UT's second CD!!!

[DosFreak]

The compressed textures will not work on any card that is not S3 or does not have the S3TC extension in the Opengl ICD. If you use the compressed textures on a card that does not support S3TC then you will just see the normal textures.


This updated Opengl driver FOR UT was not made by Epic. They have always stated that they will not offer S3TC support in Unreal Tournament because it would slow down gameplay also they are busy working on their next game. (Using this new Opengl driver it has been proved that using Compressed textures does NOT slow down gameplay in fact it increases it, I am not sure if this is from using Compressed Textures or from having an updated OpenGL drive, either way FPS are increased significantly) Using this Updated Opengl from LOKI (The guys who ported Unreal Tournament to Linux where S3TC works fine on cards that support S3TC in Opengl..because LOKI did it) we are now able to use S3TC textures.

The ONLY supported API's In the new Unreal Engine will be OpenGL and D3D.

[DosFreak]

Well I got the 4.28 OGL driver to work. It didn't work before because I turned Detailed Textures on which seems to really mess up the compressed textures. Turning Detail Textures off fixes it.

[Maggi]

Originally posted by DosFreak:
The compressed textures will not work on any card that is not S3 or does not have the S3TC extension in the Opengl ICD. If you use the compressed textures on a card that does not support S3TC then you will just see the normal textures.


This updated Opengl driver FOR UT was not made by Epic. They have always stated that they will not offer S3TC support in Unreal Tournament because it would slow down gameplay also they are busy working on their next game. (Using this new Opengl driver it has been proved that using Compressed textures does NOT slow down gameplay in fact it increases it, I am not sure if this is from using Compressed Textures or from having an updated OpenGL drive, either way FPS are increased significantly) Using this Updated Opengl from LOKI (The guys who ported Unreal Tournament to Linux where S3TC works fine on cards that support S3TC in Opengl..because LOKI did it) we are now able to use S3TC textures.

The ONLY supported API's In the new Unreal Engine will be OpenGL and D3D.

Thanx for feedback !

I overwrote plenty of textures in my installation dir with those that came from CD #2, but didn't see any problems or missing textures. Therefore I think the textures itself are uncompressed (one is bigger than 60MB if I remember correctly and if that one is compressed already, how big will it be uncompressed ?)

And also I thought they'd stick to Glide & D3D and would abandon OpenGL completely ... dunno for sure though.

Oh well, I guess I have to free up some HD space again and throw UT on my system to do further investigations ...

Cheers,
Maggi

[Dark]

Since it seems some people are unsure of how to get the S3 textures to work i wrote a mini faq on how to get them working or at least how i did. and to correct DosFreak Epic did NOT write the new OpenGL.dll it was Wraith of Loki Games the people who are doing the Linux port of the game. I should also note that my current stock install of UT now is 950MB that is with out any UT Mods, etc just UT and S3TC.
[*] backup these files you will find it in the unrealtournament\system folder. All this file does is keep control config, and settings, user.ini[*] now uninstall UT and when that is done make sure to delete the old folder where it was.[*] download the following files <a href="ftp://ftp.bluesnews.com/ut/UTPatch428.exe">UT 4.28 Patch</a>, <a href="http://www.lokigames.com/~vogel/UT/OpenGLDrv.dll">Wraith of Loki Games Win32 OpenGL.dll</a>, and last but not least <a href="ftp://ftp.gtinteractive.com/pub/games/ut/pcbonuspack/UTBonusPack.zip">the Bonus pack</a>.[*] Now install UT again. Once it has finished insert the 2nd disc and then install the S3 textures off of it.[*] Once the game and the textures are installed install the 4.28 patch[*] Install the Bonus Pack[*] Go to your Unrealtournament\system folder backup your OpenGL.dll and copy over the one from Wraith[*] backup the current user.ini and then copy over your User.ini[*] start UT and select OpenGL for the driver and then quit UT afterwards.[*] open up the Unrealtournament.ini file and find the following heading
[OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice]and replace what is underneath it with the following:
UseGammaExtension=0
UseModulatedGamma=0
UseS3TC=1
MinDepthBits=16
MaxLogUOverV=8
MaxLogVOverU=8
UseMultiTexture=1
UsePalette=1
UseAlphaPalette=0
ShareLists=0
AlwaysMipmap=0
DoPrecache=0
Translucency=True
VolumetricLighting=True
ShinySurfaces=True
Coronas=True
HighDetailActors=True
DetailTextures=True
UseTrilinear=False
[*] save the file and start up UT and that is it!

I have tried this under both Windows 98 and Windows 2000 using a Hercules Prophet II 64 MB GTS GeForce2 board. Under Win98 i am using the 6.18 Det3 drivers and under Win2000 i am using the Herc 5.22 drivers. I am able to play in 1280x1024@32 with around 40fps. My system is as follows

2x500 Intel Celeron
2x128 MB ECC PC100 RAM
1x27.7 Gb Maxtor HDD (Running NTFS with Win2k Pro)
1x10.0 Gb Maxtor HDD (Running FAT32 with Win98)
Hercules Prophet II 64 MB GTS GeForce2
SoundBlaster LIVE! Plat (Running LW3 in both OSs).

If you have any problems Email me and i will do my best to help you on your way with getting this working. I am pretty happy with how the game looks and sure Ragz it does loook a little more blurry but i will take that over the inconsitant FPS in OGL and D3D with this card.

Dark

[This message has been edited by Dark (edited 30 September 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Dark (edited 01 October 2000).]

[Rags]

Hi Dark,

I never said it didn't speed things up. It obviously does. It's just that some people seem to think that this is the best route to great image quality. At this time, it's not true if you own an nVidia product

Rags

[Dark]

lol! true Ragz true. and personally i only like it because i get a even fps something that i got used to with my ATi Fury and old G200.

[Aerobed]

erm, when you look at those screenshots, you have to see that the only thing that is actually improved is the wall texture in image 6.

Don't get me wrong, a flatmate of mine has a Geforce and I am absolutely envious of the image quality and framerate he gets in Elite Force. But looking at these screenshots, you'd be better of with texture compression turned off on your Geforce and going for the warmer, more realistic colors (especially when you compare image 1 and 2).

[Strider]

Dark, does the OpenGL driver provide improved performance if you aren't using S3TC textures? If you weren't using the large texutures would you still run the game in OpenGL, or would you go back to D3D?

[Dark]

Strider i can test it and find out how well it runs with S3TC and without and i will post back here.

Aerobed those are not really some of the best ss's there are more then just changed wall textures.

Dark

[DosFreak]

Yes, In some levels textures are drastically improved and really noticeable even while running around dodging.

OpenGl with S3TC is faster than just OpenGL or D3D. Also I now only run it with the S3TC because I can't stand the standard textures even though detail textures don't work it doesn't really matter because I now have compressed textures.

Also in NT5 using D3D the screen will jerk and sometimes freeze. OpenGL is smmoooottthh. Running the Morpheus Map with 16bots at default. OGL=40fps D3D=38fps
1024X768 32bc. Default S3TC INI settings.

[This message has been edited by DosFreak (edited 02 October 2000).]

[Strider]

I am interested in knowing if the Loki OpenGL driver is an improvement over Epic's OpenGL driver that ships with the game.
Can it be used with non S3TC cards (ie G400) provided that I don't try to use texture compression or run the high rez textures.

Dark, I am looking forward to the results. If you disable TC, will UT run the default textures instead of the high rez ones?

[Humus]

I've heard that using this OpenGL driver you can't play online, is there some sort of truth behind that, sounds just too strange too me. I know UT checks something like a CRC number to see if the map files matches but does it check texture files too?

[Snake-Eyes]

Nope, not true at all. I've been using it for the last week, and been pretty happy with it so far, although my framerates didn't really climb any over D3D. They didn't go down either, so that was a wash, but the extra purdy detail is worth it, during the few thousandths of a second I get to admire them in any given match.

------------------
Ace

[Dark]

Strider i cant see any reason why the OGL driver of loki's wouldnt run on any other card then a nvidia as it really is just a genaric driver. i should hopfully have the test done some time friday night and posted saturday morning as i have been working like a dog since my last post so its mainly been sleep, work, eat and not all in that order .

Dark

[Maggi]

Originally posted by Dark:
...

MaxLogUOverV=8
MaxLogVOverU=8
UsePalette=1

...

Hi Dark,

using those settings you limit your texture size to 256x256 pixels, that alone should give you quite a speed boost.
The G400 is capable of 2048x2048 textures which can be used by setting

MaxLogUOverV=11
MaxLogVOverU=11

It would be nice if you could try those settings and report the impact on speed or if that OGL driver is probably not capable of running those highres textures, because I think the GF can handle that res for textures.

Further the G400 does not support palletized textures a.f.a.i.k. and therefore you should set it to UsePalette=0 in order to make it more comparable to the G400 and most likely get a lot more details on your screen.

Besides tha I still didn't have the time to reinstall UT and thus I couldn't check out whether the G400 can use those S3TC textures or not.
Anybody found out yet whether the textures itself are stored uncompressed ?

Cheers,
Maggi