Max LOD file - Homeworld

Description

'LOD' stands for Level Of Detail. As the camera moves away from a ship Homeworld will switch out its model for a lower detail one to improve performance. The transition is jarring, especially at higher resolutions. Modern PCs are more than capable of handling Homeworld's simple models so this isn't necessary any more for most players.

It's a really easy mod that's been done many times before but it's surprisingly hard to find these days. If you look for information about how to do it yourself you'll just get links to long-gone forum threads. There are a few mods you can track down which do disable LOD switching but they also do a lot of other things you might not want. I spent way too long figuring this out for my own use and am releasing it so that others don't have to go through the same thing.

Installation

Place the folders in the Homeworld install directory (the folder where homeworld.exe is).

Don't want it applied across the board? Each .lod file controls the LOD for an individual ship or object so it's easy to pick and choose which ships you'd like to have always looking their best. The file names are mostly self explanatory and they're organised in folders by faction (r1 = Kushan, r2 = Taiidan, p1 = Turanic, p2 = Kadesh).

Warning

Loading old saves after installation can cause crashes. Don't start using this halfway through the campaign!

Tested with a full playthrough on the original Homeworld (patched to 1.05). It may or may not work fully on other patches. It may or may not work on Homeworld Classic from the Remastered Collection. Let me know.

DIY

Here's how you can replicate this mod.

You will need a program to extract Homeworld's .big files (e.g. WinBigw), a program to automate find-and-replace edits to many text files (e.g. Notepad++), and the file Homeworld.big which is in your Homeworld install directory.

1) Prepare an empty folder to work in
2) Using WinBigw, extract Homeworld.big to your folder
3) Delete everything in the folder except for files with the .lod extension and the folders containing them
4) Using Notepad++, press Ctrl+Shift+F to bring up "Find in Files" and set the directory to your working folder
5) Replace all instances of "LOD1" with "LOD0"
6) Replace all instances of "LOD2" with "LOD0"
7) Replace all instances of "LOD3" with "LOD0"
8) Replace all instances of "LOD4" with "LOD0"