Lowell wrote:It seems to me "any/all games" that spawn AI people/units will have the same effect on all machines.
Now that we have resolved the objectives issue, I want to come back to this. I think that you are incorrect. Any level with a ton of units will slow down. That is what SpawnPopulationLocks are for. I have not had any trouble with Biosphere since 1.2.2. There are a couple of levels in
Insurrection that bog my computer down a bit (Sanctuary, for instance) due to large numbers of units, but nothing like Hadron. I don't have a top of the line machine, but it is no slouch, either. I have been able to play every mod made, so far, except for one or two levels of martin's mod, and one level of EWIII. So, it is possible to create intriguing mods that everyone can play without relying on a metric fuck-ton of enemies.
The issue that I am having is that you seem to feel that everyone should be able to play your mod, and that you are being very insensitive to people with lower end systems. Not everyone can upgrade their machines (read: Mac owners, students with little disposable income, &c.). That is not a solution. The way I see it, you have two options: (A) in your readme, explain that PW is likely to not work on lower end systems and Macs, and live with the fact that a lot of people will not be able to play it or (B) go through it and try to clean it up a bit -- take out some of the default enemies, use triffids to sow more enemies once a player gets to a given place, use more AISpawnPoints and SpawnPopulationLocks to reduce the enemy load, &c.
To some extent, there is little that you could do now to reduce the enemy load -- you have create huge levels, which requires a lot of enemies to fill the space. If I had one piece of advice for any nacsent modders, it would be this: leave out the kitchen sink -- create smaller levels that concentrate on three or fewer primary objectives. Huge levels are a great idea, in theory, but the tend to bog systems down incredibly.
xander