Faction ship textures

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bgaskey
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Faction ship textures

Post by bgaskey »

Just throwing this out there for consideration:

Different factions have different textures for ships in the svn tree, but I don't think any of these are used except the default ones. If so, this is a simple fix that would add to the game quickly and with minimal effort. I'd be willing to do this myself if I get confirmation if this is actually the case. Peace out 8)
bgaskey
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Post by bgaskey »

Sorry about that. Had to do something real quick... anyway

I was doing some testing with the admonisher after doing some meshes. I found the wiki did not mention implementing different mesh files, and the alternate texture sets are never referenced during the process. The admonisher has textures for the purists, regional guard/homeland security (I think these are the same) and the normal one. The hud images for each are used correctly (which is reflected in units.csv) however, the actual ships render with the same textures, which is a great waste of perfectly good art. If one of the devs can confirm that this is the case I will generate separate mesh files for each ship texture so all can be added via changes to units.csv. 8) :wink:
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Post by ace123 »

If I understand you correctly, you are talking about the ship-specific textures, not the faction logos.

I thought that was working, but it quite possibly is not since I haven't noticed that in a while.

I don't know exactly what code does that, but I'll check on my desktop since I added texture debugging messages--I think it tries appending a faction-name to each ship texture it loads.

There's also faction-specific ships in the "factions" directory but I think only a few bases use that feature.
bgaskey
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Post by bgaskey »

A lot of ships have different paint jobs or color schemes depending on the faction owning the ships. in data4.x/units/ancestor/ there is a normal set for the generic ancestor and a set for the shaper faction that should be used by the shaperspec version of the ship. However, the shaper ancestor still uses the normal texture and the other ones are just deadweight in the svn tree. We could add a naming convention to the rendering to check for faction textures but the easiest way is to create a separate mesh for each factional texture set for each ship. Then units.csv could just reference the different textures and no mass renaming would be necessary. If you can think of a more elegant way to implement it by all means do so but that was the only way I could think of. 8)
pyramid
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Post by pyramid »

Faction specific textures are used correctly only in the 2 highest computer modes (512M+1GB & 1024MB) where the config variable "faction_dependant_textures" is enabled (value="1"). I have tested this with the ancestor, dostoevsky, and the agricultural station. It should work with any other unit too if the textures are correctly named.
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Post by bgaskey »

wow good call should have checked on this. I only have 512 RAM :cry: so i run at the third highest. What is the proper naming convention? is it just faction name underscore ship name?

Thanks for the tip pyramid sorry for impugning our great game :wink:
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Post by pyramid »

bgaskey wrote:What is the proper naming convention? is it just faction name underscore ship name?
Just like that. Take a look in the units folders for some reference.
Actually the computer mode values are a bit misleading in the sense that they do not represent very well the options that you are selecting. Most of the options related to computer mode are graphics related anyway.
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Post by bgaskey »

Yeah I think safemode is reworking all the options and hopefully they will be reclassified too. This really makes sense tho because loading faction textures takes more RAM and doesn't really effect the rederer.

I guess this complaint is pretty much closed. 8) :wink:
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