[RedKetchup]

A lot of verts and triangles are loaded (That is one of the reasons I have Debug loaded so I can check that stuff  )

thats something i never never think to check :S

for sure all my mods adds a tons of it everywhere and everything i do.
this why i said , i am far to be good. i main concern is : things need to visually please me and i get satisfied.
also there is another thing i like : more easy to do things, i hate when it become too complicated, when it comes : i close the 3dsmax all the time and go play civ6 ^^
and i stop to draw.

[embx61]

Scrubs/trees and such are hard to model with low poly and still looking good.

We are not the paid professionals who make a bunch of $$$ by working for the big game companies as 3d moddelers and the film industry(CGI).

Don't forget, lots of those people get trained indoor while we have to do it by watching you tube videos and look for tutorials online and learn from each other.

We do it for fun, they do it as a job.

[embx61]

BTW Red

You optimized quite a bit of your NMT buildings?

My first buildings were high poly too because all the walls were boxes and if I cut a window out I never welded all the lines above and below those windows.
I see the same in Pilgrims houses. all those squares on the walls should have been welded but on the other hand it is a lot of work and boring.
That adds a lot of verts and poly's if not done.

For a building it will probably pass as people are not really plopping 100 of them down

But the spawning stuff like trees/crops/scrubs just cannot have a lot of poly's each as thousands of those are spawned on a big map.
Add to that all the crops the players seed in farm fields, the trees, orchards and players with not to good systems are in for a crawl.

[RedKetchup]

BTW Red

You optimized quite a bit of your NMT buildings?

oh i did !!
they were at 10k poly on first attemps lol
last time they were 1-1.5k

but i know professionals would down those at 0,8k ^^

[embx61]

What the professionals probably do is to create the building and then shuffle it over to his apprentice to do combining the vertices and weld them where needed

My first buildings also had about 4 to 5000 poly's. Sheesh, I was allready happy I could put something together instead of worrying about poly's in those days LOL

But I found ways to optimize a lot since then. My walls are not boxes anymore but just plains.

The roof I start as a box but with several connecting lines
Around the outside edges I shift the lines about half on the walls so the overhang still have a double plane if I am done.
Then I delete all the other faces on the inside so that part of the roof becomes a plane.

Some more faces (Connect lines)  are needed if you want to give the roof a curve.

The other benefit is besides saving some poly's is that the diagonal lines (Moire?) you see in the game if the faces are too close together is avoided for the biggest part of the roof

The build stage 2 I just Detach the wall planes, move them a bit to the inside from the other plane, flip the faces and have a double plane wall. then select the lines on top and bridge the cap.

If all is done I go inside the main mesh and delete all the inside faces of beams so they become a U as they are not visible anyway.

Most my buildings (Besides markets because the little round fruits/veggies etc. are adding up a bit and nothing can be do about that) are about 800 to 1200 poly's average.

[RedKetchup]

but how your roof and walls are casting shadows on the groud if doesnt have your internal plane ( if you delete them (specially the roof) ) ?

[embx61]

Everything I delete is inside the building so no shadows are casted there anyway.

That is why I leave the strip around the roof what overhangs from the walls with the double plane.

The shadow from village buildings where not cast right because there was a hole underneath the roof by the porch I forgot to close up.

When I put a plane there face down the building was closed up and the shadows were casted right.

Here a image of the boarding house while I did the optimizing. At the roof ends from the inside you see the double green lines as there the roof is still double plane but all the rest is just single plane inside the house. You can also see I deleted a lot of faces from all the beams.

Also good to see the wall plane where the windows are just three faces as I moved the vertices up and welded them together in the corners.
I missed two of them though. LOL
As long as everything is closed up it works.

If I would have put backface culling on in max we would not see much in this image as we would look right through it

Just over 2000 poly's for a big building (10x4) with curved roofs including the building stages.



And here with back culling on.

[Abandoned]

@embx61  your test results are interesting.  When you test with added mods, I suggest you add 1mod first and try alone, New Flora.

On my first test map I had NF loaded before NatDiv, I had NF bees that spawned but no NatDiv branches.  I did not play long so don't know if it would have lagged or not.  Then I changed load order with NatDiv before New Flora and started map and story. I had the NatDiv branches but no New Flora spawning at all.  Having started the story I did not disable NF, I just left as is.  It wasn't long before I noticed lag especially when moving camera over trees or when it rained.  Speed improved when it snowed. That's why I suspected mods was the problem not my computer. Also had it been my computer, the lag would have worsened the more I built which it did not.   

Next I started a test map using same map, setting, and same mods except New Flora and there was no lag whatsoever.

I highly recommend modders take play breaks especially using their own mods.  With the games Heroes of Might and Magic, I can always tell if the map maker is also a game player or just a map maker. 

I'm going to start another test map, a large map with only NatDiv and see what happens.