HUGE news on using custom terrain textures!

[DaCoroner]

Ok, this actually makes a lot of sense and seems pretty obvious, but for some reason I didn't think about it until today...

With the release of 1.75 I've been in love with the 512x512 terrain textures, so much nicer to look at.  But, they come at a heavy price, at 171kb per texture any map you make with it will have a huge PBO file (think way bigger than 20mb).  That will mean that anyone running less than 512MB ram probably won't even touch your map since they would have to remove most, if not all of their other addons.

So, I figured, lets try a pbo file with the exact same name full of 128x128 textures with the exact same names on a map designed using the 512x512 textures.  Well, it works

So, if you, the mappers, pack your terrain textures outside your map .pbo you can have two seperate sets of textures for people to download.  Also, at 1/10th the size people can download the lo-res version first to see if they even want the map in the first place.

The only thing I haven't been able to test is running the two seperate version over a network (come to think of it, I've never even run OFP over a network at all).  That may be the only real catch, even then it would be a simple matter of including the lo-res version with the hi-res version and a simple bat file to swap them out, then make sure the servers/hosts run the lo-res version.

Now, if we had external file access from within OFP we could use this same theory to apply seasonal changes to maps.  ;D

So, I'm off to do lo-res version of mi hi-res texture packs, have fun...

[Nomis]

Great idea!
But here's another use for it:
56K modems - people with slow modems can download the 128 textures while the lucky sods with broadband etc can download the nicer 512 textures. So this really is a very useful idea.
Nice work.

[CAT_SHIT_ONE_MM]

Hi I have a question or a comment on that idea.  Those who use a low ram or low processing speed computer will usually set the resolution levels for both the graphic and the terrains really low so does it really matter?  My afghan map uses "ONLY" 512 x 512 textures since it gives the ability to the players to blend in the map.... yes literally blend in the map, they could blend in the rocky mountaneous area.
I used the map on my old computer (P3 550 Mhz, 128MB RAM, TNT2 videocard, 20GB HD) so yes, the map was quite choppy and lagged but after lowering down the resolution level and the terrain texture levels down it moved smoothly.  I'm currently using my new computer (P4 1.8Ghz, 512MB RD RAM, Geforce3 Ti300 128MB videocard, "10" GB HD) so there is no need to do those things... :-)  and it only costed 500 dollars for the entire parts of the computer, I bought many used parts,,, everything except for the videocard.

[DaCoroner]

Well, setting the max resolution to 128x128 doesn't help the file size.  I test everything on my wife's computer which only has 256mb RAM, I found that when the addon folder was packed full of my favorite addons AND 40MB worth of hi-res textures it crashed out while loading OFP (Couldn't map whatever.pbo to memory, something like that).  So, you can release hi-res only and people with slow processors or old video cards can run it but people with 56k modems probably won't download it (and even with a faster connection they may not be too attracted to a 30MB map file by someone they never heard of) and people with low system memory may not be able to run it with their favorite mods installed.

Although while it isn't a lot of work to do a duplicate reduced sized pack of your textures it may not be worth your time when you do it for free... I'd say it's all about making your product more accessible to a bigger market, but if they're not paying you...

[Leone]

Hehehe...let me know when someone starts getting paid for making a texture or an addons....I'll be in that   ;D