Jara,

So my guess is that next to nobody with at least mid-level hardware has any problems running WOFF UE smoothly in the early part of the war. 1915-1916. The difference between 1916 and 1918 isn't the graphical settings, etc. It's the ground war and the number of planes in the sky. Adjusting graphical settings is essentially attempting to offset the impact of the growing Ground and Air War by reducing how well it's rendered. We all already know that Air War activity has an impact on how smooth the flying is simply by reducing it from Medium to Very Light.

My question is, Is it possible to make a mod that limits the maximum number of planes in the sky in 1918 to no more than the most that are in the sky in 1916? That way people could keep all the high graphical fidelity and just lose the aircraft that we most likely won't encounter when we are flying anyway.

Todd,
that is not so easy task. The number of planes generated for each mission is hard coded in WOFF UE mission generator engine, so this question should be addressed to Windman. We can just reduce number of aircraft in final mission file - let's say user wants max 100 planes, so we could filter out the first 50 planes for each side and delete the remainder. But I have no idea if we do not wipe out completely some battle map sectors . Also, this would not be possible with simple mod. That would require a dynamic software application, for example another feature of Mission Editor.

Thank you for letting us know. I'm not surprised it's difficult to do. I was just hoping against hope there was some kind of a shortcut. Generally speaking - we don't need 200 planes in the air so if there was a way to max them at, say 50 per side, it would really cut down on the CPU load and help things run smoother at higher graphics settings for folks with more modest hardware. I appreciate the info, sir!

Jara, if you could come up with a solution, that would be fantastic. Robert Wiggins, Panama Red and I, with the assistance of Hellshade, have been working on a blue triangles mod to reduce the number of stutters in the game during the late war period, but we have concluded that the main problem during 1918 is the high level of air and ground activity. Since we can't reduce the ground activity (can we)? the next best solution is to reduce the air activity.

My thoughts on the matter are either, as you suggest, deleting extra flights in the OFF_Camp Mission file, or somehow lowering the regional air activity setting in Workshop, depending on the number of planes reported from the Camp Mission file. Does this make sense to you?

By "with the assistance of Hellshade" BuckeyeBob means that I watched smart people do cool things and then cheered them on as I got to try out the fruits of their hard work.

Just wanted to clarify that.

Wouldn’t the (geesh I forgot exactly what its called) setting in the Workshop accomplish the same thing?
Man. The Aerial Activity Level thingy?

Regional Air Activity helps. Maybe there is a way to cap the number of flights lower on each one when they generate a mission.

Or i guess an Ultra Light setting would probably work.

OK, guys, thanks for your confidence . I will try to look into it but do not promise anything . My free time is very, very limited recently.

I can appreciate limited time, completely.

Maybe just add an Ultra Light Air Activity if that is possible?

So, there is no job for me - this option "Ultra Light Air Activity" is already present in Workshop settings .

Nope. There is Very Light. We could use an Ultra Light version.

Oh, you are right

Jara, I have an another proposal for you that can be used in place of, or in addition to, the changes suggested by Hellshade. Instead of, or in addition to, creating an "ultra-light" regional air activity setting, I suggest an addition to the ME that reads the number of planes in the sky for a given campaign mission (I believe the ME already does this), and then lets the player choose, the compositescenerybudgets.xml file that best fits his system and the number of planes up in the air for the current mission. The ME would then paste the appropriate file into the terrains folder before the start of the mission.

The basic problem with the way things are right now, is that you don't really know what level of regional air activity to choose until you have seen how many planes are going to be in the air after the ME loads. Then, when you cancel the mission in order to change the level of air activity, when you come back, you may get a different mission with a different number of planes. Although, based on the year, you might have a general idea of how much air activity there may be and can then set the level of regional air activity accordingly, you don't know this for each specific mission until after it loads and you can't change anything.

My suggestion would present the player with a message box that tells him how many planes have been assigned to the current mission and a selection box with which he can choose what scenerybudgets file to use, based on his or her system and the level of air activity he sees for that specific mission. We could make this process either manual or automatic, based on the number of planes assigned in a particular mission. Robert Wiggins, Hellshade, Panama Red, and myself are currently working on a blue triangles mod that would be composed of different versions of the compositescenerybudgets.xml file (low activity, medium activity, and high activity versions) that could be used exactly for this purpose.

The advantage to this approach, IMO, is that it doesn't require the user to reduce the level of air activity, just to get acceptable framerates in 1918. Instead, we reduce the graphic load of the game by reducing the values in the compositescenerybudget file that controls the drawing of scenery objects (trees and buildings) in the game.

Does that make sense to you? Which do you think would be easier for you to code? Thanks.

Yes, that is great idea BB. Just, to ensure correct behaviour of this new feature, the up-to date compositescenerybudgets.xml files (three or more?) must be installed /present in user's ME folder. That is also why I would prefer manual selection of scenerybudget file via radiobutton: default, high, medium or low.

Robert Wiggins, Panama Red, Hellshade, and myself are currently working on producing exactly this: two or three versions of the compositescenerybudgets.xml file that can be swapped in and out of the terrains folder, depending on the amount of air activity for a specific mission. The different versions differ primarily in terms of the amount of graphic detail. Under low air activity, such as that during 1915, 1916, and 1917, we would use a high graphic quality version, and in periods of high air activity, such as in 1918, we would replace that with a slightly lower quality version, in order to reduce the strain on the cpu, which is apparently a major cause of stuttering in the game.

Hopefully, this will make careers in 1918 much more enjoyable than they currently are for most people, even those with very powerful machines.

Currently, I am debating whether this process should be automatic or manual, but we can decide the details later.

Just tell us what you need and we will do our best to accommodate you. I'll be out of contact after tomorrow for a few days, but someone else in our group may be able to follow up with you.

BB Also did some wonderful testing using your ME mod that let him see an average of how many planes were assigned to flights in April of 1916 based upon using the various Air Activity Density ratings.

VL: 30 31 34
L: 33 38 39
M: 50 51 54
H: 63 67 68
VH: 88 89 91
UH: 121 126 130

And then again in April of 1918.

VL activity: 73 planes flying (range 63 - 80)
L activity: 135 planes flying (range 128 - 141)
M activity: 163 planes flying (range 87 - 212)
H activity: 238 planes flying (range 130 - 332)
VH activity: 376 planes flying (range 214 - 502)
UH activity: 503 planes flying (range 354 - 787)

Pretty clear that the escalation of the Air War is probably eating up a lot of CPU cycles. If there was an Ultra Light setting that had (for example) an average of 50 - 54 planes in the sky in 1918 (similar to Medium settings in 1916) then people could probably keep their graphics settings high just by keeping the number of aircraft down to a more reasonable level for the CPU to handle.

In other words, instead of reducing the quality of the terrain and scenery to make room for CPU cycles handling planes that you can't see, limit the number of planes so that the scenery and terrain you are flying over is still at its best.

Since the code for doing this is already in place, maybe it's possible to use it to create one more setting with an even lower number. Just a thought.

Thx for info, Hellshade and BB for testing.


Yes, the code exists but it is a part of WOFF UE code and we do not have access to it. However, that option (Ultra Low Air Activity) could be easily implemented by DEVs, esp. Windman.

I will just need all three versions of compositescenerybudgets.xml files (named accordingly to its use, i.e. low, medium and high). ME will copy, in accordance with user option, one of selected files and overwrite the compositescenerybudgets.xml file at xx:\OBDSoftware\WOFF\OBDWW1 Over Flanders Fields\terrains folder.
I will try to write ME code for this feature (although my free time is rather limited right now).

Ahh - good to know! Thank you, Jara, WM is obviously very busy with WOTR at the moment and probably even for some time after it ships. I will see if he would be willing to make that quick addition after WOTR isn't rightfully consuming all of his time.

OK, here you are - ME 1.6.3 for testing purposes.
Just locate WOFF UE_Mission_Editor/Scenery folder and replace contents of three xml files with your stuff while keeping file names (low, medium, high).