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Re: New Build (2011-02-15)

Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2011 3:12 pm
by Ultraken
A fancy new renderer would need fancy new game assets to take advantage of it and a new asset pipeline to load them. At some point, it would be easier to start over from scratch...

Re: New Build (2011-02-15)

Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2011 6:23 pm
by Red Devil
i think you've done excellent and incredible work, Ken. 8-)

Re: New Build (2011-02-15)

Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2011 6:53 pm
by Zax
Ultraken wrote:A fancy new renderer would need fancy new game assets to take advantage of it and a new asset pipeline to load them. At some point, it would be easier to start over from scratch...
BZ3

Re: New Build (2011-02-15)

Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2011 8:30 pm
by Commando
Good luck with that one.

Re: New Build (2011-02-15)

Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2011 10:21 pm
by Zenophas
Red Devil wrote:i think you've done excellent and incredible work, Ken. 8-)
^This.

Re: New Build (2011-02-15)

Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2011 12:55 pm
by Apollo
Battlezone doesn't need all the fancy shaders of modern game engines, it just needs to work well at what it does and allow a little room for growth. Such things as 32bit color, png support, MPI, lighting, mod switching, a better sound and gamespy api. Maybe even long name support.

If you wanted better shadows, make a custom shadow per object and assign it via odf.

Re: New Build (2011-02-15)

Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2011 6:00 pm
by Zenophas
Apollo wrote:Battlezone doesn't need all the fancy shaders of modern game engines, it just needs to work well at what it does and allow a little room for growth. Such things as 32bit color, png support, MPI, lighting, mod switching, a better sound and gamespy api. Maybe even long name support.

If you wanted better shadows, make a custom shadow per object and assign it via odf.
I agree with this. By PNG, do you mean that as an alternative to MAP textures? Cause' MAPS really awful.

Re: New Build (2011-02-15)

Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2011 9:19 pm
by Apollo
Png is compressed and can use an alpha channel, which would be good for new assets for the game.
Map format has better size for 512x512, larger textures png is far smaller and larger map files cause the game to pause for loading.

Re: New Build (2011-02-15)

Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2012 5:52 pm
by Ultraken
MAP files are basically raw binary data with a relatively simple format:
  • width (16 bits)
  • type (16 bits)
  • height (32 bits)
  • data (varies)
Width and height describbe the width and height of the texture and should be the same.
If type is 0, data contains width * height 8-bit color indices.
If type is 1, data contains width * height 16-bit color values in A4R4G4B4 format.

MAP files didn't need compression because ZFS already did that for it. That doesn't help so much for mods, though...

Re: New Build (2011-02-15)

Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2012 7:36 pm
by Apollo
12bit tanks skins are far better but i would rather see map format replaced, along with any palettes. (guess that's a 1.6 thing)

Would you make a rally point for objects created from the recycler and factory?

Re: New Build (2011-02-15)

Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2012 7:51 pm
by Ultraken
I'd need the original art assets to build a full set of 16-bit or 32-bit textures, and those may well be lost forever. I wish I had burned them onto a CD or something back when I had access...

Re: New Build (2011-02-15)

Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2012 8:04 pm
by Apollo
Well we can use the 8bit planet textures for a while converted to 24bit and later gets an artist to remake them.

Re: New Build (2011-02-15)

Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 12:46 am
by Ultraken
That would improve things slightly since palette values are currently crushed down to 16 bit (R5G6B5).