Judith on 5/9/2018 at 08:40
I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall. Even when you don't see anything, it doesn't mean it isn't there. Decompressing PNGs and converting them to a format readable by your GPU (and thus wasting processing power) is a fact, there's nothing to discuss here. Try making every object and tiling texture in 1-2k format, and save it as PNG. Good luck with getting good performance.
You mention very old titles using 128 px textures. Q3 uses both jpg, png, and tga textures, and that was fine at the time. Even Thief Deadly Shadows uses DDS exclusively, and that's from 2004.
TGAs are good because this is a simple and relatively fast format (uncompressed), and it's read in similar way to DDS. Although the major downside is storage size, longer loading time, and higher texture memory needed. For example, typical workflow in Dark Mod involves making TGA textures for everything first, and then converting as many of them as possible to DDS.
Cardia on 5/9/2018 at 09:39
Thanks Judith, i feel like between the sword and the wall, but i think as long as there is a good performance with PNG i'll stick to it, unless i am forced to use DDS.
I would love to use DDS, but how to prevent the visual noise?
please be patient with me, i´m very green next to you regarding Software.
Cardia on 5/9/2018 at 11:22
How to i make textures with transparency in gif/pcx format?:
Inline Image:
https://s22.postimg.cc/ikev0pxld/laub1.gifI only now how to do in PNG/TGA format, but those are heavy formats.
Yandros on 5/9/2018 at 11:26
Quote Posted by Cardia
I would love to use DDS, but how to prevent the visual noise?
It's been mentioned several times what the likely problem is in this thread: learn to generate the mipmaps appropriately. At least that is a starting point. I can definitely say that we saw a significant performance increase in
Waterfront Racket when we converted most of the larger object textures from PNG to DDS, so this thread isn't just people blowing smoke at you. However if you are determined to continue using PNGs despite the advice given here, then the point is kind of moot.
Edit
There is no reason whatsoever to use GIF and single colour transparency any more. Even OldDark supported a full alpha channel in TGA (although it had its issues too). Learn to create an alpha mask and save as PNG or DDS, it will always look better than GIF.
Cardia on 5/9/2018 at 11:32
I´ve tried saved a png texture with transparency as DDS.format, but i can't, the texture doesn't show transparency. I´m using paint.net by the way.
Judith on 5/9/2018 at 11:35
Don't use DXT1 compression for transparency, you need at least DXT3. DXT1 removes alpha channel.
Yandros on 5/9/2018 at 11:38
Cardia, you say you've never had performance issues, but I recall now that there were many people who played FTM Life who complained of bad lag and low FPS. I would expect that was in no small part due to many high res PNG textures. There are batch converters out there which can convert many of the PNG textures to DDS and it might make a big difference for those players for you to do that.
Judith on 5/9/2018 at 11:56
That depends what he means by good performance. 15-30 fps, even on a 5 year old rig, is hardly good.
Cardia on 5/9/2018 at 12:11
Quote Posted by Yandros
Cardia, you say you've never had performance issues, but I recall now that there were many people who played FTM Life who complained of bad lag and low FPS. I would expect that was in no small part due to many high res PNG textures. There are batch converters out there which can convert many of the PNG textures to DDS and it might make a big difference for those players for you to do that.
I've tested that mission with DDS. and even without textures, and the low performance that you mention is still being affected when being in large areas.
Cardia on 5/9/2018 at 12:19
Quote Posted by Judith
Don't use DXT1 compression for transparency, you need at least DXT3. DXT1 removes alpha channel.
it works, but isn't gif or pcx better for a game performance? because if i have to chose between bmp or DDS, i still prefer bmp, despite the color quality at least i don't have this visual noise.
