MM2X Forum

I know, I said i would post a topic about the mirror trick for draw distance in October. But this is way different. And it's too big of a discovery for me to hold off telling about it.
I've found a way to get the same draw distance with every view in the game, not just the mirror! Take a look for yourself:






This draw distance is achieved by opening your profile's .cfg file in the "players" folder with a hex editor and editing 2 decimals, and emptying the city's cpvs file, so the whole city renders. These are the decimals you need to edit:

Change those to "pp". Not sure what that turn the draw distance into, but it's big.

As cool as this is, it isn't perfect. MM2 seems to have a limit on how many blocks can be viewed at one time, because some blocks don't appear until another one is out of the view, etc. Also, the frame rate dips down to 20 sometimes, with an average of 35. Both of these issues could be fixed though, with a cpvs file that rendered the proper blocks. However, I don't know of any program that can do something like that.

Despite these flaws, I still wanted to let people know about this new trick. Maybe we can all work together and polish this up some day, because at the moment, it's pretty rough cut.
In the very least, this could be used for screen shots.


PS: This also works in MM1, with the exact same edits the the exact same file for that game. As of now, I don't know how to render everything at once in that game, so I can't comment on how well it would work. However, considering how well MM1 runs, (I can get 16xQ AA, 16x AF, and even 8x TAA with a minimum of 55 fps, and with the same settings, MM2 goes down to 30) I can say pretty confidently that this would work very well with a .ptl file (MM1 version of cpvs) that renders the whole city at once. This is what it looks like as of now:

Great finds, dude! Amazing work! Hope mm1 get's fixed.

I remember that you explained the way of the mirror editing, that through it is possible to get high visibility distance, but this is a really great discovery. Maybe the player profile files can allow other possibilities.
The PSDL terrain blocks viewing in far distances problem is already known, it's an issue of the game, the screenshots look good, though. Obviously this will low the FPS number causing lag. You think that both these could be fixed through the .cpvs files?

Nice find! I guess this can be done to any city? It would most useful for NYC.

And now there will be a flood of pictures in the screenshot section as everyone tries this.

This is really cool. I'm gonna go try this now.

EDIT: Hmmm...I haven't got it to work right. The visibility/fog is all screwed up.

Can we have a mod please?

Some people dont have hex editors. Or knowledge of how to edit hex for that matter.

Franch - Yeah, without rendering blocks you can't see, it won't make any disappear, and increase fps.

Silent - Of course, any city will work with this. And about a mod... I may have to think about that...

Hummers - Haha, yeah. And about your issue, I know what causes it.


Apperently, I was half wrong about which decimals that need edited. You only put "p" in the second one, the first one controls fog scaling. Dunno why I didn't have any problems, but everyone else who tried did. So if you have been having any issues with fog, this is why.

EDIT: Yeah, I just realized I was backwards with what needs changed. Sorry about that.

HOLY CRAP! We can see whole SF! Amazing!!

HOLY CRAP! We can see whole SF! Amazing!!

+1

This can't be made as mod, as .ar file then, because clearly the procedure is compeltely different than usual. The profile .cfg file (called player0.cfg for the first player account, player1.cfg for the possible second one, and so on) has the game and hardware settings (can notice the audio card/drivers name, for example) that you've set, so it's always different for eveyone. This edit with an hex editor is really simple and easy to do however, everyone are able to do it. Of course this works with any city, remember that's an edit done to the game, not to a specific city.
I'll check this trying to change the values as Dummiesboy explained in both types. Remember that in your screenshots you're using your MM2 Revisited V4 mod, that change the for values, maybe for who isn't using it and so has the default values, or is using the Shader Mod 2, the fog can look worse because it's indeed already more "dense" than in your mod.

Nice discovery Congratulations dummiesboy

How to do it?

So let me see if I got this....

1) Open player#.cfg file with hex editor and change the "z" to a "p".
2) Open sf.cpvs or london.cpvs and deleting everything in it and then resaving? (Can this be done with NotePad?) And I guess these are the ones found in city folder?


EDIT: Guess I did something wrong. Also, I didnt see the "z", so I just changed the fourth character to "p".

Alright then, since so many people are having issues doing it themselves, I've put together a quick package that should work. You'll want to backup your players folder, because this will replace your profile. Nothing is unlocked either, this is just to help out people who are having issues.

https://www.mediafire.com/?drqwjjuyb7ah5wi

I haven't anything with the fog scaling (I don't know how to work it yet, "p" was just a random letter), so unless you have RV4, you will see fog in the distance, because of how I made it.. As I've said, this idea is pretty rough cut at the moment.

also need rv4.1 for sf_fog fix or colors are messed up