[Mobius]

I've been thinking about this for quite some time. It has some potential, but there are many things to consider when discussing it.

Basically, a while ago I realized how much free memory we waste because of files we already have. Let's take an FSPort ANI or model for example: you can find it in the Port and in the modpack of various mods using it. You can't make a custom FS2 campaign compatible with the Port, so it's far more convenient to just get that file from the Port itself and put it in modpack X. The drawback is that we end up having a great many copies of a single file in our FS2 directory (I don't know how many copies of the GTF Apollo I have and the principle can be easily applied to all non-FSPort assets).

I remember when Lightspeed's nebula pack was not in the MVPs. Campaign designers like Blaise Russel simply specified in their readme files that campaign X needed LS nebulae to be fully enjoyable, and installing them was quite easy. It was quite handy providing that a) you had LS' pack and b) you knew how to use mods.


Why did I mention Lightspeed's pack? It's quite simple. What about creating stock folders where we can place commonly used files, and then consider them as requirements to play a given campaign? FSPort models, music packs, alternate shockwave effects, new nebulae, different interfaces... if we create specific folders for them and use those as mods, we could save a lot of space and make small modpacks easier to create, upload and download. If I only I had a faster connection I would have taken the initiative, but unfortunately I can't. What do you guys think? Discuss. 

[Qent]

I think that it's misleading to call it a memory saver, because it's saving disk space, which isn't what most people think of as "memory." In fact, my guess is that it wastes more memory because the engine will load assets that are not actually being used by the campaign, but I don't know about such things.

IMHO it's more trouble than it's worth, since disk space isn't a big problem for most people AFAIK. On top of that, unless there are a good many campaigns that use the pack, the savings won't be that great.

[Dragon]

I think that now that Inferno builds are the standard, FSPort should get back to having it's modpack "linked" with FS2.
FSPort versions of ships and weapons that were changed from FSPort to FS2 could be included in two versions, FS1 and FS2.
In general, varius mods ussualy alter the assets they're using, so it'd be difficult to make a "commonly used assets" pack.
Lightspeed's nebulae were the spacial case and in the end, were put into Mediavps.

[Satellight]

I think Mobius is talking more about the bandwidth. Saving it will be good, but I also fear that it will cause more and more problems for newcomers (where to find the addon pack ? When I find them, how I install them ?). 99 % people don't read the "readme-savior-thing" 

[Mobius]

Qent, how does the game slow down if it loads an asset present in a mod folder? What's the difference between using 3 mod folders instead of 2?

That's true, Satellight. Problems may be common, but if people don't change the name of those folders we could easily prevent them thanks to ease of installation. A long while ago, for reasons I don't remember, I changed the name of my LS pack folder, and had to edit all mod inis with the old name on them. Ugh.

[MetalDestroyer]

I think it's feasable right now, but doesn't work very well.
In my custom mods, I have the following in my mod.ini:

[multimod]
primarylist= Esarai Fleetpack;
secondarylist = Next Gen Render 2010,MediaVP_3.6.12_August_2010;

It would be great to add mods like this as do Operation Flashpoint series and ArmA series. For now, FSO doesn't work well when I put many mods folder on the secondarylist.

[Qent]

I think that now that Inferno builds are the standard, FSPort should get back to having it's modpack "linked" with FS2.

FSPort is supposed to be Retail-compatible.

Qent, how does the game slow down if it loads an asset present in a mod folder? What's the difference between using 3 mod folders instead of 2?

Like I said, I don't know. It's just a hunch that loading a bunch of models and, textures, etc. that are not being used wastes memory. Does it?

[Mobius]

MetalDestroyer, don't you have to remove the spaces between words? For example, isn't EsaraiFleetpack handier than Esarai Fleetpack?

Like I said, I don't know. It's just a hunch that loading a bunch of models and, textures, etc. that are not being used wastes memory. Does it?

The amount of models used is exactly the same, so it shouldn't slow the game unless there's some tricky trap in the code allowing that to happen.

[The E]

From a coders' point of view, there isn't much of a slowdown associated with such a repository (Startup might take longer, as the engine needs to index all the "repository" directories, and file lookup may be slower), but that slowdown is so little that an end user would likely not be able to tell the difference.

There IS a penalty associated with having large VP files (TBP's Core vp, which clocks in at > 1GB is an example for this), but it would likely not apply here.

The biggest issue is that something like this will only make an impact if you have lots of campaigns/mods installed, and even then, the benefit is dubious.

In addition, what happens if someone wants to reskin/reUV/returret a given ship? Once you do that, the benefit of having this repo disappears, as the mod designer will have to include the altered files once more.

Finally, who would be responsible for maintaining this pack? Who would make the call on what goes in and what stays out?

[Mobius]

I'm not refering to a single pack, but rather to a possible series of packages that may be used for different purposes. FSPort files are a relevant example (think about FS1's ANI files for a moment), but there are many other uses. What about Nighteyes' latest shockwave, for example?

[Droid803]

Unfortunately, the chance I will actually use a model present in a shippack without modifiying it in some way is basically zero (for a number of reasons, really - its hard to find something that will slot into whatever you want perfectly right off the bat), thus, this will not reduce my modpack sizes at all.

I'd also probably hue/sat a few effects as well. I've seen some pretty good alterations of Nighteye's shockwave (with the end frames desaturated and whatnot).

Basically, the gain is minimal for the effort expended.

[ShadowWolf_IH]

I agree with you driod, but how many of us modify the textures for our mods?  A standard texture pack would allow mod creators to remove, or not bother installing the textures for the most common ships.  Perhaps a modpack inclusive of the the most common fighters and bombers, something like stratcomm's fleetpack.  Once i get a bunch of skyboxes done, I plan to release them in the form of a .vp, as in a base model that is just modified by the skybox textures i make. Kind of a mix and match thing.  People are always on the lookout for skyboxes, this allows them to create thier own with ease.   I will probably incluse all of the skybox textures that I can find, and a credits list for them.  I can see the problems inherent in this, but it is still worth exploring.

[Mobius]

Please note that if you use different textures you can simply retexture the model via tbms unless, of course, you remap it.

[Droid803]

Maybe it's just me but I like fudging with turret layouts and FoVs.

I guess the majority of the stuff I do is because a lot of the assets actually floating around are bugged as hell though (crummy smoothing, bad POF data, etc). The smoothing is a big one, like half the models out there are uniformly smoothed cause true**** sucks monkey balls and people are terrible at converting. I just fudge with the turret layouts and whatnot because I have to go into 3D Studio Max to fix the stupid smoothing anyway and might as well do something else while I'm at it.

If you do this there better be some good quality control or noone's gonna use it.

Even Stratcomm's fleet pack, I had to make the FOVs on a lot of the turrets bigger cause by default they're tiny, and hence suck.

[ShadowWolf_IH]

Just saying that with the proper execution it's worth a discussion and worth thinking on. 

[Droid803]

Yes, it is, but it's also a lot of work, and there's no guarantee it'll actually be used.
Or that it'll actually reduced hard disk space usage.

Now, if we could configure multimod to only draw from specific *.vps, then I could see that saving HDD space, as well as a reason for actually using *.vps (as of now, I feel they're absolutely useless, they don't compress anything, they increase the chance of corruption, and they're basically just a glorified folder.)

Say, you tell it to only load the CB anis vp from FSPort, then it won't load the ships you don't need. So, I could point to only load the effects from mediavps, cause I don't need anything else, for instance. You could even tell it to load, say, bp2-visuals1.vp for the UEF ships (and not have to worry about the tables being loaded too).

However, that might be veering off into dreamworld. Also, it'd be annoying as you say "requires X, Y, and Z to run".

[Snail]

However good-intentioned this may be, it sounds like it'll just cause problems. It'll complicate installation matters (especially for newbies), it'll complicate mod setup, it'll need to be constantly updated, more campaigns will go out-of-date more quickly, the list goes on.

[Mobius]

If there's a positive thing it will do is keeping campaigns up to date thanks to updated graphical effects and such. If an updated version of a given model comes out, you have to completely overwrite campaign X's VP file to use it.

[Solatar]

Seems like this could easily scare newbies.

Now if we could set up a SCP and campaign package manager that automatically kept the dependencies up to date. . .

[Mobius]

Guys, did Lightspeed's pack frighten people back when it wasn't part of the MVPs?