Thank you for the compliment tinman. Much appreciated. The current models aren't yet perfect, they need one more update which is still on my to do list. But they are much easier to deal with than the vanilla bits and pieces.
I used this mod a while back but never really gave any feedback. So let me just take a small second and say thank you for this simple yet extremely helpful mod. I am using it in a personal (non-released) mod and it has cut the time I would usually have to spend down considerably! An endorsement well earned.
So after a good deal of browsing through articles, and a lot of trial and error, I have finally got the sail animations working again. Just as they did on the vanilla ships. Still trying to figure how to squeeze some optimization out of the meshes. Once I've gotten them as perfect as I know how, I'll load an updated file. My one stumbling block right now is the collision mesh...I don't know how to create one from scratch. Not sure how much that will help anyway...but I'll keep reading up and see if I can figure out how to go about it.
I mentioned this mod over on the Official Forums, wondering if their use could help with FPS issues in the Waterfront.
Vorians AKA display name is already in use had a look at the meshes:
The NIFs from Ships Made Simple are merely the individual ship meshes held in a single NIF, they have not been edited to combine the havok collision into a single block, and other mergeable blocks have not been combined either, so in-game they are identical to the separate ship pieces. They also haven't been PyFFIed, but I tested doing that too and still FPS remained the same. Ships Made Simple is great for modders to easily place ships in-game, but does not benefit FPS. Oh, also moving parts like the reefed sails and the flags on Bloated Float have lost their animation, they no longer sway or flutter.
I'm not sure if any of that is in your plans...? It could help with a notoriously FPS-crippling area of the game (with or without Better Cities).
Yeah Vorians pretty much hit it on the head. The only thing here that would really make a difference FPS wise is combining collision meshes, which I haven't gotten around to doing yet. Some mergeable blocks have been done, so they are slightly better FPS wise than standard ship meshes, but there is more that could be done here. Just as he stated, I tested PyFFI and it made no noticeable difference...if any at all so is a waste of time as far as I'm concerned. I'll double check the sail animations, they were working in my test mod.....so not sure what happened there.
I will continue to update these as I find time to make improvements. Maybe I can squeeze a little FPS improvement out of them.
While using PyFFI did not improve FPS, it is still worth applying, as it will make other fixes and optimisations which nifSkope failed to apply. This may also increase the filesize of a NIF but don't let that deter you from using PyFFI, the purpose of PyFFI is not to reduce filesize but to optimise and where possible fix any glitches in the file, which usually does reduce filesize, but may require writing additional data into the file instead.
Interesting...I did not know all that. Thank you for setting me straight. PyFFI is rather time consuming and with the lack of noticeable improvement I just didn't see the point. Now I see it may have other uses.
Once installed and working, it's not time-consuming at all. You just right-click on the folder containing NIFs and choose "Optimise With PyFFI", wait a short time for the command prompt to say it's done, and it's done. Or you can use the in/out folders in the PyFFI install folder and run the Oblivion BAT file.
Thank you for the pat on the back but I actually feel bad now. I believe by boat house you are referring to the Bloated Float model which is not included here. A small oversight on my part since I actually have done that one as well. Will post an update once I'm free from work today.
Give Feedback
21 comments
Comments locked
The author has locked this comment topic for the time beingVorians AKA display name is already in use had a look at the meshes:
I'm not sure if any of that is in your plans...? It could help with a notoriously FPS-crippling area of the game (with or without Better Cities).
Regardless, thank you for the resource
I will continue to update these as I find time to make improvements. Maybe I can squeeze a little FPS improvement out of them.