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A practical way to lower GPU demand in CK2 (and other Paradox games)

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Ilyasviel

Ilyasviel

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May 7, 2008
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So, the other day, I was playing Kerbal Space Program, and I stumbled upon a mod that wonderfully compressed all textures really efficiently and really lowered my GPU temp. I wondered, is the reason why Paradox games make my gpu heat so much because they have optimized textures really badly? And so, I went in the CK2 folder, and what I saw was really shocking to me; lots of textures that weighted several mbs (sometimes over 10mb!) despite not being that big, and plenty that weighted several hundreds kbs for no good reason as well.

My gpu can run the game really well as it is, but I have an obsession for efficiency, and my fans bother me when they're too loud, so I went on a project to really compress/optimize those textures as much as possible without affecting the graphics too much. The first problem that I encountered was that all the files were in formats that couldn't be compressed, like DDS, TGA or BMP, but I quickly came up with a solution; to simply convert them to another format, optimize them, and then change back their file extensions to what they were before, without converting them again. It works really well. Despite not technically being of the right format for the game, it can still load them without any problem since the extensions are the right ones. The result is pretty great; my gpu temp has decreased by about 10c when playing ck2, with no huge loss in image quality. I definitely think it's worth it.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/ww2nro
Here's the files for those who want to try it. I would greatly appreciate any feedback, and also advices to optimize the game further. Note that I also compressed unit models and flags, but they aren't included in this rar, because I'm not sure that I'm allowed to upload DLC content like that, so I would appreciate it if a mod or admin told me if I'm allowed to.

While I'm at it, another tip for those who want to decrease GPU consumption in games in general: put a FPS cap on your games. I personally tend to limit them to 30 FPS, because it feels the same while really decreasing load. I recommend the free software Bandicam to do that.
 
stilgarpl said:
Compressing the files changes nothing. Game will still store uncompressed images in card memory and they will take the same amount of space.
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It changes nothing in term of memory usage, but I can promise you without a doubt that it does reduce GPU demand. It's very obvious when you try it. Run the game for a few minutes, monitor your temperature, then install my textures, run and monitor again, and you'll see.
 
Some things must be a certain format or stuff breaks/bugs. You may not have noticed it yet, but it will bad.
 
I heard somewhere that the clauswitz engine utilizes GPU power to help process the games CPU load. Thats why the game requires such a high graphics card requirement but looks like utter shit otherwise.
 
Calbrenar said:
What GPU do people have? I play skyrim with the full hd uncompressed textures at 2560x1600. I've never even considered the CK2 textures. Heck even when I play it on my surface pro the graphics are never an issue.
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As I said, I can run the game with no problem, but the question is, why should anyone want uncompressed textures, anyway? It brings no benefit at all compared to compressed ones. Compressed textures will only look ugly if you compress them a LOT, otherwise the difference isn't even noticeable unless you really zoom. All game developers need to optimize their stuff better, because there's no downside to it. Also, I had shitty PCs for almost all my life, so I can really sympathize to those who still do, and I hope to help them with this.

mjohnson85 said:
Some things must be a certain format or stuff breaks/bugs. You may not have noticed it yet, but it will bad.
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I don't think so. I've played hundreds of years, and had no bug or problem whatsoever. I've also done the same in Vicky 2 and EU4, and again, no problem so far.

buhite2 said:
As someone who just got a new computer (laptop) with one Tb of memory only to find out it can barely run modern clauswitz games because my integrated GPU and the game don't like each other
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You should definitely try those textures I uploaded, then. I think that you'll find that it makes a difference.
 
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I'm running on desktop i3 (Haswell) with integrated HD4600, 8 GB RAM 1600MHz - no issues whatsoever. I never checked the temp, but never heard the fans either...
 
Calbrenar said:
What GPU do people have? I play skyrim with the full hd uncompressed textures at 2560x1600. I've never even considered the CK2 textures. Heck even when I play it on my surface pro the graphics are never an issue.
Click to expand...

Lag is a typical late game issue for most. I don't believe it is related to gfx but rather to a glut of useless characters to emulate.

What GPU are you using btw?
 
stilgarpl said:
Compressing the files changes nothing. Game will still store uncompressed images in card memory and they will take the same amount of space.
Click to expand...
This sounds like it would be the case, and I'm wracking my brain trying to think of how this wouldn't be. If it's lossless compression, then so far as I'm aware it ought to be more intensive (at least whenever the textures are initialized).

Unless by "compressed" he means scaled? If he's reducing a 200px x 200px texture down to 5px x 5px and the renderer is stretching that over the same area, it's a lot faster for texture lookups and would have far less mipmaps and such. I wonder, though, can the engine even handle smaller files?

But no, jpg, png or bmp, if it's 200x200 then it's taking up that much video RAM...

Edit: Aha! More wild guessing - maybe the "compression" technique is changing the color data from 32-bit to 24-bit (assuming the original had an unnecessary alpha channel). Assuming Clautzwitz uses something like SDL or any of the other popular graphics file import API's that detect this sort of thing, the OpenGL texture it spits out would have less bytes per pixel, thereby decreasing the texture lookup times, an effect amplified by the repeat lookups necessary for interpolation... yes! It makes sense!

Of course, most BMPs don't have an alpha channel... :laugh:
 
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i'll give a try, but i dont think this will help with the late game slowness, which is my problem.
 
zyphial said:
This sounds like it would be the case, and I'm wracking my brain trying to think of how this wouldn't be. If it's lossless compression, then so far as I'm aware it ought to be more intensive (at least whenever the textures are initialized).

Unless by "compressed" he means scaled? If he's reducing a 200px x 200px texture down to 5px x 5px and the renderer is stretching that over the same area, it's a lot faster for texture lookups and would have far less mipmaps and such. I wonder, though, can the engine even handle smaller files?

But no, jpg, png or bmp, if it's 200x200 then it's taking up that much video RAM...

Edit: Aha! More wild guessing - maybe the "compression" technique is changing the color data from 32-bit to 24-bit (assuming the original had an unnecessary alpha channel). Assuming Clautzwitz uses something like SDL or any of the other popular graphics file import API's that detect this sort of thing, the OpenGL texture it spits out would have less bytes per pixel, thereby decreasing the texture lookup times, an effect amplified by the repeat lookups necessary for interpolation... yes! It makes sense!

Of course, most BMPs don't have an alpha channel... :laugh:
Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly. Library, like SDL, don't care what it loads, it just detects the file by content, not by extension.
I think scaling down is the only option - type of image buffer is declared in the code. Even if the file was 8bit - it will be converted to 32bit if the buffer is 32bit.

So, it's either placebo effect or scaling.
 
Calbrenar said:
What GPU do people have? I play skyrim with the full hd uncompressed textures at 2560x1600. I've never even considered the CK2 textures. Heck even when I play it on my surface pro the graphics are never an issue.
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I got a GTX 570 and I play skyrim at fullHD using 2042x1536 resolution.
So yeah, I doubt that textures would make a big impact.
one Tb of memory
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Really now? On a laptop at it?
Usually you need a server PC to get that amount of RAM (~116GiB in case you wondered).
 
buhite2 said:
No, no, not RAM, general storage memory. I simply mentioned it to indicate that the computer wasn't complete sh*t.
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Better to call that "storage" or "drive space" -- it has little-to-no impact on performance of the computer except in the fact that you cannot install things, save things, etc without enough storage space. Speed of storage media has some performance impact, but that's not directly related to the size. Memory when used without other qualifiers pretty much always refers to RAM (though it is sometimes used to refer to GPU memory, and could occasionally be used to refer to cache -- better to specify in either of those cases though).

Onisuzume said:
Even so, 1 Terabit isn't exactly something to boast about.
I got a SSD drive that's bigger than that.
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Presumably he meant terabyte, i.e. TB.
 
buhite2 said:
Maybe these days, but its the first windows laptop I've encountered with that much, its custom made for gaming.

EDIT: ok, ok I realize my computer sucks, and I'm sorry for the vague phrasing.
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I'm not sure anyone knows that your computer "sucks" -- just that it has a drive of a certain size. It could, in fact, still be the highest performance laptop ever created, while also being capable of autonomous flight. We simply wouldn't know from what you said. =)
 
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