[MOD] [TC/AP] X3 Rebalance Mod (XRM) - Total conversion - v1.30d (02.12.13)

[alt3rn1ty]

Double check that you copied every script. I didn't test the new scripts in TC, but i tested thoroughly in AP on and off SETA and there's nothing added that I'd have thought would cause issues in TC.

Also, try turning off the bounty system and see if it makes a difference.

Every script copied - Went for a clean install, and started again.

Not using any packs except all plots complete - but choosing to still do the plots when the pop-up appears.

Tormented Teladi start.

The good news - I cant make it ctd again. So my bad somewhere.


I can if I load up my previous save ... More on that ;

In my previous save I have already acquired the Enhanced Kea - But I wanted to speed things up to get there so used Cycrows cheat scripts (TC 1.60 version) to get the necessary 2.250.000

There is obviously something wrong with my previous setup, and the resulting save - But I wonder if using Cycrow cheat scripts and / or acquiring the Enhanced Kea in that way .. Or is there just something wrong with an Enhanced Kea in XRM....

Or maybe it was something rogue about my early attempts at getting up to date with Bonus pack updates / lucike scripts.

Anyway the above does not help you much but at least you know I have a stable game again following your installation instructions and not mistakenly installing something to upset the applecart.

Since restarting after this re-install, I have had no need to turn off the Bounty options.

I have a further question - I used to use Grax.Remove.Rocks script (based on Bunny's old X3R remove rocks) to get a bit more performance out of the game, will that still be useful with XRM or have you already done a bit of rock weeding as part of your performance enhancements?

And lastly, out of all the packs - Are there any which additionally benefit performance ?.

[paulwheeler]

I've not altered the debris files in the xrm, so the remove rocks mod should work just fine.

None of the xrm addons will enhance performance.

The cheat scripts should be fine with xrm (I use them all the time while testing), and as far as I'm aware there's nothing wrong with the enhanced kea.

Glad you fixed your crash issue.

[alt3rn1ty]

Thanks Paul, I think I have just been a born again noob somewhere along my catch-up path

[d_ka]

Well, switching to AP seemed to be a reasonable way to get rid of my CTDs, so i followed your advise, Paul, and installed AP + XRM.
The good news: I haven´t experience any crashes since then.
The bad one: the performance in my new game is, well, underwhelming - i had to lower the graphics to minimum, and my standard resolution ( standard HD 1920/1020 ) to 1600:1050 ( iirc ), and the resulting "blury" text + quite an ugly graphics. And still, i am getting "slide shows" during the fights in some better populated secotrs, or in some empty ones, but filled with quite of ships battling each other. The only current script i have running is "Marine Reparis", but i don´t think it´s of any big importance for the performance.

The summary: Yes, AP seems to be the better engine, and it might have the better options, but there is no alternative for older PCs than to play XRM with a TC exe., i´m afraid

[paulwheeler]

Well, switching to AP seemed to be a reasonable way to get rid of my CTDs, so i followed your advise, Paul, and installed AP + XRM.
The good news: I haven´t experience any crashes since then.
The bad one: the performance in my new game is, well, underwhelming - i had to lower the graphics to minimum, and my standard resolution ( standard HD 1920/1020 ) to 1600:1050 ( iirc ), and the resulting "blury" text + quite an ugly graphics. And still, i am getting "slide shows" during the fights in some better populated secotrs, or in some empty ones, but filled with quite of ships battling each other. The only current script i have running is "Marine Reparis", but i don´t think it´s of any big importance for the performance.

The summary: Yes, AP seems to be the better engine, and it might have the better options, but there is no alternative for older PCs than to play XRM with a TC exe., i´m afraid

What are the specs of your system? You should really see improved performance in AP over TC...

[Vhyle]

Paul I am seeing the same fps issue. The best example is just starting out and entering Mars as the ATF Veteran, there is a huge fight within the system nearly as you load in from the jump gate. I went right into the furball and it's pretty choppy but it sorts itself out, but every time you face the ball, it's crap fps again.

It might be all the weapons fire going on, because when there isn't a lot of fire going on, or the intensive aoe type weapons firing, the fps drops off in a huge way.

I'm on a laptop with a 9800 gts, I can play SWTOR with 40-60 fps on most planets, if that helps anything. TOR is a huge resource hog. At any rate, the processor is rated as a 3.8 (it's an intel dual core) so it surpasses the specs for the game. 8 gigs ram btw.

The game runs smooth everywhere else, but whenever there is a large dust up with multiple caps, it gets pretty hairy fps wise. I'm unsure what is causing it, because with 4 m7's fighting 4 other m7's, the fps was perfectly normal, but add a carrier and a few m2's, with a crap load of traffic and fighters and what not, it gets real bad.

EDIT: I turned view distance down to Medium and that helped. I was able to fight in the ball pretty easily, no real issues. I think as it loads the system and all the textures and ships that it bogs down a second but then everything runs smooth again. That has been my experience. I contemplated on turning bloom off and all the nice looking stuff, but it seems for me at least that turning view distance from high to medium was enough.

[paulwheeler]

There's always going to be a frame issue on medium spec systems like yours in massive battles. That's the nature of the beast I'm afraid. The only solution is don't have battles that big - like vanilla. But I think the majority of people are now running systems that can handle the large battles.

In my experience laptops always struggle compared to desktops, plus that graphics card is only 512mb iirc. Try reducing your texture quality to medium. Also, is your OS 64bit? If not you're only using about 3 of those 8GBs of ram.

[Kinnison]

I've been holding off updating XRM for a month or two now (been playing Skyrim) and while keeping an eye on this topic I convinced myself that AP would be a good idea. So my fresh install (vanilla at present) now has the /addon subfolder with AP in it.

A quick question if I may. I'll put my mods and scripts in /addon - but will things break if I also put a (naturally slightly different) set in the main directory? I'd quite like to be able to compare the up-to-date XRM in both AP and TC, and IWBN if I could do it without yet another installation.

Great mod btw Paul, thanks for all your work.

[alt3rn1ty]

Similar setup here as Vhyle, core 2 duo, 6gb ram under-utilised with Win 7 x32 - With TC and since sorting out my installation I have been throwing in a few more performance helpers ...

Renamed 00044.pck as per instructions but also renamed 00002.dat - Get rid of those advert banner vids
Installed ...
No-Ad-Sign-Mod by Killjaeden - to get rid of the ad sign objects
Low Poly Roids
SSWamp_Troopers Performance Shaders from X3R for X3TC
Resized Aldrin Big Rock
XRM 1.18 and 1.18c part 2
Shimrods Smart Turrets 2.2 for TC
Grax Remove Rocks script
Missile Safety and Missile Defence MKII

I haven't installed Mars this time around, nor any other scripts or the optional packs (I was tempted with PSCO1's Cockpits, but refrained for now ... I remember the cockpit for the Kea having a big structure covering the right half of the screen which kind of puts me off being my favourite ship)

Graphics settings - No AA, no Anisotropic, Textures Low, Shaders Low, No Glow, No extra dynamic light sources, No extra ship colours (both of the last become un-available with low shaders anyway).

Monitoring performance with Task manager, and the game running in windowed mode (1024x768), in game graphics settings Field of View at 70% -

I am averaging 62% CPU useage, dips down to 35 occasionally, and the most I have seen was 75% in a heavy sector with a few battles occuring.

Ram useage the max I have seen is 1.92gb

I also have switched off the XRM Bounty system.

It all runs well mostly, and really I have only my previous brief experience of 1.18b and the old SRM to compare ..

But even with all the above, I feel XRM is a little more frequent with occasional stutter than the more modular SRM used to be.

To be honest its not so bad it would make me want to un-install, after reading all the monumental work that has gone into making this (and the game as a whole) less buggy, un-installing would be a bad move IMHO

But I wonder is there anything else I can tweak to help on a laptop ?

EDIT: PS - I also have it installed on the desktop, which has a Geforce GT 440 with 1gb VRAM, Win 7 x64, 8gb DDR3 RAM (2 x 4gb Paired sticks), a 2 core AMD processor both cores running at 3ghz each ... And I get comparatively similar frequency of occasional stutter with exactly the same files/patch setup as the Laptop - But I have increased the graphics settings on that machine (Medium Textures, High Shaders, No AA, 4 x Anisotropic, No Extra Dynamic light sources, but allowed extra ship colours, No glow enabled ( it bugs me ) ... On the desktop I should not really need to cut much down, but after noticing similar performance as the laptop decided to use the same patch and file setup so I could compare the two.

You have obviously put a lot of thought and effort into XRMs performance, but I can only conclude there is something still a bit heavy on CPU load about XRM, even though monitoring it via task manager does not seem to show any significant CPU spikes at the times when the game stutters.

Son of EDIT: I do not have any video/sound codec packs installed on either machines which traditionally are problematic with egosoft X game series.

[paulwheeler]

Well I'd have thought smart turrets is quite a CPU intensive script as it does a similar job to MARS.

If you can, try a bare XRM install - no other scripts at all - and see what performance is like then. Really, you've already turned off everything I'd have suggested. Make sure you have all of Windows' bells and whistles turned off (the Aero GUI for example in Vista and Win 7).

Comparing performance in XRM to SRM is not really worthwhile as they are both very, very different mods. The XRM does a hell of a lot more than the SRM.

I do think that one of the issues in the current XRM is that Expnobody's ship models are not as optimised as they could be. However, whats the solution to that except remove the ships...? I'm already holding back on a few new ships he's sent me as they will just kill performance.

[paulwheeler]

I've been holding off updating XRM for a month or two now (been playing Skyrim) and while keeping an eye on this topic I convinced myself that AP would be a good idea. So my fresh install (vanilla at present) now has the /addon subfolder with AP in it.

A quick question if I may. I'll put my mods and scripts in /addon - but will things break if I also put a (naturally slightly different) set in the main directory? I'd quite like to be able to compare the up-to-date XRM in both AP and TC, and IWBN if I could do it without yet another installation.

Great mod btw Paul, thanks for all your work.

Depending on the nature of the mod you install, it will break AP if you install mods into the child TC (putting the XRM in there certainly will). Basically, AP will load the TC cat/dats first and then the addon cat/dats, so any cat/dats you put in the base TC folder will get loaded as well - best to keep it clean. Just make a second installation for TC.

[Sn4kemaster]

Right then.....a momentousness thing has occurred in the Sna4kemaster camp

I have spent £15 and AP ordered off Zavvi, should arrive in the next day or so!

So goodbye XRMTC.....i have high expectations of it being a better experience than TC so if its not Mr Wheeler we will be having words


P.S i have heard in AP the Valhalla cant jump to gate's.........Paul if this is so can you sort it out as its sounds $hit

[Vhyle]

There's always going to be a frame issue on medium spec systems like yours in massive battles. That's the nature of the beast I'm afraid. The only solution is don't have battles that big - like vanilla. But I think the majority of people are now running systems that can handle the large battles.

In my experience laptops always struggle compared to desktops, plus that graphics card is only 512mb iirc. Try reducing your texture quality to medium. Also, is your OS 64bit? If not you're only using about 3 of those 8GBs of ram.

This card is actually 1gb and it is 64bit Windows 7. Its not a big deal to me, because the fps issue isn't that bad, no where near a slideshow and i can still kill stuff and maneuver just fine.

[paulwheeler]

P.S i have heard in AP the Valhalla cant jump to gate's.........Paul if this is so can you sort it out as its sounds $hit

Yeah - thats already on my "to-do" list.

[Kinnison]

Depending on the nature of the mod you install, it will break AP if you install mods into the child TC (putting the XRM in there certainly will). Basically, AP will load the TC cat/dats first and then the addon cat/dats, so any cat/dats you put in the base TC folder will get loaded as well - best to keep it clean. Just make a second installation for TC.

Thanks very much, that make it all clear.

[d_ka]

My specs are very underwhelming, too:
2x2.6ghz athlon cpu
2 gigs ram ( 32 bit system )
500 mb graphics.
No antialiasing, no a.filtering, no glow; medium settings for shaders and textures. Now i´ve reduced "vision" to minimum, too.
But, i could run XRM with TC quite smoothly with those settings, except the larger battles, which i always tried to avoid by luring the enemies away from the main battlefield ( which is safer anyway^^ ). I should have switched to 64bit system years ago, but why change a system that is running, even if it´s not ideal ( and it costs money, too... ). My system is old, too old for modern games, but i wasn´t planing to build a new one before Rebirth would come out anyway

I´m still hoping to achieve a better performance, but right now i´ve started a new plot as Teladi Smuggler, and fighting isn´t my main goal ( maybe my subconsciousness told me to start that plot, who knows ). I´ll try the "windowed" mod, but, as i said, lowering the resolution leads to a blury text etc.

[alt3rn1ty]

Well I'd have thought smart turrets is quite a CPU intensive script as it does a similar job to MARS.

I gave it a bit of study and from what I understand its not nearly as heavy as MARS, which is why I chose it instead of MARS.

When I was last running the game with SRM, I also had MARS installed.

If you can, try a bare XRM install - no other scripts at all - and see what performance is like then. Really, you've already turned off everything I'd have suggested. Make sure you have all of Windows' bells and whistles turned off (the Aero GUI for example in Vista and Win 7).

Going to give this a try next (desktop composition is already switched to disable via the desktop icons compatability modes; When the game launches aero gets killed)

Comparing performance in XRM to SRM is not really worthwhile as they are both very, very different mods. The XRM does a hell of a lot more than the SRM.

Understood; I toyed with the idea of going back to SRM / CMOD4 etc setup, but then thought we have had the 3.2 patch of the game since so whats still compatible out of that setup I would be lost at the moment - An even more drastic cut back would be Drafutts original patches but I believe have also been superceded by 3.2 - So unsure if they are even needed.

I do think that one of the issues in the current XRM is that Expnobody's ship models are not as optimised as they could be. However, whats the solution to that except remove the ships...? I'm already holding back on a few new ships he's sent me as they will just kill performance.

I did not know of any particular ship models which may be a bit overkill in the mesh department, but that thought had crossed my mind (I knew there were more in XRM compaired with SRM) ...

So I did do a bit of testing that theory, trying to get in a sector with as few new models as possible - It does help; I notice the old problem of stutter when a large ship jumps in sector is more prevalent in XRM, and even when they are not jumping in but just having a few of the new large ships in sector causes quite a lot of interruptions to the flow of throwing a fighter around in a dog fight .. jud, jud, judder .. resume smooth responsiveness for a while then jud, judder resume then a slightly bigger pause as a large ship jumps in .. etc.

Cutting them out for a few people with not quite up to par machines I think would be not only unfair on everyone else with close to cutting edge, but also probably a nightmare rewind for yourself, and of course there are fewer and fewer of us without AP and its further game engine optimisations so you would be doing a lot of additional care for not many people who may on a whim upgrade tomorrow = Not really a viable proposition.

I am waiting on an upgrade route to my disk based (non steam) installation, when that happens I will be AP too.

For now though, I think I might end up reverting to just having 3.2 on the laptop, and do a bit more tweaking on the more capable desktop with XRM installed.

[nap_rz]

Similar setup here as Vhyle, core 2 duo, 6gb ram under-utilised with Win 7 x32 - With TC and since sorting out my installation I have been throwing in a few more performance helpers ...

firstly sir, you need to change your OS to a 64 bit one or you waste your 2GB RAM...

[alt3rn1ty]

Similar setup here as Vhyle, core 2 duo, 6gb ram under-utilised with Win 7 x32 - With TC and since sorting out my installation I have been throwing in a few more performance helpers ...

firstly sir, you need to change your OS to a 64 bit one or you waste your 2GB RAM...

Ehm, yes, that is what I meant by "6gb ram under-utilised with Win 7 x32"
The desktop setup though which is also mentioned in the same post (see the edit near the end) does not have this problem with memory, its win 7 x64. But does have the same stutter/judder problems with XRM installed as the laptop.

[Requiemfang]

I can tell you as others can easily tell you as well. Yes... I know... the dual core processors are as best as you can get for this game to run as it uses them. But upgrading to a cpu with more cores is sort of a good thing.

The faster the CPU is the better off you are as the calculations can be done faster and in general improve game play stuttering/fps loss. A more tech savvy person could give you more info on this. Like Trixx since he's helped me choose the parts I need for when I'm ready to upgrade my computer.