= The 512kb MAPPING CONTEST discussion !! =

[GenMoKai]

Amazing m8

[memsys]

Paper I hope you don't mind but I took the liberty of playing with the textures a bit.
I removed the transparency and re-ordered the index to have red be the mask. I made a zip file with the PCX versions that you can get HERE because I am not allowed to attach then to a post.

I also did some testing, using a 256x256x256 cube with one of the textures on all faces and touching NOTHING else I got the following results:
(yes, I know I have too much spare time)

L1.unr 69,9 KB (71.610 bytes)
L2.unr 69,9 KB (71.588 bytes)
L3.unr 21,9 KB (22.436 bytes)
L4.unr 261 KB (268.196 bytes)
EDIT: L5.unr 69,9 KB (71.588 bytes)

EDIT:

After some more testing my conclusion is that total colour count does not matter AT ALL!
I made the L5 texture that used 256 colours and the file size ended up being 69,9 KB (71.588 bytes) the exact same as L2!
Exporting to utx files yielded interesting results, L1 was 20 bytes larger then L5 and 21 bytes larger then L2.
I think it is safe to say that any deviation is due to user error.

When using only one texture it does not matter how many colours it uses, when using multiple textures it might matter IIRC Flay mentioned you could use one pallet for an entire pack to reduce filesize somewhat.

[papercoffee]

My post was meant as a preview.
I wasn't finished with it. But thanks for the work.

Did you change it in a black and white BMP first?

[memsys]

My post was meant as a preview.
I wasn't finished with it. But thanks for the work.

Did you change it in a black and white BMP first?

Hahaha, that would not be the first time that would have happened .

I did not change it to a BMP first that would only mean more work. I changed transparent to red, fixed the palette order and saved it as a PNG with 3 colours in the palette in photoshop. After that I used irfanview to convert them into import ready PCX files.

[Dr.Flay]

You could be brave and use 1 palette for an entire pack with no groups, but unless you are making a muddy brown Quake level, you should group similar textures. Each group can have its own palette (I really need to find the tutorial I found this in).
To be honest I doubt many of you will need that level of optimisation, as you won't be using many custom textures, but when you need to scrape those last few bytes it is another tool in your box.

[Myth]

To find out the size of your texture:

width*height bytes for texture map
+ 768 bytes for palette
+ about 64bytes of metadata

So the space needed by a 256x256 texture is something like 66368 bytes. Of which the palette uses only like 1.15%
Space needed by a 128x128 texture is something like 17216 bytes. Of which the palette uses only like 4.46%
And 64x64 texture is 4928 bytes of which the palette uses 15.58%

I never knew that you could join the palette of more textures. This makes it quite interesting. You can potentially use one palette for storing gray-scale value and the other one to store colors and combine your textures using the macro texture setting.

Also, please note that PCX uses RLE compression and files with small amount of colors are compressed well. This doesn't happen in unreal. The textures are unpacked before storing them in an unreal package making all image optimizations using compression useless.

But then again, people not using custom textures will have the advantage of adding extra geometry, lighting or making a bigger map, adding interesting gameplay elements.

[papercoffee]

But then again, people not using custom textures will have the advantage of adding extra geometry, lighting or making a bigger map, adding interesting gameplay elements.

^This

And you have the benefit of the high-res textures ...if a client use 'em of course.

[FraGnBraG]

But then again, people not using custom textures will have the advantage of adding extra geometry, lighting or making a bigger map, adding interesting gameplay elements.

^This

And you have the benefit of the high-res textures ...if a client use 'em of course.

probably only a small level screenshot, and one of the smaller versions of the contest logo, plus a few imported .u files would leave plenty of room for geometry, lights and i'd even suggest an amount of proper trimmings - Also deleting brushes in the contest map can gives a huge amount of space to the cause --> I took a nearly completed 900K map (which contains a level screenshot and 160 swjumpads). I just full built it and deleted the brushes and the resulting size is 600K ... That's a decent amount of space recovered - it's easy to see where I can optimize the map to get it down to 500K or less... there are around 270 brushes...

[Forum|User]

Hi,

When we can start the mapping? And there is a map limit?

[papercoffee]

Hi,

When we can start the mapping? And there is a map limit?

1. October will be the start.
We will set up a thread for the rules in the next days.

[FraGnBraG]

Hi,

When we can start the mapping? And there is a map limit?

mappers should be allowed to submit as many maps as they want, and judging should be collective (by voting), not by individual judges...

[Whitey]

I'm in.

[Chamberly]

lol Hi Whitey!

I'll be interested to look at these maps.

[Myth]

Yeah, I'm also in.
I'm actually glad that there is a size limit and 2 months to work on it.
This will ensure that mappers have enough time to get it done and the result will be, more maps!

[Radi]

Hmmm I'm really need a good idea to start a map. . Help