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The ALOT (A lot of textures) mod is the best overhaul of graphics for the Mass Effect games. In recent years its overhaul has become so extensive that when ALOT is installed alongside EGM we are running up to the limitations of the game engine.
ME3 is built on the 32-bit unreal 3 engine. A major drawback is that the engine can only address 4 GB of memory (32 bit means that it literally runs out of memory address numbers at 4GB). Once you remove memory used by the engine itself it means you have about 3.35 GB of memory to load textures, models, animations.
This means if memory utilisation reaches 3.35GB the game will crash.
We have optimised EGM v1.50 to work with ALOT. To optimise we tested (and retested multiple times) EGM with ALOT 11.3 Beta, we measured peak memory usage in various areas of the Normandy to ensure crashes wouldn't happen, and optimized where necessary.
Test Setup
ALOT was v11.3 Beta, with MEM v419
Texture mods included:
- ALOT main 11.3 and Improved Static Lighting Maps
- All ME3 optional extras included in ALOT manifest 6.2.9
- Installed on ME3 with all DLC, EGM v1.50, EGM Squadmate Pack, Ark Mod 0.87, Miranda Mod 1.1, Omega Hub 1.0 and the Alliance Armor Pack.
- All armors and casuals were unlocked for testing purposes.
- The tests were carried out with Broshep in standard fatigues for casual portions or the standard N7 parts armor for combat.
- EGM Settings had Memory Optimization set to Aggressive.
Any changes above will impact these results. Adding extra armors, casuals, texture mods or mods that add NPCs in particular will have sizeable impacts.
Optimization Results
BLUE = Just EGM and vanilla ME3 install. RED = EGM + ALOT; GREEN = Peak usage when there are lots of models (extra NPCs) being rendered or having scrolled through all the EGM/vanilla armors and casuals in the armor locker.
FAQs
What does "Aggressive Memory Management" actually do?
It uses a number of routines to more frequently try to reclaim memory with information that is not needed (unused textures and models). As far as the player sees it the main impacts are that the armor locker has a loading screen (behind which the Normandy is unloaded before the armor locker is started), and a few other minor changes (such as certain additions like the windows on the cargo deck being open into Port and Starboard Cargo are now closed, or the scanner taking a fraction of a second longer to allow new textures to load.
I want to use lots of Armor and Casual mods. Can I do this?
Yes - with 2 caveats:
(1) Only use armor/clothing mods that are optimised. This means that they follow basic principles to avoid excessive memory usage - such as norm textures should never be 4k as they are uncompressed (take 4x the memory) are never rendered (unreal doesn't like them). Or that stripe and tint maps should only be rendered at lower levels (as there will be no visible difference between a 4k and a 1k tint map).
(2) The player should only scroll over 10-15 armors before exiting the locker and restarting. There is a bug in the armor locker which means textures and models are not unloaded properly. So if you scroll through everything a crash is likely. Even just EGM + ALOT means scrolling through everything is at a "peak" of near 3.0gb.
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