Official HR4 (High-Resolution, 4x) Texture Pack - WIP

[jitspoe]

http://dplogin.com/forums/index.php?topic=26600.new#new - not done yet, but this is for you, BASEBALLDUDE.

[jitspoe]

I don't particularly think any of the textures are 'good', but out of the ones there are, jitspoes are the best.

I definitely think though, that paintball should have more cartoon-like textures.

I also believe it should, pointless aiming for a photo-realistic art style in this engine as good as it looks now in comparison to what it did look like.

Responding to these here, since they seem more relevant to this discussion than scripts.

There are a few issues I have with taking a cartoony/cell-shaded approach to textures.

#1.  I have yet to see a cartoony art style in a lower-poly 3D game that I think looks good.  It's not that I dislike that style.  I enjoy Anime, and sometimes I'd like to see an awesome anime styled game, but it's almost always a disappointment.  For example, I came across some artwork for a game called "Elsword", and thought "That looks pretty cool":
http://play-and-fun.com/wp-content/gallery/eslword/raven-2nd-job_reckless-fist02.png
http://www.zonammorpg.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Elsword-copia.jpg

And then when I actually played it, it looked like this:
http://i1-games.softpedia-static.com/screenshots/Elsword_8.jpg

And I was just like, "wow... that looks awful."

#2. Low texture detail means you need high polygon counts to look decent, otherwise it just highlights how low detail everything is and makes it look worse.  Some might think something like TF2 style characters are "simpler" when, in reality, they have a ton of detail - probably like 10x's the poly count the PB2 character has:
http://www.gamer.ru/system/attached_images/images/000/281/190/original/tf2_engineer_closeup.jpg

The textures may be simple, but all of the facial features, even down to the teeth, are modeled.

#3. Cartoon style textures have a lot of solid colors and clean, hard lines.  This doesn't translate well to textures on a budget.  If you have a solid colored texture with a black line on it, for example, unless that texture is really high resolution, the black line will stand out as blocky.  More detailed/noisy textures can actually look better at lower resolutions.

#4. The low res lightmaps are really visible with flat textures.  They're very blocky, and you can see various artifacts in them.  More detailed textures help cover that up.

#5. Low-detail textures tend to get very washed out and ugly looking when lit.  Say, for example, you had a texture that was just 2 shades of green.  When its in bright light, both those shades of green may end up being "bright green", then the whole surface just looks flat, like it doesn't even have a texture at all.  Having lots of variety/shadows in the texture make it have detail even in the dark areas.

#6. Subjectively, some people simply don't like a cartoon styled game and will not play it for that reason.  I think there's a broader audience for graphics based closer to reality than cartoon graphics.

As for the idea of maintaining both realistic and toon style... well, that's just twice as much work.

If you have any good examples of how you think the textures should look, though, I'd love to see them.

[BASEBALLDUDE]

Responding to these here, since they seem more relevant to this discussion than scripts.

There are a few issues I have with taking a cartoony/cell-shaded approach to textures.

#1.  I have yet to see a cartoony art style in a lower-poly 3D game that I think looks good.  It's not that I dislike that style.  I enjoy Anime, and sometimes I'd like to see an awesome anime styled game, but it's almost always a disappointment.  For example, I came across some artwork for a game called "Elsword", and thought "That looks pretty cool":
http://play-and-fun.com/wp-content/gallery/eslword/raven-2nd-job_reckless-fist02.png
http://www.zonammorpg.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Elsword-copia.jpg

And then when I actually played it, it looked like this:
http://i1-games.softpedia-static.com/screenshots/Elsword_8.jpg

And I was just like, "wow... that looks awful."

#2. Low texture detail means you need high polygon counts to look decent, otherwise it just highlights how low detail everything is and makes it look worse.  Some might think something like TF2 style characters are "simpler" when, in reality, they have a ton of detail - probably like 10x's the poly count the PB2 character has:
http://www.gamer.ru/system/attached_images/images/000/281/190/original/tf2_engineer_closeup.jpg

The textures may be simple, but all of the facial features, even down to the teeth, are modeled.

#3. Cartoon style textures have a lot of solid colors and clean, hard lines.  This doesn't translate well to textures on a budget.  If you have a solid colored texture with a black line on it, for example, unless that texture is really high resolution, the black line will stand out as blocky.  More detailed/noisy textures can actually look better at lower resolutions.

#4. The low res lightmaps are really visible with flat textures.  They're very blocky, and you can see various artifacts in them.  More detailed textures help cover that up.

#5. Low-detail textures tend to get very washed out and ugly looking when lit.  Say, for example, you had a texture that was just 2 shades of green.  When its in bright light, both those shades of green may end up being "bright green", then the whole surface just looks flat, like it doesn't even have a texture at all.  Having lots of variety/shadows in the texture make it have detail even in the dark areas.

#6. Subjectively, some people simply don't like a cartoon styled game and will not play it for that reason.  I think there's a broader audience for graphics based closer to reality than cartoon graphics.

As for the idea of maintaining both realistic and toon style... well, that's just twice as much work.

If you have any good examples of how you think the textures should look, though, I'd love to see them.

My advice: do exactly what you have been doing with the remaining textures that have yet to have hr4 components. I suggest working on the really ugly one that JMR uses in kingdom for the plank ramps and cannon part.

[cusoman]

@jitspoe:
I was working on a "toon" texture pack about a year before you started your hr4 pack.  I remember running around sassault4, and all the colors were very crisp and flat and clean.  The main problem, though, was that these textures were pretty far from the normal low res or available hr4 at that time.  It was more like giant solid colors that were equal to the average of the low-res textures.  They looked pretty cool and I showed them to a few people, but the main problems were lack of consistency of style (its a pretty harsh transition between solid-ish green for grass and solid-ish red for a barrel) and the fact that they didn't look like the normal textures. 

I also really like the current hr4 direction. I can't find any textures or screenshots so I must have done them on a different computer, otherwise I would upload some comparison screenshots.

@superman:
The main point I'm trying to raise is that I thought the hr4 pack was supposed to standardize the game-play so that people don't have arbitrary textures, and so that people won't get banned for having alternate textures because there is only one option.  How can a toon pack and an hr4 pack be used at the same time?

@jitspoe:
Are there going to be multiple sets of "accepted" textures that come with the game download? maybe some kind of optional package installer?  Will we be allowed to mix and match any of the acceptable textures? Or only enable/disable entire texture packs?

If we are doing multiple acceptable sets of hr4 I'm definately on board for toon textures.  Maybe look at warsow for a toony look? My textures looked more like a bad windwaker haha

@Everyone:
This post is pretty disorganized, hopefully someone decides to read it and respond   I'm just happy that standard hr4 is happening at all!

- Cusoman

[SuperMAn]

@superman:
The main point I'm trying to raise is that I thought the hr4 pack was supposed to standardize the game-play so that people don't have arbitrary textures, and so that people won't get banned for having alternate textures because there is only one option.  How can a toon pack and an hr4 pack be used at the same time?

I was talking about new maps.  There is no reason why a mapper can't create a toon-styled map, just don't replace current textures and there is no problem.

There have been so many different textures created over the years and instead of giving unique textures unique names we are just trying to remake the same texture over and over again.  If we would give them unique names our texture library would probably be twice as large.

We have some pretty good mappers in this community, I am almost positive that if someone made some nice looking toon textures that there would be some decent maps created.  We just need to start adding to the texture library instead of constantly redoing the "same" textures over and over.

Lostbricks3? is a good example of this (lego map).  Why not have those awesome looking lego textures in the official pack?  Then anyone would be able to make a lego themed map.  The same thing can be done with toon textures, we just have to start looking forward instead of constantly retracing our steps.

[MyeRs]

We have some pretty good mappers in this community, I am almost positive that if someone made some nice looking toon textures that there would be some decent maps created.  We just need to start adding to the texture library instead of constantly redoing the "same" textures over and over.

+1

Increase the texture pool, give new mappers ability to be more creative. Outdoor maps seem boring now cause its the same few textures used in every map. Even though maps are different, they come across so similar cause of textures.

[not_payl_obviously]

If you have any good examples of how you think the textures should look, though, I'd love to see them.

Wait till first of april, please.

#6. Subjectively, some people simply don't like a cartoon styled game and will not play it for that reason.  I think there's a broader audience for graphics based closer to reality than cartoon graphics.

So instead we try to be realistic and fail.

Adding more textures would allow mappers to have bigger variety on maps. But it has various disadvantages: For now there is really no way to control those textures, so most of people (especially new people) will end up with no textures.

I think that first of all, jitspoe needs to do hr4 and enable it by default, so we are all on same level (newbs doesn't enable hr4, all pros do). Then we can move forward to various other aspects. I think first thing to do would be central repository of all known textures, maps, etc. This would prevent issues with missing textures (if downloading from there added in game). Then mappers can easily make new maps with custom textures, so it would be up to them what textures to choose.
I think then if there were good textures, people would start using it after bit of time (since you need to get used to that).

My point is: I believe there is no need to think about textures as game developer, just add way to easily get most of them, and then textures will evolve people like them the most. Same thing happened to maps: Maps started simple with one path, and now we have various great maps with interesting paths.

[BASEBALLDUDE]

So instead we try to be realistic and fail.

*succeed. Whether or not you like jitspoe's textures is a matter of opinion, but I think he's doing a great job putting together the hr4 pack.

I agree that there should be a check box in the game installation that players could check and it would automatically install hr4 textures into the game for them.

There should also be a guide some where in "general BSP stuff" (jits can edit his original post) that explains how to use custom textures and the CTP1 pack. Maybe some of the cartoon textures, if people seem to like that idea, can go into ctp1 instead of the pball folder.

[cusoman]

As a mapper, I avoid any non-standard textures as a rule.  Absolutely refuse to add custom textures to my maps. Why? Because years ago, I used a ctp1 wall texture in frigid.  Almost everyone I showed the map to saw it with "no texture" walls, because the game doesn't come with ctp1, and servers don't universally enforce texture downloads.  Some people still don't have the cmp1 tree from oth, because servers don't enforce custom downloads.  The only way to ensure that everyone that plays my maps can have the same experience is by using standard textures and models. 

I would love to use sk89q's models in my maps, or cpt1 textures, but neither of these come with the game.  Even the most popular non-standard texture set, uni's ub_* set, doesn't come with the game, and almost every server plays his maps!

As soon as the texture pool is broadened in terms of the vanilla dp:pb2 install, I'll be using more textures in my maps.  Might even go back and re-texture some old maps, just so they don't look so ridiculous.

That being said, there's absolutely no reason to stop the hr4 progress.  The standard textures look great with jitspoe's hr4 pack.

Whether or not you like jitspoe's textures is a matter of opinion, but I think he's doing a great job putting together the hr4 pack.

I agree that there should be a check box in the game installation that players could check and it would automatically install hr4 textures into the game for them.

+1

We just need to start adding to the texture library

+1


- Cusoman

[SuperMAn]

That being said, there's absolutely no reason to stop the hr4 progress.  The standard textures look great with jitspoe's hr4 pack.

Yeah just to clarify what I was saying earlier, I completely agree with this.  The current HR4 pack is great in my opinion and I don't think there is anything wrong with upgrading the low res versions of textures.  What Jitspoe has been doing is great.  It is just the other textures that are completely different but use the same name that I was mentioning above.

[jitspoe]

Felt inspired to work on the tudor wood texture, since I felt the first HR4 version was a bit bland, and I've learned a few filter forge tricks since then.

Original:


Standalone:


HR4 v1:


HR4 v2:


Visible in freedom, siegecastle, and a several other maps.

[T3RR0R15T]

I've had a look at it on siegecastle. The new one looks a bit too dark with that big border (of the wood) in my opinion. It was much better after resizing the new hr4 to 256 x 128.

[BASEBALLDUDE]

For some reason, it looks a little awkward on freedom. Can't explain why, though. Maybe it's because the gaps between planks are too distinct/big.

[Union]

Is it possible to replace the gun textures?
Or would it be to hard to edit the wrap texture...

Because the high res texture pack that I have is nice and all but the guns still have the default texture.

[jitspoe]

It's possible.  I just haven't had the time to do it yet.  I'll probably remake the models, first, though.

[BASEBALLDUDE]

It's possible.  I just haven't had the time to do it yet.  I'll probably remake the models, first, though.

[off-topic] How are the bots coming along, jits?

[Extrawelt]

i know with this inte./grass texture theres maybe an light/shadow advantage. but truly this textures still dont look rly good.

would be great to use this grass texture not illegally. it looks way better than HR4.

In my opinion no 1 uses inte.pack. to have an advantage, they all use it just for the better look of the game.

/new highres.tex. with lighter grass pls. or just use the inte.grass.

no1 will make the player models like green players and white walls. xD cause there would be no fun.     

I hope some people agree with me.

loveuall <3 extra.

[jitspoe]

i know with this inte./grass texture theres maybe an light/shadow advantage. but truly this textures still dont look rly good.

would be great to use this grass texture not illegally. it looks way better than HR4.

In my opinion no 1 uses inte.pack. to have an advantage, they all use it just for the better look of the game.

/new highres.tex. with lighter grass pls. or just use the inte.grass.

no1 will make the player models like green players and white walls. xD cause there would be no fun.     

I hope some people agree with me.

loveuall <3 extra.

What are your thoughts on this texture?



It's the texture from the inte pack adjusted to match  the brightness of the original texture (and look more like real grass).

In-game:



vs. current hr4 texture:

[BASEBALLDUDE]

What are your thoughts on this texture?



It's the texture from the inte pack adjusted to match  the brightness of the original texture (and look more like real grass).

In-game:



vs. current hr4 texture:

IMO the tiling is too visible with the new texture, creating unrealistic patterns. That's a tough problem with grass textures: too smooth and it looks flat, too varied and it looks bad due to tiling.

[jitspoe]

IMO the tiling is too visible with the new texture, creating unrealistic patterns. That's a tough problem with grass textures: too smooth and it looks flat, too varied and it looks bad due to tiling.

I agree.  This isn't the new official texture, it's just one of the grass textures included in some texture packs darked to a more appropriate level.  People can use it as an alternative if they want.  I was just curious what people thought about the texture -- if they thought it looked better somehow -- or if people are just using that as an excuse to use bright textures.