Soul Tear on 4/12/2014 at 15:05
I convert all textures in Obj\Txt16 to DDS and mission crash on start. PNG works.
I use AMD TheCompressonator 1.50: DDS, ATI 3Dc Compession (DX1, DX3, DX5), Box-Filter.
My PC: Intel Core i5-4570 CPU 3.20 GHz, 8,00 Gb RAM, GeForce GTX 660.
Any ideas? Weak graphics card?
Perhaps the trouble with bad texture, but I can't find it.
fibanocci on 4/12/2014 at 15:36
Did you remove the old png-Textures?
Did you convert transparent textures to DXT3?
Did you convert any textures of objects in the loadout screen?
bassoferrol on 4/12/2014 at 16:22
I know for sure that at least the talisman objects if they are converted to DDS will make the game crash when they are needed. That's my experience.
Ricebug on 4/12/2014 at 21:02
Try processing one folder at a time. Remove the PNG files to a sub-directory, per fibanocci's suggestion.
Now run the game.
Do the next folder and repeat until you get the crash. That will be the directory with the "bad" texture.
Soul Tear on 5/12/2014 at 01:57
Quote Posted by fibanocci
Did you remove the old png-Textures?
Did you convert transparent textures to DXT3?
Did you convert any textures of objects in the loadout screen?
Yes.
DXT5.
Yes.
Necrobob on 5/12/2014 at 02:03
Quote Posted by fibanocci
Did you convert any textures of objects in the loadout screen?
Quote Posted by Soul Tear
Yes.
Well there's your problem. The loadout screen is always rendered in software, so it cannot handle compressed DDS textures. Just keep all textures that show up in loadout in PNG or what-have-you, and you'll be fine. :thumb:
fibanocci on 5/12/2014 at 07:15
Yes that's it. There are already some people around here who got that problem with the loadout screen.
bikerdude on 5/12/2014 at 17:01
Just a quick question, but can I ask why NewDromeders are using .DDS image files..? Is it just for file compression/size? because correct me if Im wrong but NewDark can't use .DDS files like we can in The Darkmod.
fibanocci on 5/12/2014 at 17:19
Quote Posted by bikerdude
Is it just for file compression/size? because correct me if Im wrong but nudark can't use .DDS files like we can in The Darkmod.
How do you use it in DarkMod?
dds with mipmaps has some advantages. The size of the files are usually much smaller and Thief2.exe takes lesser RAM than with other textures (such as PNG, TGA, gif). It's also rendered faster.
LarryG on 5/12/2014 at 18:19
As I understand it, .dds contains the original image plus all its mipmaps. The Watcher has a post about this somewhere, but I can't find it just now. This is what I remember from reading that post. Those more knowledgeable, please offer correction and clarification.
Mipmaps help to increase rendering speed and reduce aliasing artifacts when drawing textures on polygons as they recede from the camera. When NewDark loads any other format than .dds the mipmaps need to be generated, by Direct3D/OpenGL and/or hardware. Thus, these other formats involve a processing overhead when loading textures, and the quality of the generated mipmaps will depend on the player's graphics driver or hardware. .dds file generator plugins for graphics packages will usually have an option to automatically generate mipmaps during saving, and that will produce mipmaps as good as (and sometimes better than) the mipmaps generated inside the game. Using .dds plugins will remove the processing overhead from texture loading during the game and these plugins will almost always allow you to specify mipmaps yourself, which can allow you to include much better quality, hand-crafted mipmaps with the texture.
Now that NewDark supports .dds, it is probably a "best practice" to use it on all but software-only rendered applications (loadout screen). For your legacy textures, I would recommend conversion to .dds before packaging in most situations.
Edit: For those interested in a freeware batch converter, I found (
http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/archive/legacy-cpu-gpu-tools/the-compressonator/) The Compressonator by AMD. You'd select:
* Output File Format: DirectDraw Surface Textures
* Output Format: ATI 3Dc Compression .. then click the Options button next to it and select DXT1, DXT3 or DXT5 and leave other options at default (If your texture doesn't have alpha then pick DXT1 no alpha, if your texture has alpha then DXT5 or DXT3 ... which of those two is better suited depends on the texture, you'll have to try both and evaluate the results.)
* Mipmaps: Box-Filter
that should be all. Try it on a temp copy of a directory somewhere first if you want to get acquainted with it.
