I have made some really cool 512x512 24-bit bitmaps that are amazingly realistic. Now, will the computer rendering this bitmap have lag when for ex: making it partially transpartent as compared to the same file type and size but just less color info(meaning low quality texture)? I want to know if I make the textures for my game 512x512(most likely 256x256) 24-bit bitmaps for things such as smoke and fire and have them resize and become transparent(as smoke would) or create an animation for the fire, will the detail of the picture matter in how much computer power it would take to do this or only the initial file type and size? In other words, what maters in the world of textures and lag: the detail of the picture or the size and type of file it is?
Does anyone understand that? Because I can hardly understand it myself.
Textures and lag. Do these affect each other?
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MakerOfGames
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Textures and lag. Do these affect each other?
Think outside the box.
To go on an adventure, one must discard the comforts and safety of the known and trusted.
To go on an adventure, one must discard the comforts and safety of the known and trusted.
Basically bigger textures will cause more slow down, If you have a bigger texture you better breaking it down into smaller ones, or resizing it down, im loathed to shrink textures though, if you have a big texture and make it smaller then enlarge it again to fit your geometry sometimes you get noticable artifact's on the image or blurry results.
i don't think colour depth has much to play with in frame rates(could be wrong though?)
i'm not sure of the technical reason why this happens though(im sure the developers could explain why),
through trial and error has proven to me to squeeze extra frames i had to go resize a couple, but i guess if you use bigger textures sparingly it won't make that much of a difference.
so key thing here is use smaller textures on things that lack intrest(something the player could miss or really has no relavance/details), and bump up the sizes on things the player cant miss.
i don't think colour depth has much to play with in frame rates(could be wrong though?)
i'm not sure of the technical reason why this happens though(im sure the developers could explain why),
through trial and error has proven to me to squeeze extra frames i had to go resize a couple, but i guess if you use bigger textures sparingly it won't make that much of a difference.
so key thing here is use smaller textures on things that lack intrest(something the player could miss or really has no relavance/details), and bump up the sizes on things the player cant miss.
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QuestOfDreams
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Q. Do larger textures slow down framerate?
A. Only if they are really large and the limit of the video card's memory is reached so the textures have to be transfered between memory and graphic card all the time. At least larger textures do increase level-load times, because of the time it takes to transfer the textures to the graphic card's memory. Larger textures also increase the size of the BSP files.
Q. Do scaled-down textures increase poly count?
A. No.
Q. Should I scale down textures or leave them at 1.0?
A. In places that get much attention I would use larger textures and scale them down. A 512x512 texture scaled to .25 looks better than a 128x128 texture scaled at 1.0. On less important geometry I would stick to smaller textures.
Q. Does a low lightmap setting slow down framerate?
A. Yes, because geometry gets split along lightmap boundaries.
A. Only if they are really large and the limit of the video card's memory is reached so the textures have to be transfered between memory and graphic card all the time. At least larger textures do increase level-load times, because of the time it takes to transfer the textures to the graphic card's memory. Larger textures also increase the size of the BSP files.
Q. Do scaled-down textures increase poly count?
A. No.
Q. Should I scale down textures or leave them at 1.0?
A. In places that get much attention I would use larger textures and scale them down. A 512x512 texture scaled to .25 looks better than a 128x128 texture scaled at 1.0. On less important geometry I would stick to smaller textures.
Q. Does a low lightmap setting slow down framerate?
A. Yes, because geometry gets split along lightmap boundaries.
The FAQ says that, regardless what the image color depht is, RF converts any bitmap(here a texture) to the geBitmap format, a format that is used by the genesis engine. So a 24bit and a 8bit image would be the same for RF. So the color depht does not affect the framerate.Spyrewolf wrote:i don't think colour depth has much to play with in frame rates(could be wrong though?)
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MakerOfGames
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Thanks for the info. So if I "cell" shade my game(meaning the textures have few colors in them) or have the same textures with lots of detail(color info), it wont create more lag, right? Thats great news to me, I can keep my really realistic textures.
Think outside the box.
To go on an adventure, one must discard the comforts and safety of the known and trusted.
To go on an adventure, one must discard the comforts and safety of the known and trusted.
it shouldn't generally slow things down too much. when i use a 512 texture i almost always use grayscale so that its less of a load on the graphics card, but like they said, it will still cause the same slowdown.
i really dont think this should be much of an issue though. games like Halo use textures that are tiled 128x128 and lower over a 128x128 texture scaled larger. this is called detail mapping, and to some small extents we can do this in RF. but modern games rarely use larger than 256x256. halo only used 512x512 compressed .DDS textures for characters and first person weapons, all the others were smaller. so there really isn't much need to use large textures.
but I think it would really be a blessing to get away from the internal GeBitmap if we could and convert to .JPEG or the newer .DDS encoding, since at the very least this should speed up load time. but im sure this would take a lot more programming than it's worth.
i really dont think this should be much of an issue though. games like Halo use textures that are tiled 128x128 and lower over a 128x128 texture scaled larger. this is called detail mapping, and to some small extents we can do this in RF. but modern games rarely use larger than 256x256. halo only used 512x512 compressed .DDS textures for characters and first person weapons, all the others were smaller. so there really isn't much need to use large textures.
but I think it would really be a blessing to get away from the internal GeBitmap if we could and convert to .JPEG or the newer .DDS encoding, since at the very least this should speed up load time. but im sure this would take a lot more programming than it's worth.
two things: i believe greyscale or not they take up the same amount of memory in gebitmap format, could be wrong on that one. (as a note, Jay basically pointed this out, to credit him) two, .jpeg would actually load more slowly, be lower quality, and take up the same amount of memory, due to the fact it has to take time to decompress them to use them, and they would be decompressed and thus take up the same amount of memory as a bmp; the only benefit would be hard drive space. dds, however, from what i have heard, can be used in memory compressed, so it sounds like the best way to go.
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MakerOfGames
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I guess I will scale my textures down then, I have 1 brick with half of 2 others below it in a 512x512 texture! That definantly does not have to be that large. And scaling it down shouldnt do much damage to its quality. I geuss 128x128 or maybe 256 for some larger more detailed textures would be good enough. Dont want to cause lag and slow load times. Thanks for the info.
Think outside the box.
To go on an adventure, one must discard the comforts and safety of the known and trusted.
To go on an adventure, one must discard the comforts and safety of the known and trusted.
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psychopath
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Iv'e done an OpenGL DDS loader in my engine, but I don't know enough about the RF/Genesis texture system to add it, and the fact the RF uses D3D (which I know nothing about) may be a problem aswell. I was going to try and tackle this a while ago, but as usual, I got sidetracked. If I ever start at this, I'll let you all know.
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