Cloudscapes' Super Mario 64 texture pack thread..

[GrumblyStuff]

This makes mario so beautiful. I've been playng it all afternoon

God damn it. Don't post BMPs.

 

[guruguru-]

My cents worth very little, but worth a look.
-Coins
-Mushroom
-Goomba face

great work :bouncy:

 

[cloudscapes]

SUPER MARIO 64 TEXTURE PACK V005

Huzzah! Download now while it's still warm!

I decided to supply it in zip format now, even though personally I prefer rar. Reason is that more people can open zips than rars. You'll also notice my new downloading structure!

 

[_pm_]

SUPER MARIO 64 TEXTURE PACK V005

Huzzah! Download now while it's still warm!

I decided to supply it in zip format now, even though personally I prefer rar. Reason is that more people can open zips than rars. You'll also notice my new downloading structure!

Wow, excellent work Cloudscapes!!! Your work is just amazing!! Keep it up!

 

[Trotterwatch]

Wow, that is excellent work. Personally I prefered .rar files though, but whatever eh The textures are the main thing.

 

[ToninhoFWi]

Congratulations for your work. SM 64 looks betther than ever. I love your textures.

 

[ScottJC]

You've completed a massive amount of the games textures, this is friggin awesome, *jaw drop*. Also... Who cares that more people use Zip? how hard is it to download winrar anyway... people who don't have it should have it as it is a standard.

 

[Noxious Ninja]

Wow, that is excellent work. Personally I prefered .rar files though, but whatever eh The textures are the main thing.

Might as well use 7-Zip, if it compresses the textures more than RAR. WinRAR 3.4 can open 7z files, anyway, so it's not that much more hassle. Or you could make an SFX archive; the 7-Zip SFX option only adds 80 KB.

 

[Trotterwatch]

I'd be happy with .7z too My main point was that .rar is a pretty standard format now and people such as MP3 e o shouldn't be dictating what should and shouldn't be uploaded

Anyways lets keep all this on topic now. Back to the Smash Bros discussion.

 

[cloudscapes]

I don't compress these archives, I just use "storing" archiving. The reason is that PNGs compress extremelly poorly.

Just now, I archived all 310 of my textures to test:
-ZIP using "store" archiving (basically zero compression, but still a bit better than nude files as there isn't wasted cluster space)
-7-ZIP using best compression.
-RAR using best compression, solid archiving, and forced true-color compression.
I only saved 11kb between ZIP and RAR (7-ZIP placed between the two), out of a little over nine megs. The resulting gain in compression is too small and just isn't worth the risk that some people won't know what to do with a RAR, even if it's like five out of a hundred.

But me too, I personally prefer RAR. I use RAR all the time for my stuff, except when sharing with others, and especially if what I'm archiving compresses poorly, it just isn't worth it.

EDIT: If my textures were BMPs, I'd save over a meg (out of nine) in my RAR archive with the same settings, but it's over double in size once extracted. Not worth it IMHO.

 

[krhyluv]

the downloads aren't working for me. got an ed2k link or something? Also, do you need all 5 packs, or does 5 include the previous 4? It doesn't look like it to me based on file sizes.... One file would be better though, no?

rhY

 

[_pm_]

I don't compress these archives, I just use "storing" archiving. The reason is that PNGs compress extremelly poorly.

Just now, I archived all 310 of my textures to test:
-ZIP using "store" archiving (basically zero compression, but still a bit better than nude files as there isn't wasted cluster space)
-7-ZIP using best compression.
-RAR using best compression, solid archiving, and forced true-color compression.
I only saved 11kb between ZIP and RAR (7-ZIP placed between the two), out of a little over nine megs. The resulting gain in compression is too small and just isn't worth the risk that some people won't know what to do with a RAR, even if it's like five out of a hundred.

But me too, I personally prefer RAR. I use RAR all the time for my stuff, except when sharing with others, and especially if what I'm archiving compresses poorly, it just isn't worth it.

EDIT: If my textures were BMPs, I'd save over a meg (out of nine) in my RAR archive with the same settings, but it's over double in size once extracted. Not worth it IMHO.

If file size is a problem for you, you may try using JPEGs instead of PNGs.
As all of us know, JPEG is a lossy image format, but you can try applying different levels of compression and see if you get smaller files without losing too much quality. Ironically, some simple textures seem to compress better in PNG.
As an example, I'm saving about 1mb in my Diddy Kong Racing texture pack, using a PNG-JPEG combo, and the JPEGs quality is very close to my original PNGs.
Personally, I prefer PNG rather than JPEG (especially for textures with alpha channels/transparent areas), but if you need/want to reduce the texture pack size, JPEG may help.

I was also considering the possibility of using 7z archives. For now, I'm only saving 300kb in SSB (compared with RAR, maximum compression), but the difference may be bigger in the future. Plus, I didn't play with all the 7z options yet. I'll keep using RARs for now.

 

[Noxious Ninja]

I don't compress these archives, I just use "storing" archiving. The reason is that PNGs compress extremelly poorly.

Just now, I archived all 310 of my textures to test:
-ZIP using "store" archiving (basically zero compression, but still a bit better than nude files as there isn't wasted cluster space)
-7-ZIP using best compression.
-RAR using best compression, solid archiving, and forced true-color compression.
I only saved 11kb between ZIP and RAR (7-ZIP placed between the two), out of a little over nine megs. The resulting gain in compression is too small and just isn't worth the risk that some people won't know what to do with a RAR, even if it's like five out of a hundred.

But me too, I personally prefer RAR. I use RAR all the time for my stuff, except when sharing with others, and especially if what I'm archiving compresses poorly, it just isn't worth it.

EDIT: If my textures were BMPs, I'd save over a meg (out of nine) in my RAR archive with the same settings, but it's over double in size once extracted. Not worth it IMHO.

Zip won't save any space, but rar or 7z with solid archiving does save space.

I just have the first pack right now; I'm on dial-up, and I'll get the others tonight. Here's how it stands, though:

Original size of folder with textures: 642 KB
7-Zip .zip - max compression - 646 KB
7-Zip .7z - max settings, except for memory at 128MB, - 649 KB
7-Zip .7z - max settings, except for memory at 128MB, solid - 613 KB
WinRAR .rar - Rar, best, solid - 644 KB
WinRAR .rar - Rar, best, solid - 610 KB

That's already more than 11KB. I wonder what was happening with your tests.

 

[Clements]

Looks like I'd save 1.07 seconds downloading time with solid compression Vs. Store compression on my cheapo 256k connection for that particular archive.

 

[cloudscapes]

the downloads aren't working for me. got an ed2k link or something? Also, do you need all 5 packs, or does 5 include the previous 4? It doesn't look like it to me based on file sizes.... One file would be better though, no?

That's strange, what browser are you using? They aren't ED2K links, no. The links should redirect to the actual file apon clicking on them. And yes you do need all of the files that are there if you've never downloaded this pack before. Each texture addition I will do will work as an additional pack along with those five. So if I upgrade 50 textures this week, then you'll have a new zip with just 50 textures, named "SM64_texturepack_v006.zip", and so on and so forth.

Noxious Ninja, _PM_ : perhaps I didn't explain correctly English isn't my first language. What I meant to say is that I didn't think the download size difference between compressed and uncompressed was big enough to justify a quality compression algorithm (like RAR and 7-ZIP). I'm using ZIP for now because (although RAR is my personal favorite) I'd much prefer everyone spend a couple more seconds downloading than a few people not knowing what to do with a RAR/7Z archive.

 

[krhyluv]

They all work now. Look awesome too. Great job. What a great game, and what a nice update. Thanks!

rhY

 

[Noxious Ninja]

Well, now that I have all the packs, I see it only makes 100 KB difference overall. So, yeah, no problems.

Thanks for your awesome work.

 

[anders339]

Nice work, mates!!
I just downloaded the SM64 Rom, and I hope that I can complete the game without cheats (i couldn't do that before, because on the level that you are goin to find the Bowser sub and get the star, the whole thing was gone!! with the star :O!!11) and now the games grafhics kicks ass! What a plus!

 

[cloudscapes]

anders339: I believe you can pass it with just 70 stars (there are over 100 in the game), so the sub star is optional.

 

[Weatherton]

The sub star is necessary for opening up Bowser 2 which is needed to get the key to open the door to go upstairs... the star is needed even in a 16 star run (which involves glitching through several doors and the endless stairs). 70 stars are needed to beat the game legitmately, every star in the game (except the Bowser sub star) can be skipped using glitches. There are 120 stars in total in the game.