Posts: 77
From:
Registered: Dec 2000

posted 12-09-2000 08:59 AM               

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I was wondering approx how many textures we could add to a map before hindering performance.

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Posts: 251
From:Germany
Registered: Nov 2000

posted 12-09-2000 09:17 AM               

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From the tutorial, p. 75:

>>>
There is a limit to the amount of “texture memory” per level…can’t give
exact numbers, but economy of use should always be at the forefront!
If you reach this memory limit, when you try to apply a new texture or a
portion of a texture that hasn’t been previously applied, you will not get
the texture you want! And if you run short on “texture memory” new
animation ranges will not activate.
<<<

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Posts: 77
From:
Registered: Dec 2000

posted 12-09-2000 10:24 AM               

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Yeah I read that and thought, OK......

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posted 12-12-2000 02:03 PM              

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It really is impossible to give exact numbers regarding texture use when you consider all the variables! But just be aware that there is a limit to the texture memory. Every different texture or piece of texture applied has to be stored in memory. Once this limit is reached, additional texture tiles or portions of tiles can't be stored. So, if you have some really complex modeling requiring a lot of little triangles and bits of textures you should try to use the same 'pieces' as often as possible...avoid selecting different portions if you can get by with using the same ones. It's not the number of times a texture is applied, but how many different textures and pieces are used.

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Posts: 114
From:North Hollywood,CA. U.S.A.
Registered: Dec 2000

posted 12-12-2000 05:28 PM               

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Thanks Reb that was very helpful, but can you answer this for me?
If its not how many times you use 1 texture but how many different textures you use, then is the texture memory large enough to at least store each texture in full form once?

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posted 12-14-2000 10:21 AM              

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I would assume so as long as you don't exceed 160 tiles (the total number that can be displayed when you set animation ranges). I asked the programers about this hoping to be able to give more definite guidelines in the manual but they couldn't give a definite answer....there must simply be too many permutations to calculate. If you played TRLA you may have noticed that in the zoo level, the green radioactive tiles did not animate as in the other levels...this was a problem of texture memory and was discovered too late in the process to go back and 'fix'. Once you've spent days carefully placing and adjusting textures, to rearrange or eliminate any would require retexturing the entire level. Also in this same level, after a certain point, no new pieces of textures could be applied which did create some limitations that had to be 'worked' around. Hence the recommendation to be prudent with texture use! Again, check out the sample levels for an idea of how many textures were used...you know developers always push to the limits, so if it were possible to use an unlimited amount of textures, it would have been done!!!

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