Remove cinder particles from main menu (particle texture location)

Age of Empires II: DE II - Modding
1

Hi, anyone knows where the Main Menu’s cinder particle’s texture is located? I want to make them a transparent texture (so they become invisible) because they’re cool but they don’t look that good with the menu background mod I’m using currently

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2

I wouldn’t be surprised if the cinder particles’s were program generated.
They are simple dots with varying shades, sizes, and opacities of white, yellow, orange, and red.

3

They changed them to snow for the winter, so it must be possible somehow. If not as particle file, then at least a text file where it’s defined.

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4

Did that come with the holiday pack? if so then i can look into it for the snow file

5

I cannot find it too.

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6

It isn’t on the winter pack, nobody knows this? is it even possible?

7

This is the official answer I got on Discord:

ember particles are hardcoded, there is currently no external mod-able config file

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8

It’s frustrating. :cry:

9

Once i open this game and “did nothing”,GPU spiking as **** (filtered)
Plz disable fire embers or any other useless animation
At least add option somewhere
Fire embers contributed to global warming. how dare you .
Make it silent as other edition before game started, please

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10

Good news. Sort of.
I figured out which files control those particles, at least the relevant shader.

go to AoE2DE\resources_common\shaders\
ember.fxo
then go to the d3d11 subfolder
ember_ps_main.pso
ember_vs_main.vso

You can delete them; but if you really want them gone, you should replace them with an empty file of the same name, so that they don’t come back the next time you update.

I tried putting the empty files into a mod, but the game doesn’t want to use the modded ones then. So you have to manually delete/replace them.

If anyone happens to have a backup of the game files from the period during the winter holidays, please let me know. I tried to get the old files from steamdb, but even with those shaders, I couldn’t get the snow particles.

EDIT: I found another way to disable them.
Try this mod: https://www.ageofempires.com/mods/details/15618

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11

Good job Zetnus,really appreciate!
This mod reduce my GPU usage from 90% to 80% at main menu.
But other menus only take half usage ,so something hardcoded still works behind i guess.

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12

Thank you very much Zetnus. Switching between in-game menus is so much faster after installing the No Embers mod.