Soulstorm Turbo Mode for Dawn of War

Soulstorm Turbo Mode

This is as the name suggest, only for Soulstorm.

Made by Norwegian_Loki

What is Soulstorm Turbo Mode?

What is this, and what does it do?

It will be a big boost to your game. It makes the game load much faster giving it the ability to use the memory unlimited. Before it was locked at 2 GB, which would make the game crash to desktop on big mods. It also Improves the game graphics to make it more high resolution, and improves the quality to make it more smooth to look at. It does not make the game skins HD. For that you need mods with HD skins. But if you use this the HD skins will look ten times better in the game. This makes the game require more to work. So, if you have an old toaster for a PC your game might crash. Fear not. In the file I will include a folder with the toaster settings. So you can still have faster and better Soulstorm without the improved graphics.

Soulstorm Turbo was made for the DVD version, but works for steam too. I have had 32 people test this for me with no problems so far on both. So I know this works, But just in case take backups of any files before overwriting anything.

How to install? DVD Version.

First install the latest patches for the game or the whole game will crash. Yes, they are included in the files you lazy bum. With English,Spanish, German and Russian patches. You can find other languages here. There are two for each and you have to install both. It will tell you the correct order if you try to install in the wrong order.

Then Copy the mod files to your Soulstorm directory (where it is installed). You need to extract the files there. I used 7zip, but other programs will work fine. Press yes to overwrite files, but make sure to create a backup copy of them just in case. Now you are done.

Go to the improved file GraphicsConfig then go adjust the screensize to your game. It even let's you test it. Now you can start playing. Enjoy your "new" game.

How to install? Steam Version.

Due to people not liking the official patches on their steam version since steam has it's own update system, I will respect that and have therefore created one just for steam. It gives the same benefits, but now there is no need to use the official patch originally made for the DVD version.

To install just Copy the mod files to your Soulstorm directory (where it is installed by steam). You need to extract the files there. I used 7zip, but other programs will work fine. Press yes to overwrite files. You should make bacup of these files just to be on the safe side.

Go to the improved file GraphicsConfig then go adjust the screensize to your game. It even let's you test it. Now you can start playing. Enjoy your "new" game.

Does it work with UA LAA patch?

Yes, but only if you install this mod first, then install the LAA patch. Not the other way around.

TroubleShooting.

If the Game crashes to desktop, then your pc was not strong enough to handle the improved graphics most likely. There will be a new folder called toaster. Copy the file in that one to you Soulstorm installation folder. Say yes to overwrite. Now your pc should work fine again. If not, good thing you had those backups. Right? RIGHT?

Large Address Aware: This is a problem for some 32-bit versions of Windows. If you have 64 this does not apply to you. There is this webpage where a guy has a solution for you. He tells you here.

How to get more boost to your game?

Getting greedy, are we? well there are some fun tricks you can do yourself.

A little Performance Boost, and a tiny bit better framerates

You can't get much because you need to have relics tools to remake the game, but here is a way to do this. Thank's to Excogitatoris-Logica for this tutorial.

Important note!: This requires at least 3 cpu cores to work. It will not make any improvements on systems with dual or single core cpu's.

Make a shortcut to your game executable. Right click it and select Properties.
On the Shortcut tab, edit its Target field and add the following before the existing path between quotes and separating it with a space:

%windir%\system32\cmd.exe /c start "DoW" /high /affinity 6

While on it, also add this after the path, also separated with a space:

-nomovies -modname %Your_Favorite_Mod_Folder_Name%

So when you first see it, it will look like this:

"C:\Program Files\THQ\Dawn Of War - Soulstorm\Soulstorm.exe"

Now it will look like this:

%windir%\system32\cmd.exe /c start "DoW" /high /affinity 6 "C:\Program Files\THQ\Dawn Of War - Soulstorm\Soulstorm.exe" -nomovies -modname %Your_Favorite_Mod_Folder_Name%

Click OK. That shortcut now launches a specific mod bypassing the intro movies, setting the Soulstorm executable on high system resource priority and set to not work on CPU core 1. As most applications load on the first core by default this core is busier and has less free cycles to run cpu intensive apps (such as DoW). By avoiding running DoW on the busier Core 1 altogether you can get a slight performance boost.
For example, if you want to make a shortcut with all that code to the vanilla game which also has a "mod name", 'DXP2':

%windir%\system32\cmd.exe /c start "DoW" /high /affinity 6 "C:\Program Files\THQ\Dawn Of War - Soulstorm\Soulstorm.exe" -nomovies -modname dxp2

Misc Tweaks & Fixes:

- Right click your Soulstorm executable. On the Compatibility tab, select Windows XP SP3. Click Apply. This helps with performance and stability by a tiny bit.
- If on Windows Vista/7 (8 unconfirmed), on that same Compatibility tab, check the "Disable desktop composition" checkbox. This will disable the transparency When Soulstorm is running and prevent it from freezing when alt-tabbing. Works partially on the latest Steam version update. I'm looking into it.
-If running Windows Vista/7/8, run in compatibility mode for Windows XP SP2.

Credits:

Kekoulis

Thudmeizer

Gambit

Lemon Tree

Excogitatoris-Logica

UnsocialLobster

BlackRangerXIII

and Thudmeizer Mod Team for testing, and support.

Thank you all for helping me make this.