Myst Online: URU Live Forums

Re: Global Textures

Stucuk — Wed Jun 29, 2011 3:16 pm

Author: Stucuk

Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2011 3:16 pm

Most games don't limit the files that can be accessed by the game. If you take the engines made by ID Software (Quake 3, etc) they use packages like URU does, but the engine can access every single texture, model, etc. They don't load every texture/etc in existence, they only load what is needed.

The reason textures are stored in ages PRP's is proberly because they would just copy textures from the Age's 3DS Max directory without any checks to see if any textures are duplicates(Don't quote me on this though). With games like Quake 3, you have a custom map editor which uses the games directory to get the textures, so there is no copying of textures when you "compile" a level.

I have no clue how easy or hard it would be to make it so URU can have global textures but which are only loaded when needed.

Re: Global Textures

draekmus — Tue Jun 28, 2011 6:05 pm

Author: draekmus

Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 6:05 pm

Hmm... might be something interesting to look into.

But, it could be possible that Cyan built it that way so that, even though size is increased, the system wouldn't have to load the global PRPs every time an Age was linked to.

I'm no programmer, though, so I am likely wrong on this, but it does somewhat explain the route they chose.

If we could create a global textures directory, we could decrease overall size, but the overhead it puts on the system (loading textures that might not immediately be used) might be the price to pay for such an idea.

Global Textures

Stucuk — Wed Jun 01, 2011 5:21 pm

Author: Stucuk

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 5:21 pm

Does anyone have any plans to add Global Textures to CWE? As in PRP's which store common textures so that each age doesn't need to hold duplicates.

Below is the current wastage:

Quote:

All: 6398 Textures (869.26 MB) (911482183 Bytes)
Wastage: 2036 Textures (193.44 MB) (202832175 Bytes) (22.25%)

Note: I used Name, Size and CRC of the actual texture (In GL_RGBA format) as the criteria for what textures were the same.