Will the Fun Pimps ever allow better painting choices

[Riamus]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

I haven't handled them for reals, so some salt to be taken, but one "level" is basically a new bit of addressing to a two-dimensional array. So if you had 16x16 textures earlier, next "optimal" step is 32x32; quadrupling the memory.

 

And then it all depends on the tool chain, GPUs may have demands, the game engine may have demands etc - I don't even know where the thing is actually handled, but wherever it is, there's going to be plenty of algorithmic optimization going on based on some standard solutions decided somewhere at some point in time ...

Ok, that would make sense... but then, would it not be possible to instead create a second, smaller atlas?  Say you have 16x16 now and you create a 4x4, which is certainly a much smaller amount of RAM needed and use it as a second atlas that is also loaded into memory?  The impact would be lower than having two full-sized atlases or increasing the atlas size, and you could still add in some small amount of extra textures that could be used.  I'm not sure how much impact a smaller atlas would have, and it would certainly depend on the size of it, but anything that offers even a handful of additional textures would be nice.  Obviously, more is even better.

[theFlu]

1 hour ago, Riamus said:

would it not be possible to instead create a second, smaller atlas?

In theory, absolutely. In practice, it would likely need a whole lot of rewrite just for a "side atlas".

 

I mean, there probably are several atlases in different uses already, blocks vs mobs vs weapons as an idea, different things with different requirements. But to get one type to load from several, might be a lot of effort. If even supported by the engine at all - at which point you could modify the engine, but the effort and risks start skyrocketing.

 

There's so much I know I don't know about the situation, and likely 10x more actual issues that I don't have a clue of ... the pimps would probably like to have all of the textures, but they've chosen this amount after serious consideration; I have no choice but to trust them.

[bobrpggamer]

Well I finally understand the difficulty of adding new textures to the game, but at least you all had a good discussion with it.