Who uses S3TC textures? Poll.

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Do you use a modern renderer with S3TC enabled?

Yes
22
69%
No
10
31%
 
Total votes: 32

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Feralidragon
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Re: Who uses S3TC textures? Poll.

Post by Feralidragon »

Red_Fist wrote: Use the same stuff for mapping as well, no problems, never was, to use for mapping.
Except for the fact that the map becomes unsuitable to be on servers or to be open in older renderers, such as the software rendering that is still very used for UEd.
High-res textures are supposed to replace the older ones on their own, not be used directly.
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Chamberly
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Re: Who uses S3TC textures? Poll.

Post by Chamberly »

Btw, I wouldn't depend on the voting system to think that anyone throughout the UT games has came here and voted. I know there is hundreds more that doesn't use S3TC... so just incase if you going to make something S3TC only, only those peoples with that could see it. Or so.
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Re: Who uses S3TC textures? Poll.

Post by Dr.Flay »

Unfortunate, but Chamberly has a point(ish)
Though all they need to do is read for a change. They all have the same switch in the config that we have.
The only thing broken, is brain-power (and some of the CD2 textures).

They are all the people who never use or look for updates, or visit forums, so will no longer be able to play online when the gamespy master server dies.
These people never add any security or browser-plugins to protect them-selves, or block adverts, or update with anything from the "recommended" Microsoft list.
They never open a readme, or go to authors sites for real official downloads.

These are the type of people that keep me very busy fixing their PCs.
Some people want to learn, and we only have to show the way.
Others do not want to learn, and "just want it to work", and scream and dance at every minor bump in the road.
These are the people I see shouting abuse in the ingame IRC, as they have no idea about using a search engine or visiting a site like this.


Back to the beginning...
In 1998, not all people were using cards that supported S3s compression method, so it was disabled by default.
Same as many of the other features, such as the audio being limited to 22k, 16 channels.
All these options were intended for the user to over-ride, depending on their own PC.

Since Day-1, everyone with S3 texture support could use it.
Since Day-1, everyone with a decent sound card, could use 44k, 32 channels
It has never been an addon, or in any way non-standard to the Unreal engine.
Just because Epic did not add a tick-box in the GUI, does not mean it does not exist.

In 2013, I suspect you will struggle to find a card that does not support S3 compression.
Put it this way.
If your GFX card has more than 8MB RAM and is DirectX 7 or newer, it will support S3TC.

S3TC and large textures are different issues, and are in-fact opposites. Due to us having newer renderers available, we often combine the benefit.

Traditionally for us, as it has been an option we have ended up with multiple texture packs.
If the textures are not perfect, then you may get miss-aligned textures.
This stems from the problem of not being able to see large or compressed textures in UEd with Software or D3D renderer.
Using the newer renderers in UEd fixes it, but you should still edit with regular textures if you have them.

I will finish by saying the 1 reason to break the rule.
If you intend to only ever release your map or mod with large or S3TC textures, then edit with them.
Me? I make 2 or 3 texture packs, as I always start with large images.
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Re: Who uses S3TC textures? Poll.

Post by Red_Fist »

Feralidragon wrote:
Red_Fist wrote: Use the same stuff for mapping as well, no problems, never was, to use for mapping.
Except for the fact that the map becomes unsuitable to be on servers or to be open in older renderers, such as the software rendering that is still very used for UEd.
High-res textures are supposed to replace the older ones on their own, not be used directly.
I use software in the editor, but I have never had a complaint and all maps I made that was (is) run on servers seems to work, for a lot of years.
So how exactly do I make them not work to test this out. ?

"High-res textures are supposed to replace the older ones on their own, not be used directly"
But, they have the same file names and are made to copy over the original low res. And the files are much bigger.
So it is impossible to be replaced on their own, you can't extract info that is not there, the client will just see the basic texture.

Dunno never seen a problem other than the few masked textures, (like 3 files I think) and servers that won't let you move and have sliding bots.

It's a mystery for me since I been mapping things seem to work.
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Re: Who uses S3TC textures? Poll.

Post by papercoffee »

Red_Fist wrote:and servers that won't let you move and have sliding bots.

It's a mystery for me since I been mapping things seem to work.
It's not only for bots all player avatars have the same skating bug. I could see it on two specific maps on one of my favorite server ...it's a pity that the server went down a year ago.
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Re: Who uses S3TC textures? Poll.

Post by Red_Fist »

That's because they use that standalone server like 90 meg for UT, that's what those paid servers use. The good servers upload the hi res textures. The majority rules, ie: the players, so I say a server sucks if they don't upload the textures.
Mainly MH servers it seems these days.

Seems to me the client will always work and will view the basic texture if the map or server uses the hi res ones.
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Re: Who uses S3TC textures? Poll.

Post by Feralidragon »

Afaik uploading the hi-res textures was exactly what caused the skating issue, hence being adviced to not host them in a server in the first place and not using them directly for mapping purposes.
I never tried the S3TC textures (although in my next project it will almost become a requirement in some ways), so I am just relaying what happened in the past and the issues caused.
I think DieHard's textures fixed that issue and could safely be used that way and uploaded to the server without issues though.
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Re: Who uses S3TC textures? Poll.

Post by Red_Fist »

No it's not, they have to upload the textures on the second disk, well thats all I ever heard for years, once they do, the freeze and skating bots go away.

I used the low res installation to be able to play on those servers.

I really don't know, but I just map with the same install as I play on. Say a good 99% of the maps and servers work.
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Re: Who uses S3TC textures? Poll.

Post by TheDane »

Red_Fist wrote:they have to upload the textures on the second disk, well thats all I ever heard for years, once they do, the freeze and skating bots go away.
work.
I can confirm that this was what stopped it on my servers back in the days, however, when I rent a vanilla UT server from Gameservers.com the skating is not an issue, but it still looks like they don't use or link to the CD2 textures? It may very well be triggered by more than just one thingy? After all, when I connect to a random server these days I get to download a zillion packages, so chances are that a conflict of some sort can trigger this skating also.
Retired.
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Re: Who uses S3TC textures? Poll.

Post by rjmno1 »

i,m using opengl with s3tc now.

cheers:rjmno1
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Re: Who uses S3TC textures? Poll.

Post by papercoffee »

The last post was Sun Dec 22, 2013 ...the issue is solved for a long time now. :|
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Re: Who uses S3TC textures? Poll.

Post by rjmno1 »

I Always use the s3tc textures for now together with the opengl renderer.
Becous i have then no mouselag or watsoever. :tu:
Not the highend textures because mine vidcard has no mussles for that. :lol:

regardz:rjmno1
sorry about bad english
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Re: Who uses S3TC textures? Poll.

Post by noccer »

rjmno1 wrote: sorry about bad english
Do you really write that below 90% of your posts? :D

Oh, this threead was old.. i voted... does it matter? :loool:
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