MaceMadunusus

4) I have. However this one was sooooo out of the water in comparison to those (Way higher poly counts, draw calls and textures than anything I have seen prior for a hilt) that I felt people needed to know since they were voting on it for a contest. If you want to know about me and model optimization, ask Lervish how I told him he NEEDS LoDs for his Old Han model he recently released.

5) I suck at helping because I'm not trying to help. I told you what you needed to do, that is all. My goal was not to tell you the step by step process.

Problem being, Rend2 isn't doing the updates to the OpenGL that allow for more draw calls and higher poly counts. They have only added graphical features like normal maps, parallax occlusion mapping, proper speculars, cube maps, gloss, etc. They haven't done anything to the existing core. Rend2 only has a partial upgrade to the updated OpenGL, and is falling back to the old basejka version for everything else. Which means it doesn't really expand much at all.

Also, again there is no difference causing apples and oranges. I was talking about two rendering portions of each engine. A renderer is a component of an engine, not a separate piece. And again, no matter what API you are using, optimizing a model is still exactly the same regardless of how much perceived room you think you have. Just because a PC has the capability to run millions of polygons, does not mean a single model you should take up 10% of that millions of polygons with a single model. The same goes for textures, draw calls, etc. Just because you can doesn't mean you should and saying that "because I don't have a problem" is a logical fallacy that is used way too often in arguments. The only thing I listed that was JKA specific was the PNG thing, the draw calls, texture resolutions, texture counts, are not JKA specific.

4) Yes, it doesn't make sense for 32 people to use the same hilt, however if 32 people used different hilts with the same level of optimization as this, it wouldn't be good for the game. 

5) Then why are you bitching to me about not teaching you when you could do it again? No you didn't claim to be a professional developer, I said if you knew anything about them, not that you are one. I didn't illogically assume anything once again, learn to read. Even freelance developers have NDA's.

Also its impossible to google your way towards being an engineer but okay.

You completely insulted valid feedback by saying stuff like "Skyrim has a 4096 rock texture" So what? Say that modern game developers release buggy stuff all the time. So what? What does any of that have to do with my feedback? Nothing. You're telling me I'm comparing apples and oranges, yet a model is a model, it doesn't matter what game engine you put it in they're still running on the same hardware and APIs and those engines have to deal with those same API limitations, so no it isn't apples and oranges. You came pandering to me about OpenGL/DX like you understood them. You said to Spaghetti before that you were relying on Rend2 which has no intention of optimizing the base rendering code and is now more or less a dropped project. So no, it won't be making JKA run better or do the things that you want it to do. So you should optimize for BASE. It literally does not matter how powerful modern computers are when the engine can't use it to its full potential. Your attitude came from being SO DEFENSIVE that you had to make illogical arguments defending why you made choices. You did have attitude, had nothing to do with me being butthurt. Everything I listed has NOTHING to do with what API or Engine a game runs on, and is a constant optimization across every game engine in existence so your argument there adds absolutely no value to the conversation and therefore is illogical.

1) You again mentioned it yourself, TGA. TGA compresses down to roughly the same size of PNG but has no performance loss and you can set it to uncompressed so you don't get artifacts.

3) Considering I have been a successful tutor several times before and saved peoples failing grades, my ability to teach is not a problem. My goal was not to teach and still is not, it was to inform of a optimization problem. I did that.

4) Just because you have no problems doesn't mean others will, particularly if they would like to include it in a larger mod. Don't used flawed logic to justify things. 

6) Putting words in other peoples mouths is not a good thing.

7) Yeah I show off my work a lot, because people keep asking me questions about it and wanting to see progress. Avoiding answering 10 questions I just post it instead. Easier, smarter, more efficient. People are welcome to tell me the flaws of things, its how I learned and grew. Guess what, when I went into level design, people just told me to google as well. Sometimes you have to rely on yourself and not others. Very constantly, I do get told that I am wrong and can do things better, then I go and do it. I don't get all offended on a freaking comment thread and have to make this whole thing. When you responded you used incredibly flawed logic to justify your decisions instead of just listening and taking the feedback like a man. If you knew anything about professional game developers, you would know most are under NDA which means they cannot show what they are working on even if they would want to, and when they can they actually do show about as much as I do. Example: https://twitter.com/XanderClauss

1) You mentioned the texture format yourself, I felt you were capable of deducting which one to use since PNG was bad.

2) You were already aware of the polygon issue, I didn't need to touch on it as well as others had already told you of it.

3) Google something if you don't know the term so you understand. Basic common sense.

4) Textures have a gameplay impact when you load more than the game engine is capable of parsing correctly, the pool isn't infinite. In fact UE4's default pool for example is 1024MB and you have to expand it to get it to use more (IE if you have a card greater than 1024 MB of VRAM) It doesn't matter. This means that you may cause lag for people, especially with lower end computers (Which is a lot of people that play JKA). 

5) The way I worded things was technical and to the point, without a lot of fluff. I don't baby people.

6) I didn't say you had to fix shit immediately. So no I didn't assume you had no life besides fixing the shit I pointed out. I just said it needs to be fixed. Nice logic. I don't have all day to spend modding or working on things either. So of course I understand that.

7) The fact you went to my twitter where the first 2 pages are me talking with my friends and have none of the comments you speak of just to pick at the ones I mention to one person indicates a problem with you trying to pick out things that fit your narrative.

So he pointed the flaws out and you failed to fix them? Looks like you listen very well.

I did tell you how to fix things, reduce the 15 (I actually looked at the model and found it was 15 not 8) draw calls into one. Which means merging elements and combining UV's.

I told you to reduce texture count from 17 to 5, which also means doing the same thing.

I literally pointed out the flaws and told you how to fix it. That pointed you in the exact direction you needed to make it better. Reduce draw calls, reduce texture count. And I gave you a reference of the amount of resources a modern model uses to compare to yours to give you an idea of how much of a reduction is needed. Now you tell me that I didn't do any of that. Okay.

GG.

This is literally the worst hobby modder attitude I have ever ran into. Instead of listening and accepting the fact that something is broken, you refuse. I'm glad the torches have been passed off from good modders to people like this.

Ignorance is bliss, good luck expanding your abilities to get noticed or potentially paid by a hobby one day with that attitude. It isn't just your ONE asset loaded in-game it doesn't matter if it loads. And no, a .dds doesn't need to be decompressed by the game engine, because modern game engines can display textures with compression, its how they manage to fit so much with so little VRAM. JKA cannot do that.

This is coming from multiple people who actually have made games or have content in actual games. If you want to ignore that, then be my guest.

The argument that ohhh the engine was released X number of years ago, even though battlefront got rewards for being the most graphically advanced this year. Jesus dude. It sounds like you don't know what a draw call is and why they are a problem. Hint: Direct X 9 can only display about 7,000 draw calls on screen before tanking the framerate to unplayable levels on every machine. The entire point of DX12 is to greatly expand the number of draw calls that can be processed in a frame. If a single hilt uses 8 of those calls, multiplied by how many people use that hilt (lets say 32 people in a server) you're using 256 draw calls for something that should use 32. That means in the world, there can be less props, less foliage, less buildings, less npcs, less customization because it all adds up.

JKA was also built before unified shader platform, which means it cannot even use the full capacity of a modern GPU so your argument of better computers doesn't even fucking matter. Not to mention the game runs on a single core.

I also have to vote it lower due to optimization.

The brand new battlefront released by EA has a snowspeeder in it. This snow speeder has 4 draw calls (Exterior, Interior, Pilots, Window) and has uses a total of 9 textures. The biggest of which are for the exterior with 2048x2048 resolution. Interior has 1024x512 & 512x256 while pilots & window have 512x512.

This lightsaber hilt has a minimum 8 draw calls, 17 textures of which there are 10 MORE 2048x2048 textures than battlefronts snowspeeder. It is also using PNG images which causes the engine to have to decompress things twice before it gets loaded in its raw form, which increase time to load a level. Once decompressed will also use way more video memory than the snowspeeder does. 

You say that you are making it to be used for more advanced renderers, but this hilt is more intensive and requires way more PC resources than a model from a modern game engine that runs a hell of a lot better than JKA and anything Rend2 will be capable of doing. Not to mention that the model takes up way more screen space than a hilt does.

Hilts should be a single draw call, and one texture set (Diffuse/Emissive/Spec/env/reflect) which means 5 textures maximum if you aren't using env textures provided by base. 1024x1024 is also plenty of resolution for something of the size of a hilt on screen.

In the Cloud City map there was a missing texture, but I was able to fix it Glass.png and Glass1.png were found in the Leviathan duel map, which were put in their respective places then it fixed the texture error I found.

Cloud City uses the glass.jpg from CommTower, not Leviathan.

If you are having that issue, it is likely that you did not do a clean install, and have a mb2_duel_cc.pk3 within your MB2 folder that is overwriting the new shaders.

There are many Taris maps out there and this is by far the best. 5/5

Gracias! I had hoped to make it much bigger, but life took over. Maybe I will be able to in UDK in the future if time permits!

I remember working on this with Shadriss to create the beautiful skybox that you see surrounding the duel map. Definitely glad I helped out, as it has turned out to be the sole greatest rendition of the Star Forge Observation Deck in JKA!

Or make a cool trailer for it

Yeah, kinda poopy

Maybe I'll get to it in a few years! haha

I have no idea how many times I played this level.

This is another one of those old levels from back in the days. I have spent a lot of time playing on it, especially within the Movie Battles II mod.

For how old it is, it has very nice visuals based off the standard JKA style utilizing most of the assets from the original game.

After playing with this map for so long, and working on the source files to upgrade it along with MBII, my only complaint will ever be its performance and brushwork. Many things could have been done to optimize the map more, and contain more organized brushwork.

As with any level Norman manages to get his hands on, this one is superb. The textures and brushwork detail is some of the best you will see in Jedi Academy that is within the engines limits while still maintaining excellent performance.

Having worked with the source files for this beauty for MB2 for months, I am constantly very pleased with Normans brushwork, organization and his general knowledge of the engine. Very very few level designers have the ability to see things the way he does, both visually and technically.

Great work!

This is without a doubt the best Invisible Hand Observation Deck level to date.

One of the classic and popular visual levels in JKA. Many level designers often referenced their visual quality back to this level. As always, Norman does an epic job with everything he touches!

Easily one of my favorite Theed levels to date on JKA!

While this may not be one of the most visually appealing maps in the world, it is definitely a source of a large chunk of fun gameplay!

My personal favorite of the Sith Council levels by Khan. Its good to see it in a place where players can easily access it.

Many of us oldies will remember playing on this series of levels!

Lots of time was spent on this map when I first started playing JKA, its definitely a good one. First of three that I know of for the Sith Council series of levels by Khan and my personal second favorite of the three.

A decent map here. As noted in the above description there are quite a few bugs. However, this is definitely one of those levels which are visually appealing with the high resolution textures and effects. That also means that lower end computers should be wary of low performance!

Definitely a great old map, I used to play this a lot during my times as a youngin.

Definitely a great rendition of the pistol from ME3. Perfect JKA modification for Mass Effect fans!

Much love for MB2.... obviously!