[Gank]

Hey,  I'm having a few probs running the game with ht&l and was wondering if anybody could help me out with something. Everything runs okay with normal fs2 files although the game freezes for a split second sometimes. However when I installed some of the high res files, specifically the media vp the game does this so much it becomes unplayable. I've had lightspeeds weapons, planets and thruster effects running with little affect on the game so its definetly something in the vp. I took a gawk through it and noticed a lot of the image files were in odd dimensions like 203*171 and 406*342 etc. I know from working with large image files(heightmaps) in photoshop that keeping to sizes like 256*256, 2048*2048, 8192*8192 etc is faster than sizes not in base 2 and was wondering if converting these files to more standard sizes and/or jpeg would give me better performance?

My vidcards an onboard gforce 2 but it has no probs running newer games with much the same features like hw2.

btw, some seriously nice work, game looks ten times better than the last time I played it. half tempted to start knocking out a few ships for it.

[Bobboau]

it isn't freizeing, it's loading the files, we are aware of the problem, but it is a structural one inherited from the origonal game and we are unsure as how to fix the problem

[RandomTiger]

Large textures will slow any game down, some people have been distributing some very large textures recently.

Try using photoshop to lower the size and keep to those rules you mentioned, 256,512,1024,2048,4096

If you have a 513x513 texture it will actually have to go in a texture space of 1024x1024 which takes up an lot more memory.

Also even if you do not reduce them to the next lower texture size just making it a standard size may avoid the engine having to scale it which might make it load faster.

[Gank]

Thks for the quick reply, I figured it was loading causing the delays, thats why I asked if changing the texture sizes would help. I'm not really familiar with this sort of stuff but I have noticed images get processed faster in photoshop and the like when they're this size, is it the same for the ht&l engine or would resizing them be a waste of time?

Edit: Answered while I was typing this, you guys are pretty on the ball. Cheers for the help, I'll give it a shot.

[jdjtcagle]

Is this the same deal with my computer.
When I got Bobboau-lightspeeds thrusters It takes forever to load, so I got rid of the FOV settings , which worked better if it didn't freeze before it loaded

[RandomTiger]

People are inevitably going to want to use larger and larger textures but remember if the engine is the same this can cause bottlenecks. This year I hope to restructure the D3D texture system, I will see what I can do to minimise these problems.

Using textures of the given sizes really is very important and anyone who contributes textures should really take this on board.

http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/fsdoc/index.php/Choosing%20dimensions

[Gank]

I resized and converted all the image files in the effects folder to jpg and its running much smoother, still getting the odd freeze particularly at the start of missions but they dont seem to be as frequent. I'd recommend anybody whos having probs do the same.

RandomTiger, I resized most of the files up so I'm thinking the conversion to jpg probably gave me the most benefit. Certainly the filesizes are much lower, a 512*512 tga was 1025kb, same file as jpg is 42kb. I havent got time to search so sorry if this is mentioned elsewhere but are dds files supported? I think its compression even better.

[RandomTiger]

In video memory a TGA and JPG will take up the same amount of memory. However DDS is supported but not fully tested.

[Trivial Psychic]

To Gank:

Just curious, what's your specific GPU, memory, OS, and most importantly, what driver version are you using (the actual number plz).  It may have a bearing on some problem I've been having.

Later!