Graphics: HQ to Elite

[DMCain 1]

I have the elite Graphics pack but it causes some serious problems with my game. Random game crashes, buggy sound, .dll crashes and some other weird junk.

 

The Question:

Is it possible to just copy the textures from the elite .pak files over to the regular .pak files?

 

what I would like to do is just take the elite textures and replace the normal HQ textures so I can have the really nice looking stuff without all the bugs that the elite pack gives me. Can this be safely done, and if so, how would I go about it? I have a couple ideas, but, well, I'm a bit too chicken to try them without some feedback form folks that actually KNOW what they're doing.

[czevak 57]

You can replace the mq textures with the hq ones, yes. But I really doubt that it would do you any good. The reason for the problems with these highres textures is that the engine was never build to cope with them. The memoryleak problem that is there anyway will be more severe, because it will take less time to overflow-fill your RAM.

 

This can even be pushed to extremes when using PhysX and HQ elite textures. You will have regular crash intervals of aprox. 10 min. and less.

 

To sum up: I'd really recommend to use mq textures at the most. You won't see much difference while playing zoomed out most of the time anyway.

[Dragon Brother 619]

You can replace the mq textures with the hq ones, yes. But I really doubt that it would do you any good. The reason for the problems with these highres textures is that the engine was never build to cope with them. The memoryleak problem that is there anyway will be more severe, because it will take less time to overflow-fill your RAM.

 

This can even be pushed to extremes when using PhysX and HQ elite textures. You will have regular crash intervals of aprox. 10 min. and less.

 

To sum up: I'd really recommend to use mq textures at the most. You won't see much difference while playing zoomed out most of the time anyway.

 

But it does look cool when zoomed in

[DMCain 1]

You can replace the mq textures with the hq ones, yes. But I really doubt that it would do you any good. The reason for the problems with these highres textures is that the engine was never build to cope with them. The memory leak problem that is there anyway will be more severe, because it will take less time to overflow-fill your RAM.

I've never experienced this memory leak that people speak of. Even after playing for 10-12 hours straight using several characters in one session.

 

This can even be pushed to extremes when using PhysX and HQ elite textures. You will have regular crash intervals of approx. 10 min. and less.

Using the actual Elite Graphics pack (installed form disc), it took well under 10 minutes for the crash. This is one of the reasons I just want to over-write the textures (MQ or HQ, doesn't really matter which set) with those from the Elite pack.

 

To sum up: I'd really recommend to use mq textures at the most. You won't see much difference while playing zoomed out most of the time anyway.

Personal peeve of mine. I want the best eye-candy I can reliably get. This is why I have 8GB ram (can bump that to 40 if I plug in one of my USB thumb drives) and dual 1GB vid cards in SLI mode.

 

I suppose when I have the time I can copy and replace the textures to see what happens (after backing up the originals of course). If I ever get around to trying this, I'll post back here and let you guys know how it worked out.

[Dragon Brother 619]

You having more ram won't do anything. The main executable appears to bite the dust at around 1.2GB of ram usage so depending on your settings you can get more or less game time. It is a bit annoying when having 4GB of ram these days isn't uncommon, especially for gamers I would guess.

[czevak 57]

There is way of modifing the binaries to address more than 1,2GB of RAM. This has helped sometimes to prolong the playtime until crash.

 

Keep in mind, that in normal S2FA / Ice and Blood there are not many HQ textures anyway (mostly GUI and effect stuff), and the way the elite packs work, there is no difference between replacing the MQ with HQ or just installing HQ and clicking the "High Quality" Option ingame. Both ways you force the engine to run textures that are too big for them to handle properly.

(Even if you have no problem with mem-leak normally, the crashes you experience with HQ is a tell-tale hint that it is there.)

 

The debug.log associated with mem-leak normally looks sth. like this:

 

02:24:47.221 - cDX9Base::defragVidMem - E_OUTOFMEMORY

...

02:24:48.105 - out of heap memory during realtime load (8192kb requested)