Ho big may a lightmap be?
Community Forums/Developer Stations/Ho big may a lightmap be?
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| What do you say, how big may a lightmap texture be? I recently found that I need a 2048*2048 Pixel Lightmap if I want a medium sized Level to be detailed enough. Now this is a 12 MB BMP, 16 MB VRam usage, and 700 kB when saved as a 80% quality JPG (or 3MB when zipped as BMP). If this too much? Or can I expect most people who play FPS Stuff these days have 128MB or more VRam? |
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| ooopsy - wrong forum, wanted to post this in Blitz3D. |
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| You could do multiple resolution textures and allow the user to change which ones the game uses. |
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| That would mean the download size is even bigger. But I agree, on a CD it should be that way. |
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| If it's download only, some people might not appreciate downloading the game with 2048x2048 textres only to find out it doesn't work on their system... You could have different texture packs, and have them as seperate downloads. |
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| Pretty complicated. Coders might do it, but the average user won't even know what I am talking about. Currently one level has about 6 or 7 Megabytes. Using a 2k Map would probably add 1 Megabyte - not a big deal I guess. I could then scale the map down if the users hardware doesn't support it (mustang told me, older cards don't support such big maps). I really wonder what happens, when a card cannot handle a 2k map. (?) |
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| The best idea would be to hide this under something else. Like: "Graphical Quality" combo box "low" "medium" "high" "very high" And use that setting to determine the lightmap size to load. |
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| Well most people have high speed, I only know 1 person who has dial up, now I know its cheap for dial up in Canada, and the US. Im not sure everywhere else. I would just put in all the lightmaps for all sizes. Its easier. |
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| You should be able to zip a BMP file to about 10% of its size, so the downloads shouldn't be as large as you fear. Of course, you could always consider using jpegs for your lightmaps, which ought to be pretty small but okay for the style of data you're storing. I wouldn't recommend multiple downloads, it's confusing for the user and they have no idea what is 'best' (in terms of file size) until they try it. |
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| Well most people have high speed, I only know 1 person who has dial up, now I know its cheap for dial up in Canada, and the US. Im not sure everywhere else. Ignore anecdotal "evidence". Most people certainly do not have high speed. The people you know are not an accurate statistical sample of the downloadable game market. |
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| Agreed. |
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