tain.totalcodex.net

Posted: **Thu May 13, 2004 7:44 pm**

[color=DFC99B]OK, so there I am, making final tweaks and additions to RotD as I await the next build of MII 1.5 to verify all is in order for release.

After adding this Dwarven Airship . . .

. . . to the Pathfinder Airstrike attack. I decide it needs to be modified a tad, so I extract the single Airship BMP, open it in PS, and proceed to add satchels to it and make a few other minor cosmetic touch ups.

As I am making these changes, Im wondering, "how did they manage to cram soo much detail into a 256 x 256 BMP ??"
When I was making units for MPC, I was told the max size a collection BMP could / should be was 256 x 256.
Anyways I check the Image size and its a whopping 385 x 657 !! :oO

Sooo, is there any real reason why collection BMPs normally dont exceed 256 x 256 OTHER THAN to keep the collection size down ??[/color]

Edited By GHOSTÂ® on 1084569001

Posted: **Thu May 13, 2004 11:20 pm**

i only just thought of it, and i'm probably wrong, but maybe the 256 square was only for texture bitmaps. in fact i'm pretty sure that textures are limited to 256x256 (hence the 256x256 pixel submesh size, perhaps...).

if someone doesn't categorically know the answer it's certainly worth playing with. maybe bitmaps for units and scenery and projectiles can be (almost) arbitrarily sized.

*shrug*

Posted: **Fri May 14, 2004 8:55 am**

I think you're right lank. I know for certain that anything that is officially a "texture" in the collection ID maxes out at 256 x 256 (smaller sizes must be a power of two). Other collections probably could be any size because they don't have to be mapped to a geometric surface -- they're just a flat image on the screen. Making the airship bitmaps so big (and then scaling them back down in Fear) didn't make for an impractical file size for the collection because the airship doesn't have very many sequences.

Posted: **Fri May 14, 2004 10:40 am**

I believe ATI Rave/Rage cards freaked out with sprites larger than 256 pixels. At least I know that "did" at one point. It caused a hall of mirror's effect on the sprite itself.

It did not do it using software rendering, but did when using 3d rendering.

This is all pre-magma with Bungie 1.3

Posted: **Fri May 14, 2004 12:43 pm**

well one thing i know about sprites using a high pixel ammount is that they can cause horrible lag on older computers, but it always looks good if ur just doing one unit.

Posted: **Fri May 14, 2004 8:26 pm**

[color=DFC99B]Hmmm, all very interesting. I havent had any issues at allwith the larger than norm BMP size on this collection, but I will keep an ear out for any who do to make sure. :o)

On another note, did some more creative Photoshopping, and with some help with ooga on the Amber end, the dorfs in this PROJ now move, with the center dorf pitching satchels like theres no tomorrow. ;o)[/color]

tain.totalcodex.net

Ftw !? :oo - Collection bmp maximum size ?