User manual

APPENDIX G: DDS AND COMPRESSED
TEXTURES NOTES
BMS makes heavy use of DDS textures. These textures are similar to tga, jpg, gif, etc, except
they are native to DirectX. You can open / save DDS textures by using the Nvidia DDS
Photoshop plugin, located at:
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/ps_texture_compression_plugin.html
This plugin also works in Paint Shop Pro, but an older version of the plugin is required.
The object (KoreaObj) DDS textures can be in one of three formats: DXT1 - for standard, or 1-bit
alpha (formerly known as chroma-keyed) textures (DXT1a); DXT3 - for 16-bit textures requiring 4
bits of alpha; DXT5 - for High Quality 32-bit alpha textures with 8 bits of alpha. Maximum
supported texture resolution for these is 2048x2048. They are located in the
[FalconRoot]\terrdata\objects\KoreaObj\ folder.
Terrain DDS textures must be in DXT1 compressed format. Maximum resolution is 1024x1024.
When rendering tiles at night, Falcon will multi-texture the new N Tiles (night lights) with the base
tiles. Terrain developers can now work with the full color palette offered by 24-bit textures to
create both custom H and N tiles, without being restricted by a palette. Terrain DDS tiles are
located in the [FalconRoot]\terrdata\korea\texture\texture folder.
If you wish to create a new DDS texture for one of the skins or terrain tiles, simply drop the dds
file into the appropriate directory, replacing any existing DDS file. No information needs to be
written to KoreaObj.hdr or textures.bin.
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