Technical question about buildings

[Scipio]

I just wonder why BTS has 'missed' to render the building texture from inside, so if I make a pink spot, I can only see the terraine behind the building, but not the building from inside.

If the building texture would be rendered, then we could make our own textures for ruins - I think current ones are just so...you know? I wonder why they decided to hardcode this, as well as I wonder why the buildings are not rendered from the inside - it is possible for tanks, so why not for buildings?

[Schrullenhaft]

Probably because it would eat up horrendous amounts of VRAM. Something that is already being stretched to the limit.

[Scipio]

How about texture compression? Most games use it.

[MikeyD]

BFC's one concession to building interiors is with the factories. It's probably because a map may have two factories but 50 small buildings. That would REALL slow down the processor speed. I'm just happy the building interiors in cMBB are see-through! Makes it awfully hard to go back to CMBO afterward.

Now if you REALLY want interiors, what about vehicle interiors! Imagine the inside of a Tiger II - you could see all the stowed ammo, the crew sitting in place, watch the gun recoil. That would be so SUPER-cool!

[Scipio]

Oh, I didn't mean interiors. Just the walls. Well, I'm not sure if it means that each building texture most be loaded twice into the VRAM to do this. Must it?

[Zitadelle]

Yo, Scipio-

Check out the link on WarfareHQ for the winterized KV. It doesn't point to the KV, but rather the IS. I think your administrator has a little work to do.

Not to hijack a thread, but I posted a couple days ago and there still have not been any changes.

[Scipio]

Originally posted by Zitadelle:

Yo, Scipio-

Check out the link on WarfareHQ for the winterized KV. It doesn't point to the KV, but rather the IS. I think your administrator has a little work to do.

Not to hijack a thread, but I posted a couple days ago and there still have not been any changes.

Why don't you just send me a mail? Anyway, thx. Link is corrected.

[Schrullenhaft]

You would essentially double all the textures used for buildings if you included a texture for the inside wall (just the four sides for most buildings). It's been requested in the past and this has been the answer - it eats up too much VRAM and basically there are other more important things to make room for in VRAM.

Personally I'd much rather see a larger variety of building shapes, construction and textures than have a texture for the inside wall of the four primary sides of current buildings in CM.

[Scipio]

Originally posted by Schrullenhaft:

You would essentially double all the textures used for buildings if you included a texture for the inside wall (just the four sides for most buildings). It's been requested in the past and this has been the answer - it eats up too much VRAM and basically there are other more important things to make room for in VRAM.

Personally I'd much rather see a larger variety of building shapes, construction and textures than have a texture for the inside wall of the four primary sides of current buildings in CM.

Does it double the texture even if they use the same texture? Does this mean that also all unit textures are double loaded into the VRAM?

[Schrullenhaft]

Every unique texture will be stored in VRAM. You can have several buildings, vehicles, etc. in the game that can share the same texture (i.e. - several T-34 M40's will require only one set of textures if they're all the same tank). Each item that is unique will require that textures be stored in VRAM. So at minimum you would need to match the exterior textures in some fashion. I doubt you would want the exact same texture in every type of building (it would look strange to have plaster walls in a peasant shack). So every unique building texture in the game would most likely have a matching interior texture.

[Scipio]

Well, I guess you missed the idea.

I did not mean to add an additional texture for the inner side of the building. The problem is (if I understood it right):

As you (maybe) know, CM uses a special pink color on textures that is transparent in the game - this works fine on vehicels. If I use the pink on a vehicel, it just makes 'hole' into the vehicel, and now I can see the vehicel from inside (of course only an 'empty' vehicel without interior). If I do the same for a building texture, I see only the terraine behind the building through the 'hole'. If the building textures would work like the vehicel textures, we could make just better looking ruins.