[The Blazer]

I downloaded the high resolution maps from the Freespace DVD about 14 month ago on this forum (from GE I think, he should know, I can't seem to find the original thread).

This week, I decided to reinstall Freespace 1 and I discovered something, the maps from the Freespace.vp I have on my original Descent Freespace CDs (really called Descent, not Conflict) are the exact same than those I downloaded here more than a year ago (I compared each one after extracting them with VPVIEW32) !

So I was wondering why Volition decided to put lower resolution maps in Freespace 2, it makes no sense ! I really though these maps where only for the special DVD edition of Freespace 1.

On a side note, the textures seem uglier in FS1 then FS2, even with the registry hacks... I'm not sure why...

Also the other day I saw on a web site that some peoples were working on a big texture rebuild project for Quake 1 to be used with the Quake 1 Tenebrae project (IIRC). So I was wondering, as anyone ever though about "upgrading" all the FS2 maps ?

After all, what's the point of doing a major overhaul or the gfx engine if we still use old textures (GF4 can use 4096x4096 textures !).

[Galemp]

First things first.

Of course, since you've been lurking here for the past year you know everybody. Thanks for the interest, let me help.

Originally posted by The Blazer
So I was wondering why Volition decided to put lower resolution maps in Freespace 2, it makes no sense ! I really though these maps where only for the special DVD edition of Freespace 1.

I'm pretty sure it was to save space. FS2 barely fits on 3 CDs as it is. And I imagine they cut down the Lucifer maps so much because it wasn't used in the main campaign and they were massive.

[q]On a side note, the textures seem uglier in FS1 then FS2, even with the registry hacks... I'm not sure why...[/q]
Well, FS1 is forced to run in low-res, and was designed for software rendering, and probably doesn't take advantage of many of the graphical capabilities later machines, cards and code can handle.

Also the other day I saw on a web site that some peoples were working on a big texture rebuild project for Quake 1 to be used with the Quake 1 Tenebrae project (IIRC). So I was wondering, as anyone ever though about "upgrading" all the FS2 maps?
After all, what's the point of doing a major overhaul or the gfx engine if we still use old textures (GF4 can use 4096x4096 textures !).

We're working on upgrading the models instead of the textures to work with HT&L, since there are more talented hi-poly modelers here than there are hi-detail texturers. Bobboau's been pressuring us to have our hi-poly ships completely mapped with one texture, however, so we may end up doing this anyway.

[The Blazer]

Originally posted by Galemp
First things first.

Of course, since you've been lurking here for the past year you know everybody. Thanks for the interest, let me help.

Great my second beam, thank anyway...

I'm pretty sure it was to save space. FS2 barely fits on 3 CDs as it is. And I imagine they cut down the Lucifer maps so much because it wasn't used in the main campaign and they were massive.

Hum, I don't like that argument... Here's why:

FS1 maps take 14.8 meg and 16.2 meg for FS2. If I overwrite FS2's maps with FS1's (without removing the few useless ones) it takes 24.3 meg. It ain't THAT huge !

Also, I know that both the original FS2 and the GOTY edition used 1 74 min CD and 2 80 min. I doubt it would have cost more money to make 3 80 min and hey, that had enough space to do a GOTY edition on them ! (Believe it or not, I don't play on my originals, when I can I use copy on RW... err... but I don't have all the originals in this case, simply could find them all when I had the cash . I guess now that you can download it, it's less an issue but still I always wanted those... )

We're working on upgrading the models instead of the textures to work with HT&L, since there are more talented hi-poly modelers here than there are hi-detail texturers. Bobboau's been pressuring us to have our hi-poly ships completely mapped with one texture, however, so we may end up doing this anyway.

Funny I really though textures would be a heck of a lot easier to do then high-polygones models . You should find a bunch a graph student learning photoshop .

[Sheepy]

theres one here, but texture making aint all that easy, of the time they look great, but as soon as you put them in FS2 they just dont fit and you know something is wrong with them.

[StratComm]

Freespace 2 also had a registry-set limit on how big the texture files could be, thus the need for the registry hack to make the old maps work.  I don't know why they did this, but I suspect that it may have had to do with some low-end card that the designers wanted to assure the game would run on, which could only deal with 256x256 maps.  Software mode rendering (such as FS1) doesn't face those restrictions unless specifically coded to.

[Lightspeed]

heh... hi res textures might start to be appearing sooner than some of you imagine

I didn't say that, did I?

[The Blazer]

Nice !

The 128 meg of my GF4 Ti 4400 are craving for some maps !

[Triple Ace]

I want hi res maps too.