Rendering Settings

[aussig]

How to adjust items to use fewer resources:

1. Objects - Already have LOD levels and distances, so this is probably unnecessary
2. Textures - Swap in lower resolution versions
3. Forests - Change the SPACING of trees

For textures, the only way to do this is really to have multiple versions of the texture but we could automate the creation of these as a one-off. For text files, there are a number of ways of doing this:

1. We could have different versions of files in the repository, named appropriately.
   Cons: Explosion of the number of files, especially considering seasonal variants. If we ever wanted to support other configurable options in future then the explosion becomes exponential.
2. We could include various alternative lines in the files, most likely using comments # to surround the variants. The installer could look for these and modify the blocks according to user preference. To speed up the manipulation of files by the installer, the build script could build an index of files that have these markers so the installer only has to work through the index.
3. We could programmatically build the variants based on some logic. e.g. Scale the SPACING in forests up and down. This could be done at build time, generating multiple versions of the file (though this has the same cons as option 1 above) and the installer simply swaps them, or the installer could be more intelligent and do this on the fly.