S3TC Textures again...

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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Hook » Fri Jun 17, 2011 11:47 am

Hermskii wrote:I already did. It is done my friend. Who wants it?
Maybe post it?
Or link to DL it? :P
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Hermskii » Sat Jun 18, 2011 2:08 am

Ummmmm.................NO!

I actually had a negative event occur here last time I did AND it was due I suspect to a former member here. I will give out a link to it if I get a PM or a email requesting it. That is all. Carry on.
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by *POTS* » Sun Jun 19, 2011 1:53 am

For clients:
1 - Install UT patched up to version 436
2 - Install all bonus packs (GOTY editions usually only require the BP4 to be installed)
3 - Download and install a newer renderer (stock D3D7 does NOT support s3tc textures and will crash your UT, use D3D8 or higher or a newer OpenGL renderer) here:
http://www.cwdohnal.com/utglr/
4 - In your UT.ini, under the OpenGL or D3D8/D3D9 section look for the UseS3TC entry and set it to True
5 - Make a backup copy of your whole original UT texture folder and rename it to, let's say, CD1Textures, but be sure you still have the original Textures folder with the original texture packs in it
6 - Check the system requirements here:
http://www.unrealtexture.com/UT/Website ... xtures.htm
7 - Download the S3TC textures that fit your system better, but keep in mind that not all textures are available in Extreme End format, so you'll still have to download the High End ones first and eventually overwrite some of them with the Extreme End ones:
:arrow: LowEnd
:arrow: HighEnd
:arrow: ExtremeEnd
8 - Unzip the whole content in your original Textures folder overwriting those files that need to
9 - NEVER use these textures for Editing, Mapping and stuff! That's why you'll need a backup copy of your original textures as well!

If you have followed all steps, you should have everything installed properly, plus in case something is not working you still have that CD1Textures backup folder so you can switch between the folders on the fly.

For servers:
- To avoid the skating player glitch crap simply:
1 - Do NOT use the so called "net-textures" made by Epic for servers only. It's easy to detect them since they're really small in size, even smaller than standard textures
2 - Do NOT install the S3TC hi-res textures on your server
3 - Use the textures from the 1st CD only! You may not even need to use them all, just be sure the following ones are from the 1st CD, since they're the only S3TC textures released by DieHard:

city.utx
CoretFX.utx
GenEarth.utx
GenIn.utx
GenTerra.utx
Indus3.utx
Ancient.utx
CTF.utx
DDayFX.utx
DecayedS.utx
GenFluid.utx
ShaneDay.utx
ShaneSky.utx (not recommended, read below) :!:
GenFX.utx
HubEffect.utx
JWSky.utx
Langs (UnrealGold package)
Mine.utx
NaliCast.utx
NaliFX.utx
PlayrShp.utx
RainFX.utx
ShaneChurch.utx
SkyCity.utx
Skaarj.utx
SkyBox.utx (not recommended, read below) :!:
SpaceFX.utx
Starship.utx
UTbase1.utx
UTcrypt.utx
UTtech1.utx
XbpFX.utx

As regards that extra pack DieHard added to the downloads with some textures from the 2nd CD, I checked the content and they're just plain, non-S3TC textures from ChaosUT and the various bonus packs, so if you've already installed the bonus packs you won't even need to install those.

Only problems I've noticed so far are the Angel/Devil icons in DM-Agony looking kinda worse than usual and slightly misaligned and a General Protection Fault error while playing a SP map (not even sure if it was S3TC-related), but no frozen player glitch at all.

Keep it simple folks, and forget about the 2nd CD textures, they're obsolete and buggy plus not all players have a copy of the 2nd CD.

P.S. If you manage to get that damn glitch on a random server just swap the texture folders and you'll be fine. It really takes a minute.

[Edit]
Hold on found a skybox in a map that looks weird (like if it's made up of many rectangles) while with the standard textures looks fine. :roll:
Last edited by *POTS* on Thu Jun 23, 2011 11:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Hermskii » Sun Jun 19, 2011 10:57 pm

Which map? Which server?

I don't know if I'm skilled enough to notice something like that but since I can flip back and forth between testures, I should be able to notice some sort of a difference.
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by *POTS* » Tue Jun 21, 2011 1:00 am

Hmm...

The server was:
Loathsomes OldSkool ECoop Madness! -> http://ecoop.ucoz.com
69.210.212.204:8887

while the map was... hmmm SP-Kaliber-Part2 IIRC

Found also a black square surrounding the moon/planet in the skybox of UTIllhaven1

Will post screenshots when/if I have some time.
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by a nameless entity » Wed Jun 22, 2011 10:43 pm

You can see that black square around the moon in at least two other maps. One for sure is MH-RuinsofHarobed. Are you telling me that it isn't bad mapping as I originally thought, but instead a result of my using the enhanced textures? :o
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by *POTS* » Thu Jun 23, 2011 11:09 pm

You can easily check it by yourself; I did some testing and replaced both the ShaneSky.utx and SkyBox.utx S3TC versions with their original counterparts and everything looks fine now.

See also the attached images for a comparison between glitched S3TC textures and original textures.

I think someone should report this issue to DieHard.

P.S. Yes I do have that MaskedTextureHack option already enabled but doesn't help on it.
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Hermskii » Thu Jun 23, 2011 11:37 pm

I will notify DIEHARD but I think this has been addressed. I recall mentioning the variance in star density around a moon once to him which varied far too greatly with the sky. He mentioned it would be impossible for him to ever get them to match since the sky textures could be any of many and his moon for instance would have only matched up with one of them. I hope that is clear but anyways I'll inform him of this thread.
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Hermskii » Fri Jun 24, 2011 8:23 am

I sent DIEHARD a link to this and he has registered I see so I expect him to jump in here soon and say something. Funny thing is I thought he already was registered here but maybe he was one of the 25 real members I accidently deleted several years ago while trying to remove spam bots.

Either way, I'm thrilled to have DIEHARD himself join us and I'm anxious to have a full discussion with him in regards to all of this S3TC texture stuff! I hope he also manages to line up on our "Welcome to the Show" part of this forum and gives us a short biography of himself per the directions.

Ahhh! I'm positive now he was a member already. I recall him contacting me here way back when he first started trying to redo the S3TC textures and he had wanted help testing. It is all coming back to me now! Welcome back DIEHARD!
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Diehard » Fri Jun 24, 2011 5:31 pm

Hi all,
Funny thing is I thought he already was registered here but maybe he was one of the 25 real members I accidently deleted several years ago while trying to remove spam bots.

Ahhh! I'm positive now he was a member already. I recall him contacting me here way back when he first started trying to redo the S3TC textures and he had wanted help testing. It is all coming back to me now!
Yep, i was registered before, and to be exact on Saturday, January 19, 2008 9:07 PM :) So i guess the account got deleted alright and interesting thing, you have the same forum style as my forums :)


But to get on topic. Yeah all bugs that you guys are discussing have been reported before.


To start with the Non Tiling Clouds bug. That one has been reported a while back and in the initial testing i was able to solve the issue. But a couple a months later i wanted to work on the solution and i was unable to reproduce the fix. It is however a new bug for UT, as i only was aware of the fact it did surface in Unreal, which is why it never was mentioned in the UT community.


The cause is unknown but hopefully it can be fixed with an updated renderer. So effectivelly its likelly a bug that is triggered by S3TC textures and not so much an actual S3TC bug. Which would be good news, because it could be fixable. But i am just theorising here! To make sure if its a render bug i need to contact Smirftsch and Chris Dohnal about it, since they teamed up with the renderers. And up to this day i simply was to ill to dive in that conversation, but its on my todo list.


The black square behind the planet bug. This is clearly a masking problem and i did not see this specific one before. Pretty much all masking problems have been solved in the past. But other similar problems were in the pipeline to be fixed in the next updates. And those concern all moon and planet textures that were added non-masked to the packages. For the mountains i already used the trick to force them to be masked permanantly by adding an Alpha channel to the textures.


It already was planned to do the same thing for all planets and moons so they will be forced masked. The innitial reason for that was that often the stars on the background differ in size with the stars on the foreground that are sitting on the planet/moon textures. Making those textures masked will remove the stars sitting on those textures, and at the same time it will prevent a visible black square.


Which means that this particular bug WILL be fixed in the next update. When will the update be there? It might take a while, due to my illness and the fact i have to update the website which is consuming tons of time. On a sidenote, the nebula textures suffer from the same problem but this cannot be solved with an Alpha channel, because this requires an 8bit Alpha channel. For Unreal this is possible due to patch 227 unlike UT.


I am also working on an S3TC helpfile that contains info on updates as well as a complete list of known bugs, and how they can be solved. This should also provide a platform for clients to find out if a bug is reported before and when it will be solved.


There was a bunch of other bugs reported that i also deal with, but luckelly most of them are super duper, mega rare. Which makes it unlikelly anyone ever encounters them.


Long story, but i hope it clears up the questions a bit.
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Hermskii » Fri Jun 24, 2011 7:30 pm

Ding! So there you have it straight from the man himself.Thank you DIEHARD for getting in here so quickly and clearing that up. Your response was exactly what we were looking for.

I know you have health issues and am wondering if whatever they are is a big secret about the details or is it something that I just don't know about and you are willing to share with us here? I hope asking isn't rude but I am curious especially with "The Dane" passing away and shocking the community the way it did. I certainly don't want you off the map anytime soon! I have had you in my prayers before and don't know how hard I need to pray for you for that matter.

I think your help file is a great idea. I'd call it more of a "Issue/Change Tracking Log" myself. Have a numbered list of known issue descriptions and then follow it up with a list of independently listed and linked for download latest releases of the S3TC textures. I can help you with this and also mirror it for you here. You just say the word.

Lastly, I want to stress how grateful I am to you for your continued efforts. I know you and I have bumped heads in the past over the process of installing the files and other small details but I'm thrilled that we see eye to eye now on pretty much all of it. I agree with your installation instructions now that I have tested them myself with great success. I'm looking forward to the next round of fixes and want to help however I can.
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by *POTS* » Fri Jun 24, 2011 8:52 pm

I have to ditto what Hermskii posted.
Thanks for your explanation DieHard, and sorry about your illness, hope you may get better soon.

About the textures, I guess ATM the best way to deal with this is replacing those two packages with the original ones. However as a whole you did a very good job IMO.
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Hermskii » Mon Jul 11, 2011 7:48 pm

Here is some very helpful S3TC stuff from DIEHARD. I went to his site and I asked several questions. He replied in full to all of them. Here is the link to that topic:

http://www.unrealtexture.com/General/We ... ?f=6&t=725

Thanks DIEHARD for the prompt and concise answers! You rule!
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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by {§ÎR}Írôn Chef » Fri Jul 15, 2011 10:27 pm

Hey long time, was thinking about reinstalling ut99 and was wondering what was the hot setup atm, these super textures and open GL? or ?

all the best

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Re: S3TC Textures again...

Post by Hermskii » Sat Jul 16, 2011 7:25 am

Hi Chef! Either way is the right answer. The S3TC install has become easy but there are still some known issus it seems. I've been using them again for months now with no problems. At the same time, a basic install will work great too and a basic install and usage of one of the latest modified OpenGL renderers works wonders too. It is all good at the moment to use any method of video rendering to be honest. Wow! I never thought I'd say that...
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