A little something extra...

[Ultraken]

I finally put those 24-bit unit BMP files to good use...




These are 16-bit (R5G6B5) textures loaded from a new MAP file type (type 2) created by a custom MakeMAP utility. I was originally going to create 24-bit (R8G8B8) and 32-bit (A8R8G8B8) types but this looked good enough that it seemed unnecessary.

[Dx.]

I've had the 16bit maps in BzE for many years Ken but we really need to bypass the old palettes.

All new games use 24bit and 32bit large textures today, Bz can handle it well enough, look here:
http://www.battlezoneclub.org/forum/vie ... =78&t=3326

[Firestorm29]

I've had the 16bit maps in BzE for many years Ken but we really need to bypass the old palettes.

All new games use 24bit and 32bit large textures today, Bz can handle it well enough, look here:
http://www.battlezoneclub.org/forum/vie ... =78&t=3326

My question is two-fold for that:

1. How well would BZ handle numerous high-poly units?

2. How well would the common PC playing BZ handle the high-poly units?

I can still remember the time I attempted to max out the units in BZ2 and got some nice bit of slowdown (though later I realized part of the issue was thanks to playing on a Dark Planet map.).

[Ultraken]

I've had the 16bit maps in BzE for many years Ken but we really need to bypass the old palettes.

Thanks a lot, Captain Buzzkill.

All new games use 24bit and 32bit large textures today, Bz can handle it well enough, look here:http://www.battlezoneclub.org/forum/vie ... =78&t=3326

Most games these days use multiple (diffuse, normal, specular) large (1024x1024 or more) compressed (DXTC/S3TC) textures. The 4x4 compressed blocks use 16-bit R5G6B5 color entries but in most cases it's difficult if not impossible to tell in-game with lighting and everything. It might be noticeable on extremely smooth color gradients but dithering or error diffusion can compensate for that. I didn't bother doing that with the simple MakeMAP tool but it wouldn't be that hard to add.

(As an aside, the UDK editor won't even let you pick uncompressed RGB or RGBA formats as far as I can tell. It gives you a lot of options but uncompressed isn't one of them.)

In any case, the difference between 8-bit palettized and 16-bit R5G6B5 is night and day. The difference between 16-bit R5G6B5 and 32-bit X8R8G8B8/A8R8G8B8 would be relatively subtle and most likely not worth the doubled texture size. I'd rather have higher-resolution compressed textures. (If you had asked me that about 10 years ago I would have answered very differently.)

1. How well would BZ handle numerous high-poly units?
2. How well would the common PC playing BZ handle the high-poly units?

I can still remember the time I attempted to max out the units in BZ2 and got some nice bit of slowdown (though later I realized part of the issue was thanks to playing on a Dark Planet map.).

1. The BZ1 renderer has high CPU overhead per polygon so I would expect a significant frame rate drop with a lot going on.
2. Even low-end modern PCs are vastly more powerful than anything available in 1998 so they'd probably do fine.

[Dx.]

The Aircraft in the picture is about 2900 poly, the game handles it well so long as the lod is reduced like in lod3.

What the game doesn't like is high resolution "map" textures, this is where png comes in. PNG format is much more compressed and easier for the game to handle plus it's 32bit and open source.

[Dx.]

Thanks a lot, Captain Buzzkill.

I've been telling ya for 12 years now, this isn't news Ken come on.

[Sno]

So this opens the possibility of a hi-res texture pack?


For minimum system requirements with 1.5.x, we can use my DELL 9300 laptop as a minimum requirement pc, or I could whip out my sisters Compaq PC that had Windows Me on it

[Ultraken]

I've been telling ya for 12 years now, this isn't news Ken come on.

"WHY CAN'T YOU JUST BE HAPPY FOR ME?"

So this opens the possibility of a hi-res texture pack?

It wouldn't be so much a high-res texture pack as a high-quality texture pack, but yes.

For minimum system requirements with 1.5.x, we can use my DELL 9300 laptop as a minimum requirement pc, or I could whip out my sisters Compaq PC that had Windows Me on it

The high-quality textures use the exact same internal format (R5G6B5) as the existing opaque textures in 1.5 and take up only 4MB more memory so the system requirements shouldn't change appreciably. (The irony is that this could have been done way back in 1998, though it would have been a fairly high-end feature then.)

[Dx.]

In any case, the difference between 8-bit palettized and 16-bit R5G6B5 is night and day. The difference between and 32-bit X8R8G8B8/A8R8G8B8 would be relatively subtle and most likely not worth the doubled texture size. I'd rather have higher-resolution compressed textures.

The dither16 from the old acti. tool and 24bit png is quite different.
Not sure how your 16-bit R5G6B5 and the old dither16 (which you probably made too) would differ.

A 2048x1024 png is 1500KB to 1700KB, the same texture in dither16 map format was around 8MB and caused Bz to have a long pause to load it. How would your new 16-bit R5G6B5 do in that case?

[Ultraken]

It'd be the same file size (4 MB), just a different pixel format, so it'd take the same time to load. DXTC format would be 1/4 the size but much harder to generate. (I did find a library, libsquish to make DXT format data so it's always a possibility.)

[Dx.]

DXT has mips but it may take a new editor to work with it, png works on many old editors.
DXT may work out better for terrain texture. Could try it and see...
err.. maybe i got DXT mixed up with dds.

In 3D Studio Max 7 - 2012 the main textures supported are:
bmp
jpg
png
tga
dds

I don't have any editors that works with DXT, not even Photoshop CS5, unless there's a plugin for it.

Here's the png code if you're interested. http://lodev.org/lodepng/

I tried it in png the 2048x1024 = 1670KB and in -565 it's 4MB.

I take it the renderer needs a tweak to use it but Kool look.

[Ultraken]

DXTC/S3TC is a set of related block-compressed texture formats (DXT1 through DXT5). DDS is a file format that is often used to contain texture data in those formats.

I've been trying out stb_image.c since it handles JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF, HDR, and PIC. I switched MakeMAP over to use that instead of my custom BMP reader.

That image looks like the textures are using the wrong pixel format. MakeMAP -565 generates type 2 MAP files that the game can't use correctly without an update to the renderer.

[Dx.]

I take it these will work on objects and terrain but not sprites?

Can one color be used for transparent objects like in a fence, replacing (255, 0 , 255)?

[Ultraken]

The new R5G6B5 format only works properly for opaque textures. You'll want to use the original A4R4G4B4 format for anything with translucency or transparency, including one-bit alpha like foliage or fences. MakeTRN supports chromakey transparency though I haven't tested it yet. (An A1R5G5B5 format would work better for that but it isn't supported.)

[Dx.]

- 888 or -8888 need compression badly.

I tried a 24bit palette in "png" the file size is 59KB and in -888 the "map" format is 64MB.
In other cases for stock textures -888 map is about 2.5 times larger.

[Ultraken]

32-bit MAP files are uncompressed memory dumps meant to be stuffed into a ZFS with LZO compression so they're fairly wasteful on their own; LZO reduces them by half on average. PNG uses more powerful compression library so it naturally does a much better job.

Ultimately I found the 24-bit and 32-bit MAP files disappointing because they look only slightly better than 16-bit but take up twice the memory.

[Ranger]

there's no way yet to add some 1024x or 2048x textures or separate like

Avtank
Avtank_n
Avtank_s

even with ken working hard, it sucks that no one didn't managed yet to unlock and decode BZ source code

[Dx.]

there's no way yet to add some 1024x or 2048x textures or separate like

Avtank
Avtank_n
Avtank_s

even with ken working hard, it sucks that no one didn't managed yet to unlock and decode BZ source code

I've had 2048 x 2048 compressed png 24bit long ago, started a BF2142 map and never got around to redoing the mech animations over.

We've had the Bz code since 2007.

[Ranger]

there's no way yet to add some 1024x or 2048x textures or separate like

Avtank
Avtank_n
Avtank_s

even with ken working hard, it sucks that no one didn't managed yet to unlock and decode BZ source code

I've had 2048 x 2048 compressed png 24bit long ago, started a BF2142 map and never got around to redoing the mech animations over.

We've had the Bz code since 2007.

but there's no way Dx to change at least bz texture codes from BMP to DDS?

i still have the pics here of a high poly razor and grizzly(i think that it was from the cinematic)

[Dx.]

I like compressed png over dds.
High poly models can be done but you also need the LOD system to reduce the poly count for performance, we only have lod 1 and 3 for vehicles and 2 is cockpit, the game was setup to use 5 lods but i don't know why the rest doesn't work. Buildings only use lod 1.