=== Parallel Universe Patch v1.0.5 === -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This document contains the most important information about the Gothic 3 Parallel Universe Patch. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- == Important notes == - This is an unofficial patch, therefore you use it at your own risk! The author cannot be held responsible for anything that happens while using it. - The Parallel Universe Patch requires the Gothic 3 Community Patch 1.75.14. - For optimal performance, it is very important to install Gothic 3 on an SSD. In addition, the pak archives in the Gothic 3 data directory should be packed without compression (see "Optimize installation" for more information). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- == Description == The Parallel Universe Patch originates from a parallel universe where Gothic 3 isn't plagued by performance problems and bugs, or at least is an approximation of it. Gothic 3 has always been plagued by bugs, stutters and long loading times. The former has already been mostly fixed by the Community Patch 1.75, whereas the latter two are still an unsolved annoyance. This is where the Parallel Universe Patch comes into play, which optimizes, parallelizes or replaces inefficient parts of the Gothic 3 engine. This drastically reduces stutters and loading times, so that for the first time a hopefully almost stutter-free and less wait-intensive game experience becomes possible. In addition, some of the remaining bugs have been fixed and the error logging has been extended. Thanks to the extended error logging, crashes can now be analyzed in a practical way and hopefully even more bugs can be fixed in the future. A comprehensive list of all changes can be found in the Changelog_en.txt file. == Compatibility == In principle, the Parallel Universe Patch should be compatible with all mods, since it does not make any changes to the game data, but only changes to the Gothic 3 engine. It should also be compatible with the Update Pack, since the changes to the parts of the Gothic 3 engine modified by the Update Pack are not applied to the files on disk, but at runtime in memory. == Installation == The only requirement for installing the Parallel Universe Patch is the Community Patch 1.75.14. The installation order of Parallel Universe Patch in relation to other mods and the update pack does not matter. It is NOT necessary to start a new game for all changes to become active, i.e. existing save games can still be used. == Optimize installation == A major cause for the stutters and the long loading times in Gothic 3 is that the loading of resources (textures, meshes, ...) is done in the same thread as all other activities of the engine. The Parallel Universe Patch partially offloads this to background threads, but for optimal performance it is still important to make resource loading as efficient as possible. The first and most important step is to install Gothic 3 on an SSD. The much shorter access times and read transfer rates of an SSD lead to an enormous improvement compared to an HDD. The second step is, after installing all mods, to pack the pak archives in the Gothic 3 data directory, which contain the resources, without compression. This step is optional, but brings another noticeable improvement if you make the effort, which is limited thanks to MadFaTal's helpful G3CU tool: https://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/threads/1225965 Nameless Hero: Why should I use uncompressed pak archives on an SSD? A pak archive combines several files or a directory tree into one file. Optionally the pak format offers the possibility to compress the content of each individual file. This was useful in the past with HDDs, because decompression took less time than reading the larger uncompressed data from the HDD. With SSDs, however, this has reversed, i.e. the time you save when reading the compressed and thus smaller file is less than the time you have to spend on decompression. == Reporting errors == The Parallel Universe patch will be made available to the general public for the first time with its release. It is therefore not ruled out that bugs and unexpected behavior may occur during gameplay. In order to make further improvements, please report such bugs in the Parallel Universe Patch release thread in the World of Gothic forum under the following link: https://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/threads/1587508 If the observed bug is a crash, i.e. the infamous "Where is the guru?" error dialog, please be sure to also upload the corresponding Gothic 3 crash report when reporting the bug in the forum: Gothic 3 stores the crash log file of the last crash under Documents\Gothic3\Lastlog_GE3.log. Logs of previous crashes are located in the same directory and are numbered in ascending order. == Credits == The Parallel Universe Patch was created by George. Many thanks for their help to: - MadFaTal - Askanius - Gregox - Robespier - Seeev - Knighter - Hero3000 - Feyn - chris-40 - controlled - Community Story Project Team - NicoDE Libraries used: - AsmJit: https://github.com/asmjit/asmjit - AsmTK: https://github.com/asmjit/asmtk - diStorm3: https://github.com/gdabah/distorm - FMOD Core: https://www.fmod.com/ - EASTL: https://github.com/electronicarts/EASTL - libdeflate: https://github.com/ebiggers/libdeflate