DetailLevel

A graphics detail level — the one the player has chosen, or the lowest one at which an animation is drawn.

Animation detail threshold

Specification — Animation detail threshold

Applies to: AnimType
File: art.ini
Section: [<ObjectType ID>]
Value: integer
When omitted: 0

The animation is drawn only while the player’s own detail setting has reached this figure. That setting runs from 0 at its lowest through 2 at its highest, so 1 drops the animation at the lowest setting, 2 keeps it only at the highest, and anything above 2 hides it at every setting. At zero the test never hides anything. A purely decorative animation carries a high figure so that it is the first thing to go on a slow machine.

The test governs drawing alone. An animation held back by it is still created, still advances through its stages, still counts its passes down and still applies whatever damage, craters, scorch marks or tiberium growth it carries — only the artwork is skipped. Raising the figure therefore trims drawing work without changing what happens in the game.

The stand-in a structure’s animation leaves behind under the fog of war makes the same test, so an animation the setting hides is missing from the remembered picture as well as from the live one.

How faded the animation is drawn is gated separately, by its own TranslucencyDetailLevel; this figure decides only whether it is drawn at all.

[MYPILE_A] ; an idle animation for a barracks
Image=MYPILE_A
LoopStart=0
LoopEnd=8
LoopCount=-1
Rate=300
Surface=yes
DetailLevel=1 ; not drawn at the lowest detail setting

Chosen detail level

Specification — Chosen detail level

Applies to: client settings
File: SUN.INI
Section: [Options]
Value: integer
When omitted: 2

The figure runs from 0 for low through 2 for high, and the read holds it to that range, so a figure outside it is pulled back to the nearer end rather than reaching the renderer. The in-game game controls dialog offers the three positions and writes the choice back to sun.ini.

Each step turns on more of the drawing work rather than scaling one dial. Smoke and spark particles, and every laser beam, are skipped entirely at 0. Cell lighting is quantized at every setting the dialog can reach, coarsely at 0 and least so at 2. Only 2 draws the sonic wave beam and the ion blast flare, applies a particle’s translucency, and lets a particle system cast its spotlights.

An animation is drawn only where the setting has reached the animation’s own threshold; DetailLevel on an AnimType covers that test, which the remembered picture left under the fog of war repeats.

See also — TranslucencyDetailLevel, Translucency, GameSpeed