Freedom Reborn Archive

Freedom Force Forums => Technical Issues => Topic started by: daglob on November 21, 2008, 05:49:18 PM

Title: Looking for information
Post by: daglob on November 21, 2008, 05:49:18 PM
I am having memory problems. What I need to know is, how does FFv3R prioritize what it loads as far as meshes and skins go? I cut back on my Hero files and cured the Fastheap trouble, but then I got over 3000 meshes (no, not all of them original, a lot of them were duplicates that I knew, I juut hadn't had the time to sort through them), the game began to lock up. Well, I've cut out the dupes, abandoned the non-effects versions of the meshes wherever I could, cut back on a lot of fun, but not necessary meshes, and put a lot of skins wehre they belong.

But are the meshes the problem? How does the game treat the skins? Does it read them all, or jsut wehn you access the mesh?

Does anyone know?
Title: Re: Looking for information
Post by: AfghanAnt on November 22, 2008, 06:20:26 AM
Well we know that  :ffvstr: has issues with tgas. Honestly since I started converting my skins to dds I've noticed better loading times.
Title: Re: Looking for information
Post by: USAgent on November 22, 2008, 07:32:52 AM
I know when I switched all my meshes to this location:
C:\Program Files\Irrational Games\Freedom Force vs The 3rd Reich\Custom\Art\library\characters  it sped things up dramaticly for me.
Title: Re: Looking for information
Post by: daglob on November 22, 2008, 10:57:20 AM
AA: That is an ongoing process for me. I have a "mass" converter, but on many of them it insists that it can't convert the file. I have checked to be sure that it wasn't set to Read Only, but that hasn't been the case. I have taken to just loading them into Photoshop and Saving As a dds. This is going to take awhile. It is something that I plan to do, however.

Agent: I think that is where I have everything except for The Ant 1970s. I will check however and move any that are not in that directory to that location.
Title: Re: Looking for information
Post by: AfghanAnt on November 22, 2008, 11:55:50 AM
Happy you say that about the mass converter, I was in Photoshop today changes some files to dds and if and of the tgas are set to index color they will not convert. I would check to see to see if they were and retry. Also why not set up PS to save as dds and close as an Action?
Title: Re: Looking for information
Post by: GogglesPizanno on November 22, 2008, 12:13:49 PM
QuoteAlso why not set up PS to save as dds and close as an Action?

Ive done this before as well because you can add other things to the process like converting to RGB to solve the index color issue etc... It really would be a fast way to do it.
Title: Re: Looking for information
Post by: daglob on November 22, 2008, 03:00:15 PM
Good ideas there. I haven't done an action yet becasue I wasn't sure if it would work. None of the "non-convertable" skins have given PS trouble so far, but I really ahven't sat down and started doing them large scale (the indexed color setting is somethig to check, though). Mostly if I find that the game has quit reading the TGA files of a mesh; for some reason it will only show the Standard skin (tga or dds) and no others. Not on all meshes-and I don't know if it does it every time (last time it was Male Muscular Tall Cape, I believe). One wonders if Irrational employed a programmer named Murphy (or Finagle).
Title: Re: Looking for information
Post by: GogglesPizanno on November 22, 2008, 03:22:28 PM
Quote from: daglob on November 22, 2008, 03:00:15 PM
for some reason it will only show the Standard skin (tga or dds) and no others. Not on all meshes-and I don't know if it does it every time (last time it was Male Muscular Tall Cape, I believe).

This usually happens when there is a mix of TGA and DDS skins for a single mesh. So for example, the 'standard' skin folder contains TGA based and say a 'Superman' skin folder contains DDS. They should be either all DDS or all TGA...