Low-Res Recommendations

[Sanok]

I now have CMAK. I also have an older computer. To help reduce/eliminate lag, I'd like to mod some low-res terrian into the game. The thing is, until actually downloading and opening a bmp, I don't know if a mod is low or high-res. Does anyone know of some terrain mods that are low-res? I've seen the ASL mods. Thank you.

[MikeyD]

If this was CMBB I'd have a looong list of recommendations for you! But CMAK came along a year or two later and there are just that many fewer (is 'many fewer' a proper turn of phrase?) of us with slow machines.

I've down-res'd practically the whole map for my own personal use... but I haven't assembled any of it to upload for the gang.

[Sanok]

Originally posted by MikeyD:

If this was CMBB I'd have a looong list of recommendations for you! But CMAK came along a year or two later and there are just that many fewer (is 'many fewer' a proper turn of phrase?) of us with slow machines.

I've down-res'd practically the whole map for my own personal use... but I haven't assembled any of it to upload for the gang.

Even though the ASL mods were made for BB, I've taken a lot of them and used them in AK. Many are the same. The main thing I need, is open terrain. Grids would be nice, too.

Are you able to email the files of the mods you've created for your own computer?

[Hentzau]

Something you could try would be to pick up Irfanview http://www.irfanview.com/ and batch convert ALL the original tiles to 256 color bitmaps. I did that to CMBO the other day just to see what would happen and it didn't look bad at all. Really reduced the size of the files too. The ASL mods could even benefit from it. Irfanview batch converted every single tile in about three minutes, the pink stays pink so transparent tiles work fine too. Since its not sticking to one palette for every single file, 256 colors works fine for bitmaps in the game, IL2 FB only uses 256 colors in their aircraft, that should tell you something.

[ August 02, 2004, 08:20 PM: Message edited by: HENTZAU ]

[johnnymo]

You can try out my SPR-AK mods on cmmods.com; I brightened up the terrain elements to try to make things look cleaner and slightly more movie-like (not sure it succeeded). There are low-res versions of the groundcover and doodads, look for the files with 'LR' in the titles.

They're not masterpieces, but I notice the infantry and vehicles are MUCH sharper on my computer with the low-res mods in place.

Should have noted, they're under 'johnnymo3' as author.

[ August 02, 2004, 08:30 PM: Message edited by: johnnymo ]

[Sanok]

Originally posted by HENTZAU:

Something you could try would be to pick up Irfanview http://www.irfanview.com/ and batch convert ALL the original tiles to 256 color bitmaps. I did that to CMBO the other day just to see what would happen and it didn't look bad at all. Really reduced the size of the files too. The ASL mods could even benefit from it. Irfanview batch converted every single tile in about three minutes, the pink stays pink so transparent tiles work fine too. Since its not sticking to one palette for every single file, 256 colors works fine for bitmaps in the game, IL2 FB only uses 256 colors in their aircraft, that should tell you something.

Does this reduce the amount of kb for each terrain tile?

[Hentzau]

Yes, as an example if you take the ASLTERRAIN.zip file and extract it, it comes out to 26.4 MB. I just ran Irfanview on its tiles and they are reduced to 8.99 MBs. They pretty much look the same still.

[Sanok]

Originally posted by HENTZAU:

Yes, as an example if you take the ASLTERRAIN.zip file and extract it, it comes out to 26.4 MB. I just ran Irfanview on its tiles and they are reduced to 8.99 MBs. They pretty much look the same still.

Wow. I'll check it out. Thanks.

[Sanok]

Originally posted by Sanok:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by HENTZAU:

Yes, as an example if you take the ASLTERRAIN.zip file and extract it, it comes out to 26.4 MB. I just ran Irfanview on its tiles and they are reduced to 8.99 MBs. They pretty much look the same still.

Wow. I'll check it out. Thanks. </font>

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by HENTZAU:

Something you could try would be to pick up Irfanview http://www.irfanview.com/ and batch convert ALL the original tiles to 256 color bitmaps. I did that to CMBO the other day just to see what would happen and it didn't look bad at all. Really reduced the size of the files too. The ASL mods could even benefit from it. Irfanview batch converted every single tile in about three minutes, the pink stays pink so transparent tiles work fine too. Since its not sticking to one palette for every single file, 256 colors works fine for bitmaps in the game, IL2 FB only uses 256 colors in their aircraft, that should tell you something.

That would be damn handy. I downsampled the original bmps to 256 just using PAINT but it was a long manual process, and when I shrunk the sizes down, it didn't keep a 256 colour palette, or at the very least it started putting other colours in, shades of pink and purple, that had to be manually taken out. Very annoying.

[Michael Dorosh]

Oh, and just a note - I thought I released the CMAK ASL interface bmps also - should be at the scenario depot under my name - madorosh.

[MikeyD]

Tell us if reducing to 256 colors like that affects game downsampling significantly. Rumor has it (based on what, I don't know) that the game automatically drops art to 256 colors anyway. But I ain't no techno-geek and don't really know what I'm talking about on the subject.

[Sanok]

Originally posted by MikeyD:

Tell us if reducing to 256 colors like that affects game downsampling significantly. Rumor has it (based on what, I don't know) that the game automatically drops art to 256 colors anyway. But I ain't no techno-geek and don't really know what I'm talking about on the subject.

I converted all three CM games to 256. The entire AK bmp folder was pretty much reduced in kb by 2/3. Makes a huge difference for my PC. The game looks the same and plays just fine.

For BB, I added the ASL mods and a low-res, gridded open and steppe mod. I then batch converted to 256. My gridded open terrain tiles are now 65 kb, and my tree bases are 17 kb.

For BO, I did the low-res, open terrain grid and selected ASL mods, then converted it to 256.

All three games look fine and play better on my computer.

I must say, that cool-looking graphics mean less to me than being able to play the games on my PC.

[Blazing 88's]

Did you reduce all bmp's? Or just the terrain and such?

[Sanok]

Originally posted by Blazing 88's:

Did you reduce all bmp's? Or just the terrain and such?

For AK, I just reduced the entire bmp folder. For BB, I added the ASL mods and gridded open ground first, then reduced the entire folder. Same with BO.

[GunMod]

Originally posted by HENTZAU:

Something you could try would be to pick up Irfanview http://www.irfanview.com/ and batch convert ALL the original tiles to 256 color bitmaps. I did that to CMBO the other day just to see what would happen and it didn't look bad at all. Really reduced the size of the files too. The ASL mods could even benefit from it. Irfanview batch converted every single tile in about three minutes, the pink stays pink so transparent tiles work fine too. Since its not sticking to one palette for every single file, 256 colors works fine for bitmaps in the game, IL2 FB only uses 256 colors in their aircraft, that should tell you something.

The biggest problem with doingthat, is IF you do not use a common palette file is the game engine still has to render in 16.7 million colors, so it has to convert the 256 colors up to 16.7 so your not really saving graphics bandwidth. You are saving harddrive real estate but that's it.

Since the engine is DirectX and not software based using less than 16.7 doesn't help the game engine at all.

The BIGGEST thing you can do to save graphics bandwidth is the actual size of the file.

In other words a 512x512 size bmp knocked down to 256x256 and so on.

[Sanok]

[Hentzau]

Originally posted by GunMod:

The biggest problem with doing that, is IF you do not use a common palette file is the game engine still has to render in 16.7 million colors, so it has to convert the 256 colors up to 16.7 so your not really saving graphics bandwidth. You are saving harddrive real estate but that's it.

Since the engine is DirectX and not software based using less than 16.7 doesn't help the game engine at all.

The BIGGEST thing you can do to save graphics bandwidth is the actual size of the file.

In other words a 512x512 size bmp knocked down to 256x256 and so on.

1. IF you used a common palette, what would happen in regard to DirectX?

2. I was originally trying to conserve HD space, but thought that it might work for game speed too, not knowing anything about DirectX.

3. Irfanview can do batch resize also, so one could go into advanced options and set width and height to 50% in order to make 128 x 128 bmps instead of 256 x 256. I'd do that from the original bmps and not bmps that have been reduced to 256 colors though, should look better that way.

[Sanok]

Originally posted by Hentzau:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by GunMod:

The biggest problem with doing that, is IF you do not use a common palette file is the game engine still has to render in 16.7 million colors, so it has to convert the 256 colors up to 16.7 so your not really saving graphics bandwidth. You are saving harddrive real estate but that's it.

Since the engine is DirectX and not software based using less than 16.7 doesn't help the game engine at all.

The BIGGEST thing you can do to save graphics bandwidth is the actual size of the file.

In other words a 512x512 size bmp knocked down to 256x256 and so on.

1. IF you used a common palette, what would happen in regard to DirectX?

2. I was originally trying to conserve HD space, but thought that it might work for game speed too, not knowing anything about DirectX.

3. Irfanview can do batch resize also, so one could go into advanced options and set width and height to 50% in order to make 128 x 128 bmps instead of 256 x 256. I'd do that from the original bmps and not bmps that have been reduced to 256 colors though, should look better that way. </font>

[Sanok]

"3. Irfanview can do batch resize also, so one could go into advanced options and set width and height to 50% in order to make 128 x 128 bmps instead of 256 x 256. I'd do that from the original bmps and not bmps that have been reduced to 256 colors though, should look better that way."

Wouldn't that actually be 25%? A 128 x 128 is 1/4 the area of a 256 x 256. Of course, I may be talking out my ear. lol

[Hentzau]

This should answer both questions, Took an 800 x 600 bitmap and in "set advanced options" the only option I checked was "resize" and then "set new size as % of original" I set width at 50% and height at 50%, the output was a bitmap of 400 x 300. In reality the bitmap produced is 1/4 the area of the original.

[GunMod]

Well, DirectX uses images uncompressed in 32bit format nativly. (16.7 million colors)

Not being privy to the actual code used in CMAK I can't say if CMAK uses compressed texture formats or not. The 2x2 rule (where images have to be dividable by 2, 64x64, 128x128, etc) is for when compression is used. If texture compression is not used then the 2x2 rule isn't neccesary. Looking at the exe code with a hex editor I do not see any calls to texture compression. That doesn't mean it isn't there, I just can't find it.

So I "think" the CMAK uses very primative DirectX 3D and doesn't full with the whole texture compression mess. That's good and bad.

The good thing is the engine doesn't have to uncompress a texture before using it which allows fast load times. The bad thing is that texture sizes are effected by your system. The more RAM and video ram you have the bigger the textures can be.

That's why new games use texture compression so they can have a 1024x1024 texture that uses about 64 megs of RAM only use a tenth of that.

So what does that all mean to you?

It means that really high texture sizes (1024x1024) and above will slow you down.

It means you don't have to worry about the divide by 2 rule.

It also means textures are considered to be 32 bit, checked against a hard coded palette (like how pink is transparent) to be shown in game.

That means that even if you convert all the textures to 256 color ( 8 bit) the engine still has to apply its color rules to the texture so that transparency rules will work.

So while you may save some space by using 256 color BMP's you wont speed the game up because the engine assumes all BMP's are the same.

No, we have the problem of MipMaps. Does the game use Mipmapping? I think so. So does that mean the textures are in fact compressed? No. You can have a texture with mipmaps without it being compressed.

Here is my "guess" on how the engine works.

It takes a BMP in the BMP folder.

It assigns it a set Mipmap regardless of color or size.

I wish we could use DDS textures because you can define the mipmapping yourself to make really crisp textures.

Now if your going for color accuracy what you would do is make a palette that encompasses all the major colors your BMP's would use. Convert all images to this new pallete.

THis would keep all hues (colors) uniform in the game.

For example, say you make Bush A, B, and C

Bush A and C need to be the same colors.

Instead of having to load up Bush A and Bush C and compare the colors you could make a master pallete and convert Bush A and C to this pallete and you would know that both bushes have the same colors.

That of course has nothing to do with how the engine handles the files, it's just a way for you to make colors that flow.

At the end of the day, the conclusion is that 256 color BMP's are only going to hurt you because you are limiting yourself to 256 colors with the only benefit being smaller size files.

As for SIZE? Yes, Size does matter!

A 128x128 texture will use half the memory of a 256x256 texture. a 128x128 texture uses 1/4 the memory of a 1024x1024 texture and so on.

So if you can get away with smaller textures, do it. It does make an impact on performance.

Colors = No Impact

Size = Biggest Impact

Now, all of this is by looking at hard coded data that I don't have the source to, so BF feel free to step in here and tell me if I'm dead wrong. I'm just going by what I can see.

I hope that wasn't too techy. I'm not a very good teacher.

[Sanok]

Originally posted by Hentzau:

This should answer both questions, Took an 800 x 600 bitmap and in "set advanced options" the only option I checked was "resize" and then "set new size as % of original" I set width at 50% and height at 50%, the output was a bitmap of 400 x 300. In reality the bitmap produced is 1/4 the area of the original.

GunMod, if I do the above, there should be an improvement for my computer, right? I should also get more RAM, as I have only 64 megs.

[Sanok]

I just used Irfanview and reduced the dimensions of the AK BMP folder by 50%. The good thing was, that all the bitmaps are now 25% the kb they originally were. The bad news is, everything on the screen is 1/4 the size and nearly impossible to read. There are some things you need to click, like the scroll arrows in the scenraio page or the terrain icons in the scenario editor, that aren't even on the screen anymore.

Sigh.

Time to reinstall the game....

[Hentzau]

Sorry, luckily thats an easy thing to do. It worked for everything other than the user interface graphics though right? I'll try it as soon as I clear some room on the drive. lol