45 replies to this topic

[Ghostrider]

Many thanks for the campaign feedback so far, including your comments and issues with Galaxy Far, Far Away.
I have spend the last few days addressing these comments and generally improving the campaign for re-release.
Most of the problems that you have experienced with GFFA and GFFA_Lite have been to do with the extremely high load times and the slow frame rates/lag of the game in galactic mode.

The majority of these problems are simply down to the size of the campaign file - the full version of GFFA campaign is 1400kb, compared to 500kb for the Core Worlds campaign. This is the primary reason for the poor performance, with a partial contribution to perfomance loadings being added simply by the number of planets.

I have rectified this problem by reducing the file size of this campaign considerably, mostly by reducing the quantity of extraneous units and replacing them with other craft to maintain balance. A perfect example of this would be one of the many separatist worlds.
In the original file, I had listed, say 20-30 assorted light fighter craft (Vulture droids and Mankvims for example), and 12 carrack light cruisers as part of the line of battle. This has been replaced with a single Venator_Droid - so 30 lines of code are reduced to 1 line, and you probably won't see much change in the actual battle as I have replaced individual fighters with carriers.

This lesson has been well noted and will ensure the reduction of file sizes in the future. If you modders want to make campaigns, remeber to use fleet carrers to give you your fighter presence, not massive lists of indivudual fighters and light cruisers!

Overall, a divided theme is emerging:
If you want totally epic space battles, play the Core Worlds, Inner Rim and Outer Rim campaigns, as these retain the massive fleets in all their glory. We can get away with this due to the small number of planets in play, hence keeping the file size small.

In contrast, if you want to see an massive galaxy, go for the Galaxy, Far Far Away campaign, which will be basically the same force structure as the smaller campaigns, but with some judicious trimming to keep the file size down. Battles will still be tough, but not quite on the epic scale as the sub-campaigns, and with some subtle simplification of forces - cruisers rather than spam frigates - capitals instead of spam cruisers!

To give you an idea of this, while the original GFFA file was a nasty 1450Kb , it has now been trimmed to just over 900KB - hardly bigger the Outer Rim campaign. It runs much more smoothly as a result. Get ready to conquer the galaxy soon!

Edited by Ghostrider, 31 December 2008 - 08:50 AM.

[cromy]

Will you be coding the carriers for the CSA to have their fighters spawn in the beginning or will they be vulnerable tot he same weakness as other carriers in that begin able to be destroyed before they have all their fighters out i say this because in a lot of battles the defending forces are pretty close to the middle of the map with the attacker jumping in pretty close to them so a carrier could theoretically could be spammed by massive turbolaser barrages before they can get their fighters out . . . though perhaps giving carriers used to replace those spam fighters power to shields ability could eliminate that possibility.

[Casen]

If it's the same as the Outer Rim Campaign then it'll still be horribly laggy for me; I played it the other day and it still lagged, not as much but still to an annoying extant.

[Ghostrider]

Cool, but will you also later downgrade the core, inner and outer rim campigns like GFFA also. Since some of us with older computers can't even play those anymore....

I'll talk to PR and find out what he wants me to do!

As I will probably be tweaking these campaigns as well, has anyone noticed any balance issues that need to be nudged??

All you modders and players are the best testers we can get, so please post comments on my GFFA Forum in Community suggestions, and I'll take a look at any balance issues you may have.

Edited by Ghostrider, 31 December 2008 - 09:46 AM.

[Tropical Bob]

On the subject of trimming down the sub-campaigns, you could make a Lite version of each, for those with weaker computers.

[cromy]

perhaps all the cannon fodder like transports that have no armaments, quite useless in battle hardly ever servive a barrage from a dreadnought, since after taking a good bit of the outter rim and destroying the fleets there in i've yet to see a performance increase with the decreased amount of units on the field

[EduardPais]

Instead of placing all those pirate units on the map, wouldn't it be better to transform them into the asteroid's garrison, while leaving just the unique pirate ships ?! It's much more simple to just add the pirate asteroid starbase with a heavy garrison, than placing tons of units on the map which just lag the game. The same could be done with the land pirate outpost.

[Casen]

I'll be honest with you I'm not too fond of all the planetary defense fleets; not pirates. The pirates and their super battleships/souped-up transports I don't mind, I just think so many planets having these huge defense fleets over them being kinda odd. I just think the whole planetary defense fleet thing is mundane, is all...

Granted due to the awful lag I haven't been able to see much of that.

But it seems like what I -did- see was all this.

And the idea of the rebel alliance killing the defense fleets in addition to conquering them doesn't seem like them...

Edited by Kacen, 31 December 2008 - 12:24 PM.

[coinich]

Aw, I was kinda looking forward to the epicness of GFFA! Thanks for the work however; it might be more enjoyable that way.

[feld]

Overall, a divided theme is emerging:
If you want totally epic space battles, play the Core Worlds, Inner Rim and Outer Rim campaigns, as these retain the massive fleets in all their glory. We can get away with this due to the small number of planets in play, hence keeping the file size small.

In contrast, if you want to see an massive galaxy, go for the Galaxy, Far Far Away campaign, which will be basically the same force structure as the smaller campaigns, but with some judicious trimming to keep the file size down. Battles will still be tough, but not quite on the epic scale as the sub-campaigns, and with some subtle simplification of forces - cruisers rather than spam frigates - capitals instead of spam cruisers!

To give you an idea of this, while the original GFFA file was a nasty 1450Kb , it has now been trimmed to just over 900KB - hardly bigger the Outer Rim campaign. It runs much more smoothly as a result. Get ready to conquer the galaxy soon!

I hope that you're keeping a copy of your full v1.1 GFFA handy somewhere for download? The thing is a work of art. I enjoy the feeling of attacking a populated spaceport with shipping traffic that isn't warships in the area.

Might I also request keeping versions of the unaltered v1.1 Core, Inner, and Outer Rim campaigns available?

r/
feld

[Kitkun]

Instead of placing all those pirate units on the map, wouldn't it be better to transform them into the asteroid's garrison, while leaving just the unique pirate ships ?! It's much more simple to just add the pirate asteroid starbase with a heavy garrison, than placing tons of units on the map which just lag the game. The same could be done with the land pirate outpost.

My thoughts exactly. The big thing I can think of is that it would probably increase tactical load time, and that the starbase file would probably need to be split up to keep it intelligible.

If nobody else ever does it, I'll probably experiment with it sometime next month or so.

I hope that you're keeping a copy of your full v1.1 GFFA handy somewhere for download? The thing is a work of art. I enjoy the feeling of attacking a populated spaceport with shipping traffic that isn't warships in the area.

Might I also request keeping versions of the unaltered v1.1 Core, Inner, and Outer Rim campaigns available?

If for some reason they don't, it'll become a mini-mod.

Edited by Kitkun, 01 January 2009 - 09:14 PM.

[bob345]

If the original GFFA file is just a little bigger then the outer rim file where does GFFA Lite rank?

Edited by bob345, 31 December 2008 - 04:50 PM.

[SurfingDoc]

Might I suggest doing that for all the campaigns. I have a newer, higher end computer and Core Worlds still causes horrible lag and I have seen it use between 500,000 to 1,100,000 K of memory while running.

[coinich]

Mine beat 1,100,000 K. Thats a gig, right? I've only got two more left...

[Sion4000]

I have a a new high end computer (Plays Crysis smoothely on high) but get massive amounts of lag even on the smaller campaigns
however with pirates Edited back to 1.0 levels all the campaigns run smoothly (Except GFFA)

I also have an idea that will likely remove the lag but allow for strong pirate fleets.
Rather than having to program in individual ships to make pirate fleets, why not just make several versions of the the pirate asteroid base all of which have different garrisons.

For example pirate asteroid base NO. 1 would have a garrison of a victory class and 3 fighters
these units would the hyperspace in instantly at the start of a battle

Pirate asteroid base NO. 2 (representing a more wealthy/Powerful planet with a strong defense force) might have an ISD, 3 Carracks, And six assorted fighters
they would also hyperspace in instantly at the start of the battle

This way you could have major pirate fleets while using only one line of code rather than four, ten, or even more
just by using the space station garrison from vanilla

[Dalmp]

I have a a new high end computer (Plays Crysis smoothely on high) but get massive amounts of lag even on the smaller campaigns
however with pirates Edited back to 1.0 levels all the campaigns run smoothly (Except GFFA)

One of the big causes of lag in the original GFFA was that the AI was able to expand too easily without pirate defenses. There's definitely a balance to be struck there. Many of the other campaigns had a significant pirate presence, and the structure of the maps was such that the AI was boxed in more easily.

I also have an idea that will likely remove the lag but allow for strong pirate fleets.
Rather than having to program in individual ships to make pirate fleets, why not just make several versions of the the pirate asteroid base all of which have different garrisons.

For example pirate asteroid base NO. 1 would have a garrison of a victory class and 3 fighters
these units would the hyperspace in instantly at the start of a battle

Pirate asteroid base NO. 2 (representing a more wealthy/Powerful planet with a strong defense force) might have an ISD, 3 Carracks, And six assorted fighters
they would also hyperspace in instantly at the start of the battle

This way you could have major pirate fleets while using only one line of code rather than four, ten, or even more
just by using the space station garrison from vanilla

I was thinking of this too. I can see a few problems with it.
1: It's a large amount of work.
2: Raids would destroy all defenses, land and space-based, in a single easy shot.
3: Hit and run attacks that destroyed the space colony, would also eliminate all fleet defenses.
4: Recon and intel would become useless

[Ki-Tarn]

Another thing you might want to try is what UEAW did with the XML's Instead of haveing the big bulky Spaceunits<Class>.xml files they broke the XML's down to individual folders. Buildings, Heros, Skydomes and Units giving each unit it's own file like Acclamator_ClassI.xml, Air_Whale.xml, etc. Seeing as you basicly already broke them down for the upgrades.

For example change the \Data\XML\SpaceUnitsBombers_BTL_K-wing.xml to \Data\XML\Units\BTL_K-wing.xml.

Just a suggestion as I don't know for sure if it really madders load wise. But then again they only have 63 planets set up for their mod not 150+

[Darth Stalin]

Hello, guys!
One question - is the newest version of PR 1.1 with remodelled GFFA already available for download? Or the downloadable file is still the same "lag-making" version?

[bobthebobthe]

hey! anyone know how to get the Skirmish starfighter base (x7 factory??) in the map editor????