Sins Forums
When I look at a star at the beginning of the game, it's in this state of flux where the whole surface looks all bubbly and in motion. But if I looks later, this effect slows down, and eventually the animation ceases altogether. Is it supposed to stop, or is it a video driver bug or something?
could be a simpe thing to reduce the strain on the processors etc. it may not be situational (i.e. even if you comuter CAN handle it, it will still drop the effect)
Running a mod of anykind? I noticed sometimes modded effects would stop appearing during hectic conflicts and reappear again later...
Dr.Gonzo
No mods -- but it does make sense that it could be related to the load on the GPU or CPU, since that is usually directly related to time too. I'll have to try evacuating planets and scrapping everything after a game ends and see if it makes the effect return.
I'm going to guess that you've reached the particle count (assuming this only happens late game). In the user.settings file, there is are two lines MaxParticleCount and MaxParticleSimulationsCount. You could try increasing those numbers and see if it takes longer for this to happen, or if you increase them enough it might not happen at all (assuming this is the problem)
Particles disappear a lot in the graphics-improvement mods because there are so many particles flying around, etc. It can happen in un-modded Sins as well, although it takes longer.
Okay so I fiddled with those two lines, and a few of the others, and it didn't seem to make any difference. I could multiply them by 2 or by 10, or reduce them to 0 or 1, and the effect still acted the same way -- it would be present in the beginning and gradually go away. Took the same amount of time to reach certain states, too (based on a replay).
I also loaded up the autosave from the end of a 6 hour game, where the effect had ceased, killed the last enemy planet and then scrapped everything I owned and evacuated every planet, so all that was left visible were the neutral extractors. No change.
I watched a replay at 8x speed for the first 30 minutes of it and can describe what happens a lil better--
At the start it is normal, the texture looks all high quality, and the pulsating effect looks convincing and normal.
As the game progress it seems like the different parts of the texture sort of wash together and the effect noticably slows down, to where it is barely noticable on 1x speed.
At the end of a 6 hour game the star's texture looks noticeably pixelated and the effect is gone, save for the occasional twinkling appearance of some of the pixels on its surface.
Here's a comparison of the same star, at the start and ~4 hours into the game -- you can see how the texture is clearer in the first:
http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/natural/86b5b5757101f6d1e6a6badb0fc1ac8905b4bd05.png
http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/natural/94a231c4e79c84b91f5596b8a2ea14381103acfc.png
And here it is from another angle and closer, showing the odd pixelation up close:
http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/natural/b5a6cea3f79eb7255185c59f77b36a5d07ccd9b0.png
Am I the only one with this? Can anyone take a look at their autosaves or run a replay in high speed to see if the effect changes for you?
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