Tileset Textures/Suraces

[ChupaReaper]

I can make 64x64 tiles tileable but there's still some repetition going on, I can mess around for a while and alter them to remove the repetition but a lot of detail is lost. It would be better if we could use stuff like 128x128 textures or any that are powers of 2, these textures wouldn't be scaled down to 64x64 in game though, so we can then make megatextures which don't tile as often and are thus not as noticeable, I'm guessing the problem is that each cell of a map is separate and it would mean cells sharing the same texture, or having to set offsets to match neighbouring cells. Maybe an option in tileset xmls to scale the texture used and set an offset, etc too this way rather than having a load of separate images all tiles could share one image and use offsets (such as all grass1 textures in one texture). Scaling down textures means better quality when zooming in and maybe not as much repetition.

[silnarm]

how many textures per surface are you using?

Use lots, with a mostly even spread of probabilities. If you have only a few textures (or only a few are dominating because of high probabilities) it is very easy to get a 'carpet' effect if the map has large areas of all that surface.

With enough textures for surfaces 1 & 2 the regular splatting works reasonably well (for most maps, which use lots of surface 1 & 2).

[wciow]

I've recently been experimenting with using tileset models as decals on top of the terrain.



Apart from the obvious restriction that they can only be used on completely flat parts of the map they are actually quite useful and give a nice look.

Rather than playing around with the basic 64x64 cell textures we should be using extra stuff on top of the tiles such as grass or decals. The simple 64x64 tile textures are an excellent base and cost very little to render on modern systems.

I've also covered an entire 128x128 map in the complex grass model in the dark_forest tileset and had my framerate hover between 50-60 fps on my middle of the road GPU   I'm now trying to reduce that model by 50% (polygons) to improve effeciency without much effect on looks.

[hailstone]

Very nice   It might be worth looking into billboards for grass to improve performance.

[ChupaReaper]

I've many textures per surface but the borders aren't randomized enough really I'm gonna go over them and 'uncarpet them'. It would still be nice to use larger images for better quality when zoomed in though.

[silnarm]

There are plans to completely redo terrain rendering, but its probably some way off.

Bigger textures could be doctored in to the current one, but the textures are splatted before the game starts, making them bigger will use lots of texture memory, and terrain rendering is slow enough as it is, so you'll have to wait. 

[ChupaReaper]

Ok, well it works well enough as it is now so I'm happy to just wait for when they redo the textures.

[titi]

You can use 128x128 textures, but then you have to build a whole tileset using this 128x128 tiles.

BUT: As Silnarm said the texture for the whole terrain is assembled before the game starts so you get a really huge texture for the terrain. So better don't do it. Currnetly all the terrain splatting is done "manually" by the CPU and not by the gfx card.

So what does it mean:
lets say we have a map of 128x128 cells and 64x64 texture tiles.
the resulting texture size is:

128*128*64*64 pixels big or an image of 128*64  x 128*64  ( 8192 x 8192 )
with 24 bit colordepth its already
128*128*64*64*8 bits which is already 192MB only for the terrain texture !!!! Or am I wrong?

This is maybe one of the main issues why its slow      ( and very big in the memory )

[Gabbe]

doesn;ty most cards have 256 - 512 MB already? ıf not ı suggest and upgrade...

[wciow]

Having lots of memory is no reason to waste it  

[ChupaReaper]

You can use 128x128 textures, but then you have to build a whole tileset using this 128x128 tiles.

BUT: As Silnarm said the texture for the whole terrain is assembled before the game starts so you get a really huge texture for the terrain. So better don't do it. Currnetly all the terrain splatting is done "manually" by the CPU and not by the gfx card.

So what does it mean:
lets say we have a map of 128x128 cells and 64x64 texture tiles.
the resulting texture size is:

128*128*64*64 pixels big or an image of 128*64  x 128*64  ( 8192 x 8192 )
with 24 bit colordepth its already
128*128*64*64*8 bits which is already 192MB only for the terrain texture !!!! Or am I wrong?

This is maybe one of the main issues why its slow      ( and very big in the memory )

Ahh I see, I'll wait for it all to be redone then else playing a 512x512 map with 256x256 tile textures would be huge! Hopefully when it's redone it'll use the graphics card.

[Coldfusionstorm]

and lets all note that this is GFX memory.