32 bit art for allegiance

[Raveen]

Just how much of a performance hit are we expecting here? Probably less than using the HiRes textures causes I would guess. As it's very easy to have different versions of the texture files used in alleg I see no possible issues of locking people with low end computers out of Alleg by enabling 24bit textures.

Would there be any benefit in moving to a more efficient file format for textures? I suppose I'll do some reading and see what I come up with.

[Zapper]

I would rather have a better UI design tool, then 16mil colors that only work on 10% of the community machine park.

Please us the time to optimize the UI for the hirez, I think we are ready to make 1024 UI.

[Orion]

QUOTE (mdvalley @ Dec 21 2006, 12:23 AM) For the alephs and build spheres, Alleg uses a trick called alpha blending. In short, it’s a way to make stuff semi-transparent without messing with alpha settings in the texture. We MIGHT be able to pull it off for a ship (or part of one), but it would need some code wrangling, and something in the mdl file to tell what’s transparent and what’s not (as well as code to parse that in, and Alleg’s mdl parser is WEIRD.)

That's not all, you also have to disable Zwrite and do Z order manually.. that means changing the order things are drawn in if they have transparent components. Also, if we dont use a color key (such as Black) or the alpha channel, you can only make individual components transparent if they are in seperate draw calls.

QUOTE (Raveen @ Dec 21 2006, 03:20 AM) Just how much of a performance hit are we expecting here?

Probably insignificant, especially on machines built within the last 5 years.

[Raveen]

QUOTE (Orion @ Dec 21 2006, 08:44 PM) Probably insignificant, especially on machines built within the last 5 years.

That's what I figured.

Would it be worth moving from bmps to tgas for the texture files?

[mdvalley]

Alleg can’t READ anything other than bmp-based mdl files. I’m trying to work out how difficult it would be to add code to read a different format.

I don’t see the point in using tga files. Aren’t they crazy big as well? If we’re going for a new texture format, I would use png. Dunno how quick they are in decompression, though.

And don’t suggest jpeg. Jpeg is evil for 3d textures. Don’t ever run your texture-to-be through jpeg compression.

[madpeople]

looks like .png, tga or tiff

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_data...hic_compression
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of...cs_file_formats - the bottom table lists compression and loslessness

my copy of fireworks can do .png and .tiff

so i vote for one of those

not embedding the file name in the file wil lalso be a good idea, so we can just rename things without re-converting them.

[finn_bryant]

QUOTE looks like .png, tga or tiff[/quote]

i believe that all of those would have to be decompressed before entering the graphics card, so in a prefect world you should pick a format which can be compressed on the card (don't know much about this but i believe that DXT is an example).

after all, if your going to do it, why not do it properly? (unless it requires a huge amount more effort)

doing so would mean that more people could use the high res pics youve done without filling their GPU memory

EDIT: i may be getting confused now that ive looked more in depth at some sites. (also, it looks like DXT is 16 bits only)

[Orion]

QUOTE (Raveen @ Dec 22 2006, 03:09 AM) That's what I figured.

Would it be worth moving from bmps to tgas for the texture files?

For compression purposes, maybe. I would actually use DDS files though, as far as games go DDS is superior to PNG (and yes, they are compressed on the card). It would make the Allegiance install (not installer) smaller.

QUOTE (mdvalley @ Dec 22 2006, 09:17 AM) Alleg can’t READ anything other than bmp-based mdl files. I’m trying to work out how difficult it would be to add code to read a different format.

If you use the TextureLoader class in Dx9 you could load them in quite easily...

[Quia]

Back to the subject of actually making these 24 bit bmp.mdl's, I can't get anything but the original 16 bit mdlc to work. For the rest, I get 'application failed to start because MSVCR71D.dll was not found. Reinstalling may yadda yadda yadda. Anyone else having this issue?

[Your_Persona]

http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?msvcr71d