LarryG on 28/9/2012 at 20:18
Quote Posted by DrK
JPEG was just an example. I missed this part completely.
Where's ZB when you need him. I want a tutorial on the positives and negatives of each format for us. I have no idea which format would be best under any set of circumstances, but based on some of his posts, I'll bet he could pontificate on the subject at the drop of a hat! :laff:
ZylonBane on 28/9/2012 at 20:50
JPEG isn't a supported format, so there's not much to pontificate upon there.
LarryG on 28/9/2012 at 20:59
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
JPEG isn't a supported format, so there's not much to pontificate upon there.
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No, not on jpg but on the others. I don't know why you would pick one format over another.
GIF, PCX, TGA, PNG, DDS, PCX 32-bit, BMP 24/32-bit, TGA RLE, DXT
Gecko on 28/9/2012 at 22:13
I´ve tried to use my new hd dds textures in Thief Gold! It doesn´t work with 1.19 exe. For example "b07.pcx" in "fam/bafford". Where to put the dds file "b07.dds"? I thought in the "mods" folder but it didn´t work! And then i have to add a line with "mod_path...." in the "cam_mod.ini"? I´m confused. Please help me! With a example ;) THX!
The Watcher on 28/9/2012 at 22:31
Quote Posted by LarryG
I don't know why you would pick one format over another.
A quick overview, in rough ascending order of usefulness:
* BMP - Don't. Just, don't.
* GIF - palletised (max 256 colours), 1 transparent colour. I guess you
might want to use these for textures with simple, hard edged transparency. Frankly, they're probably now pointless now save for legacy content.
* PCX - supports a variety of formats internally, no idea how complete the support is, but it may be subject to the same restrictions as the old pcx and gif. Again, I can't really see much point in bothering with these in new stuff from now on, either. PCX-32 provides full 24 bit RGB images with an 8 bit alpha channel, making them equivalent to TGA (no idea if the loader supports run length encoded compressed PCX-32, though).
* TGA - supports 24 and 32 bit images, with an 8 bit alpha channel in 32 bit mode. These will allow much better looking textures than GIF and PCX in most cases, and are equivalent to PCX-32. TGA RLE allows run length encoding compression of images. Run length encoding is a simple lossless compression technique that can significantly reduce the size of images with large blocks of the same colour, but is generally poor compared to PNG.
* PNG - supports a mass of different formats, but of most interest is its support for 24 and 32 bit images, with generally good compression (usually much better than TGA). If you don't want to deal with DDS/DXT then this is probably the format you should be using, they're also likely to be easier for more people to open and edit, as some graphics programs won't load DDS.
* DDS - a format specifically designed for textures to be used in 3D applications. It can be used for palletised, 8, 16, 24, and 32 bit images. It is different from all the previous formats in that it allows mipmaps to be specified in the file (and, according to the modders_notes.txt file, we are required to include them). Explaining what this is would take a long time (see, say (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mipmap) this), but basically when you load a texture into a game, it generally needs mipmaps of the texture, smaller images that it can use to efficiently render surfaces further away from the camera in a way that prevents a number of graphical artifact problems. If your image doesn't include mipmaps - if it's loaded from any of the image formats before DDS in this list, it wont - then those have to be generated as the image is loaded. This is often done using routines designed for speed rather than looking good, so the results are lower quality than can be achieved by either slower, better quality generation done by a graphics program, or even hand-made mipmaps. DDS allows the inclusion of those better-quality mipmaps, at the expense of larger files.
* DXT is a format of DDS that includes image data compressed using a (lossy) compression algorithm. Why use this instead of DDS? Because if you're using a lot of large textures, you're going to eat through texture memory - DXT textures remain compressed in memory, and are decompressed in the GPU on demand. So, you get more textures, at the cost of losing some quality (although how much varies depending on the situation). There's a note in the modders_notes.txt saying that we can't use DXT for software rendered components.
So, basically, I'd recommend using DDS, with DXT if you're using a lot of large textures. You might want to use PNG if you can't generate DDS/DXT for some reason, or you want to maximise the people who can edit your texture (although there are DDS converters out there, so that's arguable). The other formats are probably of limited real use for new content now.
Ottoj55 on 28/9/2012 at 22:34
saving files, if i want to increment file names with a "save as" which was 1.18s default save method, how?
R Soul on 28/9/2012 at 22:40
Quote Posted by Gecko
Where to put the dds file "b07.dds"?
The intrface.crf file had to go in a 'patch' folder, so I just tried using that and it worked.
e.g. patch\fam\core\cobls1.dds
LarryG on 28/9/2012 at 22:52
@The Watcher: Thanks! I'll need time to digest all that. Since I want a pretty purist looking Thief aesthetic, I may stick with gif for that "hard edge" with ventures into PNG or TGA if I want graduated transparency. DDS and DXT sound like overkill for my currently limited personal texture memory. :laff:
Xorak on 28/9/2012 at 23:16
About BMP, as far as I know, they can produce excellent quality images, but don't scale well because of the way they are pixelized, way too large in file size, and don't really compress well either. Though they could be good for specific images where you're planning for a specific size and quality.
