Unofficial PS art update, V1.1 [updated July 27, 2014]

[Venalan]

Hey everyone.

So for a long time I have tried to 'fix' long standing art bugs, and had good success for a while. Recently this progress has slowed so I decided to release all the fixes I've been able to do using the released art independent of an art update. I hope at some point I can get the master copies to fix the same art in the released client.

So please download the changes and use them. They are generally quite small 'fixes' but some have a big impact on the art, this is one of the bigger examples.



Most of the changes I've made are involved with the 'mipmaps' which are the versions of textures which show when you are further away from an image. With these fences when you are very close they look fine, but as you move away they look worse, this is what I've tried fixing.

Unfortunately I don't have the skill to make this an automated install process so you will have to modify the materials.zip file manually.




how to do it:
1a - Download this zip unofficial texture updates 1K V1.1
1b - Download this zip unofficial texture updates 2K V1.1
2 - extract it somewhere.
3 - locate C:\Program Files (x86)\PlaneShift\art\materials.zip
4 - Copy the materials.zip file to somewhere like the desktop (you could then rename the original file to maintain a default copy).
5 - Copy the files from the extracted download file into materials.zip.
6 - Copy and replace the original materials.zip file (unless you renamed it when it will just copy it).
****You should now have changed the official art for my unofficial edits.
7 - load PlaneShift and play as normal.

I hope this was clear, I've had some testers and they were able to do this and enjoy the adjustments I've made.

[LigH]

I would have done that years ago. But Talad seems to have insisted in using the bugged output of a possibly misconfigured DDS converter until CrystalSpace would release an own converter. Which probably still didn't happen.

I was never granted access to the original material, to avoid accumulation of artefacts by recompressing already DDS-compressed art (which has blocks and reduced color depths).

[Bonifarzia]

For those of you who are using PSExtended, the mod package by Neeno: The modloader feature allows you to easily replace textures, for example with this unofficial update, while keeping your materials.zip unmodified. This is very convenient, not only if you want to run the updater!

So, to use Venalan's art update with the modloader,

• get the zip file Venalan linked above,
• drag and drop a mod.xml file into the zip,
  
• put the zip in /planeshift/art/mods/ and
  
• Enjoy.

The mod.xml is just a text file with the mount path. You could either just copy the example file that comes with PSExtended (from /planeshift/art/mods/redrobe_ylianm.zip), or you can copy/paste the following text to a new mod.xml:

Code: [Select]

<xml>
    <mod_information>
        <name>Unofficial art update</name>
        <author>Venalan</author>
        <description>mostly fixes to minimaps </description>
    </mod_information>
    <mount_path>/planeshift/materials/</mount_path>
</xml>


[Venalan]

I've done a little more editing.

Comments?



(yes an armoured riverling!!)

[Rigwyn]

Sweet!
But can it swim?!

[Venalan]

Like a stone!

[zarre]

The riverling is stylin' and landscape looks great! 

[bilbous]

haven't uploaded the latest yet? linked file is 3 days old.

[Aensor]

Ahh you did it!
Looks fantastic!

[LigH]

Well, now, that is an Armored Riverling!

[Illysia]

Very nice armor Venalan. However, I am not sure what the original riverlings looked like up close as I always gave them plenty of space when traveling. Nice job on the landscape as well.

[tman]

I had always assumed "armored riverling" meant like a turtle shell.  Does this mean riverlings are intelligent and advanced enough to smith their own weapons/armor?  Or are they like hermit crabs and find armor laying around to occupy?  Or I suppose it's possible that the riverling body could convert minerals in the water and food supply into a protective casing over time, like our bodies do with calcium to make bones.

[Bonifarzia]

No riverlinga.dds in the mod package? So I guess that is a preview. I am really curious about the changes to the terrain, and wonder if this is mostly a result of smart settings in plslaunch and fixed scaling problems. Either way, the ground texture looks great in the screenie.

Back to armored riverlings: The art for these has been around from the very beginning when riverlings were introduced to the game. However, something is messed up really badly with the UV mapping for lateral symmetry, so the poor thing looks like a floating bunch of texture patches. I think someone tried to fix it long ago, maybe that was Moja, I don't really remember.

[Venalan]

For the armoured riverling, both versions of this creature have a different texture files which both have different mapping (layout of the art). This results in the normal riverling looking fine, and the armoured riverling looking like it does with lots of random bits of texture all over its body and lots of 'invisible' bits which correspond to 'empty' parts of the texture file. What I tried to do was rearrange the texture using the basic riverling as a template. This has resulted in a much better looking final model, BUT, it's far from perfect. Ideally someone who is actually an artist needs to remake the texture, but in the mean time I love it

The above picture was a preview as I've been (I hope) improving the ground+rock textures further as I get a little better with making this stuff. Today I remade the sky map, and I'm just testing it.

For the texture improvement, I did not change anything in pslaunch. It's simply better textures.

And for Illysia

[LigH]

Oh, I remember, someone already offered a patched texture long ago. Was it Minks?