[jdjtcagle]

Hey, everybody I've been working on this VP for about two weeks now and I'm finally finished. I need the public and moderators opinion on this VP so I can start doing the official ones.
The new features include:

All lightspeeds weapon effects (except the missles)
Bobboau and Lightspeeds thrusters
New Planets effects
New Preload screen (comments? Sathanas done by Artimus)
I think thats it so keep in mind this is still a WIP VP until new effects come out?
Be happy to test and comment.

here you go
Enjoy;)
Special thanks to WMCoolmon for allowing me to do these!!:D
Thanks

EDIT: this brings the VP to around 27.1MB so 56k users beware:nervous:

[CP5670]

Well, there are a couple of problems with this; many of these were issues in the last VP version, although a few are new. I wouldn't recommend putting any tables files and table-based mods in there, as it would cause issues with existing mods that worked okay before. These can be included in a seperate download but should not be in the required main VP. Remove all the background nebula files, missile trails and most of the beam bitmaps, which both have much bigger filesizes and look worse than the original ones ingame. The suns might not be needed either. Several of the other files also seem to be far too large considering how blurry they are and no quality would be lost if their dimensions are cut in half or even a fourth in some cases; this includes at least the suns, the beamglows, the nbacks and the thrusterglows. Most of the TGA files should be made into 24-bit PCXs, especially the existing effects, as the PCXs are much smaller and no quality is lost. You also definitely want to remove the high resolution planets; the current versions of FS2_open are extreme memory hogs and introducing these makes the game pretty much unplayable, as it crashes with memory errors within a few minutes of starting a mission. Maybe you can replace them with the smaller ones and/or turn them into PCXs.  The Arcadia shinemap seems to be a bit too bright and causes some weird color oversaturation effects in the game. Lastly, there seem to be duplicates of the thruster files as well as two corrupted files in the maps folder, which should all probably be removed.

[redmenace]

I will download and use with my new Radeon 9600 this weekend when I come home. I hope it works....

[jdjtcagle]

Ya, CP5670 I'm thinking about really big files and High Poly  models be sqeezed in a VP so it would greatly shorten the MB
Sound Good?

And those problems are not mine to deal with I put the files in the VP not make the files. but if Lightspeed/ and or whorever makes these files(thrusters, TGAs, and whatnot) doesn't mind I'll I'll make the TGA's into PCXs.

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by CP5670
Well, there are a couple of problems with this; many of these were issues in the last VP version, although a few are new. I wouldn't recommend putting any tables files and table-based mods in there, as it would cause issues with existing mods that worked okay before. These can be included in a seperate download but should not be in the required main VP.

Agreed

Remove all the background nebula files, missile trails and most of the beam bitmaps, which both have much bigger filesizes and look worse than the original ones ingame.

wth
Want me to post a 1:1 comparison?

Most of the TGA files should be made into 24-bit PCXs, especially the existing effects, as the PCXs are much smaller and no quality is lost.

PCX with 24-bit are not supported by FS2open.

You also definitely want to remove the high resolution planets; the current versions of FS2_open are extreme memory hogs and introducing these makes the game pretty much unplayable, as it crashes with memory errors within a few minutes of starting a mission. Maybe you can replace them with the smaller ones and/or turn them into PCXs.

zero slowdown here I agree they should be optional though, as the high-res ones could probably knock low-spec systems down single handed. Things will get better when I can finally use DDS (since those can be stored compressed on the vid cards )

[Kazan]

lightspeed wait until you get to do graphics for ferrium .... i think you'll like all the available support for different filetypes


(edit s/filesys/filetypes)

[J3Vr6]

In the meantime, keep doing your great work on ScP!

[Lightspeed]

I'm somewhat sceptic towards ferrium, but prolly that's just me.

[Kazan]

/me hoslaps lightspeed

[CP5670]

And those problems are not mine to deal with I put the files in the VP not make the files. but if Lightspeed/ and or whorever makes these files(thrusters, TGAs, and whatnot) doesn't mind I'll I'll make the TGA's into PCXs.

Yeah, as I said, most of these problems were in previous versions of the VPs. I stated them before in various places but nobody seemed to notice so I thought I might as well list them all in one place, and this thread seemed as good as any for it.

wth Want me to post a 1:1 comparison?

Alright, let me show you what I mean. Here is a comparison of a background in the same mission but with different nebula sets. The jpg compression was screwing up the image quality so I uploaded them as pcx files instead.

This is what things look like with the original nebulas:
http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/procyon/misc/screen00.pcx

And here is what the same scene looks like with the "enhanced" ones:
http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/procyon/misc/screen01.pcx

I have been talking about this for some time now; the problem is that the nebula images have been made much larger but no actual detail has been added and the heavy blur more than negates any advantage gained by making the image big, so the end result looks more blurry than it used to even at the original size. Similar comments apply to the missile trails, beam bitmaps, suns and a few other things; some of these are the same image size as before but are once again blurred, so they look less detailed in the game.

PCX with 24-bit are not supported by FS2open.

oh, never mind then. Are there any plans to put this in?

zero slowdown here I agree they should be optional though, as the high-res ones could probably knock low-spec systems down single handed. Things will get better when I can finally use DDS (since those can be stored compressed on the vid cards )

yeah, it could be my machine (Athlon TB 1400, 512mb, Geforce3; do you think that would cause trouble?). I actually do not get any slowdowns either but certain other effects fail to show up at all - one common culprit is the player ship's engine, which has no thrusterglow effect at all and looks really dim and stupid - and the game CTDs with a memory error after about a minute's play.

[jdjtcagle]

EDIT: well come to think about it the weapons and tables shouldn't be in there at all or any other VP
They should just be in your main data effects folder.

So I'll make the VP with the pretty much everything else.
Only reason I didn't have a problem with it was that I'd always make my mods to VPs. so the mod fuction worked perfectly for me, sorry.

[Lightspeed]

Just have 3 different VPs for different 'performance' levels, plus one extra VP containing table-based addons (and the effects for them).

[jdjtcagle]

Ok, have them soon:)
 Lets go over this:

1. If I include the tables, people with mods are going to have problems, if the mods are not in a VP.  For example, inferno will work fine with the mod feature directed to it, so those folder mods will have to be put in VPs too. (I remeber a couple out there)

2. I can't make another one directed to users with low preformance, because it will end up being a old VP (like the first version of c)

So after that Tables won't make much of a problem, will it?
(Comments?)  I'm shure we will come to a conclusion about these problems soon.

[CP5670]

1. If I include the tables, people with mods are going to have problems, if the mods are not in a VP. For example, inferno will work fine with the mod feature directed to it, so those folder mods will have to be put in VPs too. (I remeber a couple out there)

Actually isn't it the other way around? The files outside of VPs take precedence over files inside them, but what I meant was that files in the FS2 open VP tend to be used in place of those in most other VPs due to its filename (so for example, my PI.vp used to be read correctly but stopped working with this in place). You could just solve this issue by renaming the VP file to start with r or something like that, although it's probably a good idea to have any table mods in a seperate VP anyway.

By the way, with all that stuff removed the VP filesize becomes much smaller, about 32MB.