[http://sourceforge.net/p/ufoai/feature-requests/503 Item 503] imported from sourceforge.net tracker on 2013-01-28 20:22:06

I am for optimized execution of things & I am for using ressources wisely to achieve the best performance.
That is why I am voting for subsections in the material files & volunteer for creating & maintaining those...
I simply do not understand why we should load all the property textures used in a Harvester only, when we are playing a Corrupter map ?!
We should introduce subsections inside the material files like [Common], [Harvester], [Corrupter] - we can name those however we like, but it would be best to use similar names, like the ones we already can choose from in Skirmish game. [like 'druglord' or 'river' or '+bigufo Corrupter' or '+bigufo Corrupter' in the case of tropic for example]
We do NOT need any additional files for that & we do NOT need a subsection for each tile of a rma map, just max. that many subsections, like you can also choose from in Skirmish game mode for that particular map.
We would not even need to make that many subsections, because we could have a [Common] subsection, which is executed for all the e.g. tropic maps, but the [+bigufo Harvester] subsection is just loaded into memory & executed if we fight the tropic +bigufo Harvester map.

I hope I explained this a little bit better this time !?
===== Comments Ported from Sourceforge =====

====== mcr2010 (2010-07-06 09:21:48) ======

From the coder's perspective this should not mean too much work, but would be a big performance & individualization possiblity gain for our maps (only really needed property textures would be loaded, more free texture slots would be available on each map, property textures could be [but would not need to be] finetuned for each of the 'submaps', so we could create a even bigger level of variety inside one 'common theme', maps would be loaded quicker as nood needed subsections inside the material file would simply be ignored)

PLEASE take some minutes to think about this & about our possibilities if we would have this.
====== tlh2000 (2010-07-06 17:38:43) ======

did i answer this already before?

no subsections - we should only load those textures that we need. subsection would a) compilate the code even more and more importantly b) confuse the mappers even more and most importantly c) must be updated each time we add new ufo or other type