Screen shots

[dmpdesign]

Nice shots...seeing your backpack reminds me to ask a question...does it require SomEx to build 512 x 512 textures?  I hate to say this, but I can't recall what SOM's original limit was anymore, I've been away from it too long to remember.

[HwitVlf]

No, Ex is not required. The converter for high res textures is a drag-n-drop built into the "tools" tab on the PRFeditor.  The standard SoM textures were 256x256.

[Verdite]

Theres a texture extension I was recommended to use from the SomEx extension library while we are on the subject

texture_subsamples
 
Introduced around 1.1.1.3, this extension blows up textures, smoothing them out in the process. So if set to 2, a 256x256 texture will become a 512x512 texture in memory. Sword of Moonlight alone will try to blow textures up to the maximum size allowed by the display device. With modern hardware that is quite dangerous, since 8192x8192 or better is common, which is a 256MB texture. The Sword of Moonlight Extension Library by default uses 256x256 textures. Values are limited to whole numbers; 1, 2, 4.

 
It's not clear why Sword of Moonlight tools exhibit this behavior. One theory is the tools would in their day require software emulation under most circumstances to display graphics inside popup windows. Since filtering the texture on screen would be slower for a software rasterizer, blowing the texture up achieves the same effect while consuming considerably more memory.
 
The Extension Library ensures the texture is sampled in "halftone" mode. Sword of Moonlight neglects to do so and therefore where that is not the default behavior will likely consume about 16+ times the memory required without any positive effect.

Taken from
http://en.swordofmoonlight.org/wiki/Sword_of_Moonlight_Extension_Library/list_of_extensions#texture_subsamples

[HwitVlf]

It is in a section marked "Editor" so that extension is only talking about the 3D preview windows for the Editor, correct?  It would be preposterous to say the actual SoM games enlarged every texture to 8192x8192. It's even preposterous to say the Editor does that. A single texture that size would take up 64MB of memory and be the equivalent of 1024 textures that are 256x256. Trying to display a texture that size would have caused serious problems on a computer back when SoM was released, and it doesn't. It's more likely that one of Mick's other "tweaks" caused the bug that this extension is trying to fix.

I don't even see the point of enlarging the size of textures in RAM under any circumstances; he says it "smooths" them, but more accurately it blurs them. Which is the exact opposite of why you want large textures in the first place- for crisp sharp definition.  If you want 512 textures, just use 512?

[Verdite]

Trying to display a texture that size would have caused serious problems on a computer back when SoM was released, and it doesn't.

I was curious about this, which is why I posted it. I tested the texture uppage when you released the function, and the definition was clearly there without any form of extension... ...

[HwitVlf]

It occurs to me that this "enlarging" issue for textures in the Editor may be what causes the Map Editor crash when the 3d preview for Map Pieces is displayed. I know the crash doesn't happen with texture-less models which supports that thought. If so, I can certainly see the benefit of using this extension, but I would expect the cause to be a change in the way video card drivers handle textures since SoM was released. When I first got SoM, I was running a fairly snazzy (for the day) ATI Radeon video card and the Editors opened all the preview windows perfectly. I only started having the issue after a video card upgrade.

It's too bad that Mick doesn't release stable, versioned installer packages for the fully tested and functioning parts of Ex.