[S-99]

dds has artifacts, 16bit palette does not.

(200% size)

I prefer the DDS one. It has compression artifacts, yeah.
But it has mipmaps and takes up even less memory than the 16-bit TGA.

Why can't we stick with 24bit stuff? 16bit was necessary back in the days of the voodoo3 and tnt2 when 32 bit was too slow to play in. Today 32/24 bit (it's the same thing except in 24 bit you don't have 8 layers of transparencies) is no longer a concern of speed. In fact todays cards since the first radeon came out perform better in 32 bit than 16. And what is with the 24 bit dds sucking ass? The 24 bit dds looks just like the 16 bit tga. Who sharted here? I don't see any benefit moving on up to 24 bit from 16 bit if you're going to make it look the same. Sure dds may have less memory usage and mip maps, but the 24bit tga up here is the only good looking thing, while the 24 bit dds is merely a clone of the 16 bit tga. If you're going to use 16.7 million colors next time for a 16.7 million color texture, make sure to use more than just 65, 536 of the 16.7 million. I mean this is horrible.

And if you want to see a difference in 16 bit and 32 bit, go play half life 1 and compare it to playing half life 2 color palettely speaking. Or compare quake 2 to quake 4. You're sure to see a difference on the 16 bit only games and their 32 bit only successors (hl1 and q2 have significant color banding while hl2 and q4 do not as they have good 32 bit measures taken).

EDIT: Sorry, the 24 bit dds does have slightly better color blending than the 16 bit tga, but the 24 bit dds look largely identical to the 16 bit tga anyway.

[DaBrain]

All modern games use compressed textures.

First, you can't make a game without mipmaps anymore. Really... you can't do that.
Ok, you don't really need DDS for that, but imho, it's the best way to handle them.


And if you use compressed maps, you can use the saved memory for high-res maps.

A 2048² DXT1 compressed map looks better than a 1024² uncompressed map. Or at least it can possibly look way better if the artist does a good job.

You should also realize that the next Media VP version will take up around 1 GB. (with the VP compression). And the biggest part are the textures and effects.

Now imagine we get normal mapping support. Those maps will add a considerable ammount of stuff for the gfx memory.


Sometimes you have to use uncompressed 24-bit maps. Mostly for some effects (not the animated ones).
16-Bit textures are not useful anymore though.

Look at the sample picture. The color banding in the16-bit effect is horrible.
Sure, the DDS one looks a bit grainy, but at least it can handle pretty much all colors and you don't have to worry about color palettes.

Imho the DDS one looks better. Especially because something will be behind it in the game.
A ship... a nebula, or an explosion. It will cover the grainy look.

The colorbanding can get even worse with something in the background.

[Wanderer]

The software used to create the DDS also has large effect on the amount and visibility of artifacts. Older like DDS converter do not really do that good job in it. Using somethinga tad better like nvdxt (command line utility) helps.

[Flaser]

Final note:

Use DDS. Even though you may prefer TGA, and it is easier to develop with use DDS for the final product.

• It's more efficient since videocards natively support it.
• DDS generates mipmaps - that's NEEDED
• If you're hung up on artifacts, you can USE UNCOMPRESSED DDS

This has all been said before, the coders are just rehearsing the same.

Bobbau also often rants (and rightly so), that you can't aim for perfection with each and every single effect/model. You have to make compromises. This is a game, if each and every effect eats up tens of Mbytes the memory requirement will knock down the roof.