ww4 anims beta

[anguis 4]

Again, Merry Christmas!

I use the mission "Battlefields" as sort of a benchmark for OFP. Invariably, stutters abound on this mission (settings @ 1600x1200, 1200m v. dist., high terrain, dxdll active, etc. . .). This is the first mod I have used that allows this mission to run smoothly, better than vanilla. I am amazed and very happy! Introducing this game to my buddies just became a whole lot easier - thank you very much, Sanctuary! You are doing a great job!

[sanctuary 19]

Thanks, i am always happy when people enjoy my work.

Anyways, important question, as it will have an impact on everything.

The PAA/PAC format of textures used in OFP is a very annoying one, most of the time your nicely and carefully crafted texture is often "destroyed" in many by the conversion into the .PAC or .PAA format.

So you have to use some tricks to try to lower the horrible impact the texture conversion will have on your work.

Either you convert your texture to 256 colors, play with texture noise or just pray everything will be alright etc... but in the end the texture in PAA/PAC is never as good as your original one.

In the current status of beta 7, you can see some examples of this if you look carefully to the textures of the soldiers, there is a lot of texture bleeding.

One exception is the blackop with his black uniform that is nearly 100% as good as the original one, because the IA8:8 format of PAATool can convert a greyscale texture into something nearly as perfect as the original.

But this conversion format unfortunately does not work on anything that has colors.

Using some tricks i am trying to improve this, so here is the question :

Which one you prefer , on the left the current version of the textures and on the right the version i could get to everything.

(click on the pictures for full size)

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Pay carefull attention to the textures :

-the current ones on the left have the very bad transition between shadows, colors and wrinkles, you can see lot of texture bleeding.

On the right, there is no more texture bleeding at all, but you can spot some noise on the texture if you look carefully at it.

Personnally, i believe the right version would be the way to go, as textures transitions are not bleeding anymore and unless you are in a close closeup you don't notice the noise.

So do you think you can accept the small noise in close up to have the nicer transitions and no more texture bleeding ?

[Vultar 0]

Well, I think that texture quality is very important as we have already spotted on Hyk units, that's why I choose the second one.

On my res (1680x1050) every mistake on texture is noticable  

Question, Are you aiming for Realism or Fun Factor or Both?

[Jklv 1]

I think the one on the right looks more clean. I vote for it  

BTW, what program do you use for image editing? Photoshop?

EDIT: Did you add this bodyarmour model the resource pack?

[Pulverizer 1]

I like the later ones with more definition better.

Can targa or jpeg be used as texture and does it have any game performance difference on new cards?

[sanctuary 19]

Here is another example of the difference, even more noticable on this screenshot of what i am talking about :

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To the left is current method with texture bleeding and bad transitions, and the right is the new one with dithering that prevent the texture bleeding (but include some noise)

Once i will go to the second method, textures will be 50 % bigger in kilobytes (no in size), as more color informations are saved. But the difference in my eyes is really big, as even if the result in PAA is not as good as the original i painted, it is the method that destroy my work the less

For modders, it is in PAATool "RGBA 5:5:5:1" and "Dithering checked", it takes lot more time for the conversion to occur than with the DXT options that result into ugly bleeding and can only be in .PAA, as a .PAC obtained like this is just unreadable by Bulldozer.

Quote[/b] ]I think the one on the right looks more clean. I vote for it

BTW, what program do you use for image editing? Photoshop?

EDIT: Did you add this bodyarmour model the resource pack?

I have an old program named Picture Publisher and and old version of Paintshop (version 7).

I included the black version of this body armor texture in the 1st ressource pack, but the P3D is exactly the same (just remove the pouches), you can just recolor the black into green and you will obtain the same.

In the second ressource pack the green version is included, as it is the one i use for my 1985 naval infantry replacement for the BIS naval inf soviet troops.

edit : forgot to add the pictures

[stgn 39]

Its a shame it takes ages to make those textures and Paa tool is so unreliable so atleast I could not perform eny other task while converting, I don't normaly use it enymore it was one of the things that turned me off addon makeing some years ago.

While it looks better only do it if you realy want to. I use an overlay with a cloth pattern(like ripstop or twill) on my textures it makes the degration less noticable.

STGN

[sanctuary 19]

Yes it is sad the ugly DXT1 compressions takes +/- 1 second, while the one that result in a way better visual result takes a very lot of time.

But as all my project is about texture merging, and so most of the soldiers i create are ending with only 2 textures (+2 for the wounds), fortunately it is not that annoying.

Without merging texture i would have very likely gave up, as the amount of them would have been way too much for the time i am willing to spend on that paatool.

[Jklv 1]

Thanks alot sanc!!!

I just deleted the pouches xD

But yeah, at least I got them working ingame!!    

First pic stretches the page too much, so I provided a link d=

http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/848/soldmex1ui7.jpg

Quote[/b] ]Mexican soldiers training to fight the mafia scum in Tijuana and Mexicali.

[sanctuary 19]

Good work.

Notice in the ressource pack 2 , there are PNG files named "undershirt" , by copy pasting them on you body texture, you can give your soldier an undershirt (the part of the texture near the neck you can see that is always in 3colors camo)

[Jklv 1]

Thanks, I'll install paintshop PRO later and edit the TGA file. Thanks a lot sanc, without you this wouldn't be a possibility

[anguis 4]

The textures on the right look better, to me, too (though I've had to enlarge the images 2X to detect the differences). What performance impact, if any, do you anticipate them having, given their larger size?

[sanctuary 19]

Well, it seems i was wrong, it is not 50% increase in kilobytes, in fact the kilobytes size of the textures are doubled for the "nicer" version.

Why oh why this annoying PAA/PAC format can't just get even those textures that i can manage to tone down to only 140 colors displayed totally right without me having to use that compression tricks and this dithering that double the texture "weight" in kb.

Sometime you really want to throw this damned thing out of the window.

I don't know how much performance impact it could have, but i am really concerned by this as if the impact is too much it just kills my mod whole purpose : allowing massive battles without a performance hit unlike most of the high res addons around.

I will have to make some performance tests before deciding to use the nicer (even if the result looks nothing like the nice original TGA) compression or the shitty DXT1 one that is used in beta 7.

[Vultar 0]

Sanctuary, I must say that ingame, the worse textures look more realistic, they look like an old, a bit destroyed because of weather soldier's uniform. If making good quality is so hard and takes so much time then - I want textures on left.

[sanctuary 19]

Ok after some tests in intensive battles on Nogova, the only difference is a slight longer loading time, barely noticable if i didn't timed it.

Performance is for now unaffected probably because i played without any other addons or custom island that would have added their lots of textures.

But it is a problem : because for now there are only 3 army corps : the BIS usa army , the BIS soviets naval infantry and the BIS resistance.

In the long term the ww4 mod will feature a minimum of 21 army corps, each in both woodland and desert camouflages, so in the end there will be a very lot more textures to load for the people creating missions involving several of those army corps in the same time.

And of course for each textures there will be a blood version, adding to what OFP will store in vram (along the islands, other addons content already stored there).

So having every textures being 170kb or 340 kb will make a difference.

That's why i decide to go with the "shitty" DXT1, the difference of quality being noticable only when you look closely at someone, it will be irrelevant in battle situations.

It will be a lot better for the performance part of my project in the long term.

edit :

Quote[/b] ]Sanctuary, I must say that ingame, the worse textures look more realistic, they look like an old, a bit destroyed because of weather soldier's uniform. If making good quality is so hard and takes so much time then - I want textures on left.

Well, i guess you are in a lucky day, because i just explained that i have chosen the left textures to keep with my project whole purpose .

[mortyfero 0]

Quote[/b] ]In the long term the ww4 mod will feature a minimum of 21 army corps

Whant?? 21 corps?? yor're awesome man!!!!!

[Pulverizer 1]

And of course for each textures there will be a blood version, adding to what OFP will store in vram (along the islands, other addons content already stored there).

So having every textures being 170kb or 340 kb will make a difference.

That's why i decide to go with the "shitty" DXT1, the difference of quality being noticable only when you look closely at someone, it will be irrelevant in battle situations.

Could you share a pack of the original textures when you're done though, I think I'd want to go with the better-looking format.

Are you sure Cpu won't be the bottleneck rather than Gpu on modern systems with massive number of AI?

It would take plenty of textures to run out of 512-1024 MB of vram that new cards have, as each texture only needs to be stored once even if a hundred units use it.

[Pulverizer 1]

Did a little test with ATI tray tool:

1st Test

Start ofp w/ ww4beta6, load desert island with 1 civ. Free vram 443/512 MB

2nd Test

Start ofp w/ ww4beta6, load desert island with 1 civ + every unit from West->Men list (with all the different weapons they have). Free vram 429/512 MB

Analysis

Vram usage negligible

[Vultar 0]

Ok ok Sanc, not my lucky day. I just see no point in spending whole day for some stupid textures bleeding, the point is to not make them pink (gaaaaayy...).

But there's problem. Weapons.

Are you going to make your own (hehe) or to use Laser or SJB ones?

21 countries? Hope for Poland dude. If you need any informations about Polish soldiers' equipment I am the right person xD

[Jklv 1]

Ok ok Sanc, not my lucky day. I just see no point in spending whole day for some stupid textures bleeding, the point is to not make them pink (gaaaaayy...).

But there's problem. Weapons.

Are you going to make your own (hehe) or to use Laser or SJB ones?

21 countries? Hope for Poland dude. If you need any informations about Polish soldiers' equipment I am the right person xD

There are already polish weapons pack from umm I don't remember the name mod lol

But you can find it at ofp.info

Anyway, AFAIK there are weapons already made:

American

Russian

British

German

Swedish

Norwegian

Finnish

French

Polish

Belgian

Etc.

And most of the other countries use those weapons or variants. For example, Mexico uses HK G3. A lot of european/asian countries use AK variants. Croatians use a rifle exactly (exterior) as the FAMAS, etc.

For weapons I don't think there is a problem as most of them are already done.

@Sanctuary: Are there gonna be short-sleeve and "tucked" jacket models? I mean, the untucked jacket forms like a "skirt", but a tucked one doesn't. Like the RHS OMOH soldiers.

EDIT 2:

Check this out mate, I was playing with PSP X.

I only had 2 layers, wrinkles and flecktarn. So I only added "overlay" effect and this came out hehe.

EDIT 3: 1 con I found ww4 mod is the voice commands. AI players wait until the sound ends to star moving. My men were massacred because of that It was a horror experience, one by one, torn into bits. /drama off

EDIT 4:

After I convert the TGA file into PAC and load it at a model in O2, I open the external viewer (bulldozer). And the texture won't show up. I get a white body =/

I also got an error, TGA file is not 32bpp was 24bpp. But in PaintShop I only get 8 16 and 24bpp when I try to save the file =/

[sanctuary 19]

Quote[/b] ]Could you share a pack of the original textures when you're done though, I think I'd want to go with the better-looking format.

Are you sure Cpu won't be the bottleneck rather than Gpu on modern systems with massive number of AI?

That's the point of every modder ressource pack, inside of them can be found all the original TGA i made, so in both modder ressource pack 1&2 you have every textures that are present from beta 7 in TGA format.

Quote[/b] ]It would take plenty of textures to run out of 512-1024 MB of vram that new cards have, as each texture only needs to be stored once even if a hundred units use it.

It is not the WW4 textures that i am really worried about as the WW4 pack is very optimised, but i know lot if not most addons and islands are using tons of textures, and i remember having read that OFP can't use more than 512 (i didnt remember if it was vram or ram) and harddrive swap will take over after that, slowing down things.

So by getting very reasonnable textures weight in kb, usage of those not really optimised addons in the same time of WW4 would not cripple performance too much.

For the CPU, i consider people computers have stronger ones nowadays, that's why i am more concerned for now with optimising the visuals.

Quote[/b] ]1st Test

Start ofp w/ ww4beta6, load desert island with 1 civ. Free vram 443/512 MB

2nd Test

Start ofp w/ ww4beta6, load desert island with 1 civ + every unit from West->Men list (with all the different weapons they have). Free vram 429/512 MB

Analysis

Vram usage negligible

That's great , it seems like i am doing things right

Quote[/b] ]21 countries?

It will be 21 army corps , not 21 countries. But with the modders ressource anyone should be able to create other soldiers for any kind of country they want.

And i repeat but there is no real country in WW4 only West side, East side and "Unaligned" (badly named Resistance for now).

Quote[/b] ]Check this out mate, I was playing with PSP X.

I only had 2 layers, wrinkles and flecktarn. So I only added "overlay" effect and this came out hehe.

Yes that's good, it is all the point of me releasing the winrkles TGA.

Now on your wrinkles overlaying the camo swatch uniform texture, do the same with the blooduniform.png, and ...tada ! immediate blood texture created

Quote[/b] ]1 con I found ww4 mod is the voice commands. AI players wait until the sound ends to star moving. My men were massacred because of that It was a horror experience, one by one, torn into bits. /drama off

Yes radio voices will disappear, i hate the very big delay in AI responding to your command, it makes them even more stupid they already are.

I wish the radio voices were totally independant from AI reaction time.

Quote[/b] ]After I convert the TGA file into PAC and load it at a model in O2, I open the external viewer (bulldozer). And the texture won't show up. I get a white body =/

How do you convert exactly your tga into pac ?

check the texture path for the model too, if O2 does not find the texture it will display a white texture.

[Jklv 1]

Just like you mentioned.

The texture path is 100% correct. Checked it a hundred times.

This is the error I get.

So I get it's because of paint.shop

[sanctuary 19]

Upload your TGA and your PAA/PAC somewhere so i can give a look .

And set Mipmap filtering to BOX, not Point if you are doing a soldier texture.

Can targa or jpeg be used as texture and does it have any game performance difference on new cards?

If you hex edit the models, you can replace the PAC/PAA by a JPG but one of the BIs dev , Suma said

Quote[/b] ]Another point you might want to consider when using JPG textures:

While JPG textures are stored very effectivelly on the disk, they are stored with no compression while loaded, because video card needs them uncompressed. On the other hand DXT compressed textures remain compressed even when being used.

How much i wish they would have updated the engine so it could read JPG without having to uncompress them before, at least my textures would have looked nearly the same as on my tga.

But always in the same thread :

Quote[/b] ]4. By hex editing Oxygen created models, you can change name/format of textures to alternate formats that the game engine supports. I think there is a texture swapping prog. that does this.

Game engine supports: PAA, PAC, JPG, DDS

Other formats maybe supported: TGA, PNG, PCX, BMP,

The DirectX utility code may read some of these in, but the game engine may not have supporting code/or not let it happen.

5. Ideal Texture Format:

Extension Bit Depth(col) Colors Transparency(levels) Mips DiskSpace CPU VRAM

PAA 12 4,096 16 Yes Good Good Good

PAC 8 256grey 256 Yes Good Good Good

JPG 16?24? 65,536 ? No? Bad Worst Good (same as PAA/PAC)

DDS 16 65,536 2 Yes(is supported..) Best Best Best

Others that might but probably aren't supported:

TGA 24/32 16.7million! 256 No? Worst Depends on comp Worst

Since DDS is supported on 99% of video cards, requires no CPU processing, supports 61,440 more colors than PAA, takes up the least amount of VRAM and still supports basic transparency, it should be the defacto standard for all addons. The game Morrowind uses DDS for all textures and it's skies look beautiful whereas OFP skies are relatively ugly (To be fair, Morrowind uses terrain paging system where not all textures are loaded into RAM/VRAM where OFP is different so texture requirements are much more important). Going to DDS will allow you to have 16 times the colors than PAA. All newer cards will support DDS, but older cards GeForce2 maynot. DirectX/OFP engine might convert DDS to uncompressed versions if not hardware supported though--so you need not release separate addons.

I had no idea the OFP engine could support DDS like some other games.

I have no knowledge on how to build a DDS correctly, but if someone wants to give a try, if OFP can really read them without having to uncompress them, as they use DXT compression too it could be a possible solution as DDS games so far have always displayed a higher texture quality than OFP PAC/PAA on my system.

[zwobot 17]

I just noticed I cannot throw handrenades while running anymore? Is this a bug, feature or am I doing something wrong? how can I throw grenades while running?

[sanctuary 19]

As i modified the running classse (to allow the dynamic stance change during the jogging for both player and AI) i forgot to add something to the new running classes, should be fixed in next beta.

But you will be able to only throw a grenade when you run whith the weapon shouldered, not when you have it pointing down (as i disabled firing during that state to prevent both AI and player to shoot themselves on the feet, it also prevent throwing grenade)

So you will have to tap fire to should the weapon when running, then switch to grenade to launch it always while running.