Displacer on 25/1/2007 at 17:02
I found the code section that deals with mipmapping, a couple of things about this. First off not all textures are mipmapped. There are at least 2 types that are not, one is sky textures, the other I haven't figured out yet. Second, mipmapping can be turned off all together for all the textures! It doesn't have a huge impact on the game, but it does make it look better. There is a flag called _mipmap_enable that I assume was set when the program was compiled. To turn off mipmapping for all textures its just a 2 byte change.
If anyone wants to check this out, let me know and I'll give you the instructions on making the change, or I can send you a copy of ShockEd with the changes already made. (And yes it can be changed in the game exe as well)
RocketMan on 25/1/2007 at 20:42
Dude, can I get you anything? Coffee?, tea?, fillet mignon?, nobel prize? :D
Enchantermon on 25/1/2007 at 20:56
For those of us who have no idea what mipmapping is, how does turning it off make the game look better? Just curious.
[edit]Read about mipmapping on Wikipedia, but I'm still curious about how it improves the game.
Displacer on 25/1/2007 at 22:22
Well basically mipmapping is taking a image, and the farther you get away from that image, it starts cutting the detail down, as the render would rather make the images close to you look good, and not bother with the ones far away. This is done to take the load off your computer and graphics card. By turning mipmapping off, all images are the same detail no matter how far away you are. Again this is not a huge improvement, but it does make certain images (or textures) look better at a distance. Most graphic cards these days can handle a game like system shock 2 without mipmapping.
Displacer on 25/1/2007 at 23:22
I would say its more a matter of taste. I prefer the sharper textures myself.
Bjossi on 25/1/2007 at 23:24
Me too, but the floor does look weird in that Q3 screenshot with no mipmapping.
Ajare on 25/1/2007 at 23:40
One time you definitely do want mipmapping is with large checkered floors, because else you get horrendous aliasing artifacts.
RocketMan on 25/1/2007 at 23:42
I see it makes the textures look a bit sandy at a distance...but could this just be because there's no AA or Aniso applied? (I don't know of the Q3 ones have it on or not). One thing I can definately tell about the mipmapped shot is the tiling effect on the ground, where the different mips have been generated. They don't look bad, but their interfaces are ugly. Not to mention the mips in the far distance don't even resemble the original texture.
Displacer on 25/1/2007 at 23:45
What I wonder is which textures the software turns off mipmapping. One of them is sky textures, but there is another set that it turns it off. I'll dig a little deeper and see if I can find out what it is.
