I noticed while playing different games that many modern shooters have a strong looking overall environment, while Nexuiz still gives the effect of something being too simple even with all rendering effects enabled. I tried looking as to why and comparing the view in Nexuiz to other games, and I think the worst issue on the side of looks is the low quality textures and blurred environment rather then a sharp and detailed scene. I would say this is currently the main limit which keeps Nexuiz from looking like a modern game with high quality sharp looks.

I'm not sure how the quality of surfaces can be better improved at this point, though I think a few ways could work. Here's a comparative image between Nexuiz, UT and the new Xreal regarding texture quality.



From my understanding there could technically be 3 ways to improve texture quality:

1 - Replacing all textures with higher quality textures, most of at least 512x512. That would be a ton of work and would cause big file sizes and loading times however... I don't know why I even thought of this

2 - Implementing detail textures in Darkplaces, the easiest, most performant and highest quality way imo. My vote is totally on this For users who are not familiar with detail textures, this is a short explanation of how they work like in UT (the system exist in many engines I think).

3 - Implementing some other filter in Darkplaces which can make textures look sharper one way or another, though this probably wouldn't solve seeing textures blurred when looking from way up close like detail textures would. A possible technology could be mipmapping of textures.

I think it would be wonderful if detail textures could be implemented and their scaling, distance and depth adjustable from cvars. All that the engine needs to know is how to blend a grayscale image over a texture on a single surface, and of course shaders to be defined for each texture owning a detail. This is a close up example of what a big impact detail textures have in UT2004.



I'd like to hear more opinions and thoughts on this. If everyone agrees with detail textures I can try to photoshop a few and make some shaders, if someone could add this type of texture rendering into the engine (not sure if a shader can already do that, DP knows to blend a grayscale image but not to render two separately mapped textures over the same surface afaik).

IMO no detail textures, they usually don't look very good compared to using higher resolution textures. By the way, not only do the weapon model textures look blurry, but a big problem also is the playermodels. Better texturing on these would improve the visuals of the game by a lot. I'd participate in retexturing a couple of maps that are in the game already, if we had some nice high resolution textures that match the old ones.

I don't think video memory usage is a big issue, as there is a texture quality slider setting in the menu for those who don't have a lot of video memory. What is a problem though from my experience with high quality textures in DP, is that high quality gloss, bump and normal maps practically kill the rendering performance. If the texture was say 1024x1024, maybe the gloss/bump/norm maps should be 512x512 instead then. Does DP scale them up to fit the high resolution texture in that case?

BTW, I'm on it.

I see you or someone else have used MapZone. :p

Hmm... looks pretty different then the original but nice. I wasn't really thinking about replacing textures with (very) different ones, but higher quality versions of the same textures if any existed in the sources or could be created. I'm not sure how actually different ones can look like from what everyone's used to... and this also requires changing the texture mapping on all maps and recompiling I think.

I still see detail textures the most practical way. On the performance side they are a few small textures to load and render at a small mapping, should take the lowest possible performance, memory and loading time. On the quality side I think they look better then plain high quality textures because they simulate a very sharp effect that a plain texture could not (unless it was really huge) no matter what the original texture's mapping is or how close you look from. If performance allows they can even be set to a very long distance, so everything is sharp even when you look far. No map needs to be edited nor textures replaced to add them either.

As for the weapons I remember the weapon skins used to be 1024x1024 when the new weapon models were committed (that was like 4-5 months ago). They were soon after sized down... the SVN revision said they offered better loading time that way, but since then weapons started looking blurred. I would still hope to see the high quality skins back if they don't cause any real harm and still exist somewhere in an old revision.

FruitieX wrote:BTW, I'm on it.

aggressor looks very neat like that

I agree.. the textures we have right now are blurry compared to what is required (imo).....Models need some revamping too, to bring them up to speed. More polys, sharper textures..... At least have the option to use different models (With increasing quality)

We can get these map modifications in by 2.5.2.... but the model idea would have to be later.

I think the weapon models are good and have enough polys, but their texture quality is very low. Manual LOD was just implemented for player models a few days ago... for players I agree more polys would be needed in some parts, but more polys always mean lower performance too.

I didn't really think replacing textures on all maps would be easily doable at this point. Of course higher quality textures (apart from any possible filter) are always great, but I guess that would raise a few concerns too. For one thing, if different textures are to be used, how will each map look like after? Everything will be very different and nothing will look like before, but maybe that's not so bad? And second, what about the file sizes and loading times? Nexuiz will probably weight +50mb more in the best case, and texture loading take two times longer. I think high quality textures away from the blurred environment is very much worth that price, still

MirceaKitsune wrote:I think the weapon models are good and have enough polys, but their texture quality is very low. Manual LOD was just implemented for player models a few days ago... for players I agree more polys would be needed in some parts, but more polys always mean lower performance too.

I didn't really think replacing textures on all maps would be easily doable at this point. Of course higher quality textures (apart from any possible filter) are always great, but I guess that would raise a few concerns too. For one thing, if different textures are to be used, how will each map look like after? Everything will be very different and nothing will look like before, but maybe that's not so bad? And second, what about the file sizes and loading times? Nexuiz will probably weight +50mb more in the best case, and texture loading take two times longer. I think high quality textures away from the blurred environment is very much worth that price, still

Well the crylink I think needs more polys.... Just my opinion... But on the map subject, yes it would make the game larger. But it's a necessity, I would rather have a good looking game than a small-ass one. As for different styles of maps........ We can always try making new textures match the old ones, just with more quality. I mean, I have photoshop CS4/gimp... so I could probably make some better textures.

I think the models are a bit of a higher priority than the textures, but hell the whole game is GPL so knock yourself out. I used to dominate paint (my PC barely ran Doom 95, UT99 ran at 10fps with EVERYTHING at it's lowest) about ten years ago, using that alone I made some pretty high detailed pics. I'll see if I still have some skillz left. More than likely I won't be able to really accomplish anything, but I'll give it a shot.

First, a clear veto for detail textures. They look artificial in these games.

However, we need part of it anyway. Especially texture blending with independent tcMods. That way you can make nonrepeating textures easily.

Incidentally, once this is added, i.e. two sets of texcoords for vertextextureblend, nothing prevents you from using the same feature for your detail textures which you then could make using a simple Q3 shader and two stages with one having a high tcMod scale.

So please, if you do it, go this route.

It's possible my lazy-ass found an easy way to up-res the textures (though they would still look a lot better if it's done properly) using Kolour Paint. For now I'm just going to double size every texture without further editing them to see how they lag the game. If the result doesn't kill my machine I'll take GIMP to them.

Oh crap! In total noob fashion I screwed up Desert Factory lol Is there something I have to tweak if I up-res something? It's obvious that simply upping the texture doesn't work.

Lee, I think you would probably change the texture mapping in the map editor to make the map use the new coordinates (so that it uses the full res and not just the first set of pixels left and right that it already used). But then if you had a stonewall texture before that you scaled up, the stones themselves would become smaller. I hope that makes some sense.

About FruitieX's screenshots: I for one think Aggressor looks amazing like that. More in line with the style of Nexuiz than it currently is, but of course this is very subjective.

FruitieX, maybe you could do a comparison shot at the angle that MirceaKitsune also used. I'd check it out myself if I could run Nexuiz high detail but as you know, I can't.

Lee_Stricklin wrote:Is there something I have to tweak if I up-res something? It's obvious that simply upping the texture doesn't work.

Up-resing only is the same as leaving them the way they are if something to sharpen them isn't also done. Some sort of smart filter would be needed to make a texture higher quality after it's resolution is doubled. In Photoshop the only way I know of is the Sharpen filter, but I don't think that's good enough to really increase the quality of a resized texture. I was hoping newer image editing applications might have a tool that can magically double-res a texture at perfect quality, not sure if such a thing was invented yet

I wonder if there aren't already higher quality versions of these textures though, if they are still available from the original creator. Actually I think I found the source of some of them, but they appear to be the same ones currently in and nothing bigger available

An idea could be to just scale them up and blend a detail texture over each image, though I don't know how good that could look like (or run some sharp brushes over them with low opacity). I agree with div's post... if the last missing engine implementations can be done I can turn a few of the current textures in detail grayscales and make the shaders for the textures in the evil# sets. I believe some specific cvars would need to be implemented as well, so one can specify the distance, strength and of course if detail textures are enabled or not (maybe cvars that address image blending properties overall, how many textures to allow per face using the new tcMod, blending distance and such).

I think we should make new GPL source textures perhaps as big as 2048x2048 and then consider this ugly (pun ) problem behind us. (AI has already started this process with batches of high quality textures.)

In other words, make them huge and then they can scale down for the different video cards of different users.

This could also be a good opportunity to decide what exactly the art direction should be too. Should soylent really be a space station built around a wood frame? Maybe not. Should there really be so much brick work in a futuristic space setting? Again perhaps not.

Well i've always wanted a sort of uniform map style for the game. Not exactly the same, but to the point that the maps match eachother. That would be fantastic... Though a little overkill... But yes, being able to scale the textures down from insane resolutions is a good idea. And we need it. ^_^

Flying Steel wrote:In other words, make them huge and then they can scale down for the different video cards of different users.

Fully agree with this.

Flying Steel wrote:This could also be a good opportunity to decide what exactly the art direction should be too. Should soylent really be a space station built around a wood frame? Maybe not. Should there really be so much brick work in a futuristic space setting? Again perhaps not.

This too.

Here is a comparison shot to Taoki's screenshot:


Notice that the trims aren't done yet, and neither are small details like lights.

I think that the revamped version of the Basement is more the way to go. Hi-res or detail textures are nice, but a box is still a box even with pretty textures. Now a box with railings and pipes, that is more interesting and more like modern games.

Chubby wrote:

FruitieX wrote:BTW, I'm on it.

aggressor looks very neat like that

Yes, that looks rocking man!

Irritant wrote:I think that the revamped version of the Basement is more the way to go. Hi-res or detail textures are nice, but a box is still a box even with pretty textures. Now a box with railings and pipes, that is more interesting and more like modern games.

How about a box with railings and pipes and hi-res or detail textures.

That would then be one nice box!

I have wondered if it was possible to use a higher res texture or if the low size was a limit of Dark places. Levels like greatwall could use a higher res grass texture. If you can scale it down for lower end computers than texture sizes should be 512-1024. Same size with bump-maps. Then you could set the texture and bump size independently in game to improve performance.

Irritant wrote:I think that the revamped version of the Basement is more the way to go. Hi-res or detail textures are nice, but a box is still a box even with pretty textures. Now a box with railings and pipes, that is more interesting and more like modern games.

But that stuff on aggressor would severely impact gameplay. I don't want to do that, as it's a very popular map especially for 1on1 matches, and even a tiny change could have a huge impact there...

MirceaKitsune wrote:

Lee_Stricklin wrote:Is there something I have to tweak if I up-res something? It's obvious that simply upping the texture doesn't work.

Up-resing only is the same as leaving them the way they are if something to sharpen them isn't also done. Some sort of smart filter would be needed to make a texture higher quality after it's resolution is doubled. In Photoshop the only way I know of is the Sharpen filter, but I don't think that's good enough to really increase the quality of a resized texture. I was hoping newer image editing applications might have a tool that can magically double-res a texture at perfect quality, not sure if such a thing was invented yet

I wonder if there aren't already higher quality versions of these textures though, if they are still available from the original creator. Actually I think I found the source of some of them, but they appear to be the same ones currently in and nothing bigger available

An idea could be to just scale them up and blend a detail texture over each image, though I don't know how good that could look like (or run some sharp brushes over them with low opacity). I agree with div's post... if the last missing engine implementations can be done I can turn a few of the current textures in detail grayscales and make the shaders for the textures in the evil# sets. I believe some specific cvars would need to be implemented as well, so one can specify the distance, strength and of course if detail textures are enabled or not (maybe cvars that address image blending properties overall, how many textures to allow per face using the new tcMod, blending distance and such).

Right now I'm just up-rezing to see what kind of performance hit the game would take with higher-res textures. After that I plan to take GIMP to a bunch of them.

Flying Steel wrote:I think we should make new GPL source textures perhaps as big as 2048x2048 and then consider this ugly (pun ) problem behind us. (AI has already started this process with batches of high quality textures.)

In other words, make them huge and then they can scale down for the different video cards of different users.

This could also be a good opportunity to decide what exactly the art direction should be too. Should soylent really be a space station built around a wood frame? Maybe not. Should there really be so much brick work in a futuristic space setting? Again perhaps not.

Agree with both of those points, though I always thought Soylent looked amazing because it was a space station with wood and brick work.

Hi all, new member here, so far I have just read but not posted, but I'd like to chime in here to support the pro detail textures side of the discussion.

I would love to see UT style detail textures in Nexuiz. Ever since I first played a game with those, I think it actually was UT, I was amazed at the effect.

I also played good old Duke 3D with the eduke32 port of the engine recently, where additionally to higher res textures they also use detail textures, and I loved it.

I agree with MirceaKitsune that it's more efficient to combine reasonable res textures with small repeating detail textures than using high res textures, because for all their size they still would blur when you walk up close, where detail textures might not.

Might be all a matter of personal preference, of course.

Oh, and since this is my first post: thanks to everybody who makes Nexuiz possible! It's a great game, I'm having lots of fun.

Maybe a combination of higher resolution textures and detail textures, because some of the textures currently used on aggressor are just outright terrible. (see the e7 bricks)

I still vote for higher res textures only. Detail textures may be a nice option for mappers though.

Really looks like crap. A blurred texture does not look BETTER, but more artificial, if overlayed with a high res texture.

divVerent wrote:Really looks like crap. A blurred texture does not look BETTER, but more artificial, if overlayed with a high res texture.

I like it.

Sanne wrote:I like it.

I do too. Not sure why it doesn't look sharper though... I think its better then nothing, and they can be disabled by default.