More Colors, More Res

[Buck Mild]

Is Oak/1.7 going to allow maps to be indexed at higher colors than 240? A couple maps I'm working on would benefit greatly from it.

When is Oak/1.7 due? Has an approx. release date been set?

[Baak]

November, 2037.



j/k - I think the best answer is: soon(tm).

[Renwood TWA]

Oak is in Alpha testing right now and is very sexy indeed.

You still have to work with a colormap of 240-242 or so in 8 bit indexed from with Oak...BUT that isnt a limiting factor really anymore because you can add a detail layer to the maps now with Oak.
They are 24 bit detail textures = tons of fukin colors!

So you gotta make the 8 bit maps as the BASE and the detail textures as the super nice high res color filled layer that goes over it. Also you can create and import your own textures for use in Oak!

look for Oak winter-ish

-renwood

[Pyro]

Yeah keep in mind not all players will be able to run the detailed textures when it is out. It is only for OpenGL it seems.

[Buck Mild]

ren, that sounds awesome. I can't wait to be using that in my map. I do have a question to clarify something. Does that mean every map, even when Oak is released will first be made in photoshop the way it's always been made?

[Renwood TWA]

Yep Pyro is correct Oak is openGL only, so mythers if your in software or dont have a openGL video card, start saving a few bucks a week and youll be all set in a few months.

It really is worth the upgrade.....now we just need high res scenary and units to go with it so everything is high res. hehe tons of work though!

[Pyro]

Yes, Buck, color maps will still be made the same. The detail textures is an optional thing mapmakers can make after their color map is done. It is also optional for the users to well use the detail textures.

[Buck Mild]

sounds awesome pyro, can't wait for Oak to be complete.

[Renwood TWA]

Yea buck its still imporant to try to make the normal colormap (8 bit indexed bmp) look as good as you can.

So its kinda like you would want to make grass and stuff like you allways did on a colormap, because you can allways just lay down a grass detail texture over the allready green grassy parts.

But things like stonework or tiles shouldnt be done on the colormap since you can use a stonework or tiles detail texture to display that. Something like if you wanted stone or brick on the colormap you would paint the base colors of the stone or brick on the 8 bit colormap, then to get the stone/tiles or bricks you would use the detail textures.

I hope that makes some sense, its like if you put the bricks on the colormap itself you wouldnt be able to really match the detail textures to it.
they wouldnt really line up or the scale of them would be off.

So for red bricks just paint a variation of reds on the 8 bit cmap.
for stone paint shades of gray where the stonework will go.
for grass paint shades of green where you will place the detail textures of grass over it.

[Buck Mild]

man sound frickin awesome. can i get a hold of the beta for this if my map looks good enough?

[William Wallet]

Makes me wish I was still doing maps.... about 5 years ago I remember wishing we had this kind of thing in Myth II. At the time I used to get by, using subtle texturing on my shadow maps of all things!

Sometimes it looked okay, sometimes it didn't.

[Buck Mild]

never too late to come back