Armour development thread. (Brainstorming for the Version 1 port)

[Markus II]

Triglav,

The vertex painting tool churns out horrible looking textures, worse than those currently in 0.903 version of the mod. Not to mention that the cloth trim now present on just about every armour piece would be lost. I'll be avoiding that tool like the plague.

As far as load times go, I'm not overly concerned. Granted that the initial game load time will be long, but setting up a new game or loading saves are unaffected and will be much the same as in Native. I'm happy with that until I can get a quality rigger on board.

 

[Triglav]

Triglav,

The vertex painting tool churns out horrible looking textures, worse than those currently in 0.903 version of the mod. Not to mention that the cloth trim now present on just about every armour piece would be lost. I'll be avoiding that tool like the plague.

As far as load times go, I'm not overly concerned. Granted that the initial game load time will be long, but setting up a new game or loading saves are unaffected and will be much the same as in Native. I'm happy with that until I can get a quality rigger on board.

As you like, as you like.

But I have to expand the statements above.

Vertex shader...
It is not a texturing tool, so it doesn't make any textures.
Any item textured only with the vertex shader will certainly look awful, as the shader tool only applies a coloured overlight to objects.
You still have to make a proper texture for any object.

But if you texture an armour, and make the sleeves textured in light grey, with a dark grey trim there as well, then in vertex shading you just apply a lightblue pastel over that and the sleeves will be blue, cloth pattern visible through and the trim will be dark blue. If you painted the sleeves yellow on the texture, and apply the same blue vertex shade, the sleeves will actually be green and the cloth trim dark green.

Same as I've done with the red pants in the armours sent you. They look just as good as the grey ones, in fact exactly as good, since the actual texture is the same, only they're red, due to the red vertex shade laid on top of them.


Texture loading...
Longer initial load times are far from the only negative effect of tons of unnecesary texture sheets. That is in fact the smallest problem.
The actual problem is that one's graphic card and video memory have to process 10 times as many texture sheets than they'd really need, which can significally slow down your game framerate, so then you end up having to play on lower settings, just to be able to display all those armours.
Three armours on one sheet vs. three separate sheets =three times more work for the video memory in the case of three sheets.
For instance in the case of the Maille Shirts with Fur Pelt you have for separate sheets which have to be loaded in full, just for the little bit of different coloured sleeve that shows up...

See my computer is already a bit dated, and it plays Native pretty good, because Native is very rational, packing 5 or more armours onto one sheet.
But already if I play The Last Days which I'm working on, game stutters terribly if I have more than 40 guys on the battlefield, because their gear is using so many texture sheets, to make it all unique and good looking. That is why Ancientwanker is on a mission now to lighten the package for the next release, putting as many items on each one sheet, as possible.

It is your mod, so certainly it will be structured any way you envisioned it, but just reconsider some of my proposals, so that the enjoyment of playing the mod is not lost on bad computer performance eventually.

 

[Spongly]

On the subject of dagged edged mail (which is the mail with triangular edged bits at the bottom and the sleeves), it is the most common form of mail for Saxons in this period if you believe manuscript illustrations, where almost all mail is dagged.

 

[Markus II]

As you like, as you like.

But I have to expand the statements above.

Vertex shader...
It is not a texturing tool, so it doesn't make any textures.
Any item textured only with the vertex shader will certainly look awful, as the shader tool only applies a coloured overlight to objects.
You still have to make a proper texture for any object.

But if you texture an armour, and make the sleeves textured in light grey, with a dark grey trim there as well, then in vertex shading you just apply a lightblue pastel over that and the sleeves will be blue, cloth pattern visible through and the trim will be dark blue. If you painted the sleeves yellow on the texture, and apply the same blue vertex shade, the sleeves will actually be green and the cloth trim dark green.

Same as I've done with the red pants in the armours sent you. They look just as good as the grey ones, in fact exactly as good, since the actual texture is the same, only they're red, due to the red vertex shade laid on top of them.


Texture loading...
Longer initial load times are far from the only negative effect of tons of unnecesary texture sheets. That is in fact the smallest problem.
The actual problem is that one's graphic card and video memory have to process 10 times as many texture sheets than they'd really need, which can significally slow down your game framerate, so then you end up having to play on lower settings, just to be able to display all those armours.
Three armours on one sheet vs. three separate sheets =three times more work for the video memory in the case of three sheets.
For instance in the case of the Maille Shirts with Fur Pelt you have for separate sheets which have to be loaded in full, just for the little bit of different coloured sleeve that shows up...

See my computer is already a bit dated, and it plays Native pretty good, because Native is very rational, packing 5 or more armours onto one sheet.
But already if I play The Last Days which I'm working on, game stutters terribly if I have more than 40 guys on the battlefield, because their gear is using so many texture sheets, to make it all unique and good looking. That is why Ancientwanker is on a mission now to lighten the package for the next release, putting as many items on each one sheet, as possible.

It is your mod, so certainly it will be structured any way you envisioned it, but just reconsider some of my proposals, so that the enjoyment of playing the mod is not lost on bad computer performance eventually.

Triglav,

You do make valid points and I'm certainly not denying any of them. I'm running a fairly high-end PC, so I don't tend to notice any ill-effects from the large number of texture sheets, even at max details with a 300+ battlesize cap. As a result I didn't realise the effect it might have had on standard or low-end machines.

Still, I'll run with the current system until such a time as I can find a rigger to work on the mod. Hopefully when the run of 0.960 ports slows down, someone will be free and willing to contribute their skills.

On the subject of dagged edged mail (which is the mail with triangular edged bits at the bottom and the sleeves), it is the most common form of mail for Saxons in this period if you believe manuscript illustrations, where almost all mail is dagged.

Aye, I've seen as much Spongly. I'm still torn as to whether or not I should include dagged edges, purely on aesthetic reasons - I've tried several such textures so far and I didn't really like the end results. I'll give it another shot and how it goes.

 

[pentagathus]

Wow the new armours look amazing.
How uniformal are soldiers sheilds going to be? Will for example the mercian thegn troop have only one sheild in its code so they all bear the same sheild design?
Are banners of standard bearers going to use the heraldic texture? If not how does the player use standard bearers?

 

[Markus II]

Wow the new armours look amazing.
How uniformal are soldiers sheilds going to be? Will for example the mercian thegn troop have only one sheild in its code so they all bear the same sheild design?
Are banners of standard bearers going to use the heraldic texture? If not how does the player use standard bearers?

It's much the same as in the 0.903 version of the mod, but with many more shields. For example, the Mercian Thegns are armed with one out of a possible three types of shields, drawn from the more complex designs on the metal-rimmed shields. There are no heraldric textures.

The banners used by standard bearers are standard textures showing a faction/saint banner, not heraldric.

 

[pentagathus]

Does this mean the player cant use standard bearers? Or that the player will just march under his kings banner?