[Warband] [B] Texture Fiddling

"Texture Fiddling" Version 1.0
~ A Warband Mod by lucky lancer ~
2010-12-21

This is Open Source - use as you please. - Credit would be appreciated nevertheless.

DESCRIPTION:
As much as I always liked M&B, I always thought most of the vanilla M&B textures were too colorful, all too cheerful - in a land torn by war. Some others were just too plain, lacking quality, definition, sharpness.
Of course Warband brought a lot of textures a big step forward. But not enough for my taste - or at least not entirely into the right direction.
That's why I started to review, play around with and finally remix the color, saturation, brightness and contrast of numerous vanilla textures, one by one, to achieve a sharper, dirtier, darker, overall more "used" look - which in my eyes appears just a lot more REALISTIC and natural.
In other words: I tried to get the best out of the vanilla textures.
Of course this is a matter of personal taste and perspective.
If you share mine, then this might be the mod for you!

I altered almost every single armor, clothing, boots, gloves, hat, helmet, shield, body and weapon texture, along with some horse/horse armor and map icons, plains and steppe map textures.
I left out the Sarranid Mamluke Mail, because I never liked it and even removed it from my personal Native.

This is the first time I edited textures - so this modification is far from perfect. Some things might well be over-accentuated. But I believe it is well enough to share.

SOME IMPRESSIONS:

Important note:
The environmental textures on those screens are the awesome work of:
- Gutekfiutek, from his famous "Polished Landscapes" mod (http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,122423.0.html) combined with
- Lucke189's also awesome "Realistic Colors 1.22 + Taller Grass" (http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,120098.0.html)

The no less awesome facial textures shown are my personal selection consisting of textures taken primarily from
- "Prophesy of Pendor" (http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/board,119.0.html)
- one female face from "Thel's Facepack" (http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,109488.0.html)
- and one male face texture from SendMeSmile's "Smiley stuff OSP" (http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,138478.0.html/)

None of the above mentioned authors' textures are included in this mod of course!

NO IMPACT ON GAME PERFORMANCE !
Since these are no new textures, but just reworked/remixed vanilla ones, there is NO impact on the game's performance! In fact, they are just the same size as before - or even smaller. Sometimes drastically smaller. That's because of saving procedures of the reworked .dds-files.

THE FILE:
http://www.mbrepository.com/file.php?id=2448

INSTALLATION:
Couldn't be easier!
Just put the texture files into your desired module's "Textures" folder.
Done and enjoy!

Should you decide you do NOT like my reworked plains and steppe textures (as I just decided for myself recently), simply delete "plain.dds" and "map_steppe.dds".
I will remove them from the next version.

RECOMMENDATIONS:
This mod looks especially well with "Polished Landscapes" by Gutekfiutek!
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,122423.0.html


OTHER MODS BY ME:


CREDITS:
1.) Taleworlds:
For creating such a great, fun game - and making it editable so exceptionally easy! Even for noobs like me!
2.) Paint.net:
A truly great, powerful, extremely comfortable, freeware picture editing software!
3.) The great M&B forum/modding community:
For just keeping making a great game even better!

Impressive!, i really gonna try this!

great job,

Thank you, Renneko.
I hope you'll enjoy it!

cheers!

Looking really good. Nice fiddling job!

For some constructive feed-back: Overall I like the idea, but some of the armors clash with the settings because they are two dark/saturated now. Like the bottom armor. The darks are two dark. If the shadow of the crack in the brick wall behind him isn't totally black, the slight folds in his jerkin shouldn't stand out so much by casting such dark shadows.

Thanks for the feedback, tyrannicide and Llew2!

You are right, Llew2.
Those were my first texture editing efforts ever and I'm aware of the imperfectness.
Although -some- imperfections partly rely on the quality of the base vanilla textures.
I already revised some of my reworks and the results are getting much better.

I will upload an updated version soon, I think.

well done lucky lancer ! soon gonna see the real in-game ones ! Wish polished landscapes gotten updated too to use with your mod also !

thanks !

when i press [tab] in single player it gives me error about plain.dds and map_steppe.dds, saying could not open and the other saying unable to open. So why doing this any idea ?

boba said:

when i press [tab] in single player it gives me error about plain.dds and map_steppe.dds, saying could not open and the other saying unable to open. So why doing this any idea ?

Click to expand...

Hello boba,

That's indeed strange. I've never experienced that and I've got no idea why these two textures should cause an error for you.
Therefore my only advise in this case can be for you to delete the two textures.
As I stated in the first post that's what I recommend anyway, since these particular textures aren't very good.

Best regards

well, a few days before i also tried this, deleting also did not solve the problem, somethings conflicting but dunno whats the reason. But i will try again with the next release for sure, keep up the good work lucky lancer

Thank you, boba.
Sorry that I can't help you with this issue.

I already fiddled together myself some of the graphic mods, but its nice to see you try to improve them further and integrate your own work 

So far everything looks nice, of course not perfect but well its the first release eh^^

One thing i have, that i don't like so much though, i think that are the chain armors or others that have chains, or some sort of plates (horse and infantry), when they are at distance, there are some issues, they look quite ugly, like there's some sort of aliasing or sth, could be the specular light, don't know I'm not very familiar with texturing, only coding 
So if you didn't do already, would be nice, if you can have a look into that.

But anyway, overall its a great pack, thx for making this

Edit:
Wanted to make a screenshot, of what i mean, because I'm not sure how the armors are called in english, but no matter which tool i use or just print screen, it gives me a black screen image -.-

Press Ctrl + Insert, that will create a screenshot and save it to the Warband folder in My Documents.

I know what you mean about the lack of aliasing on the textures, it occurs when the contrast is increased. It might be something to do with the bump map being over exaggerated.

Looking good, nice job.

ahh ok thx Densetsu,

im sure it was somewhere in a readme or the control settings 

Well when i come to my next play session, maybe i make a screenshot for the author, to show.

Oh and a question to lucky lancer,

Are you thinking about including some of the other modders work, some sort of compete texture pack maybe? For me it was no problem, to put em all together, but it would be nice for others to have a complete pack i guess, as the polished landscapes and realistic colours,  for example are a great work too, so why dont you include it and alter it to fit with your work or only include it to your download, as well as your personal choice of face textures. Just an idea

DarTMauK said:

ahh ok thx Densetsu,

im sure it was somewhere in a readme or the control settings 

Well when i come to my next play session, maybe i make a screenshot for the author, to show.

Oh and a question to lucky lancer,

Are you thinking about including some of the other modders work, some sort of compete texture pack maybe? For me it was no problem, to put em all together, but it would be nice for others to have a complete pack i guess, as the polished landscapes and realistic colours,  for example are a great work too, so why dont you include it and alter it to fit with your work or only include it to your download, as well as your personal choice of face textures. Just an idea

Click to expand...

well, unfortunately they are not for the current version of the game, they became old.

They still work fine, although they were made for the older version, as thats only a texture thing, there wont be any problem.
Im using polished landscapes and nearly all other graphic mods and i dont have a single issue 

As far as i know, only item mods or other gameplay content things may have issues with a newer version but texture and recoloring should work in 90% of the cases.
Correct me, if im wrong but as said i use em and all works fine 

This is nice. Sharpens the images.

Fat geil!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thx

I like these textures a lot, I just have one question for lucky or anyone else who has used it. Most of these are great improvements, I just have one pretty big issue, I guess.

Does anyone else have problems with Heraldic mail or surcoats? I have a bunch of little black patches or weirdness at the edges of Heraldic stuff. This is really noticeable because I really prefer to deck out my Heroes in heraldic gear, unfortunately. I might just revert to the vanilla heraldic armor, but I was just curious if anyone else had the same problem.