Flecha das Sombras on 2/2/2008 at 11:48
Quote Posted by Judith
Oh, and the texture replacer does work, I tried it lately, everything is fine. But it will be better to replace them manually, as you'll have to change the scaling and alignment.
I will try it later. But... replacing them manually would be madness (No, this is Sparta! (sorry)). The second misson is too huge to change all the textures manually. The first one maybe...
Anyway I don´t remember changing many scalings and alignments... (maybe because I did this map 2 year ago :p )
Judith on 2/2/2008 at 13:19
Quote:
Anyway I don´t remember changing many scalings and alignments
Well, then you'll have to change it a lot. 1024 x 1024 texture put on a surface in it's original 1:1 scale is so huge, that you'll barely recognize it - no wonder, it's 4 or 8 times larger than original TDS textures. Yet, if you did no precise alignment or just used planar or sth like that, it should be simple: replace textures, select all surfaces, change scaling to 0.125 and then check your map for any wrong-looking places. Still I think you'll need some time to do this.
Ziemanskye on 2/2/2008 at 14:35
Select one surface with the texture, Shift+T (I think: select all surface with matching texture), F5 (surface properties) and scale to fit.
That way you can replace textures and make sure each fits as you'd want, even if they aren't all for use at 0.125
Oh - and larger textures can very seriously affect performance. But it depends on your graphics card: old cards that don't natively allow textures that size will do a hell of a lot more work trying to use them. It's not much of an issue these days, but it is something to be at least vaguely aware of.
They can also do nasty things to performance with the normal maps (just because of the extra ammount of work needed), and IMO have a tendancy of looking quite bad anyway: your normal maps need to be seriously exagerated otherwise the effect is very nearly lost simply through being too small/subtle in comparison to the surface area, and you're wasting time/processing on an effect a lot of people genuinely might not notice if it was absent.
Finally, on the issue of high-res textures, you sometimes want to be careful about the importance of the things they're applied to: an entire scene full of them might look a lot more sharply defined, but that also means you need to work harder to create actual points of interest to help guide the player (and their eyes) around the room - without that you just end up with sharp visuals and eyestrain.
Judith on 3/2/2008 at 12:01
What a discouragement, Z! :) The difference between simple flat diffuse texture and normal-mapped one is substantial:
(
http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=7603154)
Inline Image:
http://img2.putfile.com/thumb/2/3306585765.jpg (
http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=7603155)
Inline Image:
http://img2.putfile.com/thumb/2/3306585731.jpgThe performance isn't much of a concern if you do not go over 1024 x 1024. Maps have to be exaggrated a bit, that's true. If you use crazybump I'd recommend to set intensity to 70-80.
Quote:
Finally, on the issue of high-res textures, you sometimes want to be careful about the importance of the things they're applied to: an entire scene full of them might look a lot more sharply defined, but that also means you need to work harder to create actual points of interest to help guide the player (and their eyes) around the room - without that you just end up with sharp visuals and eyestrain.
That's not a texture issue, rather a game design common problem. The best solution is to... play other games. Take screenshots. Analyze them. Notice how devs do it. Try Oblivion for example: there's something going on at almost every corner, every wall. See how Bethsoft guys did it, start with something relatively simple, like dungeons or caves.
Ziemanskye on 3/2/2008 at 15:49
One - your screenshots aren't exactly a fair comparison of flat vs not, expecially since the visible level of normal maps there could be achieved at 1-1 scale, without needing 0.125 sized details.
Two - performance hit was per graphics card, so for a TDS minspec you don't want over 512, but for most FM players 1024 is probably okay. My laptop is okay with them (GeForceGo6150), but my desktop system isn't (GeForceFX5500) as a simple and tested example.
Three - It is actually a texture issue. I have played some games with stupid-res textures, and what you get is flat surfaces with pretentions to being interesting, and so many tiny specs of different colour that it really does wear your eyes out quicker. The fact that after that you also need to do gameplay/design changes is just a side-effect of having textures which are too big.
High resolution textures can be nice, but they aren't the magic "makes it better" button a lot of people (even on professional products) seem to think they are.
However I think I have to state that my main issue here is a generalisation: they can be done well and used propertly, obviously. Having links in chainmail is fine: it's the tendancy towards having weave in cloth, individual pores in skin, and micro-granual variations in rock and dirt that I actually object to, which at "only" 1024 sizes for TDS isn't too much of a concern - start telling me you're working on 2048s and 4096s and I may have to kick your ass though.
Judith on 3/2/2008 at 16:35
Nah, anything more than 1024 starts to look much too artificial and hurts the performance, besides that's not what I/we wanted all along. Nice balance between scene quality and speed - 1024 as an upper limit is quite reasonable I guess. :rolleyes: Besides, Garret's skin looks miserable already, in comparison to 1024 textures, other characters still look well, though. I guess having 2048 textures would require reskinning all the AI's, in order not to stand out - too much work :)
Ad1. 128 x 128 normalmap on a 1024 x 1024 texture looks ugly and, you're right, there isn't much difference between "flat" texture and normalmapped in such case. There's no need to scale down N's these days, only perhaps if you want to make a surface look a little more worn out. Besides, staring at the surface at extreme angle makes N's look blocky, scaling them down isn't much of help, just the opposite.
Ad3. Oblivion isn't a good example for today's game design, but take a look at UT3 or Gears of War. Most of the textures are 2048 x 2048, with at least 2 surfaces, linked to many other properties under kismet. And they look fine where they were placed, maps in UT3 or GoW look extremely well, I only wish for some other type of LOD modifier than this bloody diffuse blur, which makes me feel like I had glaucoma or sth :p
Flecha das Sombras on 3/2/2008 at 19:37
An idiot unknow problem with the quotes file made my 3 installations of Thief3 to crash on startup. I reinstalled Thief3 and Thief3Edit. Now I am trying to resetup my map... and I am without the Minimalist (I had forgotten how stupid T3 looked without it).
EDIT: Now I cant see objectives! Does anyone know which files do I need to copy from my old editor folder to have objectives working again?
EDIT2: Had to add the "SchemaChangesAllowed=true" line in the user.ini and then repair the schemas in the conversation browser. Now objectives are back.
Flecha das Sombras on 7/2/2008 at 14:35
I think the first map is done. Only need to correct one small thing, it saves the game as "(null)"...
And... one more thing, need to create and set the "map dds".
Beleg Cúthalion on 7/2/2008 at 20:21
The name of the savegame is somewhere in the string_tags directory. Just look for the other entries (like Inner and Outer Cradle etc.).
Flecha das Sombras on 8/2/2008 at 20:11
I had edited MapRooms and Misc, as KomagTutorial says.
When I click New Game, it shows the briefing screen and in the top I CAN see the name of my mission, but when I start it and press ESC in the top is "(null)" instead of the right name. And when I save, it saves as "(null)".
