Blue mod!!!! Play smoother than before

[Broken Hawk]

Wow. It looks great. Can't wait to try it out.

[Hengist]

It does give me smoother gameplay. Even something like mouse wheeling out from the tiles, to the world view and then back, is a lot smoother... not a little, but a lot smoother Even the wonder movies seem to play faster than usual, and it also does look better than the stock tiles.

It does feel like it's using smaller textures and less video memory, but without the spec's, I'm also just guessing.

Thanks for the heads-up Cronos.

[ColdFever]

Originally posted by Hengist
It does give me smoother gameplay. Even something like mouse wheeling out from the tiles, to the world view and then back, is a lot smoother... It does feel like it's using smaller textures and less video memory, but without the spec's, I'm also just guessing.

For optimal compatibility, I applied great care that the BlueMarble terrain uses *exactly* the same formats as the original terrain. So both terrains should have the same effects on either low or high-res settings. There is just *one* difference that IMHO could explain a performance difference, and this is in the clouds: the original graphics use several complex cloud textures, probably to fade out clouds with higher camera altitude. As this effect is not desired for BlueMarble, I just created one cloud texture and replaced the other complex textures with simple "dummy" textures. Perhaps some graphics cards/drivers realize that these "dummy" textures are superfluous and simplify the rendering process. Of course this is just a wild guess, but as the cloud design really is the only format difference between the Original and the BlueMarble graphics, it probably is the best one.

[vovan]

Say... Any chance for a non-exe archive of the mod? I like to see precisely what I'm getting before I put it in.

PS: Also, shouldn't this be, like, in the creation forum? I spent a bit of time looking for it there and was only able to locate the thread from the news item.

[Enigma_Nova]

This pales in comparison to Harkonen's mod.

[Silver14]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
This pales in comparison to Harkonen's mod.

Oh come on now you can't make a comment like that and not provide a screenshot or a link.

Where can we get Hark's mod?

[Tiberius]

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=145105

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=146309

Btw, I still use the BlueMarble mod, together with Harkonnen's. It is a graphics mod, which incidentally improves the game performance as well, but it is still primarily a graphics mod. I like it because it looks better than the original (terrain) graphics.

[Enigma_Nova]

So both together makes the game go even faster.
Wheeeee....