Good evening ladies and gents, been away for a while and I’m just heading back into the FArming Simulation world.
I was just wondering if there has been any announcement yet on whether or not the new FS19 is going to suffer from the same mod restrictions as FS17 on PS4? I’m thinking in terms of amount storage space allowed and DLC, it was a pity not to be able to get the 3rd party DLCs that was avalible to buy on PC in FS17.
While I appreciate I can and I quite likely will purchase FS19 on PC as well, as it does get the upgraded graphics and obviously every single mod available. I will likely mainly play it on my PS4 as I can do that downstairs in the living room while watching over my daughter, for some reason my wife tells me off if I leave her alone downstairs while I go and hide in the pc room.
Dogface wrote: ↑Sun Nov 04, 2018 5:09 pm
You can try Steam Link, which lets you link you tv to your computer. Play your upstairs PC on your downstairs TV.
FS19 will have the same limitations regarding mods as FS17. We were not able to convince Sony and Microsoft to change the 4GB limit (note, that we already have an exception for this 4GB limit).
We however made several other improvements to improve mod support on consoles. For example it is now possible to reference the game assets as a mod. Also with the new vehicle material system, a large chunk of data is shared between all the vehicles and the size needed per vehicle is usually quite a lot smaller now. so that the size of the average mod should be quite a bit smaller.
For maps it largely depends on how many resources they re-use from the base game.
For example if they use the same terrain textures as one of our maps, the savings are already around 80 MB compared to a FS17 mod.
In the extreme case, if a map is completely built from the assets of the game (terrain texture, buildings, trees, etc.) a mod map will only be around 200 MB instead of like 800-1000 MB for FS17. So most maps will probably be somewhere in the middle.
BigC92 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 05, 2018 8:56 am
What do you mean by it is possible to reference the game assets as a mod?
I assume it will be the same as Stefan_LS did for Gamsting. The map has a lot of references to existing Goldcrest Valley or Sosnovka map files to bring it to within ModHub size limits (750mb I think it is). The map with all of those assets included is well above the ModHub file size limit (around 40% bigger from my quick look).
The problem with this is that currently trying to load the map in GIANTS Editor will result in a crash, even though the game runs it fine, so for any edits you need to copy the existing files into the map and reference them individually, which takes an awful long time and is a bit of a faff.
If we can now reference those same assets directly in GE it will help modders, and particularly map-makers, to shave off vital megabytes.
It means, if for example you want to use a texture in your mod that is part of the game, you no longer have to copy the texture to the mod directly, but instead you just point to the texture in the game.
For FS17, this was already possible for files that were referenced in the vehicle xmls (with the $ prefix. E.g. "$data/vehicles/wheels/trelleborg/TM800_440_65R24.xml" to load the TM800 tire from the game).
With FS19, it is now also possible to use that notation in the i3ds. So a vehicle could use "$data/vehicles/steerable/fendt/fendt718_diffuse.png" in the i3d to load the diffuse texture of the Fendt 718. The GIANTS Editor also properly supports this and will even automatically convert paths from the game to the right format. So when open a mod, and drag in one of the vehicles/objects from the game folder directly, it will correctly save the information to use the textures from the game.
This works for any read-only resources from the game, like audio, textures, shaders etc.
It works for density maps and height maps too, but it probably doesn't make sense, since you want to edit them in your mod.
As "this_is_gav" pointed out, with a hack it was somehow also possible with FS17 to reference game assets, but that was definitely not recommended as it had several drawbacks and thus was also not widely used. With the proper support in FS19, that is now a lot better.
Ok, i think i see where this is going. I have a learning disability so it takes me a bit to understand things, so if you want a texture that the standard in game maps have, you just go into the map file in the editor, click on the texture you want, and it'll be on the object? Or did i misunderstand it?
Stegei wrote: ↑Mon Nov 05, 2018 8:49 am
FS19 will have the same limitations regarding mods as FS17. We were not able to convince Sony and Microsoft to change the 4GB limit (note, that we already have an exception for this 4GB limit).
We however made several other improvements to improve mod support on consoles. For example it is now possible to reference the game assets as a mod. Also with the new vehicle material system, a large chunk of data is shared between all the vehicles and the size needed per vehicle is usually quite a lot smaller now. so that the size of the average mod should be quite a bit smaller.
For maps it largely depends on how many resources they re-use from the base game.
For example if they use the same terrain textures as one of our maps, the savings are already around 80 MB compared to a FS17 mod.
In the extreme case, if a map is completely built from the assets of the game (terrain texture, buildings, trees, etc.) a mod map will only be around 200 MB instead of like 800-1000 MB for FS17. So most maps will probably be somewhere in the middle.
Thanks for the effort to reduce the space occupied by the machinery in the game now with so many new things, one wishes to have more machinery.
