Tank tracks slowdown on mid-late game. (Can it be fixed?)

[Chosen One]

Greetings.

This is known and common issue in the game, tracks on all tanks have decreasing animations till at some stage they became completely static. Why is this happening, why all ally units have static track from the start of the game? Can this be fixed?

[Flynn]

Not sure if srs? If the game has gone on that long you have more things to worry about than tank track animations not working. Unless you are a nub of course.

[Ze_PilOt]

I'm starting to get annoyed by the level of condescension around these forums.

He probably has his reasons to ask for it (like making a movie or whatever), and the only noob here is you telling him how it should play.
I will start being more strict about moderation.

To answer the OP : it's an optimization done by the engine to ease the load.
This might be obsolete now, try all the console commands to change the parameter doing that (if any).

If it doesn't impact the performance, it will go into a patch.

[Chosen One]

Thank You Pilot...now if only someone could point me at which command should be used to do that...

[Ze_PilOt]

Thank You Pilot...now if only someone could point me at which command should be used to do that...

http://supcom.wikia.com/wiki/Console_commands

Here is the list of all the commands with some descriptions.

Sadly, you will have to search yourself for the right one (if it exists) :-/

[Ato0theJ]

Maybe there could be a mod made that puts all of the aesthetics first over the other engine elements. Might be harder on your computer, but it would definitely be worth it for machinimas.

[Resin_Smoker]

Tank tracks are just textures applied at regular intervals as the unit moves. The textures are added faster as the unit moves faster and slower as the unit slows down. Now as far as I know of this is handled internally (game engine) for speeds sake and is not something that can be modded directly. (Could be wrong but I don't ever recall this being modded)

Now beyond this, I know that the tracks can be rescaled like another texture to fit the unit in motion. Now if the tracks were improperly scaled to begin with its possible for the tracks to get out of sync with the unit in motion, resulting in gaps as the unit moves. I suspect that part of why we see gaps is that such textures are not considered critical and are sometimes ignored to keep the SIM speed running a bit smoother. (Keep in mind that the games engine is almost ten years old compared to the computers we all now enjoy)

A couple things to consider/remember here.

-textures have to line up or overlap perfectly if your going to prevent gaps.
-texture size may have an impact on performance. Not tried this but it makes sense for a game with limited memory.
-texture and splat life times should be kept as short as possible so less has to be updated within the SIM. (the game will run faster) This includes tracks, footprints, weapon impact effects and corpses.

Resin

[Chosen One]

Resin, will you accept this challenge?

[Resin_Smoker]

Resin, will you accept this challenge?

In a few weeks maybe...

Even still it's very likely that this isn't going to be feasible do to limitations of the game engine.

Resin