Congrats Sir Patrick You deserve it.
No, We do not want anyone to use a hack, or a 3rd party workaround just to play the mod. Though the guy offering the patch is well intentioned. There are many computer inept's out there. Sorry but it is true (just look at all the relentless "how do i do this?" topics here). Using a hack that may wind up breaking someones game or OS, because they didnt know what they were doing just opens a new can of worms. Plus like you said it leaves the 32 bit OS's out of the picture. If you do go that route do so at your own risk.
We will utilize The Optimization Project. Plus some of our own optimizations that are SoA 2 specific. Mystic is correct when he says there are many files in the mod that sins will load that we do not need. The Optimization Project was made to help eliminate some of that mess, but it also taught me what we really need to get rid of in this mod.
The planet textures in TOP can be fixed. I just have not had any free time to do so, or free time to do much of anything else.. Hence my retirement from "active" modding. The current TOP planet textures are "quick, and dirty". Meaning they were half assed just to get them to work in a short time. Mystic Spherical uv-mapping is the way to go. If you use IC's method you guarantee wasted space. Unless you know something that i am not aware of. The current TOP textures are the SAME resolution as the Vanilla textures, but 1/2 the file size, and use 1/2 the memory, because all of the wasted space was eliminated. Regardless i had plans to use Planets, and Skybox's unique to SoA 2 based on TOP. Again Real Life had other plans.
