The skating player can ruin anything you make. If the glitch does surface than you do have a problem and wont be able to use them online. It is exactly this problem that ruins the Unreal Tournament Retexturing Project.
Once the problem is build in, it cannot be removed anymore, at least not after release. As far as i can see, Epic run into the same problems as i do, which is very poor assembled UT packages. They almost all contain actual technical errors, which can only be fixed if the package would be rereleased.
Also the Mergertool, like the tool Epic used, seems to have big problems handling packages that contain procedural textures. The oné package can be Merged just fine, while the other packages fail to wotk properly and either gave errors like complete black, red, green, blue surfaces on procedural textures, or they crash the game all together.
I would not take any risk there. If you assemble a package for S3TC purposes than i stil advise this highly:
- Use only normal correct indexed textures.
- Use animations that ends with _A01, _A02, etc
- Mask textures during import and not afterwards.
Never use:
- Procedural textures in the normal package, add those to a seperate package.
- Never add any 24 bit or wrong indexed textures to the normal package.
- Alpha blending for DDS files above 1 bit Alpha(1 bit, black and white is the current limit)
Quote:What is the maximum pixel size an 8bit texture can be without causing server problems?
Is 512x512 really as high as Unreal can go for online play use?
As a matter a fact i used textures up to 1024 (as epic also does) in the SGC map, and this wont cause any problems. nor for S3TC nor for normal D3D, software or OpenGL, Glide players.
Take a look at this page:
http://www.unrealtexture.com/Unreal/Website/TextureDatabase/Unreal/Skaarj/Skaarj...The third texture (Aa_clw) was added by Epic in 1024 x 512, so dont worry about the size. Anything up to 1024 is possible, and specifically Sofware and OpenGL can render those in full size without any problem, D3D will downrender them to 256 i believe.
Its not so much the size does matter
But more the total texture load in a map. I think when the SGG map is done i can calculate what the total amount of texture surface is that an averidge player can handle(his videocard that is) That map pushes everything to the very limit, and tests for normal players ruled out any problem on that end. You can add alot to a map, that part is clear to me.
On the S3TC end you have to be more carefull, still, my videocard is only 128mb and does pull the texture load of the SGC map, and fully loaded, the map draws some 2048- 4096 Mb of uncompressed textures in memory, go figure lol
This is also the reason why UT has an averidge is 256 pixel textures compared to Unreal who has 128 pixel on averidge. In 2000 they realised that the same engine and newer cards could pull that easelly.
Quote:If only the skybox used imported true color .bmp textures without S3TC, would that still cause the skating glitch online?
I have never really tested it, but thats were the above story came in, but what would be the purpose to begin with, why not add those too as S3TC ?
Side note, you are aware of the fact you can use MergeDXT to add S3TC textures yourself to a package in UT ? I am saying this because in that way you have all controll yourself.
The S3TC packages from my end do have an edge though, the S3TC packages can be updated at any given time, even after the release, and multiple S3TC packages can be created to gain the maximum for the S3TC users, being a High End package and a Low End package. In addition to that, S3TC packages have no limit in size, since they are never downloaded from a server.
Current High End packages(8 packages) for the SGC map are 669 Mb in total. You dont wanna download that during a mapswitch..........
In any case if you want me to handle the package, dont take any risk, dont add any 24 bit to it and add procedural textures to a seperate package. The last thing you want is weird errors that makes you map/project useless online.........
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