Our ReVolt Pub

I have put this comment in here as it is texture based!
After hunting about for a while i cant seem to find much about how 1.2 effects the way i can make tracks!
Could somebody in the know add a few lines in here as far as textures go?
How big, is the main quezzy? can i now go higher than 512x512?
All the same size?? do all 10 maps have to be equal size?
MIP levels?
bit rate 32? 64? maybe?
In an ideal world and guessing that many of you have far better PCs now daze, it would be very cool to have 10x 32 bit textures at a size of 1024 x 1024! Imagine the difference in track detail if i could have that many 256 x 256 maps spread over those 10 sheets lol i would be in heaven!
Please let me know what my limits are and if i need any other tools to implement this?
Thanks.
Mike....

Skitch2 wrote:How big, is the main quezzy? can i now go higher than 512x512?

You can now go as high as 8192 x 8192 but going -that- high is a little ridiculous. But yes, you can go higher than 512 x 512.

Skitch2 wrote:All the same size?? do all 10 maps have to be equal size?

I believe so, yes. Why wouldn't you want do to that anyway? Bigger BMPs = more space to map stuff.

Skitch2 wrote:MIP levels?

Sorry, don't know anything about these but I don't think they are mandatory.

Skitch2 wrote:bit rate 32? 64? maybe?

24. Anything else does not work as far as I know. Maybe for tracks, 32bit works. All I know is it certainly doesn't for cars.

Skitch2 wrote:In an ideal world and guessing that many of you have far better PCs now daze, it would be very cool to have 10x 32 bit textures at a size of 1024 x 1024! Imagine the difference in track detail if i could have that many 256 x 256 maps spread over those 10 sheets lol i would be in heaven!

That's basically possible, except for the 32bit textures. I'm sure you'd be able to create more mind blowing tacks with your fine creative finesse.

Skitch2 wrote:Please let me know what my limits are and if i need any other tools to implement this?

Probably best to ask Huki about limits and other track makers for tools, me thinks.

Skitch2 wrote:Thanks.

You're welcome.

Skarma's got most of the answers here, just gonna add my few cents.

Skitch2 wrote:MIP levels?

I would definitely recommend using mipmaps. With the support for higher texture resolutions, Re-Volt 1.2 supports an extended mipmap system which is compatible with older Re-Volt versions. It goes like this:
2048x2048 *.bmm
1024x1024 *.bmn
512x512 *.bmo
256x256 *.bmp
128x128 *.bmq
You should get the catch here by now.

Skitch2 wrote:bit rate 32? 64? maybe?

Re-Volt 1.2 support 32-bit bitmaps and 32-bit bitmaps should be backwards compatible. Older versions of Re-Volt just won't read the alpha channel that's all. I played around with 32-bit bitmaps to see the results and you can do some quite astonishing things with it - especially with vegetation. You can find the thread here.

Skitch2 wrote:In an ideal world and guessing that many of you have far better PCs now daze, it would be very cool to have 10x 32 bit textures at a size of 1024 x 1024! Imagine the difference in track detail if i could have that many 256 x 256 maps spread over those 10 sheets lol i would be in heaven!

To conclude, this is totally possible with 1.2 and you can still keep backwards compatibility!

Skitch2 @ Jan 18 2013, 03:35 PM wrote:can i now go higher than 512x512?

Yes, for full list of supported texture sizes: <32x32 , 64x64, 128x128, 256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024, 2048x2048, 4096x4096 and 8192x8192.

Skitch2 @ Jan 18 2013, 03:35 PM wrote:All the same size?? do all 10 maps have to be equal size?

No, you can use various texture sizes, for example skymap - 1024x1024, track textures - 512x512.

Skitch2 @ Jan 18 2013, 03:35 PM wrote:bit rate 32? 64? maybe?

32bit textures are supported (game has even setting for that), 64bit - not.

Skitch2 @ Jan 18 2013, 03:35 PM wrote:MIP levels?

Up to 10 files, don't know all filenames, just bmq and bmo. I think there's bmr, bmn, bmm.

Skitch2 @ Jan 18 2013, 03:35 PM wrote:In an ideal world and guessing that many of you have far better PCs now daze, it would be very cool to have 10x 32 bit textures at a size of 1024 x 1024! Imagine the difference in track detail if i could have that many 256 x 256 maps spread over those 10 sheets lol i would be in heaven!

Except me lol. Yea, tracks with higher texture sizes, maybe more polygons would take them to a new level of look and feel.

Skitch2 @ Jan 18 2013, 03:35 PM wrote:Please let me know what my limits are

List of v1.2 enhanced limits:
- collision polygons - 65536 (was 16384)
- instances - 800 (was 200)
- higher range for camera nodes (was up to 32768 range)
- unlimited number of texture animation slots in the level world (was 16)
- animated objects - 256 (was 128)

there are more (maybe i forgot sth), but they won't be useful for track makers.


For other stuff, you can now place practice star for Practice mode and "split" trigger for Time Trial mode, because custom tracks are now supported for other modes too.

[Edit]: Was a bit too slow, heheh.

Skitch2 wrote:How big, is the main quezzy? can i now go higher than 512x512?
All the same size?? do all 10 maps have to be equal size?
MIP levels?
bit rate 32? 64? maybe?

Yes you can go higher than 512.. 1024 should be fine. They don't all have to be the same size - for example you could have most of them in 1024 and some in 512 if you need.
Upto 10 mip levels are allowed (.bmq, .bmr, etc). Mipmaps also serve as texture sets: if you include a 1024x1024 bmp texture and 512x512 bmq mipmap, you can guarantee that re-volt will load the 512 version as the main texture in case the video card is unable to handle the 1024 version.
As for texture depth, normal 24-bit RGB bitmaps and 32 bit ARGB bitmaps are both supported.

A note about using hi-res textures though: make sure you're running the latest Alpha version of 1.2 (it's always the first link under Alpha Builds in the downloads page). The Beta version is older and doesn't support hi-res textures, nor any of the custom track features.

Ok! I am running Re-Volt 1.2 (12.1225 a )
I have made a whole set of textures that are 512 x 512 and saved out at 32 bit (for windows)
when i ran the latest beta the textures were all beat up and in a sorry low bit state so i remembered that i needed to run the Alpha 1.2 but with this ver the 512 32 bit maps no longer display in re-volt. i reverted back to re- volt standard nhood maps and my models show up fine. any ideas what i am doing wrong
Mike..
Ohh just found out that they work fine as 24 bit!! so its a 32 bit prob!

One other thing!
I happen to be toying with 1024 textures and to be honest they seem to perfectly suit the Re volt engine they tile properly without having to reduce the uv unwrap by a few pixels.
but let be honest here. How realistic is it going to be for me to use large textures on my new track?
My PC will handle what ever i bung at it but i dont want to make a track that most cant run.
I will experiment over the coming days with the 10 sheets at 1024x1024 and see how will it mip maps as i know that it will scale back for peeps who cant handle that size sheets. I am also doing a project using 2048 x 2048 and so far the quality in game is outright amazing!! Seeing Dr Grudge sat on some of the floors i have made made the car look scared lol
let me know what you guys think and ill go from there. I realy could do with the 32 bit working tho
Mike..

Does it make a difference? Yes, it certainly does.

This is the Eggland track by Strava with it's original 256 x 256 texture stretched over the entire track. As you can see, it's rather blurry.




This is the same track using a new 2048 x 2048 BMP, spruced up by MythicMonkey. The detail is phenominal.




You be the judge...

Click here and here for larger versions of the images.

Skitch2 @ Jan 21 2013, 02:23 PM wrote:Ohh just found out that they work fine as 24 bit!! so its a 32 bit prob!

Maybe you're saving the BMP as XRGB (only a dummy alpha channel is saved in the image) instead of ARGB (a real 32 bits image).
Which tool are you using to create / save the BMP texture?

If we assume you're using Photoshop, from memory there's an Advanced button when you export to BMP which allow to select the 32 bits mode to use (A8 R8 G8 B8).

How realistic is it going to be for me to use large textures on my new track?

A quick calculation that may be wrong:
- A 1024x1024 uncompressed 32 bits texture uses 4MB of memory.
- Taking mipmaps into account, it uses 5.33MB.
- Ten textures (for the tracks) would use 53.3MB of video memory.

I think we can assume that most users nowadays have way more than 54MB of video memory, can't we? In other words, I think you can go for it if you really feel like it would be worth it (which doesn't mean I'm encouraging all track makers to use 1024x1024 textures as for now...).

Skarma @ Jan 21 2013, 08:53 PM wrote: Does it make a difference? Yes, it certainly does.

This is the Eggland track by Strava with it's original 256 x 256 texture stretched over the entire track. As you can see, it's rather blurry.

...


This is the same track using a new 2048 x 2048 BMP, spruced up by MythicMonkey. The detail is phenominal.

...


You be the judge...

Click here and here for larger versions of the images.

That's just amazing!

edited to avoid quoting images

Hm... so if we can now use hi-res textures... just for an example... can we map a whole Track Editor Track textures in ONE Bitmap?