HummersRock's Tracks | Current WIP: none

Sido · Postby **Sido** » Tue Mar 15, 2011 3:06 pm

Great

sajmon14 · Postby **sajmon14** » Tue Mar 15, 2011 4:06 pm

Cool track

cars88 · Postby **cars88** » Tue Mar 15, 2011 8:05 pm

very good progress! when it realised i'll check it.

HummersRock · Postby **HummersRock** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 5:29 am

I've been working on fixing some of it's problems but it still has many that need fixing.

Does anyone know any good places for textures? I can't find a good texture for cattails. CGTextures doesn't have any and Google Images hasn't helped.

Triple_X · Postby **Triple_X** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:10 pm

well here it is the link for the brown thing texture

the other parts are just green

RacingFreak · Postby **RacingFreak** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:26 pm

lolwut.. Carpet texture for a track!

HummersRock · Postby **HummersRock** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 3:02 pm

Well I want a full texture so that I can just have 2 polys. If I have textures for each parts I have to have polys for each part. I need to try to not go too overboard on polys since I already have around 100 objects and plan on having around 2,000 trees for the entire track.

Triple_X · Postby **Triple_X** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 6:10 pm

oh ok

@RF it's not a carpet take a better look

RacingFreak · Postby **RacingFreak** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 6:23 pm

@RF it's not a carpet take a better look

Hah, it`s the back side of carpet, then

zoot · Postby **zoot** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 8:59 pm

Here's one. An easy edit.

HummersRock · Postby **HummersRock** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 4:32 am

I don't...it looks too fake in my opinion (but maybe that's why I don't have a texture for it...I'm too picky

).

I noticed something strange while I was working with textures. Since I like to cut down on filesize, especially if I can do so without lowering the quality of a track, I reduced some of the textures to 256 colors (some of these textures only use 16-32 colors). One of these textures is used for the trees. Currently I let mm2city toolkit add 3,700 of them to the track.

When I went to test my track, it was lagging very badly. It was actually lagging worse than it ever has before! I immediately started thinking, "Is it the textures?

" Sure enough, it was!

The tree texture was causing all the lag. Why would having a texture in 256 colors as a .tex file cause so much lag?

While writing this post I had an idea that it might be the fact that .tex files have mipmaps stored in them and .tga files don't. And sure enough, when I added the command line to my shortcut to disable mipmaps there was no more lag (well actually there still was a bit more lag than if the texture was a .tga). This makes me wonder though, if I should leave as many textures as possible as .tga files--possibly leaving them all as .tga files and forgetting about my track having cloud shadows.

What does everyone else think? Seeing as how I don't have any lag with the other textures as .tex files, I guess it's fine, but I usually worry about lag for people that don't have powerful computers. Maybe add in a patch for less lag? I was thinking about possibly adding in levels of detail to reduce lag (which I've already done just to experiment). I guess I could add that in with the patch.

Postby **Franch88** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 4:41 am

Good try, at least you've figured out something new. An image as .tex files it's bigger than the same one as .tga file, but only if are included the mipmaps (low, medium and high quality version of the texture). The mipmaps are required, otherwise the texture will have a bad view in far distances. The use of this file is needed only if you want the feature of the clouds shadows, otherwise, is better use the normal .tga file. The lagging of the game given by textures is because of their file sizes and image sizes, I wouldn't say because of the colors.
In this case, I suggest to have the tree texture in .tga, the clouds shadows effect isn't that much needed for it (better use it only for grounds), and especially, it won't work if you're using the alpha shadow (to cut the shape, for example).

HummersRock · Postby **HummersRock** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 4:45 am

Well that's the thing, as a .tex is was smaller in filesize and resolution than the tga, yet caused much more lag. As far as I can tell, it's all because of the mipmaps. I don't really understand. I guess I should google this and learn what's going on with the .tga files in relation to the rendering of the game.

HummersRock · Postby **HummersRock** » Wed Apr 13, 2011 11:42 pm

How do you make reflections, like in shader mod, work? I've got a transparent water texture and have made the objects the same way, but it's not working.

Postby **Franch88** » Wed Apr 13, 2011 11:54 pm

How do you make reflections, like in shader mod, work? I've got a transparent water texture and have made the objects the same way, but it's not working.

You're doing this to a PSDL object? This is easy to do as you've noticed in the Shader Mod 2 Gold building where it's applied, but in that case it works because it's a PKG object. Instead, if you're using a PKG object and the reflection isn't working, all should be because of the materials/objects order, the object with the semi-transparent material must stay bottom the others, then unite all.