Some changes to make the game faster

[iIfireIi]

Before I begin explaining my ideas, there should be a feature that automatically turns low detailed mode to on/off depending on the situation, this feature can be disabled in settings in order to play with a specific mode.
If the player attempted to increase the details a popup will be displayed saying:

Increasing game details may decrease your game performance, this will make saving the world more difficult.
Do you still wish to proceed?

1. Low quality spacecrafts

I just woke up after dreaming that lol, so it gave me inspiration.

• What if there are a lot of players in one scene?
  For instance, a massive amount of players. Or even massive amount of players in one orbit; remember the Space burger party? Everyone’s FPS was reduced greatly.
  Just because the massive amount of textures and particles coming of out engines. (The space burger was fine, however.)
  ⠀ ⠀
  So, what if the game would replace spacecraft textures with a very simple 1 sprite sample spacecraft. Something like this:
  
  This can only appear if the amount of space crafts in the view decrease the fps, so if they decreased the game FPS to something below 30 FPS this effect will happen (if low detail mode is enabled)
  This can also happen when zooming out too much until players are barely visible.
  The real spacecraft will be revealed if you clicked it (becoming focused on it) or just zooming a lot to decrease the amount of spacecrafts on-screen.
  Maybe the loaded players area should also decrease
  
  
  
  ⠀ ⠀
  For multiplayer, if spacecrafts were darkened to maximum via multiplayer settings, they should universally be a single black texture with the shape of the spacecraft, and its rotation, instead of normal dark spacecrafts’ layers.
  If the FPS became lower than 30-60 low detail mode will automatically be turned on.

2. Do these if the computer doesn't meet CIU requirements:

• If the game started with a low amount of RAM, or generally poor computer specifications, low detailed and pro gamer modes will be enabled by default.
  A popup can appear after IAS logo saying:

Your device doesn’t meet the game’s minimum specifications.
The details are reduced.

Similar to the low memory warning at startup; this wont be displayed if you started with low FPS, since most of players’ fps can greatly decrease while the game is loading.

• Also, the game can switch resolutions to something lower, such as 1024*768
  And if possible, the game can use earlier engines, such as DX9. If the computer doesn’t meet the requirements of course.

• If the player later met the requirement everything will be back to normal. This includes freeing RAM while the game is running.

3. Customized details mode

• Instead of having either low/high details mode, you can choose what is low and what is high, something like this:

Smaller explosions: Yes
No particles: Yes
Fewer stars in the main menu: No
etc

4. Warn players with poor computers...

• Warn players before entering a hard mission, since they can contain a massive amount of enemies that spawn a lot of objects on screen, such as armored chickens/chickenauts, phoenix, etc…

5. Low detailed planets, suns, etc...

• Orbits will not be animated, clouds wont move, effects (lightning) wont appear, corona wont appear. And wormholes will be as simple as CI4/CI5 black holes.

Most of these can be useful one more stuff gets added that are too epic, and when the game gets tons of new players.

What sounds good to you? (Multiple choices.)

• 1
• 2
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• 5
• None.

[VerMishelb]

@iIfireIi

the game can use earlier engines, such as DX9

DirectX is not an engine, it’s a graphical API, and maintaining several of these just for low detailed mode is a giant cactus in one place.

@iIfireIi

Customized details mode

I don’t think it’s necessary because the game either doesn’t slow down, or slows down to that degree that enabling all of simplifications is the only way of playing.

@iIfireIi

Warn players before entering a hard mission

Won’t work because easy missions have a lot of stuff too, and seeing a warning every time you try to fly something would be very annoying.

@iIfireIi

Orbits will not be animated

???
All of the stuff there is already very simple (1-3 textures and some epic transformations), so the only way to simplify this would be committing CI72 planets. Though the main menu spiral is epic transformations too, so I’m not sure.

[iIfireIi]

@VerMishelb

DirectX is not an engine, it’s a graphical API, and maintaining several of these just for low detailed mode is a giant cactus in one place.

I knew it’s not an engine, but I didn’t know how to call it. Thanks for telling me.

@VerMishelb

I don’t think it’s necessary because the game either doesn’t slow down, or slows down to that degree that enabling all of simplifications is the only way of playing.

Some explosions and particles may decrease the fps greatly, turning on low-details mode will solve that, but you might not enjoy some other changes.

@VerMishelb

???
All of the stuff there is already very simple (1-3 textures and some epic transformations), so the only way to simplify this would be committing CI72 planets.

I thought they are 3D rendered?

[VerMishelb]

@iIfireIi

I thought they are 3D rendered?

Well there is not a single model in the files, and planet stuff is just a bunch of double height maps in one texture.

[hit]

@iIfireIi

I thought they are 3D rendered?

pre-rendered spritesheet

[VerMishelb]

If they were sprite sheets, we would’ve modded them a long time ago with something like woodman.

[hit]

i thought the ship images are in a spritesheet? are they separate sprites?

[iIfireIi]

@VerMishelb

Well there is not a single model in the files, and planet stuff is just a bunch of double height maps in one texture.

I didn’t mean models, I guess there’s still a 3D part (wormholes?), I’m unsure of.
Also, idk if the whole thing is rendered in a 3D universe…

Okay, I managed to turn CIU into 3D somehow.

[Baron]

@iIfireIi

such as DX9

It’s a graphical app not an engine. and it’s ineffective.

[VerMishelb]

Ships are made with sprite sheets, a separate sprite sheet for each paint job element. The planet is made of a heightmap texture that’s coloured according to it and transformed into a sphere.

[hit]

very interesting information, thank you

[iIfireIi]

@VerMishelb

transformed into a sphere.

So… is it 3D rendered?

[VerMishelb]

No, because the part behind it does not exist. It’s like a fish eye effect.
I’m not the one who made it, so I can’t say for sure anyway.

[InterAction_studios]

I generally don’t think it’s worth complicating the design to accommodate the few potato PCs left.

@iIfireIi

is it 3D rendered

The meaning of this is ambiguous. The vast majority of all images in the game are pre-rendered 3D models. When these images are displayed in the game, the polygonal geometry (quads) exists in full 3D space, but it lies flat on the same 2D plane (with some exceptions, see: Early Access version 22 - #48 by InterAction_studios )

Even in full 3D games, all geometry is eventually projected onto a 2D plane. CIU performs some of these projections separately and ‘bakes’ the calculations onto a 2D result. This is how planets can appear to be full 3D but are in fact flat geometry.

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In any case, from my experience most cases of poor performance are the result of poor fillrate and not a matter of “too many polygons”. So a tinting effect that’s only two polygons but takes up the entire screen (like the flash when Thundercluck appears) would be much more impactful than a few dozen particles that only take up 1% of the screen.

[iIfireIi]