Mon Aug 30, 2004 5:26 am
Important (!) [Archetype findings
Gang, I've registered here just for posting this.
While doing some boredom-driven .ini-surfing in my FL directory, I stumbled across this:
[Archetype
ship = rh_elite
ship = rh_gunboat
solar = depot
A quick search in the forums revealed that nobody knows something definite about this, except that this block is only present in systems where SP-missions take place, and to just ignore it.
But to me it was obvious that this is kind of a preload-list, used to cache data that might become useful. And almost immediately I asked myself; "What if we start actually using this?"
Well, took me some minutes to collect a list of the most common archetypes, including all ships, all engine and weapon sounds, some solars and even more sounds. The result looked like this:
***moved to next post, because message was too long***
Took me some more minutes then to inject this into every system.ini (UltraEdit's "replace in files" was a REAL time-saver here
)
And now, after playing through the SP-campaign for the Nth time, and doing some freelancing inbetween and afterwards, I can say the result of said modification ist just AMAZING :
There is NO noticeable disk-activity except for when systems initialize or some speech kicks in; the annoying "3-second-freeze" when leaving tradelanes or an NPC convoy is about to zap in is GONE; and it helps A LOT in smoothing out Battleship-Encounters(TM).
Memory usage increases by about 50 MB, but (a) this list can be condensed somewhat to save memory, and (b) given the fact that even I with an uber-l33t 5$-per-hour-job can afford half a GB Ram in my machine, I believe that additional memory cost in this range is not an issue.
Next on my list is caching the most common voices to reduce disk-lag even more.
Hope this helps.
Edited by - bitterMan on 8/30/2004 6:32:38 AM
While doing some boredom-driven .ini-surfing in my FL directory, I stumbled across this:
[Archetype
ship = rh_elite
ship = rh_gunboat
solar = depot
A quick search in the forums revealed that nobody knows something definite about this, except that this block is only present in systems where SP-missions take place, and to just ignore it.
But to me it was obvious that this is kind of a preload-list, used to cache data that might become useful. And almost immediately I asked myself; "What if we start actually using this?"
Well, took me some minutes to collect a list of the most common archetypes, including all ships, all engine and weapon sounds, some solars and even more sounds. The result looked like this:
***moved to next post, because message was too long***
Took me some more minutes then to inject this into every system.ini (UltraEdit's "replace in files" was a REAL time-saver here
)
And now, after playing through the SP-campaign for the Nth time, and doing some freelancing inbetween and afterwards, I can say the result of said modification ist just AMAZING :
There is NO noticeable disk-activity except for when systems initialize or some speech kicks in; the annoying "3-second-freeze" when leaving tradelanes or an NPC convoy is about to zap in is GONE; and it helps A LOT in smoothing out Battleship-Encounters(TM).
Memory usage increases by about 50 MB, but (a) this list can be condensed somewhat to save memory, and (b) given the fact that even I with an uber-l33t 5$-per-hour-job can afford half a GB Ram in my machine, I believe that additional memory cost in this range is not an issue.
Next on my list is caching the most common voices to reduce disk-lag even more.
Hope this helps.
Edited by - bitterMan on 8/30/2004 6:32:38 AM
