Wouldn't a good compromise be the Shadow Tier customers receive any new specifically 'Shadow' models for free, whilst the rest of us restless hoi polloi have to pay for individual Shadow skins?
No, leave the Shadow skins alone. Making new skins is a totally legitimate revenue stream and I do hope UWE take advantage of it. But previous posts have already ruled out Shadow Skins being resold to non shadow-tier holders. I'd be really disappointed if UWE were to renege on that.
We're still planning on getting the shadow onos and shadow fade in ns2. It's just really slow going as we don't have a dedicated art guy in the team here -- we're kind of at the mercy of our volunteers' time. Last I heard, the shadow onos model was done, and (possibly) textured, there was just some hiccup about rigging it so it works with existing onos animations. As for shadow fade, it's still just a concept, as the modeller who did shadow onos is swamped with other work and cannot devote any time to it atm.
For just more alien skin textures couldn't you leverage your vast fan base. I'm sure if you announced a contest for top three winners to get credit for their skin and dlc then you should have lots of entries to choose from.
There is a technical limitation that after the tundra skins they can't add anymore unless they make some significant changes to the game.
GPU memory limits? I'm assuming it's that, working on a new skin mod here (Primal Aliens, name not final well kinda final ). And the Fade is only 8Mb 5.33Mb, but yeah 8Mb 5.33Mb per model (color and illumination map) can eat up GPU, I guess. You only need those other maps, if you're doing significant modifications to the texture and light maps. So yeah that 8Mb (or more) per model could potentially rise rather quickly
Older mod (Nostalgia Aliens) is in total 56Mb, texture mod for all alien lifeforms
Are you using the builder? If so, let me try them building them for you in paint.net.
For UI alpha (Gorge Build Menu Icons etc), I get much better visual quality and a smaller file size using paint.net over builder. I want to compare non-alpha .dds files with builder files to see if I can prove savings on those textures too. A roughly 40% file size saving on the build menu icons is nothing to be sniffed at.
More than file size, I need to test how it translates into in-game savings, if any, in texture memory usage etc. As I can't get hold of any source files from NS2, I will have to work with anything modders will give me
Comments
No, leave the Shadow skins alone. Making new skins is a totally legitimate revenue stream and I do hope UWE take advantage of it. But previous posts have already ruled out Shadow Skins being resold to non shadow-tier holders. I'd be really disappointed if UWE were to renege on that.
For just more alien skin textures couldn't you leverage your vast fan base. I'm sure if you announced a contest for top three winners to get credit for their skin and dlc then you should have lots of entries to choose from.
GPU memory limits? I'm assuming it's that, working on a new skin mod here (Primal Aliens, name not final well kinda final
Older mod (Nostalgia Aliens) is in total 56Mb, texture mod for all alien lifeforms
Are you using the builder? If so, let me try them building them for you in paint.net.
For UI alpha (Gorge Build Menu Icons etc), I get much better visual quality and a smaller file size using paint.net over builder. I want to compare non-alpha .dds files with builder files to see if I can prove savings on those textures too. A roughly 40% file size saving on the build menu icons is nothing to be sniffed at.
More than file size, I need to test how it translates into in-game savings, if any, in texture memory usage etc. As I can't get hold of any source files from NS2, I will have to work with anything modders will give me
For reference, Photoshop NVIDIA DDS plugin -> "DX1 no alpha" and "DX5 interpolated alpha" for the specmap (compression quickest/low)