FSB Shipyards - Exeter class

[Bones]

On behalf of the FSB Shipyards, I proudly present you the Exeter class :

http://bridgecommander.filefront.com/file/Exeter_class_USS_Exeter_NCC1762C;120531

Enjoy !

[FarShot]

Now that she's up, I am PMing custom registries to the two gentlemen whose requests I accepted.  Check your PMs, flarespire and Intercity125. ;)

[King Class Scout]

I've been looking for a week

Guys, I spotted a screw-up! you have to remove the Alpha channel from speculars if you make them from the original textures (or the specs are confined to the glows!)

[Bones]

waht's wrong with that ? I always do that and there's no difference, correct me if I'm wrong

[King Class Scout]

it confines the speculars to the same bits as the alpha channel (which renders them useless).  but, okay, whatevs.

I thought this'd be a bit more powerfull than that.  only had to shrink one set of textures for my own use, though

[Shadowknight1]

it confines the speculars to the same bits as the alpha channel (which renders them useless).  but, okay, whatevs.

I thought this'd be a bit more powerfull than that.  only had to shrink one set of textures for my own use, though

The speculars look fine to me.

[Bones]

yep they appeared fine to beta testers, I'll make some research about that tho, also additional  alpha channels to speculars cause them to be bigger and are waste of space, so it's a good find KCS, thanks for heads up ;)

[Killallewoks]

The speculars seemed fine. 

[Bones]

they work fine, they're just a little bit heavier than normally

[moed]

The specs worked for me too with the alphas. But... it's still a good idea not to include them as they do make the speculars more texture heavy. And for those of us who don't have that powerful of systems any little bit helps.

Also, and this is a big one. I noticed that you guys left the specs as RGB's. That makes them essentially as large a file as the glows. I'd suggest you convert the specular maps to greyscale, there's no color in the speculars so you don't need to have them hold on to the RGB channels. They take up significantly less space when you make them greyscale which obviously makes the textures render that much faster on screen.

Hope this helps.

[Shadowknight1]

I downloaded the "fix" and...frankly, the specs in that one seem...boring.  No contrasting hull plates.

[Bones]

which leads me to only one conclusion ... alpha channels seems to work in direct opposition to what KCS told me they add aditional contrast, gotta check it tho .

[moed]

I've tried both with and without alpha's and I don't see a difference in contrast.

[Bones]

Strange, because I checked it on two systems and I could tell there's a difference in contrast

[moed]

Maybe it's peculiar to different video cards and drivers. I have 3 systems at home (I'm an IT manager) with vastly different configurations - from a 6 year old system that has a decent graphic card to a top-of-the-line 2 graphic card setup and an in-between system - and I have BC installed on each one of them... saw no "measurable" difference in contrast.

When I say "measurable" that's a completely subjective viewpoint but let me just say that any difference that I did happen to see, was so subtle that it isn't worth mentioning.

[Bones]

Well I beleve ya and that's why I see it strange, you can even see the change in FSB Shipyards thread, look at early ingame footage of Vandetta then look at thelatest, you can see an obvious change :eek I would never guess it could change anything but somehow it does, on a side note tho, I noticedthat if reduce the size of speculars texture by half there will be no noticeable change in quality ingame but the file itself will be so much smaller (4 mb instead of 16 mb ! - without alphas and greyscaled it would be even smaller - 1.2 mb) 

[moed]

The specs worked for me too with the alphas. But... it's still a good idea not to include them as they do make the speculars more texture heavy. And for those of us who don't have that powerful of systems any little bit helps.

Also, and this is a big one. I noticed that you guys left the specs as RGB's. That makes them essentially as large a file as the glows. I'd suggest you convert the specular maps to greyscale, there's no color in the speculars so you don't need to have them hold on to the RGB channels. They take up significantly less space when you make them greyscale which obviously makes the textures render that much faster on screen.

Hope this helps.

Bones, this is a comment that I made a few posts above this one. Your last comment basically echo's what I said.

It does make a big difference in texture size.

[moed]

Edit: not and exact echo but, along similar lines.

[Bones]

yeah in this case size really matters ;)