Make SWTOR run like buttah

[pandalishus]

www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=154568

Not for the not-technically-minded. There are some pretty serious steps here. Near the end of the OP is a link to a later post that actually uses a larger RAM disk and loads more assets into it. Append "&page=71" to the link above, and look for the third thread by "Caras" to see my awesomesauce BATCH file.

EDIT: the next post right after my "awesomesauce" batch file links to a batch file of such epic proportions that" awesomesauce" cannot even begin to describe its... awesomesauceness.

[Talo]

I scanned the article, but I wanted to just ask: making those changes - is this something that is reversible, with ease?

Also, the OP seemed to have the script for the ram drive setting to 1500 MB or 2gB. Am I missing something? Earlier he said the requirement was 6GB of RAM. Where do the other 4 factor in?

[Talo]

Alrighty, I'm looking closer at the instructions and I want to make sure that I'm reading them correctly.

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Creating Folder Junctions
1. Find our where your SWTOR is located, As an example my install is located on S:\Applications\Star Wars-The Old Republic\

2. Open your Start Panel click Run and type in %userprofile%\AppData\Local

3. Scrolling down you should see a folder called SWTOR, open it and Copy the settings folder to <SWTOR Install Location>\Star Wars-The Old Republic\SWTOR\retailclient\

4. Delete DiskCacheArena if it exists in <SWTOR Install Location>\Star Wars - The Old Republic\SWTOR\

5. RENAME the SWTOR folder in Local to SWTOR_Original

6. Run cmd with Admin Rights change <SWTOR Install Location> to your SWTOR Install Location.

Code:
mkdir T:\SWTOR\swtor
mklink /J "%userprofile%\AppData\Local\SWTOR" "T:\SWTOR\"
mklink /J "T:\SWTOR\swtor\settings" "<SWTOR Install Location>\Star Wars - The Old Republic\SWTOR\retailclient\settings"
mklink "<SWTOR Install Location>\Star Wars - The Old Republic\SWTOR\DiskCacheArena" "T:\DiskCacheArena"

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My question is on #6 there. When I change <SWTOR Install Location> to the SWTOR install location, do they mean the newly named "SWTOR_Original" install location (because this is still technically the installation directory) or the new-created directory "T:\SWTOR\swtor"?

[Talo]

Damn, answered myself again! Why do I even open my mouth?

Another poster followed up with:

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Yup you do, just got everything figured out myself after finding this topic last night. So for the default installation route, it should look like this:


mkdir T:\SWTOR\swtor
mklink /J "C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\SWTOR" "T:\SWTOR\"
mklink /J "T:\SWTOR\swtor\settings" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\BioWare\Star Wars - The Old Republic\swtor\settings"
mklink "C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\BioWare\Star Wars - The Old Republic\swtor\DiskCacheArena" "T:\DiskCacheArena"

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[pandalishus]

Ignore all that. Track down the post I talked about where I had an "awesomesauce" batch file. (I post under "Caras"). Starts on page 71, and right that the bottom, you'll see the OP saying something like "your batch files works, but didn't you see our super bad-ass one?" Just follow that link to his unbelievably awesome file. Once you do that (and download the RAM disk software they talk about in the original post), you can just edit the batch file for your particular setup, and then run it once. Then you run it again before patching to undo everything, or to set it all back up if you've restarted. It's really a rather amazing script they've written, that promises to protect you from errors, etc. You don't even have to tell the file where SWTOR is installed. It checks the registry for the path. HIGHLY recommended.


EDIT: Here's the direct link to his "All-in-one" script: www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=2892331

[Talo]

Quite the script! I'll be testing this out on my machine tomorrow morning. I've got 8GB on 64-bit Windows, so I think I'll be fine to use the 4GB size. I'm going to go ahead and include the FxAsset and Asset Files, too. Is this how you set yours up?

[Talo]

So, the script seemed to run with no issues. However, I barely noticed any difference in-game. I was on Corellia and still got the same stuttering on Tram rides and when entering and walking through high polygon count instances.

Outside my speeder and the passing environment seemed to go "slightly" smoother, but that was about it.

Did you see more significant performance boost? If so, in what situations?

[pandalishus]

We chatted about this in the raid, but for those who weren't there, my experience was the same as yours. No noticeable difference, but I also didn't notice a performance hit and things at least *seem* smoother. There's been a lot of talk about BW's gfx engine being in pretty bad shape (apparently it straight up stops rendering items while it waits for new data, even if it already has the data to render other objects). I gather that these fixes are most impressive on machines that are top-of-the-line. Some of the comments in the thread talk about 80 fos setups, where I rarely get over 30. So it may be that our bottleneck is elsewhere. That said, it's not hurting anything, and if I'm able to eek out ever 3-4% better performance, I'll take it

[Talo]

Definitely! And you can't argue with the price either!