Now I'm really just showing off.

[bigbadbogie]

Alright. I've put up a bug-report. Just the way you like it. It includes a test map which should show you exactly what I'm on about.

You need anything else? Don't hesitate to let me know.

[Red Devil]

i'm impressed/amazed he gets anything done with 2 demanding toddlers creating havoc around him, really. i know i wouldn't.

[MrTwosheds]

When I get time, I will try and find out if vertex transparency now works with sky domes... its not a fix as such but it might help smooth visual transitions on the horizon more without being stuck with a static dome texture.
You should now also be able to make a multi object/texture dome with its own blending fog object using transparent .png.
Not a perfect solution, but it might look nice anyway.

[TheJamsh]

Looks cool! I'm looking forward to playing it as your SP campaigns always have something fresh in them.

I see what N1 means though, the problem of using *OMG SUP3R HD* 2048*2048 textures on everything is that without shaders and fancy lighting etc, they start to look very gritty and 'tile-y'. Mip-Maps help a little bit, but you guys all remember how frigging awesome ZEMOD looked? And I don't think Space ever went above 512*512 for his textures. Depends what grid-size you're using too though...

That said, if you're willing to put the effort in, go for it As for the HUD, sometimes just a new Colorize.tga can go a long way (:

[jaydenbz2]

BBB, Reduce texture size to optimal, this will reduce artefacts which are dominant in your screenshots.

Bz2 materials don't use very advanced shaders, the engine as far as I know makes what you're doing a fools gamble, sure, increase model density, but you don't have access to no diffuse maps and all that advanced multisampling.

Even AAA games average 512-1k textures, putting 2k on everything or whatever whigh value is just non-optimal and silly, EVEN FILM does not use non-optimal textures, it's all about what you actually need.

The best work I've seen from you is FS and QF...where everything wasn't so badly done high res, no-one wants high res like this trust me, giv'em good old fashioned game art, right now you are breaking rules everywhere...and not in a good way.

[Nielk1]

If he keeps it up something like 66% of the community won't be able to play his mod.

[bigbadbogie]

DXTing a texture halves its resolution. That means that nearly all textures are 1024x1024. Only a few skydome textures are larger. The only way to DXT a 4096x4096 file is to reduce mips to 1, but it is still reduced to 2048x2048 - and that's for the entire surrounding sky.

If the community have decent gaming computers they won't have any trouble playing the mod. I think I've optimised everything pretty well. It works without much FPS drop on a gaming rig from 2007.

[Nielk1]

DXTing a texture halves its resolution. That means that nearly all textures are 1024x1024. Only a few skydome textures are larger. The only way to DXT a 4096x4096 file is to reduce mips to 1, but it is still reduced to 2048x2048 - and that's for the entire surrounding sky.

If the community have decent gaming computers they won't have any trouble playing the mod. I think I've optimised everything pretty well. It works without much FPS drop on a gaming rig from 2007.

A large portion of the community are foreigners (as per to the production of the game) such as yourself and have **** computers.
Also, that's wholly incorrect, using a mip of 1 makes it only have 1 level of full size, other mips preserve the base size and half it per additional mip. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the dxts work.

[bigbadbogie]

I know how DXTs work. As the player moves farther away from an texture in the game, it fades to lower resolution mips. I've seen what happens when there is only 1 mip. It gets really strange. It's fine for skydomes though because they don't move in relation to the player.

I was under the impression that DXTs automatically reduce the size of the textures, 4 pixels to 1, regardless of mips.

If people have **** computers, then they wouldn't be able to play any modern games. What exactly does being 'foreign' to America have do with quality of computers?

[Ded10c]

If they have **** computers, they can't play modern AAA games. Who's to say they do? All you know for sure is that they play BZ2.

[Zero Angel]

I was under the impression that DXTs automatically reduce the size of the textures, 4 pixels to 1, regardless of mips.

You might have the wrong idea. DXT compression takes each 4x4 block of pixels (16 pixels total) and palettes it down to 4 discrete colors, it's still a 4x4 grid of pixels but the maximum amount of colors that can be displayed is 4 specific ones per 16 pixel block.

Loss of color fidelity is more noticable on low-resolution textures that are designed a certain way (ie: DXT compression affects hadean textures a lot because they have an 'iridescent' look that uses a lot of subtle colors, and because they're already low-resolution). See the pictures here to see how DXT compression affects colors.

[MrTwosheds]

What it actually does is make a big (long) image of the original and adds an image 1/4 of the size next to it, then another 1/4 the size of that etc etc until its got a 4 pixel blob.
If you are not seeing the original its probably because its just too big to ever be used at your native screen resolution. Make each texture of a size where the original is actually used when viewed close up. For most of the common textures this will probably be 1024x1024.
2048x2048 works for the sky because its so big, but if you use it for terrain then 99% of the time your only going to be seeing the 2nd or 3rd mipmap, which just gives the impression of the textures being poor all the time.

[bigbadbogie]

If they have **** computers, they can't play modern AAA games. Who's to say they do? All you know for sure is that they play BZ2.

Well, if they're using computers from 1999, it's safe to say that they won't be able to play QF2.

@ZA+MTS - Interesting. So in order to increase texture quality, I have to reduce the resolution? That sounds crazy.

[Ded10c]

My other home desktop is from 2004. It plays games on Unreal fairly nicely, but struggles with Source. I dread to think what more complex engines would do to it.

I think you're overestimating power of the typical computer.

[bigbadbogie]

QF2 was/is being made on a gaming computer from 2010 that can play games such as Crysis, Assassins Creed and Farcry 3 on medium-high graphics levels without an FPS drop.

It's for gaming computers. I realise that might limit the audience among the community, but I'm not about to undo years of work on HD assets to accommodate old-timers who can't let go of their Pentium IIIs.