This Sunday is its first release. It will be 99.9% complete and fully playable. It will have all of my "first time through" textures. Nearly every texture in the game including .all textures for fire, dust, blood ect...
This will be a version 1.0. A chance for you to play through my learning curve from my very first texture to the present.
In a few weeks a second pack will be released with every texture redone that does not live up to my current skill level and fixes for the 3 or 4 areas left of unnecessary slowdown. This includes the areas with simple filtered textures and areas that could be higher resolution once I clean up the unnecessary slowdown instances that I will describe below.
*For educational purposes only:
I have already fixed several of them. I have figured out that certain textures (about .01%) are updated/checked every frame. If these textures are increased in size it will cause slowdown.
For example, the roof top above the room of clocks/staircase to the castle keep area had severe slowdown after I retextured them a month ago. Good thing is... 3 out of 5 of these textures are not visible unless you jump off of the roof and fall all the way to the ground below. Yes, they effect the area even when they are not drawn. Does anyone know what these type of textures are called and if there is another solution for this other than returning them to their original size? Please let me know ASAP!
I have been helping Sirbrownie begin retexturing Body Harvest through PM.
Below are excerpts taken from these PM's to help others identify if this is happening to them in their retexturing projects:
"... I have learned that You can use almost any texture size you want and not slow a game down as long as you identify what texture it is that is slowing it down if it does. I have found I can make an entire room out of 1024x1024 textures but if ONE of them is the type that updates every frame, then that one tile will slow everything down. Last week I spent 2 days finding ONE texture that was slowing down a whole level. Once I found that ONE texture and returned it to it's original size everything returned to full speed. Just a tip to not be scared to use huge texture sizes whenever possible. Also, do one texture update at a time and if the game slows upon loading the new texture...then you have probably found one of these stupid textures. These textures will also instantly freeze (or f-up the graphics) the emulator if you un-pause before reloading textures.
When I started out I reloaded before I un-paused because I didn't like the emu freezing or f-ing up, but now I have found that it's better to un-pause first when you return to the emulator. That way if the game f-s up, you instantly know you got one of these type of textures if you check them in game one at a time. I had let a few of these textures by by reloading first. Causing slowdown because I didn't know it was just one texture slowing it down or freezing the emulator. I would just restart the emulator and it worked again but I had slowdown. I didn't know why it was happening. Now I have a few to go back and find now that I know it's probably just one or a few textures (in each place slowdown occurs) that is slowing down (a few) portions of my game.
You should be able to identify if you have one of these textures with a little experience. According to if you reload and it slows down, or if you unpause and the entire emu crashes, you will know. It took me until only about 2 weeks ago to realize WTF was going on in LOD. After my last PM I decided to not ignore the places in LOD that slowed down any more and I found 8 new "trouble textures". Not fun as I have to return every texture in an area to it's original size, one at a time checking in game for each one methodically to see if the I get back some or all of the frame rate, and continue until full frame rate is returned. I do not reload textures while doing this. What happens if I happen to downsize the correct texture (trouble texture) it instantly updates (disappears/shrinks) when I return to the emu without reloading. Then I know I have found one. I also create a new folder in that levels folder called TROUBLE TEXTURES # and place the "TT" in it as I find them. Once I go through all textures in an area or regain full frame rate I can return all the other textures back to "my" size and every thing is fine. I found 4 textures in one room the other day. The clock tower room with the death cut-scene that I posted a pic of and mentioned it slowed down. No more slowdown now! You don't want to have to do all this latter. ..."
Anyway, don't be afraid this first release of LOD will be messed up or incomplete. It runs at full frame rate 99.9% of the time with hires textures loaded. No important areas contain slowdown! The second release will be nothing more than an update.
Are you ready? :devil:
