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Compression schemes.
Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2007 1:18 pm
by Jayecifer
I've had some complaints about my large downloads due to my custom terrains on my world. It has been suggested that I use jpg files, but every time I format my textures as such I get errors saying that the file compression scheme is unsupported. Is there more than one compression scheme for jpg formats? Does terrain only support bmp or are gif, png, tif, or targa format supported as well?
Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2007 2:13 pm
by Fooli
We support bmp, jpg, dds and tga.
Jpg: In the paint prog I use, jpg has options for "standard" and "progressive" encoding. I use standard, and that works for me. The compression ratio ought to be up to you.
bmp: you should be able to use RGB (16m colours) and RLE (256 colours)
dds: I believe this is the most efficient format to use (for various reasons I don't understand, but basically it's the official directx texture format, so there we go). However you might find it tricky to get a program to save as dds without some fecking about. Nvidia offers a free dds exporter that works with painshop pro (I've used it) and photoshop (I believe).
tga: this does work. It confuses me - I dont understand the alpha stuff with tgas - but it can be used.
In general you should be fine with jpgs, unless you can sort out the dds stuff. Jpg will be more efficient for downloads. The only real drawback using it for texture files is that sometimes the compression creates artifacts in the seams between texmaps.
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Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2007 8:52 pm
by Jayecifer
I've be just converting them with paint, I'll try it with photoshop. Perhaps paint automatically uses progressive.
Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 2:09 am
by zaroba
are you hosting the textures on an online website at all?
it'll help speed up downloads.
Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 10:06 am
by Jayecifer
I would have to allocate a http server, which I won't have for about three months. I could probably toss the files up somewhere like freewebs of something...
Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 6:00 pm
by Fooli
Oh, i know. You can't use jpgs as the source textures for autogen. Quite simple really.
Whether this is by design, by omission or just a bug, I don't know. But stick to bitmaps and you should be fine.
Yes, it'll mean larger downloads for people. But players will only have to do it once.
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