Quality of Performance as a ranked mod

[____]

Since there already are some ranked mods, I suggest making “#Quality of Performance” ranked as well.
For those who don’t know what it does: “#Quality of Performance” is a Sim mod which removes a lot of animations from the game. The goal of the mod is to increase your FPS and decrease the amount of slowdown. The core gameplay is not affected.

Here is everything the mod does, copy and pasted from the readme:

Spoiler: show

- Cybran engineers and hives no longer spawn building drones, instead they use beams
- All building beams have been simplified in one way or another, and UEF/Cybran beams are thicker
- Airplane trails and all other similar effects have been removed
- Particle effects have been toned down to 25%
- Buildings have no foundation (they are called "tarmacs" in the game's files)
- Some idle effects, audio loops, and the animation of mexes has been disabled (except Aeon's)
- Units check for a target less often (every 0.3 seconds, shouldn't affect gameplay)
- Ambient effects on energy reactors and other structures have been removed
+ The AI of UEF Engineering stations has been removed, but the drones still auto-assist just fine
+ Simplified adjacency beams
+ Removed quantum gate/shield effects (I couldn't remove all of UEF's quantum gate's effects)
+ Scorch marks have been completely removed, and wrecks don't emit smoke
+ Unit/building death explosions have been simplified
+ All engineers have a single building beam

The effect is a pretty massive increase in FPS and a really nice increase in game speed. I have seen around 30 more FPS at times, the game speed was around 1 – 1.5 units better than before (even more in air fights). Those numbers will vary greatly of course and depend on your computer and the computers of the other players. Though the difference it makes is definitely noticeable by anyone who has played the slow down intensive maps of this game.

This would probably only affect the hardcore Seton’s or Dual Gap players, which probably welcome every bit of sim speed they can get their hands on. And if you are unsure about the mod making the game too ugly, well I thought the same at first, and I got used to it very quickly, though I can only speak for myself of course

If you are unsure about the mod and its effects, I deeply recommend you trying it out. You will probably see a difference right away.

[Gorton]

Hi, right now we are unable to rate any mods.
Some things need fixing first, unfortunately.

I've noted it already as something to discuss when this is no longer the case.

I do want to ask a few questions of the mod author, though.

Spoiler: show

- Buildings have no foundation (they are called "tarmacs" in the game's files) (I'm curious if this affects the ground buildings are placed on)

+ The AI of UEF Engineering stations has been removed, but the drones still auto-assist just fine (What does this do? Will they no longer automatically build stuff in radius?)

- Units check for a target less often (every 0.3 seconds, shouldn't affect gameplay) (uh, yeah this does affect gameplay?)

[JoonasTo]

Code: Select all

- Units check for a target less often (every 0.3 seconds, shouldn't affect gameplay)

This does actually effect gameplay and balance in some edge cases.

But seeing as how equilibrium is ranked, this really shouldn't be an issue anymore.

[TheKoopa]

Yea I really need that fps increase from 300 to 500

[Uveso]

I checked the mod and scripts.

Bad coding (Just an try and error removing of functions)
Hooks are destructive
Functions are hooked without changes
Initial locals are set twice inside the hooked files
Bluepring.lua is changing unit values without validating (just change every unit)

Because all changes to animations etc are made in blueprints, it will trigger errors if an animation is called from the unitscript.

As example, "AnimationOpen" is set to nil in every blueprint. Now this will be called inside a unitscript:

Code: Select all

self.OpenAnim:PlayAnim(self:GetBlueprint().Display.AnimationOpen, false):SetRate(0.4)

You will get a nice error:

Code: Select all

WARNING: Error running OnStopBeingBuilt script in Entity xeb0204 at 18c79f08: ...\gamedata\units.scd\units\xeb0204\xeb0204_script.lua(19): attempt to call method `SetRate' (a nil value)
         stack traceback:
            ...\gamedata\units.scd\units\xeb0204\xeb0204_script.lua(19): in function <...\gamedata\units.scd\units\xeb0204\xeb0204_script.lua:13>


Also the changes to the engineerstaging platform "AI" are just setting a variable:

Code: Select all

InitialAutoMode = false

That's funny, because the engineerstation has no AI. - Its the PodUnit that has the AI.

I would not rate this mod before it is finished or optimized.

[____]

Yea I really need that fps increase from 300 to 500

x doubt

[____]

I would not rate this mod before it is finished or optimized.

That's a bummer. Would it be difficult to fix those errors?

[Uveso]

Would it be difficult to fix those errors?

Not at all.

You need to check every file (about 105), to see if there are unnecessary or obsolete hooks.
This will take at least 3 hours.

Then we need to change some codelines inside blueprint.lua with testing.
Lets say 2 hours.

Fixing animations that are called from the unitscript needs a hook from the scriptfile.
I would not change them to prevent errors.
Fixtime to remove the animation-remove-function maybe 8 seconds.

So we can fix this in 5 hours and 8 seconds.

Bad thing is, i dont like this mod.
(It makes the game ugly and i don't see any speed improvements for me.)

And i am to lazy to contact the mod author, because i will not make my own xyz version of this mod and violate copyright.

[____]

Bad thing is, i dont like this mod.
(It makes the game ugly and i don't see any speed improvements for me.)

And i am to lazy to contact the mod author, because i will not make my own xyz version of this mod and violate copyright.

Let's hyothetically say those bugs were left in. How would that impact the game?

[Gorton]

It would likely break every patch and require fixing.
Not good.

Thanks @Uveso for the rundown. I knew it would need checking first; in principle if these issues were resolved it could be considered.
And yes I noticed the change of target selection @JoonasTo and it would be something that would have to be discussed. I think in any rated version it would probably be dropped.

Speed improves would happen on such things e.g survival maps and long-running games large games

From purely a moderator standpoint as well it would lessen the work on my pc and get me through longer replays faster when I need to watch them ^^