I've been doing my homework on this and I've gained a good bit of useful insight. I'm going to try to organize this information so that it can be useful to other builders.
1.) The first thing to decide is the maximum target file size we want for our texture.prp file. This is a dynamic number which can and will change as time goes on. It's important to understand that all graphic images are processed by the GPU, not the CPU. The CPU processes the logic and animations, not the graphics themselves. Since the processing units work independently of each other, the size of the graphics file does not contribute to lag unless it gets larger than the GPU. I'm going with a very conservative number because I want to build for inexpensive computers that are 5 - 6 years old, so I'm going to limit my texture file size to no more than 256Mb. The actual size of the texture.prp file equals the amount of memory used by the GPU. Note: some of the older game engines had a 100Mb limit coded into the core system. I don't know for certain whether or not this applies to Plasma, but I tested exporting a 125Mb texture.prp file and had zero problems. Everything rendered perfectly.
2.) The Plasma game engine uses the industry standard .dds graphic file format, which was designed to utilize DirectX graphics. (NOTE: This is beginning to change as DirectX gets updated, but Plasma is still using the older DirectX). The plugin uses the generic conversion method known as DXT to "compress" the image files and convert them to .dds format. We can choose whether or not we want the plugin to compress the image by putting a check in the box to turn off file compression.
![[Image: 8558526435_4b2808cc2d_c.jpg]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8111/8558526435_4b2808cc2d_c.jpg)
I've tested it and the game engine already has the capability to render uncompressed high definition images. It works!!! Of course, if we're working on a large complex age with hundreds of images, we're going to need compression.
3.) The manner of compression is called color interpolation. This is what causes high definition images to loose their definition. Here is an explanation of this compression method that I found useful:
DXT Compression Explained
The age I'm working on currently has 431 texture files, but only 3 high-def images in it right now. The texture.prp file is only about 80Mb. So much for using the same image over and over and over to save space
.
1.) The first thing to decide is the maximum target file size we want for our texture.prp file. This is a dynamic number which can and will change as time goes on. It's important to understand that all graphic images are processed by the GPU, not the CPU. The CPU processes the logic and animations, not the graphics themselves. Since the processing units work independently of each other, the size of the graphics file does not contribute to lag unless it gets larger than the GPU. I'm going with a very conservative number because I want to build for inexpensive computers that are 5 - 6 years old, so I'm going to limit my texture file size to no more than 256Mb. The actual size of the texture.prp file equals the amount of memory used by the GPU. Note: some of the older game engines had a 100Mb limit coded into the core system. I don't know for certain whether or not this applies to Plasma, but I tested exporting a 125Mb texture.prp file and had zero problems. Everything rendered perfectly.
2.) The Plasma game engine uses the industry standard .dds graphic file format, which was designed to utilize DirectX graphics. (NOTE: This is beginning to change as DirectX gets updated, but Plasma is still using the older DirectX). The plugin uses the generic conversion method known as DXT to "compress" the image files and convert them to .dds format. We can choose whether or not we want the plugin to compress the image by putting a check in the box to turn off file compression.
I've tested it and the game engine already has the capability to render uncompressed high definition images. It works!!! Of course, if we're working on a large complex age with hundreds of images, we're going to need compression.
3.) The manner of compression is called color interpolation. This is what causes high definition images to loose their definition. Here is an explanation of this compression method that I found useful:
DXT Compression Explained
The age I'm working on currently has 431 texture files, but only 3 high-def images in it right now. The texture.prp file is only about 80Mb. So much for using the same image over and over and over to save space
.