[asheshouse]

I've been trialling different object densities on the Northeast France map.

My map building is now based on four principal building templates:

sk_country_mount 164 objects per pixel (200x200m)
sk_DownCity 136 objects per pixel
sk_MidCity 83 objects per pixel
sf_Factory 230 objects per pixel

These object densities are working out far too dense for a large map.

Northeast France is 400x270.4km -- or 2704000 pixels (map_T)

With existing map_T textures I am getting an object count of over 10 million!!

I need to reduce both the size of the built up areas, which incidentally will better reflect 1940 reality, and reduce the object density in the standard templates.

Testing in part of the map seems to indicate that a total object count of around 1 million should work ok for offline provided care is taken around cities and large built up areas. This results in an actors.static of around 8MB. The PC takes 1.5 hours to "create" the actors.static file, but it only takes 45sec to load in the game.

In rough terms this will mean halving the diameter of cities and reducing the object density of the templates by half.

It would be interesting to compare other views on this. What object densities are other map makers working to?

[lowfighter]

Looking at the industry template screenshot I see there are a lot of these cute Slovakia walls, too bad the object makers made them SO short. There are some long wall sections which came with '46 addon but they are not so nice I think. I'll think more...

[canonuk]

I'm working to a much sparser density. My map is 3488 x 2784 pixels. My towns are very small and are populated with few objects. Certain key areas (e.g London docks and my airfields) have a lot more detail because they're super-accurate but my towns have just enough to look ok. My PC is crap though, so that's a concern of mine. At the moment my actors.static is about 300k and I don't expect it to grow past 500k once I've finished all the airfields.

[asheshouse]

Some additional stats:

sk_country_mount 1.33Kb/px 0.13b/object 1.33Kb/px
sk_DownCity 10.94Kb/px 5.03b/object 10.94Kb/px
sk_MidCity 5.69Kb/px 4.31b/object 5.69Kb/px
sk_Factory 4.56Kb/px 0.31b/object 4.56Kb/px

So I think its not as simple as counting objects.
The Factory template has a high object count but a low Kb/object figure.
MidCity which as the lowest objects/px uses more memory/pixel than the dense looking Factory template.
Since the Factories will not occupy a high number of pixels I am not too concerned about all the cute walls. In fact I'm quite keen to keep them.

These figures are based on the object count and file size of the inBuilding.txt files.

Isn't maths fun

[mkubani]

@lowfighter: The only reason why I made the walls so short for Slovakia was that I needed to place them on uneven terrain. The longer the object, the less practical it gets. I knew that those walls are going to be placed on uneven terrain most of the time, so I wanted to minimize the "stair" effect as much as possible.

[lowfighter]

Thanks for explanation mkubani! And for the cute objects themselves
Just one thought: since the final patch is not out wouldn't it be possible to add one more wall object just say 4 or 8 times bigger than the original one? With the "aligntoland 1" enabled to minimise the stair effect. The '46' has similarly the concrete wall in 4 versions which differ only in length (they have "aligntoland 0" but this can be changed easily with the mods enabled).

@lowfighter: The only reason why I made the walls so short for Slovakia was that I needed to place them on uneven terrain. The longer the object, the less practical it gets. I knew that those walls are going to be placed on uneven terrain most of the time, so I wanted to minimize the "stair" effect as much as possible.

[lowfighter]

Asheshouse what is the contribution of each texture to the final object count? (easy to find out autopoping one texture at a time)

[asheshouse]

I have started now to edit map_T so as to reduce the area of towns and also make more variation in textures in and around built up areas.

Once I have completed that I will run AutoPop again for each texture to get a new object count. Only then will I think about reducing the template sizes, although I'm fairly certain I will have to do this too.

This might take some time.

[lowfighter]

i like a lot your systematic, step by step approach.

[mkubani]

Nope, MG won't accept/adjust 3D models anymore.

[lowfighter]

Thanks for info...

Nope, MG won't accept/adjust 3D models anymore.

[asheshouse]

Latest results from testing of Northeast France map.

"Create" routine would not create an actors.static if there were too many objects in inBuildings.txt

I've now successfully created an actors.static using an inBuildings.txt file with over 1.3million objects. inBuildings.txt file size was 72197KB
The programme takes ActorsJar tool takes hours to create the file. This time I just left it running and went out for the evening. Probably 2hours+ run time.

actors.static created is 10.7MB in size.
This loads and runs ok in the game.
The practical limit seems to be now defined by my video cards capability to display large city areas on screen. Too many objects on screen at the same time cannot be displayed smoothly.

[Scharnhorst1943]

Looking at the industry template screenshot I see there are a lot of these cute Slovakia walls, too bad the object makers made them SO short. There are some long wall sections which came with '46 addon but they are not so nice I think. I'll think more...

So just make a mod where you stretch the wall. This is possible right? I mean with all that Ranwars has done you think this would be a no biggie.

[PeterD]

that would stretch the texture aswell

[lowfighter]

I think it's not possible with items from "objects" menu, with the other items there's a scale option in the defining file (don't remember which one now). Some stuff can be done by skinners creating some variants of the '46 fence segments...
Getting OT...
Asheshouse do you have towns with several city textures together, and if yes, are there any problems at the border of 2 such textures as the towns are generated by autopop?
1.3 million objects...well that's good news about the limits