A couple ideas to make the lives of mappers easier...

Thor · Post by **Thor** » Wed Jul 10, 2002 12:20 am

two ideas...kinda similar to the "Project Entity"

1. a texture reference guide online...a site where a mapper could go and look through all the textures that come with the game...to find the right one...

2. an entity reference guide...pictures only...just a picture of each entity available from the right click menu...such as all the lights...effects...tables...mg42's...etc...wouldn't have as big of an impact as the texture reference guide...but it would still make the lives of mappers a little easier...

I would do these myself but I don't have the time to do it since I'm the leader of the Band of Brothers Mapping team...please...someone do at least the texture reference guide...

Post by **Surgeon** » Wed Jul 10, 2002 12:49 am

I have considered doing both - but I'm a little daunted at the thought of that much work

..I'll have a talk with some of my staff and see if we could split the task

kdja · Post by **kdja** » Wed Jul 10, 2002 1:29 am

I find a 2nd monitor and any thumbnail graphic viewer with all the textures copied to a 2nd HD works fine for me...

But it would be a good idea.
I think i may start on a page.

If someone who doesnt think HTML is a new form of chinese could make a template I could add each texture.
And if someone else could find a way to get the added pics to be linked from the PAK3 to the HTML document.that would be sweet as hosting them on a website might be a bit of a strain (200mb worth of pics)

So some sort of viewer would be a better idea.
maybe someone with more knowledge will tell me if thsi is possible???

Moal is a VB person maybe you could think of a way to make a program access the pak3 folders??

if not he user would have to extract the textures himself.

Maybe im just talking cr@p
Kdja

tstrait72 · Post by **tstrait72** » Wed Jul 10, 2002 4:02 am

i have them extracted into another folder and i view them with the Paint Shop Pro viewer, very handy...

Moal · Post by **Moal** » Wed Jul 10, 2002 4:12 am

I have them extracted to a another folder (mine are in my MOHAATools/Textures
and I use ACDSee to view them
also have a dual monitor system
I streach MOHRadiant across half my second monitor
makes life easyer as just the image section is on 2ed

the pk3 with the textures is 365 meg packed
and 611 meg unpacked
I dont think you will find a host that you dont have to pay for to let you take up that kind of space
and standard HTML wouldnt extract the images anyway
you would have to use some script like CGI or VBScript
and then the Host isnt going to like that either extracting a pk3 file on their site

kdja · Post by **kdja** » Wed Jul 10, 2002 4:40 am

So in answer to the original Q no.

But maybe if ACDsee was hosted on a few mapping pages ppl might use it.
Hint hint hint hint hint hint hint hint.

Hmm just thought of another way but its tedious and time consuming.
Using multiple ACD see windows take screen grabs of the textures using the Print Screen option or Hyper Snap.

They would be Jpeg and you might even get each group(misc_outside) into a screen (1600x1600) so they wouldnt take up a lot of space.
Hmm when me gets home from work will try it out.

Kdja

NathanielPT · Post by **NathanielPT** » Wed Jul 10, 2002 8:34 am

People please stop and think a minute. The reason the textures take up so much room is that they are at game quality! To just look at them wouldn't require them to be at that high a quality! Just JPEG compress the at a 30% to 50% compression ratio and it should bring each one down under 20K. Also they don't have to be at full size. I mean there are allot of 512x512 and 256x256 textures, you can shrink them to say 64x64 or 96x96 and bring down the size even lower, say under 10K. Let me do a little checking real quick and get some reall numbers for you:

Brstwset_1flt.jpg : 512x512
Uncompressed -- 358K
JPEG 30% -- 104K
50% -- 79K
75% -- 50K

Brstwset_1flt.jpg : 128x128 -- I shrunk it
JPEG 1% -- 18K
30% -- 5.5K
50% -- 3.5K
75% -- 2.5K

That is a compression ratio of a 119%!

See if you shirnk and compress the size comes out to be a lot less, so really the hosting space would not be that big. Here's another idea. Why not write a little program, like in VB (I could write it if enough people want it), that shows the thumbnails. This program would be downloaded with the thumbnails, which are compressed. The file size would not be that large, a rough esitmate would be 2-3MB not bad huh? If enough people really would likes this program I would be willing to do it. So if you are intrested drop in and post a reply saying so.

Post by **Surgeon** » Wed Jul 10, 2002 10:45 am

Yup and it will be gamespy that "hosts" all the pics

Moal · Post by **Moal** » Wed Jul 10, 2002 1:00 pm

alls well and good except the legal isusses with 2012 and EA

Post by **Surgeon** » Wed Jul 10, 2002 1:03 pm

I can't see them having a problem with it - it will only be a reference guide and not for profit

Moal · Post by **Moal** » Wed Jul 10, 2002 1:30 pm

well NathanielPT
you show me you have permission in writing from 2012 and EA and who ever created all 4500+ images and I will help

extracting them to your harddrive for personal use is one thing
posting them on the web is another

Post by **Surgeon** » Wed Jul 10, 2002 1:47 pm

WEll I'll go ahead and start two reference pages - I'll start with the texture one first. If you guys get a program up and running I'll put it up

NathanielPT · Post by **NathanielPT** » Wed Jul 10, 2002 2:20 pm

Hmm . . . I hadn't thought about the copyright issue. I thought since they we just being put up for other mappers it wouldn't be a problem. I already have a program that will show you the ".JPG" files in a folder. So if you decompress the textures out of the ".pk3" file, not changing the directory structure. You can then look at them and scroll through them. It is faster than letting MOHRadiant load them, for one it doesn't bother looking at the ".shader" files since we just want to see the pictures, not know how to apply them. It won't load ".tga" files which is a bummer because all the transparent textures are in ".TGA" format. Using PSP I can batch convert all ".TGA" files to ".JPG" format and then my program will work fine. So the question is, will it be illegal to uploaded the shrunken and compressed textures? I have no clue how to go about asking the copyright holders about it. So does anyone want to do that?

Post by **Surgeon** » Wed Jul 10, 2002 2:24 pm

How would people like to see the textures arranged ?? Would you like to see them in their individual texture sets, or in sets according to their type - ie walls , stone..Also should I provide any info on them or just the pics ??

NathanielPT · Post by **NathanielPT** » Wed Jul 10, 2002 7:34 pm

Um . . . we need to clarify the part each of us is doing so as not to have more than one person doing the same thing. I have a program written, like 90% to 95% done. It will look through directories and show you the ".jpg" files in them. It's a thumbnail viewer. It groups the pictures/textures by the folder they are in. I decompressed the textures out of the ".pk3" file and converted the ".tga" files to ".jpg" so my program can read them. Since I just dragged the textures folder from PakScape, the textures are already grouped in their subsets like in MOHRadiant.

I have converted all the "tga" files to ".jpg" files at 75% compression. I've shrunk some of them ".jpg" files to be no wider or taller than 128x128. I have about an hour's work left from completing the work of shrinking. Then all the textures will be ready for uploading.

My estimates about the size of the textures was very low, it looks like it will be 5MB maybe as high as 10MB.

In order to have the textures grouped other than their subsets, i.e. algiers, common, general_structure, etc. My program will have to read the shader files as well. Which will take a lot more work and will probably slow it down considerably.

Here is a link to the program so far, it is a 12K zip file, the program is written in VB6 so you will need the VB runtime files:
http://www.geocities.com/misnazbeira/TextureViewer.zip

Download it and try it out to see what it does.