[Huggybaby]

I read about changing the LOD in fireball.tbl from 4 to 1. I did so and you can get it here. Is there any reason this should not be the default? I notice no performance hit.

[taylor]

By setting it to 1 you force it to use mipmaps instead of individual LOD images.  That improves performance and quality, but only if there are mipmaps present.  If not then it will hurt both performance and quality to just use one LOD image.  With EFFs you would probably already have mipmaps, so setting it to 1 wouldn't be a big deal there.  But if it's an ANI then it can hurt performance, unless you use -img2dds and -mipmap.  With those two settings enabled the ANI will be compressed and mipmaps will be generated automatically.  You would get the performance and general quality boost from that, but also the memory savings.

You don't really need to use a new fireball.tbl for this though, it would be safer to use a modular table instead.  Here is the one from my own VP set, which has all LODs set a 1, since I either have everything converted to EFFs with mipmaps, or I let my use of -img2dds and -mipmap fix them for me.  And here is a similar weapon_expl in modular form.

[Huggybaby]

OK, you've done it to me this time. There's no way I'll comprehend that no matter how many times I read it.
I haven't come across the term EFF before. Ahhh, Macarena!

If not then it will hurt both performance and quality

I certainly don't want to do that! I guess I didn't get the whole fireball.tbl thing.
If I use your mv_fireball-fbl.tbm, where do I put it? And do I then need to invoke the -img2dds and -mipmap flags?

And how does that relate to mv_expl-wxp.tbm (and where should it go)? Or---should I leave well enough alone and recognize that you've built the quality in already?

I'm trying to figure out how to get maximum eye candy I suppose, performance be damned. And then scale it back if my system slows to a crawl. LOL

I'm acting on the presumption that if I can turn things up to max (and understand what I'm doing) I can always scale back. Which is probably giving you short shrift, for which I apologize in advance.

[DaBrain]

I've converted all explosions to DDS (EFF). With mipmaps of course.

They're in the upcomming MV_effects. Just wait a few days till my little MV tester team and I are done hunting all bugs down.

[Huggybaby]

Thanks DaBrain, we're all waiting for your new work to be released, that's for sure!

And I still haven't figured out exactly what taylor is doing.