4mb texture limit

Muu · March 2002

<div class="IPBDescription">Question</div>Does any one know what the implications of the 4Meg texture limit are and why its inforced? Im guessing its so people with only 4megs on thier video card can load all the textures into memory - but thats not going to happen because you've got all the model textures and sprites etc so I don't understand why its inforced.

mr_Nebel · March 2002

You've got a point there, also my understanding is that commander mode doesn't run in software mode which is what people with older video cards would be running anyway.
Maps will be able to be made much MORE immersive if we can up the texture memory limit.

The_Artist · March 2002

WHAT 4 MB TEXTURE LIMIT.......WTF...IM SCREWED...lol naaa im good i got a 64mb graphics card n e way lol. good point though but i have no-idea why it is enforced....although Nebal is right ppl with like older graphics card will be running it in software mode and 4mb texture limit will help <img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'>

Muu · March 2002

The artist really read your post carefuly Nebel, But I think flayra wants to fix software mode, so it should be supported if possible - what I really want to know is why mappers should have to limit themselves to less than 4Megs when the modelers clearly aren't observing this limit when skinning models? I may be really dumb though there may be reasons for the 4Meg limit I don't understand.

Black_Wolf · March 2002

basically using all 8 mb limit of textures in your map will just amke software mode laggy, and even some OPENGL and Direct3D ppl, DoD 2.0 had this problem and they have agreed to a 5mb texture limit, which i think is quite enough textures to use in your map, as long as placement it correct and textures are reused and the like this shouldnt be a problem.

Relic25 · March 2002

As far as I know, there is no "enforcement" of a 4 meg texture limit. I have chosen to restrict <i>myself</i> to 4 megs, simply because I want to keep performance as good as it can be. It's not going to kill anyone if your texture use is a little above 4 megs. Believe it or not, software mode isn't nearly as affected by this as 3DFX cards are.

Moleculor · March 2002

The limit is merely the default setting of Zoner's tools.

You can increase the limit by using the -texdata argument, but I'm not sure where.

I -think- that this 4MB limit might be something that Relic was doing, and it got read by pretty much everyone (including me) that it was an actual limit set by Flayra.

Relic25 · March 2002

If you need to increase it, use -texdata #### in every compile step, where #### is the number of Kilobytes of texture memory that you want to use as your maximum.

So if you wanted to, say, set your texture limit to 5 megs, you would use -texdata 5120 in CSG, BSP, VIS, and RAD.

Muu · March 2002

Ok thanks guys the reason I was asking because I was already using 5megs for my textures but I was pretty sure that 4 had been set as a limit - My brain probably just made that up though to get my worryed - It does that alot. I'll keep 5megs unless someone official says otherwise.

badmofo · March 2002

wo wo wo - hold the boat...i SPECIFICALLY ASKED flayra in an e-mail if i could go above the 4 MB texture limit (my maps are notorious for using lots of high res textures) - and he specifically told me if i wanted the map to be release worthy, that i couldn't go above 4....so lets please get this straight - because i'm gonna automatically change all my 128 textures to 240 if i can go past 4MB.

Relic25 · March 2002

Don't do that. 128 textures look 500% better than 240 textures. It's the old "power of 2" thing.

Freestyler · March 2002

What about 256? Is there any reason why it should be 240 instead of 256?

Yamazaki · March 2002

I've used 224 and 240 sized textures before, they always look incredibly blurry and smudgy. The only time it looks okay is when they're organic materials, like dirt or rock. Smudgy dirt still looks like dirt... smudgy walls look like arse <img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':('>

Black_Wolf · March 2002

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td><b>Quote</b> </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">What about 256? Is there any reason why it should be 240 instead of 256? </td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'>

its splits the brush into four pieces per texture repetition, 240 is the max unsplitting texture size.

Ekaj · March 2002

I'm pretty sure texture size doesn't matter, only texture scale.

Edit: I was talking about splitting, not blurriness.

Hand_Me_The_Gun_And_Ask_Me_Again · March 2002

Gah... Not again.

The only texture sizes supported by OpenGL (AFAIK) are the powers-of-two ones (128x128, 256x256 etc). Nothing else.

Half-Life, when it encounters a texture that isn't of this size, rounds it down to the nearest power-of-two size. A 240x240 texture is scaled down to a 128x128 texture - which is why things look blurry.

It's possible to make it scale <b>up</b> - to 256x256 in this case - but things look slightly lumpy due to the poor-quality nearest-neighbour scaling. Do this with <b>gl_round_down 0</b> in your autoexec.cfg or whatever.

<a href="http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~afoster/gl_round_down/" target="_blank">http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~afoster/gl_round_down/</a> - screenshots of the kind of results you'll get. It's like a mini-HD-pack for textures - and works on a load of existing Half-Life ones. <img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'>

Yamazaki · March 2002

So OpenGL is enlarging the texture to the next highest power of 2, rather than reducing to the next lowest power of 2? That sounds rather interesting.

However I tried that command myself and it had no visible effect, even in one of my maps where I used 224x192 wall textures. They still looked as blurry as normal.

Hand_Me_The_Gun_And_Ask_Me_Again · March 2002

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td><b>Quote</b> </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">However I tried that command myself and it had no visible effect, even in one of my maps where I used 224x192 wall textures. They still looked as blurry as normal</td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'>

It has to be set before any textures are loaded - it's not something that can be dynamically changed. <img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'>

For instance, I have the following in <b>valve/hw/matrox.cfg</b>:
</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td><b>Code Sample</b> </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">
gl_ztrick 0
gl_polyoffset 0.1

gl_round_down 0
gl_texturemode GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR
gl_max_size 512
</td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'>

Stroodle · March 2002

######, i just downloaded 130MB of textures <img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':('> (not that i planned to use all of em). also... when i put em all in worldcraft and clicked compile button.... worldcraft closed and gave me some error message. i tried it lots of times with and without the textures, and it only happens when i have em all loaded. Il try putting all the textures in one file and see what happens then

Black_Wolf · March 2002

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td><b>Quote</b> </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I'm pretty sure texture size doesn't matter, only texture scale.

Edit: I was talking about splitting, not blurriness. </td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'>

erm, they do, try stretching a 256 texture to exactly fit a face, then check out w_polies and gl_wireframe in half-life (someone back me up here . . .)

Ekaj · March 2002

Yes, as I said it changes with stretching, but not because of texture size. I just made a test map, it was a room with 2 square brushes opposite each other. One had a 256x256 texture on it and the other had a 240x240 texture. Both were stretched onto a 128x128 surface and I got the same w_poly no matter which texture I looked at.

Black_Wolf · March 2002

erm, im sorry but you are wrong, it will split the face into 4 pieces with a 256 texture.

for example this site:

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td><b>Quote</b> </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Does texture size matter? Yes an no...

No it doesn't matter as long as you don't require a perfect fit (walls ground etc.).
Yes it does matter if you require the texture to fit the brush (like crates).
Faces are scaled with texture scale.

Face size = subdivide size (240 max.) * scale.
Brush size / 240 = scale for lowest faces (round up to 2 decimal places (not down&#33<img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=';)'>).
Now a 256*256*256 brush with a 256*256 texture scaled to x=1, y=1 would have 24 faces. If you were to make a crate like this and wanted to reduce the faces, then you would have to increase the scale to x=1.07, y=1.07 (method above, 256/240=1.066667) and then part of the texture will be missing, so it wouldn't look good.

The same brush with a 240*240 texture scaled to x=1.07, y=1.07 would have 6 faces, and the texture would fit much better. Same as a 16*16 texture scaled to x=1.07, y=1.07, it would have 6 faces and texture would be tiled 15*15 times.

So the best textures to use are:

16*16, 16*48, 16*80, 16*240, 48*48, 48*80, 48*240, 80*240, 240*240
</td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><a href="http://www.planethalflife.com/chaincraft/home/news/news_032001.htm" target="_blank">Proof</a>

there are many other sites that will tell you the same thing, i am sure, but this was the top of my search results.

this is why mofo uses 240 textures instead of 256, to keep r_speeds down . . .

Moleculor · March 2002

However, the texture will look ten times better if at 256x256.

Ekaj · March 2002

Okay, but it cant make that much of a diff if my testmap had the same r_speeds for both of them.. And I still see no reason to use 240x240 textures (since they look bad)

Black_Wolf · March 2002

no hard feelings, just dont like to be so firmly told i am wrong when i am not and you arent sure . . .

Yamazaki · March 2002

I covered the whole subdivide thing in a tutorial I posted on my website (Address is in my signature). It may sound tempting to use this trick, but it will just bite you in the ###. I'm disappointed with vs_yamamansion (My Vampireslayer map that got released a while back) because of how blurry the textures all look. Using 224x192 sized walls (The engine subdivides by 224 if the surface exceeds 240, so tiling surfaces won't benefit from 240 sized walls) resulted in blurriness... the only thing that saved the map was the dim lighting.

Black_Wolf · March 2002

yeah, well i wasnt saying it will look better =D just lower r_speeds . . .

Flayra · March 2002

I've been thinking about this 4MB texture limit a bit recently. You make a good point about the model textures bumping the onscreen limit past 4 meg. The new CS maps are 8 megs of texture or more!

I'm going to think about this a bit more before a give a definitive answer on it. I realize this is the kind of decision that really shouldn't be changed this late in the development, but it's better to make the right decision and not be able to take advantage of it.

Relic, Merks, would it be a lot of work in your nearly-completed maps to take advantage of a texture limit of say, 6.5 megs (leaving 1.5 megs for player models, buildings, particles, HUD artwork, etc)?

Relic25 · March 2002

I don't think it would change anything at all. I can't think of any place in mine that I've been prevented from using a different texture because of the limit. There was a time when that was true, but that was because I had 3 or 4 giant textures (256x256) on brush faces that would never be seen. Simply replacing those freed up a ton of texture mem. I'm only using 3.83 megs now. However, I <i>am</i> adding those signs, which are not included in the texture memory for the map, but definitely do add to the load since they are models.

mr_Nebel · March 2002

Is this 'official'? Those of us that wish to can use 6.5MB of textures? or was that just a non-official comment/question?

MonsieurEvil · March 2002

Does anyone know the technical specifications of the rendering and texture pieces of the HL engine? I am curious to know if WAD's are completely loaded into memory for interpretation or if the actual textures are extracted at map-load time, and then held resident for usage as needed later, and the WADS ignored. If the WADS themselves get fully loaded, it's in your best interest to keep things as small as possible, regardless of the rules; otherwise, the engine will be constantly swapping to disk to get textures, causing a lot of paging and unnecessary IO.

I am mucho curious about this, from an architectural standpoint...

4mb texture limit

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