SIZE OF TEXTURE IMAGES
Anyone who has been building for more than a day or two is probably already aware of the constant
reminder to keep the texture sizes small and not add unnecessary bloat to the texture.prp file. Okay. Message understood. But what does it really mean to us when we're building an age?
Emor sent me on another fact finding mission
. Here's a fact:
* I added all the actual image sizes together of my test age and total original image size came to 11,558Kb. That number assumes that the images used on multiple objects in the test age are only imported once into the .prp file. Then I deleted the texture.prp file from the .dat folder and exported a fresh file. The plugin compresses the texture files on export. Total .prp file size after export = 1,796Kb. That's an almost 85% compression rate! What I'm not clear on is if it's the size of the .prp file that matters, or if the images are de-compressed during runtime, in which case the size of the .prp file becomes irrelevant. *
Another fact I discovered during this exercise - I took a look at the texture.prp file via PlasmaShop and discovered that the file was keeping every . single . image I had ever exported with the age, including those that were no longer in use. It appears to just keep adding new images without ever deleting the old ones. So, if you notice your texture.prp file getting extremely bloated, you just might want to try deleting it and doing a fresh export (wish I could loose weight like that
).
Another fact is that at this time, we don't actually have a maximum safe texture.prp size for reference. Most of the documentation references the standards set when Cyan originally built the game, but those standards are completely out of date now. It is my understanding (someone correct me if I'm wrong) that the size of the video card's RAM can be used to decide a safe target size for the texture file. Recommended GPU RAM on Cyan's website is . . . would you believe 32Mb
! I have very inexpensive video cards, but they all have 1Gb of RAM. I think maybe we can be more generous with the size of that texture.prp file.
One thing I have no way of knowing at this time is how or even if this effects online servers with multiple players in different ages. I think it's still dependent on the client side hardware.
Anyone who has been building for more than a day or two is probably already aware of the constant
reminder to keep the texture sizes small and not add unnecessary bloat to the texture.prp file. Okay. Message understood. But what does it really mean to us when we're building an age?Emor sent me on another fact finding mission
. Here's a fact:* I added all the actual image sizes together of my test age and total original image size came to 11,558Kb. That number assumes that the images used on multiple objects in the test age are only imported once into the .prp file. Then I deleted the texture.prp file from the .dat folder and exported a fresh file. The plugin compresses the texture files on export. Total .prp file size after export = 1,796Kb. That's an almost 85% compression rate! What I'm not clear on is if it's the size of the .prp file that matters, or if the images are de-compressed during runtime, in which case the size of the .prp file becomes irrelevant. *
Another fact I discovered during this exercise - I took a look at the texture.prp file via PlasmaShop and discovered that the file was keeping every . single . image I had ever exported with the age, including those that were no longer in use. It appears to just keep adding new images without ever deleting the old ones. So, if you notice your texture.prp file getting extremely bloated, you just might want to try deleting it and doing a fresh export (wish I could loose weight like that
).Another fact is that at this time, we don't actually have a maximum safe texture.prp size for reference. Most of the documentation references the standards set when Cyan originally built the game, but those standards are completely out of date now. It is my understanding (someone correct me if I'm wrong) that the size of the video card's RAM can be used to decide a safe target size for the texture file. Recommended GPU RAM on Cyan's website is . . . would you believe 32Mb
! I have very inexpensive video cards, but they all have 1Gb of RAM. I think maybe we can be more generous with the size of that texture.prp file.One thing I have no way of knowing at this time is how or even if this effects online servers with multiple players in different ages. I think it's still dependent on the client side hardware.