S3TC Texture download

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a nameless entity
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Post by a nameless entity » Tue Dec 09, 2008 7:38 pm

Uhhhmmm..... ok if stick my oar in here?

Herm, you once told me of a setting that could be changed in the advanced preferences that had something to do with frame rates. I made that change, and noticed right away that in practice matches the game speed changed dramatically. My bot would speed up and slow down while running down a corridor and then up a ramp for example, but overall, everything was much faster. Online there was only a small improvement, and my bot always ran along the same stretch of ground in the online game at a constant speed.

I don't know if this adjustment might have anything to do with the problem or not, but I would like to know what that adjustment was. I have reinstalled the game long since, and I'm lagging so badly everywhere these days that I'll take any improvements I can get. :?
I'm a man........but I can change........if I have to........I guess

gopostal
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Post by gopostal » Tue Dec 09, 2008 7:58 pm

Sounds like either unlocking vsync or uncapping framerate.

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Hermskii
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OK

Post by Hermskii » Wed Dec 10, 2008 12:46 am

Was it this?

VSYNC:
VSYNC is a control built into the game that tries to equalize the refresh rate of the monitor to the framerate of your video card, as I understand it. Depending on how good your video card is can greatly affect the maximum framerate you might achieve with this setting. Here is an example: If you have a great video card on a great system, when you run a framerate benchmark, your results will usually max out at the speed your monitor’s refresh rate is set at which by default for most systems is 60. There are many video cards that can produce well over that amount of Frames Per Second (FPS). If you were to tell the VSYNC setting to ignore the monitor refresh rate, you would in effect remove the max speed limit from the video card and you would achieve higher frames per second which would usually mean a much smoother picture. Generally any thing above 60 FPS is considered excellent and everything above 60 is supposed to be invisible to the human eye. If you ran the benchmark described above, and were stuck at a flat 60 or 75 or whatever your monitors refresh rate is; then I suggest that you do the following and retest to see what your card can really do. If when you benchmarked earlier and you got a score of less than 60, I’d leave this setting alone for now until you get a better video card or computer. It is my opinion that the game is very playable at anything over 30 FPS.

One more note about this setting, and this has always been odd to me:
The default is set to “False”. We are going to set it to “True”, which when I read it would mean that we are turning it ‘on’, when in fact, we are turning ‘off’. Don’t ask me why, but this seems backwards to me.

How to Disable VSync to see what your video card can really do:

Start the game up and begin a practice match.
Hit the tilde (~) key.
Type the word preferences in the command line and hit enter. (Note: Some systems will crash right here if they have their Windows Screen Resolution and Color Quality set to a different setting than the UT Video Resolution and Color Depth settings. If this happened to you, go back up to Chapter 3 and reset these values and restart the game.)
Wait for up to 15 seconds on some machines for the Preference screen to open.
Click the + next to Rendering.
Click the + next to D3D.
Scroll to near bottom and change UseVSync=False to UseVSync=True.
(I also would also set Coronas to False and Volumetric lighting to False. I do this to get rid of the misty rings of light you see around lights in the game like the moon on a very humid night and I turn off the volumetric lighting too because it create a haze appearance which to me reduces visibility.)
Close Preferences window.
Close System Console window.
Close UT game.
Restart the game and benchmark your frame rate. Done.

So Nameless, IS this what your were talking about? I just saw this post from you and Scotty. If so, set it back to false and tell me if you still have the issue and I'm assuming that you have not done any of this S3TC stuff yet. Do you have a computer with a multi-core processor? Let us know. Thanks!
~Peace~

Hermskii

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Hermskii
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OK

Post by Hermskii » Sat Dec 13, 2008 1:46 pm

OK, here is the latest greatest in case anyone is looking for it or to do it.

http://hermskii.com/Files/S3TC-Texture-Fix-12-13-08.zip

Let me know how it goes. David, I presume the work back that I provided returned you to your original configuration correct?
~Peace~

Hermskii

gopostal
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Post by gopostal » Sat Dec 13, 2008 4:28 pm

On that linky above Herm, a person needs to Right Click>Save As to get it to work right.

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-HellFire-
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Post by -HellFire- » Sat Dec 13, 2008 5:12 pm

ScottyD wrote:On that linky above Herm, a person needs to Right Click>Save As to get it to work right.
I can click left mouse and automatically the file opens.
Image

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Hermskii
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Yes

Post by Hermskii » Sat Dec 13, 2008 6:08 pm

Yes, this is a standard ZIP file Scotty and not the 7z file. I sent you an PM on messenger about it. Did you get it?
~Peace~

Hermskii

gopostal
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Post by gopostal » Sat Dec 13, 2008 8:02 pm

Yes, I replied. How big is yours as a zip file?

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Hermskii
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Answer

Post by Hermskii » Sat Dec 13, 2008 9:08 pm

Damn, I never logged back in on MSN so I never got it. I had stayed logged in for several hours when I sent you the message. I logged off figuring you were out of town or something. The full load is 1.9GB in size but compressed with WinZip's best setting, I got her down to 1.27GB. Thank God for that new FTP program I found. It rules! I got the whole thing up onto my website in one try and it took about 4 hours.

I will now look at your reply and determine if I want to try to switch back to it or leave it as it is. Simplicity is paramount for this to touch as many lives as possible.
~Peace~

Hermskii

gopostal
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Post by gopostal » Sat Dec 13, 2008 9:27 pm

Some of us have to work on Saturdays :(

I'm around most evenings, and on Sundays. It may very well be a deal breaker to go from a 650MB download to a 1200MB download. Maybe you might consider breaking it up or creating a torrent?

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a nameless entity
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Post by a nameless entity » Sat Dec 13, 2008 9:59 pm

Well I guess that that is what I was talking about..... it was all so long ago that you first told me about that little fix during a game. :lol:

I use Open_GL now, so I will check it out later as to whether this will work in that mode or not.

I downloaded the improved texture set and looked over the instructions. As I had already put in the S3 textures from the cd, and had done the S3 fix, I just backed up my texture folder and copied in the new ones. They work fine, and the game still runs fine. Looking down at the earth in SpaceNoxx and the overall view in Face is quite a revelation. The moon is Phobos looks nicer too, as promised.
As for the other textures, I will take it on faith that they are nicer than the ones on the cd. So far I haven't noticed any big differences in the other maps I have been playing.
I'm a man........but I can change........if I have to........I guess

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Hermskii
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Zole

Post by Hermskii » Sun Dec 14, 2008 11:47 am

This is from somebody named Zole on another forum who gave this a try:

Hermskii,
I want to thank you sir for taking the time and effort to put this together, I followed your walkthrough intently and the result was beyond my imagination, UT looks the best I have ever seen it!!! I find my self stopping and just looking around at things I just never noticed before, from the floor cracks and texture to the ceiling stars that I have never seen.

Your walkthrough was precise, well thought out and logical. Your links worked (after the initial Snafu) and the time to put it together is certianly appreciated by one ZOLE.

Thank you for making a 100% instuctional.

Z



This is Hermskii speaking again. It is replies like this one that make doing stuff like this totally worth it to me.

David, I have an idea! You could copy out your entire UT folder somewhere as a back up leaving just the empty folder of UnrealTournament. Then reinstall UT to that folder and then try all of this again since it includes everything you'll need in the package and see if you still have the same issue. If you do, just delete everything in that UnrealTournament folder and replace it with your back up you started this process with. Then you would be exactly back to where you started. No risk. What do you think?
~Peace~

Hermskii

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Hermskii
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ScottyD

Post by Hermskii » Sun Dec 14, 2008 11:49 am

We also need to recall that it was ScottyD who really streamlined this process for me by getting everything into one place and rewritting the instructions for it all to work based on the newer, faster more streamlined packaged. Thanks ScottyD!
~Peace~

Hermskii

gopostal
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Post by gopostal » Sun Dec 14, 2008 12:08 pm

It's the least I can do. You did all the work, I just packed it up.

I really want to reiterate that I tried three times from a new install of UT and each time had no problems whatsoever getting the texture packages to work.

Now, if problems arise this almost certainly means something added after the installation is doing it and finding that culprit is of utmost importance. If you have *any* sort of trouble, please please please let us know so we can adjust for it. The results are very much worth it and the better we build the install package, the better it will be.

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