URProject Update 07-30-2007

[DieHard SCWS]

I have had several e-mails/ meaasages and questions about the updates. I had planned to make he post about that but real life issues prevented me from doing so  :(  Its not going to well in my familly nor is my health to great.




As for the project, i have been working around the clock wherever i could, and i have allot done. Especcially making all the original shapes for the Skaarj (Holograms) and Mine packages did consume a huge amount of time.




At this moment i am working on (again, and again, and again lol) the PlayrShp package. The package has been (or i should say will be) completelly redone. I discarded most of the S3TC textures that were made by Epic and replaced them with brandnew ones made from complete scratch. This too is taking allot of time, though i have done most of it, theres still textures that need more work on them before release. But the package will rock alright




As said at this moment i am working on the PlayrShp package, but i am going back and forth between several packages to solve problems i encounter. I keep working on a package untill i cannot go further (means i am stuck  ::)  ) At that moment i switch to another package to work on that one till i find a solution for the problem(s) in the other package(s).




The only problem working like this is that i kinda lost overview on what i really did do and what not, and my biggest scare(ow thats no correct English..) would be at this moment that i release packages without having all updates added, or that i release the package accidentelly with unwanted beta texture(s).


The packages i am working on are:

Skaarj.utx
PlayShp.utx
Langs.utx (for the ones that dont know this package, it belongs to UnrealGold)
Mine.utx
DecayedS.utx (wont be a huge update)
Ancient.utx ( i think so at least, i forgot what i did with the package, but if so, its a minor update)

Apart from that ill see if i can fix the nebula texture in such a way it will have star behind it. The texture is sitting in 2 or 3 packages, ill have to find them all, but i do plan to fix it.




As told above the PlayrShp package will contain the largest updates and will look quite different. Ah well lol, the Langs package does also contain a huge update if i may say. The package i desperatelly wanted to work on probably wont have updates and that is the Starship package. However if i have time ill see if i can do some work on that package, but dont count on it.




I still do get better on making textures, but i keep running into problems, mainly i am unable to create a much more natural decayed look over the textures. The same goes for making rockfaces, i keep working on those but no usable results so far  :-/




All together i hope to release the first packages in 2 weeks, but if it needs more work it could be a bit longer, But i do want to release the updates this month, so it cant be longer than 4 weeks lol.
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[Shivaxi]

niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice....dude...i wanna see like player skins and monster skins in S3TC..can't u work on those first?

[Smirftsch]

working on all this is a huge job. Its incredible how much work you put into it and the results are fantastic. Without it 227 would be only a small step, but with it- hell, it can even compared with some games which are just released. Everytime I compare Unreal without the textures against Unreal with them, its just like someone opened my eyes. If i can do something to make your work more easy, such as changes in the engine, or some necessary command you may need, or whatever, just let me know, maybe there is a way to realize it.

I just wanted to say this here. Thankya m8.

[DieHard SCWS]

Thanks Smirftsch, thats nice to say


But i would be nowhere if you and Kerilk hadnt done the OpenGL support and the Mergertool, without those the project also would be useless


And yeah i do the same thing, looking at new games like UT2004, Joint Ops, Call Of Duty, etc. than i do conclude that the textures for Unreal turned out better than those games. They do offer higher polycounts but the textures themselves are smaller in size and therefore they lack the super high quality that is possible with Unreal. And the reason for that is that Epic dispite some unfortunate decisions, still made a rocking super cool engine and game.


Its for sure cool to see that the good Ol Unreal  ;) engine can match brandnew games

If i can do something to make your work more easy, such as changes in the engine, or some necessary command you may need, or whatever, just let me know, maybe there is a way to realize it.

I have had a few forum conversations with Wolf about the Mergertool, and i will get back on that here on the forums in a while. I may need a little help on the tool. But i know you work your a$$ off too for the 227 patch

niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice....dude...i wanna see like player skins and monster skins in S3TC..can't u work on those first?  

Half a year ago i have been working on oné skin(Bane i think), to help out JackRabbit with a skin. I made a testskin but those are difficult alright. But i have been thinking to call in some extra outside troops for those. Maybe they can help me out on the skins.
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[Shivaxi]

haha...i know JackRabbit

I can't remember if he was the one good at making skins or not...hmm...can't remember

[DieHard SCWS]

Two packages have been added to the upcomming update:

Starship: A few new textures but mainly fixes for problems mentioned on these forums.
HubEffects: Its a small package that only contains a few textures, update will cover 3 new textures.

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[Shivaxi]

uh...one other thing...when are we gonna get to see some S3TC Weapons?!

I know that the guyz at UnrealSP.org made one for the Stinger for there map packs...and i saw a pic of it and DAAAAAMN it looks fricken AWSOME! Maybe you could ask them for da texure files so we can have em?? Cause the pack that its in isnt released yet...so its not like we can jsut DL the pack and take it from there

[DieHard SCWS]

In the case people create brandnew packages than they should also make the textures in high resolution. If they do so and keep the textures seperate from the .u file than it can be turned into an S3TC package with a press of a button.

Theres 2 main things that needs to be done:

- Must be a seperate utx file.
- Texture package must be created with Unreal or UnrealGold.

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[Shivaxi]

ah...well that might be a problem then...cause i think they used UT ED to make it...cause there lame and only making the map pack for UT cause its "MORE STABLE :P:P" f**kin boobs they are

[DieHard SCWS]

The maps themselve are no problem, but the texture package, it only works if its done with Unreal. And i can understand their decision, because UT enables you to make S3TC packages to begin with, unlike Unreal.
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[Shivaxi]

yeah i know...but i still think there complete boobs

and how the heck are u supposed to SAVE ur game in UT for the single player maps they make?

[Lightning_Hunter]

Still really looking forward to this release, Diehard. All your textures really rock.

yeah i know...but i still think there complete boobs

and how the heck are u supposed to SAVE ur game in UT for the single player maps they make?

Yeah, those boobs. How dare they use an engine that has a better editor, better OpenGL drivers, a bigger variety of weapons and pawns, and a bigger community of players. Oh, and how could I forget Oldskool, which has permanent decals and carcases, a score system, a nice menu, plenty of extra little options and external mutators, and screenshots & levelinfo for mappacks. What were they thinking?

[Smirftsch]

yeah i know...but i still think there complete boobs

and how the heck are u supposed to SAVE ur game in UT for the single player maps they make?

Yeah, those boobs. How dare they use an engine that has a better editor, better OpenGL drivers, a bigger variety of weapons and pawns, and a bigger community of players. Oh, and how could I forget Oldskool, which has permanent decals and carcases, a score system, a nice menu, plenty of extra little options and external mutators, and screenshots & levelinfo for mappacks. What were they thinking?

ROFL

[Shivaxi]

meh...



Oh i remember whos good at making skins...its Kraid...i havent seen him in a while though :-/

[David_OSU]

I have had several e-mails/ meaasages and questions about the updates.

I was one of the guilty ones asking "when will it be done?".

I had planned to make he post about that but real life issues prevented me from doing so  :(  Its not going to well in my familly nor is my health to great.

Very sorry to hear that -- I hope things get better for you.

Apart from that ill see if i can fix the nebula texture in such a way it will have star behind it. The texture is sitting in 2 or 3 packages, ill have to find them all, but i do plan to fix it.

I really hope you can fix the nebula, this is one of the most annoying problems with the texture set right now.

All together i hope to release the first packages in 2 weeks, but if it needs more work it could be a bit longer, But i do want to release the updates this month, so it cant be longer than 4 weeks lol.

Take as much time as you need to get it right.  I know it takes a lot of time and effort to get these textures looking just right.  As much as I'd like to have them all done now, it is more important that they look good and you are proud of your work when its done.

I do have one question -- will the same texture packages be used for both Unreal and UT (using Oldskool), or will UT require unique packages (like the current high res textures on www.celticwarriors.net )?  If different packages are required for UT, you will be releasing those also, right?

I really appreciate your work.  Your textures make Unreal look so good in OpenGL at 1600x1200.

[DieHard SCWS]

As you may have noticed i did release the updates (and had to withdraw 2 package ) All the links can be found here:

http://www.oldunreal.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1186942640


As for the UT textures, yes those are the same. In time, if we can make netcompatible textures for UT than its likelly the files will be split in Unreal and UT downloads. And its that you need to keep in mind if you use them for UT, they are NOT netcompatible and only usefull for Single Player.


Of course the Unreal textures are 100% usable both Online as well as Offline.


The texture packages for the upcomming release from the SG1 map can be used on and offline for both Unreal and UT It seems that normal packages created with Unreal and the twin S3TC package are compatible for Unreal and UT.


For that reason, if someone wants to create S3TC textures for their own map(s), its advised to assemble the original utx file in Unreal and not UT.

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[David_OSU]

Wow, this release is nice!  The wall signs in Mine.utx all have text on them now, and the Nebula looks much better.  The Playership textures are very nice, and look more like the originals than the S3 textures.

As for the UT textures, yes those are the same. In time, if we can make netcompatible textures for UT than its likelly the files will be split in Unreal and UT downloads. And its that you need to keep in mind if you use them for UT, they are NOT netcompatible and only usefull for Single Player.

I didn't realize that net compatibility was the reason for the different Unreal/UT texture packages in the first place.  Since I don't play UT99 online much anymore, I really don't care about net compatibility (I can play online with UT2k).

I did notice Unreal was rendering a little slower with these compared to the last release.  The first level of Ortican was really having some trouble.  This level uses lots of textures from the largest packages, so I think it is loading/unloading a lot to the graphics card (on a 256MB graphics card).  Quickly changing your view >90° in Ortican will cause a noticeable lag while new textures are fetched from memory.

You may want to rethink some of the texture resolutions, especially the animated textures.  Does the animated radar screen really need to be 1Kx1K?  Wouldn't it look just as good in game at 512x512, or even 256x256?  I'm guessing that a 512MB graphics card won't have any problems with the current release.  But if you continue to be wasteful with texture space as you add more textures, eventually you will see problems on high-end cards with certain levels.  That would be a shame if you can barely see a visual difference anyway (like with the animated radar screen).

[DieHard SCWS]

You may want to rethink some of the texture resolutions, especially the animated textures.  Does the animated radar screen really need to be 1Kx1K?  Wouldn't it look just as good in game at 512x512, or even 256x256?  I'm guessing that a 512MB graphics card won't have any problems with the current release.  But if you continue to be wasteful with texture space as you add more textures, eventually you will see problems on high-end cards with certain levels.  That would be a shame if you can barely see a visual difference anyway (like with the animated radar screen).

I always use my videocard as calibration (so to speak), i have a geforce 128 Mb and run my Unreal at 1024 x 768.

In general its a fair assumption, if i can run it, others should be able to do too. Most people nowadays do have 128 and often, more and more 256Mb, while others even have 384, and even 512 aint that rare anymore lol. It means that i myself am at the lower end(of course there are people having 64 or less) of the S3TC users.


Before the previous update, most textures didnt exceed 1024 x 1024 because all the textures at that moment that were recycled from UT were not bigger than that. This kinda stopped when i released the update from SkyCity, NaliCast GenEarth end GenTerra. Those packages i started to use 2048 x 2048 for walls and the grass textures. While the original size is 256 x 256, which matches the current calculation  how big S3TC textures are supposed to be.

normal versus S3TC

32 - 256
64 - 512
128 - 1024
256 - 1024 or 2048
512 - 2048 or 4096
1024 - 4096

The calculation is adapted to how likelly it is to have a texture shown up ingame, in general.


I didnt do the Hull textures from the PlayrShp yet, but seeing the fact that texture is rarelly used, and if its used, like on the outer hull of the spaceship, a fair size is 2048, but maybe better seeing the projectionsize, 4096


In any case SkyCity was really made to the max. All textures in the S3TC package are huge, and on some maps i do have lag, but only on maps having like almost all SkyCity textures in them. Thusfar, on averidge, theres no lag, only occassionally in a few maps. And as said i am the lower end of the videocard users. But, in time i may split the packages up in high and lower end.

In fact the SG1 textures will have 3 package, the normal, low end S3TC, and high end S3TC textures.


As for the radar screen, yeah the size according calculations should have been 512 and not 1024. But this had a reason, the texture compression was a problem. The radar screen is is a so callad Iris color, it means it starts with bright green in the middle, to dark green in the edges, which is called an Iris (like in the rainbow). S3TC compression has great difficulties making a smooth Iris without showing horrible imperfections.


Its exactly that what a 512 screen would show, ugly blocks of different colors of green and no where near the smooth (relative ) blending you see now. For that same reason its pretty useless to create S3TC textures in the size of 256 pixels, i do make them sometimes, but in reallity you always need to have 512 to eliminate the compression damage, and for an Iris, 1024 may be the minimum.


256 Pixels

[img]http://www.celticwarriors.net/Media/S3TC/scrn_256.jpg[/img]




512 pixels

[img]http://www.celticwarriors.net/Media/S3TC/scrn_512.jpg[/img]



1024 pixels

[img]http://www.celticwarriors.net/Media/S3TC/scrn_1024.jpg[/img]


And i asure you ingame its much more noticable, because the artifacts keep moving, and while the animation is running you can see artifacts getting brighter and darker and/or moving around the screen. And it may look like the 512 looks ok, ingame its still quite different, because even the 1024 ingame its still noticable, pick a rifle and zoom in on them and look closelly to the purple rings where it connects to the green.

At the end i decide, ill just go for it and release them as 1024


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[Hyper]

My vote also goes to the highest resolution. The Unreal ReTexturing project is a long time project, and the worst thing would be that when it's all finished that we need to start a Re-Retexturing project again. We already have the original low-res textures for everyone with slower and low-memory cards. The videocards get better with every generation, and within one or two years even the cheapest system can render Unreal with the hires textures on.

[David_OSU]

As for the radar screen, yeah the size according calculations should have been 512 and not 1024. But this had a reason, the texture compression was a problem. ... S3TC compression has great difficulties making a smooth Iris without showing horrible imperfections.

I was thinking 512 for the radar screens myself.  But I know what you mean about compression artifacts with slow gradients like these.  Now I see why you went to 1024 on this texture -- it was for artifact reduction, not really because you need that many pixles (you can't really get that close to the radar screen unless you put your nose to the wall  :)).  It just ends up making the texture package huge, because it's an animated texture.  :-/

I really like to see the best use of texture space used -- so rock, grass, and sky textures can be as big as possible because the visual benefit is clearly there.  On textures used on small objects or animated textures, its better to go with the smallest you can get away with and still be visually acceptable.  But I see your point with the radar display.  Part of the reason that the radar shows compression artifacts is that it is unnaturally clean and perfect.  A "dirtier" screen would hide the artifacts and get you back to 512.  But it is very hard to do this on an animated texture (can be done by applying the same "dirty" layer to all frames).  Its probably not worth the effort required, so I agree with you that leaving it at 1024 is best for now.

In any case, from your explanation, you have obviously thought about this quite a bit, and you do have a good schema for determining texture resolution.  Keep up the good work.

[David_OSU]

I always use my videocard as calibration (so to speak), i have a geforce 128 Mb and run my Unreal at 1024 x 768.

That's a pretty good baseline system for testing.  I'm running these with a Radeon 9700 Pro (128MB) on a 1.5GHz Athlon (512MB), and the performance is good.  I'm also running at 1600x1200 with 16xAF and 2xAA, so the graphics card is working hard.

The delay I noticed before on Ortican seems to be much better.  I think I was actually suffering from a memory leak or something from starting and stopping UT so many times.  After enough times, UT can get choppy, and a reboot clears it up.  

To really test the Skycity textures (the largest package), I loaded up the sky city map of Strangeworld (strange6.unr), and gave that a spin.  It does slow down in spots, but no more than it did with the S3 textures.  As such, I think you're OK on total texture package size.

[Shivaxi]

Yeah definitely the highest resolution pic...its not like anyone who playz unreal still runz it on a Windows 98 :P:P

or if they do...im sure they have something better then 200 mhz of speed and 256 RAM and something better than a Voodoo card :P:P

[David_OSU]

Yeah definitely the highest resolution pic...its not like anyone who playz unreal still runz it on a Windows 98 :P:P

or if they do...im sure they have something better then 200 mhz of speed and 256 RAM and something better than a Voodoo card :P:P

Windows 98SE is actually a very good OS for gaming.

I have two computers (well, two that I actually still use , my gaming computer which is an Athlon 1.5GHz with 512MB running good old Windows 98SE (with the OS torqued out a bit for speed), and my work computer.  My work computer is a high-end Dell laptop:  Core 2 Duo, 2GB, and Windows XP Pro.  The sad thing is that my old Windows 98 machine RUNS CIRCLES around my work computer, mainly because Windows XP is such a fat sloppy bloated pig of an OS.  My Windows 98 machine boots in under 30 seconds, does shutdown almost instantly, and never uses the swap file.  My XP machine, in comparison, takes minutes to boot (and is still slow for a few more minutes), takes about as long to shutdown (what the hell is it doing???), and seems to like to slap the harddrive around constantly.  God I hate XP.

The only downside to using Windows 98 is the frequent reboots -- but it boots so damn fast, who cares?

[DieHard SCWS]

Though i will also return to the SG1 map and go try finish that up somehow, i did start working on the Starship package. I think i got most backgrounds covered, and for the ones missing it wont be too difficult to create those. Apart from that, most of the wall textures are super complicated and contain a huge amount of little shapes. That will take some time to get that done.


One of the textures that already was S3TC on the 2cd, is one of the first i did update, to see if its correct. The UT version also missed allot of extra detail which is missing compared to the original one.

Heres an example so far, though it misses scratches that should be on the final version

http://www.celticwarriors.net/Media/S3TC/sh_bs4.jpg

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[DieHard SCWS]

Theres two updates comming up, the main texturepack for CTF (RealCTFtxtrs.utx) and SkyCity.


While its my favorate gameplay next to normal teamgame, i never thought of it to make those textures S3TC. A couple a days i came to that idea due to a post from tronovision. No clue why i didnt think of that before.

I already asumed that i could make a rather large update since most CTF textures are recolored textures from other packages, and if needed, theres the CTF sign on them. That assumption was correct and i could update some 69 (out of 192) textures which made the package grow from 11Mb to 83 Mb.

While i was working on those i found out that the Windows section from SkyCity were not upgraded to S3TC. Because i needed those textures i had to upgrade those and off course for fixing the missing textures in the package itself.

The SkyCity package is more an upgrade than an actual update. In the previous update i made all walls S3TC, but not the decoration sitting on them. For this update its the same thing, i added the walls in high resolution but not the deco on them. It still does mean that all the walls should match eachother now. (which i thought i already did  ::) )


I may add a few actual new textures, but i gotta look into that. The package grew conciderably, from 274 Mb to a staggering 335 Mb and still counting in case i add some more.
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