Mod Size

[MoLAoS]

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[Omega]

I really think you might need to rethink how it works. The largest mod I've seen for Glest had about 60 units in two factions, with very large textures and detailed models, but caused Glest to overload. If you keep the texture size small, the numbers won't make such a difference, but a large number of textures could be problematic. If you go with your 147+  units, you'll definitely want to consider sharing textures between them (have the models all in the same folder, and the models only vary in basic ways, namely the shapes in the models and using "optional" parts in the texture).

However, don't you think your mod might be a touch large, for Glest's style of gameplay? 7 subclasses and 3 upgrade paths is quite a lot of micromanagement. Plus the heros, buildings, etc.

[Omega]

I really think you might need to rethink how it works. The largest mod I've seen for Glest had about 60 units in two factions, with very large textures and detailed models, but caused Glest to overload. If you keep the texture size small, the numbers won't make such a difference, but a large number of textures could be problematic. If you go with your 147+  units, you'll definitely want to consider sharing textures between them (have the models all in the same folder, and the models only vary in basic ways, namely the shapes in the models and using "optional" parts in the texture).

I am not sure what you mean by overloaded Glest. Do you mean the game move really slow? Did it load really slow? I have been looking at optimizing load speeds and have found some tricks that work and some that need further testing.

More clarification would help.

I mean you won't even clear the loading screen before the game crashes.

[ElimiNator]

I really think you might need to rethink how it works. The largest mod I've seen for Glest had about 60 units in two factions, with very large textures and detailed models, but caused Glest to overload. If you keep the texture size small, the numbers won't make such a difference, but a large number of textures could be problematic. If you go with your 147+  units, you'll definitely want to consider sharing textures between them (have the models all in the same folder, and the models only vary in basic ways, namely the shapes in the models and using "optional" parts in the texture).

I am not sure what you mean by overloaded Glest. Do you mean the game move really slow? Did it load really slow? I have been looking at optimizing load speeds and have found some tricks that work and some that need further testing.

More clarification would help.

I mean you won't even clear the loading screen before the game crashes.

Okay. Why would the game crash? Does it have memory leaks? I don't understand why adding more units would crash the game.

I don't think MegaGlest would crash, I think Omega is referring to GAE (You need to worry if you use GAE).

[Omega]

I don't think MegaGlest would crash, I think Omega is referring to GAE (You need to worry if you use GAE).

I'm referring to Glest. Glest, Glest Advanced Engine, and MegaGlest. No idea why it does this, only the very old versions of Chupa Reaper's M-rising mod exhibited this trait, and it was because he had too many large textures. Reducing the resolution of his textures solved the problem. There's no particular reason to believe that this is unique to GAE. It's not the number of units that's the problem, but the memory used by the textures. Presumably having a large number of units means a large number of textures too.

Going from another game where I had experience similar problems, early versions of Skyrim were not Large Address Aware (LAA), which means they could only consume so much memory (thankfully a mod patched this until an official patch was made). While that didn't mean anything to people playing vanilla Skyrim, if you had enough large texture mods, you could end up exceeding the memory allotted for the game, causing it to crash. Enabling the LAA flag allowed Skyrim to use up to 4GB of RAM, fixing that problem (of course, you still have to actually have that much physical RAM). I have no idea if this could have been the cause of the crash that M-rising exhibited in the past. In the meantime, sharing textures to at least a degree, as well as keeping texture size small (256x256 for units, up to 512x512 for large buildings) is likely the best way to go.

[Bloodwurm]

Its less about "design the game like that" and more in regards to, whatever you do, you'll eventually run out of memory if keep cramming in assets.
Imagine you had only 200 megs of RAM to run the game. If every unit takes 1.5 megs of ram (both from models and textures) trying to load in 147 of those different and unique units means you'll require about 220.5 megs of RAM. So you are short of 20.5 megs. That's a hardware limit, not a software one (ie, it's not Glest/GAE/MG, its your PC). Oh yeah sure, stuff can be done to try and limit the used memory to stuff you have on screen, but that opens up another can of worms.

Your PC obviously has more than 200megs of memory but the principle is the same. (You have to consider both your PC's RAM and video card's RAM).

[Coldfusionstorm]

Total Texture size usually have to fit inside the Graphic cards memory(VRAM). This if you have a 256 VRAM card, you will only have that space for your entire mod. for a 512 Card you will have that amount avaiblable for your mod, ect,ect,

[Mr War]

We should probably warn you that the biggest challenge we see/hear about with making a new faction is actually finishing it.  It takes a lot of time. And you are describjbg among the biggest mods ever.  Good luck with the mod, looking forward to seeing and plating it.

[Omega]

Do you think custom levels are better than a large set of morphs?

Custom levels definitely have the advantage of ease of use, but do note how much more limited they are: You can only change the stats and prepend a title to the unit. You can't change the abilities, looks, or give them a real cost besides kill count. Might be difficult to balance, as well.