Neolbah - Test Run

[diafero]

Last time I was in Neolbah I could not read the note I found because the texture was too low-res. Yes, texture details are very low for me because my laptop graphics card plus crappy linux graphic card drivers don't allow for much, but in Cyan's ages, I can read the notes.

[D'Lanor]

Cyan's notes are often dynamic text maps. However, I'm sure a static image GUI can be made readable at low quality settings as well.

[Aloys]

Is there any way to prevent a specific texture (or material) from being downsized by the graphic settings? (ie: to exclude it from those setings)

[andylegate]

Actually, with Cyan's plugin, you can control the export size of the texture, in the layer part of the Material. Normally it wants x and y to be the same: 256 x 256, 512 x 512, etc. And the highest you can set it is 1024 x 1024.

If I remember right, my notes in my gui's are either 512 x 512 or 1024 x 1024.

Not sure why it looks bad on some people's computers and not others (looks great on mine, and a few others that were beta testing for me).

Now you can control graphics quality too. Cyan's plugin has many cases where you can set what get's displayed depending upon the client's graphic settings (like wavesets, the Representation Group allows you to set the waveset being used with graphics set to Low, Med, High, etc. It's a drop down menu).

But there is nothing like that specifically for GUI's, however, as D'Lanor pointed out, a lot of Cyan's "Notes" are Dynamic Textures overlayed on the paper texture.

[N. Sigismund]

Can't you just tell the Plasma Material to never reduce it's resolution? In the Plasma Layer you want to always be at a set quality, there is a tick box called "Never Compress". Click that. Also, there's a texture scaling option display, which I'd assume if you set to "No scaling" would do something similar?

[diafero]

Well, but some of the notes are definitely images, like in Sharper's desks in Teledahn and BCO. I will check if I can read those.

[D'Lanor]

PyPRP also has the option to avoid compression. Turning off both interpol and mip map in Blender exports the texture uncompressed. This is the preferred setting for GUI images.

[andylegate]

Yes, Max has the same thing in the Material Editor. You can turn Compression and Scaling off for a texture layer.



the "Detail" section is really neat too for setting up when a layer becomes visible at what distance.

I'll have to go back and check the compression on my GUI textures.

[ddb174]

Keep in mind that a lot of the "tools" we use (OfflineKI, Drizzle and the UAM, and even Fan Ages) are things that are not 100% guaranteed to work. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to reinstall Uru and all the tools, hehehehe.

Well, it's true that it's a good idea to keep a backup of your Uru folder. Though I've never had Offline-KI, Drizzle, or UAM break my installation, and I've done some pretty crazy things ;) I have seen problems, where e.g., someone creates a fan Age with the same sequence prefix as a Cyan Age, and that causes Cyan's Age to have it's files deleted by Uru or something like that.

[andylegate]

Just to let you all know, I went back and checked the textures on the GUI's, and yes, they all had compression and scaling turned on, so I've turned them off and tested it: they look a bit clearer to me, so I'm including that as a fix that will be with the next release.

I've updated the SDL file too, as it was pointed out that only one of the doors was remaining open (heh, forgot about that to tell you the truth), so that animation states will be saved when you link out and back in again.

The elevator is giving me a bit of a problem however on saving it's state and the call buttons for it (hey, I've never tried this before, heheheheh). But I'm sure I'll get it figured out, so that if you ride the elevator and link out, you'll be able to call it to you when you link back in (not have it "magically" be back).