I've been getting a fair number of questions about optimization over the last few months, so I thought I'd set down some things that I think are generally very important to know about (but probably get ignored).
Basically, the way the engine works, most of the shaders are optimized for DXT1 textures, without alpha. The alpha isn't even being read; yet if it's there, it's a significant amount of data. Lose it, and you can improve performance throughout the engine, whether we're talking about hitting RAM limits, time to load a scene change, or FPS during the biggest fights.
Keeping textures lean and mean is a big deal. I'm not quite sure why it took me so long to polish this part of the mod; I think that a lot of it's just that until I figured out the sound-glitch error, and how it is (somehow, very mysteriously) tied to RAM / VRAM use, I wasn't thinking mainly about textures, both in RAM and VRAM. Further research about how to improve stability has led me to conclude that this, along with getting total vertex counts down (mainly, we're talking about good LODs here, unifying vertexes on your artwork, and so forth) is a major factor in terms of stability.
Let's look at sizes, to get a good idea of how much memory you can save. Let's say that you have 50 suits of armor, assembled from the usual OSP hodgepodge, plus your own work. Your armors have 1024 skins.
If you use DXT5 (soft alpha) or DXT3 (interpolated alpha), that suit of armor is eating up over 1MB in size, per skin. 1048KB, more or less. Since each suit of armor needs 3 skins, that's 3X50X1048 KB, or 153.5 MB in skins, just for your 50 suits of armor.
If you use DXT1 (1-bit alpha), you go down a lot, to 683 KB. That gives you 100 MB, almost exactly. A 50 MB reduction.
Now, I don't know for certain how much this will improve stability, for users who are crash-prone. But my experience thus far is that every time I find another way to optimize, the engine gets a little more stable. Having seen the results of this, I'm pretty tempted to even do it with the more common Taleworlds textures, as it would really save a lot of space (they were kind of on-again, off-again about doing this in-house).
How much space? Probably almost 100MB. I'm a bit chary about shipping out that much of the game's content, though, so I may offer that as a side-thing, instead of integrating it with Blood and Steel, for people who want an ultra-optimized version of the game's content.
[EDIT]Corrected silly error--> me turned off mip generation for some strange reason. Thanks to Barf for pointing it out![/EDIT]
Basically, the way the engine works, most of the shaders are optimized for DXT1 textures, without alpha. The alpha isn't even being read; yet if it's there, it's a significant amount of data. Lose it, and you can improve performance throughout the engine, whether we're talking about hitting RAM limits, time to load a scene change, or FPS during the biggest fights.
Keeping textures lean and mean is a big deal. I'm not quite sure why it took me so long to polish this part of the mod; I think that a lot of it's just that until I figured out the sound-glitch error, and how it is (somehow, very mysteriously) tied to RAM / VRAM use, I wasn't thinking mainly about textures, both in RAM and VRAM. Further research about how to improve stability has led me to conclude that this, along with getting total vertex counts down (mainly, we're talking about good LODs here, unifying vertexes on your artwork, and so forth) is a major factor in terms of stability.
Let's look at sizes, to get a good idea of how much memory you can save. Let's say that you have 50 suits of armor, assembled from the usual OSP hodgepodge, plus your own work. Your armors have 1024 skins.
If you use DXT5 (soft alpha) or DXT3 (interpolated alpha), that suit of armor is eating up over 1MB in size, per skin. 1048KB, more or less. Since each suit of armor needs 3 skins, that's 3X50X1048 KB, or 153.5 MB in skins, just for your 50 suits of armor.
If you use DXT1 (1-bit alpha), you go down a lot, to 683 KB. That gives you 100 MB, almost exactly. A 50 MB reduction.
Now, I don't know for certain how much this will improve stability, for users who are crash-prone. But my experience thus far is that every time I find another way to optimize, the engine gets a little more stable. Having seen the results of this, I'm pretty tempted to even do it with the more common Taleworlds textures, as it would really save a lot of space (they were kind of on-again, off-again about doing this in-house).
How much space? Probably almost 100MB. I'm a bit chary about shipping out that much of the game's content, though, so I may offer that as a side-thing, instead of integrating it with Blood and Steel, for people who want an ultra-optimized version of the game's content.
[EDIT]Corrected silly error--> me turned off mip generation for some strange reason. Thanks to Barf for pointing it out![/EDIT]
...maybe not?
