Simplified Water

[Fridlekh]

A while back, in the quest for perfect water shading in maps, Tree had written a script to render the wireframe model of water to a png file... the result was a perfect map of where there is water in-game, and showed an amazing waste of polygons.

We assume that the extra polys are for some unused feature in the rendering engine that would add waves or other effects that vertex shaders would be good for, but since none of this is being used, why not simplify the model and save our poor clients from having to render all those polys just for flat water? now, the first release of this is simple, and merely makes all water 2 polygonswith no caostline, so if you like the foam, don't use it.

You can download it here: http://mysite.verizon.net/fridlekh/hydro.rar
Unpack that into: \Horizons\resources\models\objects\hydro and overwrite all files. A full patch will replace these, so unpack again if there's a content update. Unlile map packs, this will add less than 1MB to any future content patches. Credit goes to Tree for writing the script that generated the files, I just prodded him into doing it, and made sure it worked.

Just for fun here's what each .hyd file is turned into:

;test createWaterGeometry
;num Vertices 4 X:2 Y:2
;num Rings 0
;numVerts 4
;numFaces before terrain trim 2
;surfaceNormal 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000
;height 525.000000
v -250.000000 -250.000000 0.000000
vt 0.000000 0.000000
v 250.000000 -250.000000 0.000000
vt 1.000000 0.000000
v -250.000000 250.000000 0.000000
vt 0.000000 1.000000
v 250.000000 250.000000 0.000000
vt 1.000000 1.000000
f 1/1/ 2/2/ 4/4/
f 4/4/ 3/3/ 1/1/


For reference, here's the top of a normal hyd file from Dalimond Bay:

;test createWaterGeometry
;num Vertices 10201 X:101 Y:101
;num Rings 1
;numVerts 140
;numFaces before terrain trim 251
;surfaceNormal 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000
;height 525.000000

And out in the middle of the ocean:

;test createWaterGeometry
;num Vertices 10201 X:101 Y:101
;num Rings 1
;numVerts 149
;numFaces before terrain trim 251
;surfaceNormal 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000
;height 525.000000

[HAG]

Hmm, just to assure i get this right:

replacing these files will give less Memory-usage by the client and due to that less lag/everything annoying?

[Fridlekh]

In theory, yeah, but not all that much. If you notice significantly more lag in areas where there's water, I'd say definately try this.

[Merriweather Honeythorn]

So has anyone tried it? When I come back to the game I'd like to be able to cut down on my lag problems as much as possible. Before I cut out seeing the Blight effects which helped when in Blighted areas but I still had a major issue with water.

Anyone out there able to report anything on this?

[Blue Hasia]

when I click the link I get a page that looks like this

"Rar! ;�s bÒtÀ?HK Ô� ³??ÇÀPÙ0 5( Black_Water_Surface_1659_17750_20250.hyd§ ;:Üb?Uõ®ÃGk?³¡ Cº?]|? ?äÒ?zô¤ä¸ å?¯ ~?/ zRÃ0l'ç�?Né ?øÃH�º¬IK¤ ???Ò?vg�ÚÂìc?¡?ô? ÇTÛ£?ÓÅ»?H«g??ZÿB2 a?ÞV] NË? ×??Ùæ? ?NùûØéä «?ʵ] nÀk?Ç1^ÜP¦P¾ç©7)OÞæ�z?ª/Kå¤�ó?Ì?&?WÒÚ

[Henry Redacre]

when saving it, you should be prompted to "Save As..." so you can designate a name for the file.. you should notice it as being saved as --- hydro.rar.htm

this should be a .RAR file (for those unfamiliar with .RAR files, it is just another type of archive, much like .ZIP.. it just uses a different algorithm to compres the data) so simply backspace over the .HTM part of the file name so it looks like --- hydro.rar

and save the file that way..

of course, youre going to need winRAR (or some other archive/compression utility program) in order to "unzip" the archive.

hope this info helps...

~ Henry

[Khosadan]

Hm, the .rar file is damanged or corrupted. Does anyone have a copy of this mod still, that I could get?

[Fridlekh]

This mod is no longer applicable really, so I'm locking it.

Explination:
New water has been introduced since this was released, and follows a naming convention as before. If you were to turn all of the new hydro files into this format you would end up with very many 'sunken lairs' as this makes water cover an entire sector, and most of the new water was made to FIX the problem of water that covered an entire sector instead of conforming to the coastline.

Additionally, I haven't been a Verizon user for a long while, and don't have that rar anymore either. No sense in continuing the topic.

I'll leave the thread existing so that peopel can maybe use the info here to understand hyd files a little better, but that is all.