Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

DDS files and resizing: Having troubles

Collapse
X
Collapse
 
  • Page of 1
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
Previous template Next
  • #1

    DDS files and resizing: Having troubles

    Well, I'm working on resizing the dds files so they take up less memory. That should improve performance. Right now on my system (768 megs of ram) I can't run a game on a large or larger map. This is because mid-game it fills up all my ram and has about 800 megs of data in virtual memory (e.g. on the hard drive that it swaps in and out of the RAM as needed).

    Anyhow, I'll let people now how the performance improves and figure out wether I can post the mod on here when I am done. Certainly I could make a mod of the Blue Marble Mod, but I think I'll be able to have one of this too.

    ------the problem I was having------
    I tried resizing the DDS files from the art0.pak so that the terrain and such would take up less memory. I hoped I'd be able to play on a large map that way (right now the game slows to a crawl around the era of riflemen). So, I got the nvidia DDS plug-in for photoshop, and I halved the resolution (in each direction, so quartered the size) of all the DDS files except for the units. When saving I told Photoshop to keep the mipmaps that were part of the image (resized with everything else) and I went with the default settings otherwise (no alpha channel...though I'm not sure what that is--I assumed the default would save it in the same format it was originally in).

    When I tried to run the game, however, there were several graphical errors (grey plains for example) and when I tried to found my first city the game crashed.

    I'm afraid I don't know how this texture format works very well, so I have probably missed something. Can anyone tell me what I did wrong?

    -Drachasor
    Last edited by Drachasor; November 26, 2005, 19:59.
    "If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper -- that makes this country work." - Barack Obama
    Tags: None
  • #2
    i´ve no idea
    but i´d suggest to try it on 1 single file at start so you can have a much higher try and error rate in a give time.

    Comment

    • #3
      Drachasor, hehehe, you should have done a few, then run the game to test!

      You need to keep the alpha channels, VERY important. Use DXT3 as the format, and keep existing mipmaps when they are there, otherwise DO NOT auto-generate... if you just leave it, the 'generate mipmaps' will be selected by default.

      BTW, I stripped the mipmaps from all the leaderhead textures with no problems. After all, you only ever see them at one distance, close!

      Comment

      • #4
        Yeah, I realized that about the Alpha channels looking some things up.

        The default number of colors seems to be better than DTX3 though, as each channel (red, green, blue, alpha) has 8 bits, not 4 (I think that's what DTX3 has, but I can't find the site was was reading). I'll try DTX3 though (I was having some trouble even keeping the alpha, but that might of been from something else).

        Thanks

        -Drachasor
        "If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper -- that makes this country work." - Barack Obama

        Comment

        • #5
          I've had overall good success now. I've put all the terrain into DTX format. At first I had ugly lines between the tiles, but I then redid it and had the mipmaps generated (I was just resizing them before--I was already fiddling around with that before you gave me your warning). Now there are just very faint lines in the ocean. Any idea how to get rid of that?

          On a huge map the game is using about 400 fewer megs of ram (most of the map uncovered). Oddly though it is still putting about 800 megs of info into the swapfile/virtual memory/whatever you want to call it. I am going to try lowering the resolution of all the other dds files, save the leader heads, and see if the program can figure out it has a lot more memory to work with (aforementioned 400 megs free). Maybe it will figure that out in a new game or if I keep playing that one (I just looked to make sure it rendered correctly and didn't crash).

          Anyhow, the terrain doesn't look worse at all...maybe if you zoomed in close you could see something, but certainly from the view you spend most of the game in you can't see a thing. Though I do want to get rid of those lines in the ocean. I'm looking into that with google searches, but it isn't easy.

          Hmm, I'd probably need to get permission from firaxis to post this mod on here, right? Considering it is basically using their art? Hmm, or if I had a disclaimer "don't download this unless you own the game"...perhaps that would be sufficient.

          Well, I'll worry about that after I have it working and once I see it is improving performance.

          -Drachasor
          "If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper -- that makes this country work." - Barack Obama

          Comment

          Previous template Next
          Working...
          X