Rome: Total War

Rome: Total War

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Performance + debug cam mods [2025]
By _______NAACAL_____
THIS ONLY WORKS FOR STEAM VERSION AND NOT THE CD/RETAIL VERSION
This is meant for higher spec (4 and more core CPUs) that can handle the game without arbitrary pauses in the code.
Doubles if not triples the framerate but that's if your CPU is powerful enough (especially for Ryzen CPUs that used to be bottlenecked easily).


Downloads

Recommended: dxvk version (to use Vulkan)
https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/220b8cdb-11cd-418c-a5e4-ee443d28d287

dgVoodoo2 version (to use DirectX11)
https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/d8acf403-8836-45b9-875e-c6f2c5e1226f

For singleplayer, if you don't care about compatibility and want as much fps as possible:
https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/f8154562-dded-49fc-987d-49e58af21565

Standalone (non-mp compatible) dll if you want to test dxvk (works with dxvk 2.5.3):
https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/dd6b0e97-1347-4e46-a731-1da5e44f4894
The dll needs a wrapper such as dxvk or dgVoodoo2. The dll will not work without them.
dxvk download if you want to test newer releases: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases

Debug cam (increases camera height from 3-40 to 0-300m)
Vanilla
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UeGcR7-VBT9qpJeEZb1LWJoXvFjg9RM2/view?usp=sharing

Barbarian Invasion
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11PdD3tRJVsQAAeTMT8WoNgjpFC-t-jo5/view?usp=sharing

Alexander (has two files, testappa is opened by Steam and RomeTW-ALX is used by mods)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1de4Z_NAk2c-dA80N4zaAlKm1jUYKiYf7/view?usp=sharing

How to install
All of them can be installed by dragging and dropping them in RTW folder and replacing RomeTW.exe with the patched one to install debug camera mod. To uninstall, delete dbghelp.dll and verify in game files on Steam to revert back to vanilla exe.

Why this works?
The dbghelp.dll file is being put in place of a debug file that has somehow been used in the Steam version of RTW without any debugger attached this entire time on top of RTW code forcing arbitrary function calls that pause the game (at the time this was necessary to not fry old CPUs and make textures/sound load properly. For context, with this mod I'm getting 30-40% CPU usage on Ryzen 3 3100 and on multiple cores too). Something similar has been used in Dark Souls' DSFix to get the game to not run at locked 30fps anymore.
By concept, this should not work with multiplayer but through rigorous network tests with 8 players inside 15k+ troop count battles, a stable version with solid (if double the fps counts as solid idk what would) performance gains has been made.
Shoutout to everyone for putting up with that one Saturday evening where 3 games crashed after waiting for 20+ minutes.

Known issues
  • Campaigns by themselves run smooth but camera drops the framerate to 30fps and lower on mods.
    dxvk version seems to have fixed this issue.
  • Potential rendering/flickering issues have been reported, don't know what the cause is yet but it's likely low spec PCs may struggle with this mod.
  • Camera stuttering may happen on larger (12k-15k+ troop count) battles Seems to happen under some dgVoodoo configurations, may have to use the prepackaged dgVoodoo config if that can help.
  • Potential desync issues in 4vs4 multiplayer lobbies especially if non-compatibility version is used. Warn people ahead of time or if you have issues connecting to the lobby to begin with and get error with numbers starting from 12 or 6 then change to compatibility dll if you haven't yet. Fixed with latest version.
  • FMV videos are forced to have 1ms interrupts, the dll may make them stutter as a result of breaking that so intro videos may sound choppy. A non-issue for those skipping intros, the rest of the sounds seem fine.
  • Projectile trails on 10k+ troop count may draw slightly late as the engine's supposed to stop to draw the arrows, only really visible if you have projectile trail mods installed and a lot of archers are firing at the same time. Trail effects from rain may be slightly broken, now slightly looking like original Medieval.
  • Cursor lag present for low spec PCs.

To-do/wish list
Need to implement a dgVoodoo-less solution,
Non-debug file dll with autohook that loads into both Steam and CD versions
Make a custom d3d8.dll/d3d9.dll file with this performance fix (d3dto9 has the source code available but I couldn't get it to work with RTW by itself)
Target specific graphics-hook32.dll function calls to maximize performance without affecting multiplayer
   
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Videos
Youtube link showing 4v4 CWB in 50-60fps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSeHl_cXtwI

3v3 31k battle showcase:
https://youtu.be/wGzl7tqxPt8

Benchmark between performance mod, Steam and retail/CD versions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OQxfvigSmk
11 Comments
_____MARS_______ 17 Aug @ 7:32pm 
Even on my crappy laptop, I'm getting great fps with 12k + troops, just need to replace my dbghelp.dll! Also the camera works on old standalone mods such as Zhanguo TW but then again its a BI mod.
lavrval 16 Aug @ 9:16pm 
Unfortunately, I could not get the hack to work. Renaming files or modifying the batch script file did not work for me.

This is alright. Will be playing with default camera settings then.

Thank you any way.
_______NAACAL_____  [author] 16 Aug @ 8:14pm 
@lavrval Whaaaaaat may possibly have to rename the batch script file to launch the testappa.exe instead of RomeTW-ALX.exe. Otherwise I have no idea what is happening, like I renamed the modified testappa.exe to RomeTW-ALX.exe on top of having a modified testappa.exe.
lavrval 16 Aug @ 8:08pm 
Gave it a shot with some complication though.

Rome Total War Alexander folder has both RomeTW-ALX.exe and testappa.exe.

I`ve replaced the original RomeTW-ALX.exe with renamed testappa.exe. Also, replaced the original testappa.exe with the one from the link.

Did not work unfortunately.
_______NAACAL_____  [author] 16 Aug @ 7:29pm 
@lavrval just rename testappa.exe to RomeTW-ALX.exe and you should be good to go.
_______NAACAL_____  [author] 16 Aug @ 4:44pm 
@lavrval hm weird I'll try out a mod if that by any chance uses RomeTW-ALX.exe instead of testappa.exe, that's odd.
lavrval 16 Aug @ 4:37pm 
Thank you for looking into this. I appreciate it!
I play barbarian empires hellenistic legacy mod that uses Alex exe. I do use TW camera only. So I grabbed testappa.exe from the link and dropped into the Rome Total War Alexander folder. Unfortunately, camera still limited by the default height. I may be missing a step here but cannot figure this out.

I did test your camera hack with original RTW and it does the job.
_______NAACAL_____  [author] 16 Aug @ 1:08pm 
@lavrval I hope you're using TW camera as that's the one camera I modded for ALX (Steam) lol I don't play ALX pretty much at all

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14U76rb3hi-RFYJO1Z_O7e7_HdNtH-TpN/view?usp=sharing
lavrval 16 Aug @ 11:38am 
Camera hack is very nice feature to have. Is there a chance to have RomeTW-ALX.exe modified as well? One of modes I play go with this exe only. I tried to rename RomeTW-ALX.exe as RomeTW.exe but no magic happened. RTW launched usual way, which is understandable.
[TITANS]Antiochos 15 Aug @ 11:11pm 
Thanks, Naacal!!!