Unreal Texture UT site and S3TC releases

Lots and lots of technical problem. I already solved a ton of them this week, which delayed the releases even further. Now i have to catch up with the lost days, and i need to solve one mayor issue with the UT files.


For some reason the upload is capped to 21 Kbs on the UT Texture site. I do a few other tests tomorrow by trying at my neighbours house to see if he has a better connection, to rule out a problem on my end. He uses a different provider, so if the result its the same there, than it my website host causing problems. If the problem persists its my ISP problem.


Release will be soon i hope.
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Have been reinstalling my computer 10-15 times to solve all the technical issues i have. I only did some test uploads to the Unreal Texture site since last week. And i have to upload the stuff first to the main mirror on Unreal Texture and UT Texture.

For various reasons, the files must be on Unreal and UT texture first. All other mirrors i mostly add as last, except the main Extreme End mirror. So no, i havnt uploaded anything yet to UT-Files.com.


Aside that, even when it all works, than it will take days to upload. All together is more than 15+ gigabyte of data that needs to be replaced. So uploading simply consumes time.
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Ahaigh from Old Unreal made a large update for the GenFX package(almost all if not all that can be update, around 20 textures) as a few(read as a couple) textures from other packages.


Than there is a pretty large amount and important updates that concern alot of packages, but those are all technical updates to solve lots of bugs that surfaced in the past year. In most cases it means that a certain texture is removed or that the package has been reprocessed to fix an error. In that sense this update is a critical and very important update!


Than i worked on the DecayedS package, while processing that package for this update i found out there was a difference in amount of files between Extreme, High and Low end. I checked on the packages and found a ton of textures that simply were normal textures but bloated up """"S3TC"""" textures. And those were 20+ textures i removed. The result was that the Extreme End package dropped from 951 Mb to 936 Mb.


Last week i wanted to process the package again, to find out there was still a difference between the packages and decided to redo the entire packages to make sure all was correct. At the same time i also started working on textures that wernt(cant be correct spelling ) updated, and right now the Extreme End package passed the gigabyte threshold and is 1005 Mb large, but that is excluding the masked textures, so it could grow to 1057 Mb+ and might close in to 1100Mb.


The grass has been redone which means that i can now turn all packages that have grass in them to Extreme End. As you all know i am an Unreal player and not a UT player. But when i go outside in Nyleve using Extreme Grass it makes a huge difference, and these textures are the reason i came up with the Extreme idea. This involves the GenEarth, GenTerra and SkyCity packages, but the last two i still have to do which means they have not been created yet. And those are alot of textures.........


Needs to be said, the grass textures are not final, i can forsee that in the future ill try get better grass, but its almost impossible to find in the wild. The first grass textures i found by sheer accident and was able to take photos, and in the past 5 years ive looked all over where i live but could never find a new one. I kinda did for these textures, but i am not super happy with them. But alla they do the job, and they contain almost zero repeat stuff and look super detailed in Extreme End.


I also worked on the rockfaces, and found a 8 by 10 inch piece of stone in the city. I had to get back there when the sun was at the right angle to make sure the shadoing was good, but couldn find it anymore..... Its part of a pavement from the church there and i looked for 45 minutes to find the damn piece back. While people were asking what the heck are you doing or just shaking there heads. But found it back, but sun was gone, and did it another day.


The result really looks like the original rockfaces, but... it looks soooo confusing and its soooooo completelly different, that i am reluctant to include them. I guess people like them or not, and if you dont like them you probably might even hate them, while at the same time they are correct and look as it should be. So its optional if i release them now, i gotta have a second look at those....

Than there are a few other packages that have some updates like the Mine package and a few UT specific packages. In all those cases it means theres an Extreme End version included that wasnt there before.


Than there is the release for the UT 2nd CD S3TC packages that have been processed to fix the skating player glitch. It is highly untested stuff and no guarentees. And i release those for people that still like to play with only the UT 2nd CD S3TC textures, as well to help out the Red Nemesis project and Mister_Prophet.


In addition to that, a whole new serie of packages will be released called Vanilla UT and Vanilla Unreal. These packages have a few alterations to the normal S3TC packages. You cannot read the text on the holoscreens anymore, so they will remain neutral and wont interfere with another storyline(like Red Nemesis). The planet and moons will look more like the originals, which means they loose the noticable atmosphere and will look alot closer to the original. Some players didnt like them, Raynor.Z among them i believe The vanilla packages only concern the packages that have that kind of stuff in them, so its a limited amount of packages. Of course all packages will have Low End, High End and Extreme End versions.


The releases might be spread over several weeks, because i still have like 15% done and need to process the other 85%


There is more, but above sums up the bigger bulk. But on the spot i might have forgot alot of stuff, as there is alot lol.




EDIT:

Almost forgot, there will also be 3 packages from Hourences released in High End and Low End being:
HourIndusX
HourNature
HourPitores

The packages could not be released in Extreme End because Hourences did simply not have that high resolution files available(and why would he at that time of release ). HourKraden unfortunately dropped off due to the skating player glitch. Me and Protos(well Protos did mostly) did limited tests on the three remaining packages and for now they have been cleared, but it still doesnt mean they work flawless. So only time will tell, and they can only be used at your own risk.
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All together i had a lucky break on stuff i needed for the textures. I was able to create better grass, i might have found a decent base for the rock textures. And i also finally got ahold of a decent photo from the moon. Most celestial stuff i have in high resolution like the nebulas(up to 15000 pixels). And i also found photos from Earth and Mars in the last years in the resolution 4096 x 4096 which is what i needed for the Extreme End versions.

But the moon... I never was able to find photos larger than 1500 x 1500 pixels. And about three weeks ago, thanks to the guys from the lunar reconnaissance orbiter Camera(LROC for short) i was able to get ahold of a mega resolution, friggen 145 Megapixel photo from the moon with a staggering resolution of 24000 x 24000 pixels packed in a 562 Mb TIFF file

It is monogrome, so i had to color it myself, while i wait for them to have the color version made available. The colored version will be around 1260 Mb large, which is also pretty much the same size as mine after i colored it myself.


The cool part is, that the resolution is that high, you actually can see the debree and materials left behind from the Apollo missions. Its just i need to find them But the thing that struck me most is that there are alot of smaller and very large trails to be seen on the moon, for which i dont really have an explanation. In that sense, weird stuff alright


Oh, and i got me a new digital SLR camera that fits my needs alot better than my old 10 Megapixel SLR. The new one is a 18 Megapixel SLR which means i dont have to "paint" extra stuff on the sides anymore to get a 4096 x 4096 pixel base, in contrast to my old camera that had 3888 x 2592 pixels.


This camera is 5184 x 3456 pixels which means the width is well over the 4096 threshold and i only need to paint in the vertical(height) directions. The grass and (possible)rock textures are one of the first results of that camera.
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Thanks Raynor.Z


Ill just give a fast reply on you Leo for the moment. Yeah, you cannot use the textures for editing or creating maps. The reason for that is that the URP/UTRP textures either contain a low resolution texture or a high resolution dds texture, never both. The original UT 2nd CD textures contained both, and if you load them in the editor than the editor simply uses the normal textures and disregards the also present S3TC textures.


I never tested it, but if correct the 227 Unreal editor can read them and show them properly. The UT editor lacks the capability to do the same trick nor does any Unreal prior to 227E. This would only work if you can manage to set the viewports and texturebrowser to use an updated D3D or OpenGL renderer( i heard in the past its possible as someone did it, but no idea how). If correct(not sure at all!!) the default setting is likelly Software mode. And software simply doesnt know how to handle them and they show up as garbled or bandened textures(read completelly messed up )


For those reasons it was always adviced(and still is) to never use the URP/UTRP textures for editing, mapping or servers. For those you should always use a seperate Unreal/UT install that is loaded with the normal textures that came with your game.


It is also described in the Warning_Read_Me.txt that comes with each zipfile. Hopefully a more advanced manual will go in very near future updates that explains that alot better and is more user friendly with lots of usefull chapters.
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And i still would like to know how you can change the viewport and browser so you can use them. If anyone wants to test that, than please do. I asume its an alteration in the ini. And if someone succesfully can do it, i could add it to the future manual for the people that want to try it(at own risk of course).

Oh, and addition to above. The mergertool that i use switches out the pcx file in favor of the dds file in such a way the file still thinks its the same file and keeps its unique GUID which explains the net compatibility. If it would add the dds texture on top of the pcx than the GUID would change, hence loosing net compatibility.
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Had it happen with rys, hence why there was the updated version of MGskin, although on one texture the bug remained and for some reason the package got bigger and also the textures got lower detail but that's because I didn't know how to do it right.

Click to expand...

And that will be explained in the Manual you are waiting for for the PSX project how to prevent that........
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It is in UnrealED.ini for unrealed 2.0

Device=SoftDrv.SoftwareRenderDevice

is the default in the viewports, if you change it to opengl and have s3Tc set to true I think it should work. Never tried it myself though.

Click to expand...

And i dont mind if anyone feels like to try it on my behalf I will in time though, but if someone offers to try be my guest

Anyway you know there is other way to make packages net compatible and that is the "UCC conform file1 file2" command. I think that's how they made the original UT S3TC textures net compatible too. It changed the GUID back to the old file as well.

Click to expand...

Yes and no, the resulting package does contain both a low and high resolution texture if correct. But this aplies to a newly made unreleased package, so the GUID doesnt matter. Before you merge them, the package had its unique GUID, than after the merge even if it gets a new GUID it doesnt matter because it hasnt be released yet. And only when the merge has been completed, the package will always have the correct GUID because now its ready to be released


But for the UT S3TC textures, you could be correct, i never tested it, if it keeps the original GUID. But Epic did and does have the tools to make a package have the GUID they wanted regardless what changes were made. Which makes it the more sad how many incompatible packages were released by Epic on UT and later on Midway with Unreal ..........


Just a couple a days i found a textbook example of that (i mean maintaining the same GUID), but right now i cant remember what file it was . If i find it somewhere in my head ill get back to that and let you know.
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PS Leo, you only found the error with the non tiling clouds in combination with the SkyBox.utx package, right? Or were more packages affected with that specific non tiling clouds bug?
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That is actually a worrying thing..........

Because there was a fix in the make for the ShaneChurch package that suffered from a similar error. In ShaneChurch Palette2 is being purged during the conformation to the nettextures. The only way to solve that was to remove the S3TC texture that was linked to Palette2.

Ill have to check if this is the same error on the Playrshp package. If so than hopefully its not a too important texture..........
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This is real bad news

PurgedPalette5
==============

Conduit3
Girdrw8
Girdrwk2
Girdrwk3
Girdrwk7
Hullpn97
HULLRIB2
Locker1
PANELS10
Panels11
pburn3
pburn5
Slotted1
Slotted3
Socket
vbase1
vGirder1
Wallwka

Those are all the textures that make use of the same shared Palette5















And they basically are all textures that were made, while using entire or parts of this base texture:




I cant include this in the upcomming update because i have to see, if the package can be repaired by leaving out only oné texture. In any case the problem can only be solved forgood by either using an updated ucc make tool or i dont make this package conform the net textures. And if the choice is to leave out 18 textures or dont make the package conform, than ill choose for the last.


On itself its weird this error didnt show up before. Because this happens on any map that uses the Playshp package, and not just oné texture but 18 are affected. And the package contains 178 textures which means (just)over 10% is damaged.


Of course i am doing all this just on the fly, and i have to check if this really is a conform error problem like the ShaneChurch package. I asume it is, but gotta make sure. Now its also the case that the skating player glitch can have 2 causes plus a third unknow X factor in the map itself. Either a 24 texture bit was addded to the normal package and/or the package isnt conform the so called nettextures. I asume that the package does not contain 24 bit textures because the package was assembled in the Unreal era and not in the UT era, and thereby unlikelly it contains a 24 bit texture by accident, nor will it trigger unknown factor X in a map. So its less likelly the skating player glitch will occur.


Still it sucks............

And thats put mildly.....
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