blaydes99 on 5/10/2006 at 15:37
Quote Posted by Nameless_Voice
Didn't telliamed write a tool to parse a mission file and automatically change the scale/alignment of textures?
I think it only worked on unstripped missions, though.
I'm currently chatting with telliamed to see if the txswap program that he made can modify or retain u,v offset data when replacing textures, instead of simply resetting everything back to 0. If this can be done, texture swapping will be super easy and painless.
At this point it looks like we're going to have to work with the unstripped missions. Short of playtesting them, can anybody confirm that they are exactly the same as the official retail missions? If so, then we will soon have high-res terrain textures in all of the unstripped missions. We won't be able to do anything with the stripped missions until we can extract and then restore all the missing terrain data. At this point the tools seem to be able to extract this data from stipped missions but not able to plug that back into a .mis file or through DromEd. Anyone can confirm this?
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Animation rate is a texture property (like its material type, and so forth), so where are those stored? The MIS or the GAM?
You know ZB, I think this might be in the .gam file. This would make things super easy...
ZylonBane on 5/10/2006 at 16:18
I don't think anyone should entertain notions of every single terrain texture being upgraded. There are hundreds of them, and most of them would be nontrivial for anyone but a professional artist to reproduce.
For the most part, Irrational did a really good job of creating textures that look good at a low resolution. Aside from the screens, I can only think of two or three terrain textures that stand out as distractingly low-res (like the "lockers" near many of the airlocks).
blaydes99 on 5/10/2006 at 21:01
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
I don't think anyone should entertain notions of every single terrain texture being upgraded. There are hundreds of them, and most of them would be nontrivial for anyone but a professional artist to reproduce.
For the most part, Irrational did a really good job of creating textures that look good at a low resolution. Aside from the screens, I can only think of two or three terrain textures that stand out as distractingly low-res (like the "lockers" near many of the airlocks).
My thoughts exactly - we should only have to produce high res textures for most of the tech family (tech screens) and some of the real eye-sores (perhaps terrain textures like the keyboards as well). Most of the wall, ceiling, and floor textures are just fine (and may already be at 256x256 as it is). So, even if I have to adjust a few by hand, it won't be THAT big of a deal.
ZylonBane on 5/10/2006 at 21:23
Exactly two of the terrain textures are 256x256 -- Ert022.pcx and Rhull001.pcx -- and I'm not even sure if they're used.
Zygoptera on 6/10/2006 at 03:53
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Animation rate is a texture property (like its material type, and so forth), so where are those stored? The MIS or the GAM?
You're right, of course. For the terrain textures the animation rate is stored in the gamesys and is easy to change, it's the object textures which have the apparently hard-coded rate
blaydes99 on 6/10/2006 at 14:10
This is good news then guys in order to beef up those animations. I seem to remember something - what is the limit of frames of animation for terrain textures ?? - I seems to remember that someone tried this and couldn't do more than 9.
If none of the terrain textures are 256 x 256, I think that we are going to see some drastic results. We can also improve on tech textures but retain the original feel and style of the SS2 textures (like what SHTUP does). For example, that tech texture that is just a bunch of green circles could potentially be something cool.
ZylonBane on 6/10/2006 at 14:25
Max is 19 frames, IIRC.
blaydes99 on 6/10/2006 at 17:04
Wow, we could some really smooth looking tech panel animations going then.
Bjossi on 6/10/2006 at 17:07
I'd love to see the blue light on the laser pistol move more smoothly. :)
ZylonBane on 6/10/2006 at 19:21
That's an object texture. Those can't have their animation rate changed, unfortunately.
