I have 5 radio to make, what should I do?

[Delta Hawk 1829]

With my mod there's about 5 different radios carried on a person depending on there unit (prc-126 with mike and handheld, F3 innersquad radios, Sabers with Lash II, Sabers with another headset, some old 80s spec ops radio I have no clue what it is) and I don't know how to do the textures. This issue doesn't involve man packed radios like the PRC-119, only handheld.

I don't have enough room on my common gear texture to put even one radio textures on it. I can't put the radio textures on the vest textures cause some units would have radios without vests. And I can't put the radios on the uniform or helmet textures since there's multiple camo files. Should I make individual texture files just for the radios? Or should I make one gaint texture with all radios? Only the 2000 Rangers would use two radios at once. Every other unit would only use one kind of radio. I'm trying to not make another texture requirement for the game engine since I heard that's bad.

I would really like a opinion from a developer/game designer point of view.

Since I'm on this topic, can I make a part of a back pack act as head gear?

---------- Post added at 19:20 ---------- Previous post was at 19:05 ----------

Actually, make that 6 radios. I also have to make a MX300R radio for my Navy Seals in the 80s.

[Binkowski 26]

I would just make another big texture file (4096x4096 or 2048x2048) and call it radios_co or whatever you wish, and put all of the radios on there. That way it's optimized, filesize is kept down too. I'm not a game developer or designer.. but it's jut the way I would do things.

[max power 21]

Say you have 5 potential radios but you're only using one in a scene. If you use a 4096x4096 texture map, 80 percent of that map's 10 megs in memory (if it's a dxt1 map) will be unused. I would do one map per radio.

Edited March 25, 2013 by Max Power

[Delta Hawk 1829]

Binkowski, we're game designers in a way. We have nobody to tell us how to make something, so we have to figure it out ourselves, such as how to make textures that's best for a game engine.

I like your reasoning Max. I think I'll do 512x512 for each radio and their respected headgear/handmikes.