Inventory icon image file size wastage?

[Fidcal]

I am making some inventory icons and note of the existing ones some are 128 x 128 and some 256 x 256. It seems either stretch to fit the square in the inventory area so presume the 256 x 256 would look better (not tested yet.) But I am intrigued to see that while pretty well all the 256 x 256 use up over 250K there is one, paganorb_icon.tga that does not - it is only around 72K less than a third the file size! I compare its file info with smallbook_icon.tga whose image looks no more complex and probably less complex than the pagan orb.

 

paganorb:

256 x 256

RGB 8 bits channel

layers 1

alpha channels 1

file size : 72K

In RAM : 240K

 

smallbook:

256 x 256

RGB 8 bits channel

layers 1

alpha channels 1

file size : 256K

In RAM : 240K

 

So what is the secret of the pagan orb? And can we save some space? My only clue is that looking closely at the pagan orb I think I see jpg artifacts. Maybe it was saved as a high compression jpg then converted to tga and that saves to disk more efficiently? If so, maybe we should try it with others.

[greebo]

TGA supports RLE compression (run-length encoding) - it's lossless, but it has a small performance impact, because the data has to be decompressed again before it can be used by D3.

 

For these small images it's probably not worth mentioning, but for the highres textures we chose to save them uncompressed. Maybe this saves a bit of loading time on weaker systems.

[Fidcal]

Mmm... can't tell in the file properties but I know my own icons are saved compressed and yet are still around 260K. Big difference from 260K down to 70K for similar images.

[Springheel]

Sometime before release I'll be going through and customizing all of the inventory icons anyway, so I'll look into getting the best filesize to quality ratio then.

[New Horizon]

I would suggest avoiding the TGA RLE compression. It just creates more work for the users system at run time.

[Fidcal]

OK - but I think that answers my question I just resaved the icon from Paintshop Pro with 'uncompressed' selected and guess what - exactly the same file size. Seems PSPs tga compression is not working.

 

So, if DM is as a general rule avoiding tga compression and if these icons are indicative then the total of all these files is 3 to 4 times the file size. (it may be that icons compress better as they have a lot of border)

[Tels]

OK - but I think that answers my question I just resaved the icon from Paintshop Pro with 'uncompressed' selected and guess what - exactly the same file size. Seems PSPs tga compression is not working.

 

So, if DM is as a general rule avoiding tga compression and if these icons are indicative then the total of all these files is 3 to 4 times the file size. (it may be that icons compress better as they have a lot of border)

 

256x256 icons for inventory sounds a bit overkill to me (I could fit only 6 icons net to each other on my HUGE 1600er resolution , but then, presumable these pale in comparisation to the rest of the textures.

 

RLE won't work good for photos and/or stuff with lots of colors in it (it can only compress runs of pixels of the same color, like borders).

 

if you want, you can send me the two icons and I can see what I can do to compress them without dropping the quality - sometimes even subtle things like smoothing them, or reducing the number of colors helps.

 

Using 128x128 would mean roughly one quarter of the file size, tho, so maybe just using this would be better

 

all the best,

 

Tels

[Fidcal]

You're welcome to take a look though see New Horizon's post two before yours. There's a link in the other thread I started in my post HERE

[New Horizon]

Yeah, don't bother with compressing TGA's, it just creates more work at load time since they have to be uncompressed to be used by the video card. I'm not sure if we're able to use .dds for the inventory icons...if so, that would be better since they are understood natively by vid cards and do not require any decompression.

[Springheel]

256x256 icons for inventory sounds a bit overkill to me

 

They're not that size on screen. However, D3 images must be saved as powers of two to avoid stretching.

 

if you want, you can send me the two icons and I can see what I can do to compress them without dropping the quality

 

As I said earlier, I'll be going over all the icons when we're closer to the release date. Consider everything a placeholder until then.

 

I'm not sure if we're able to use .dds for the inventory icons.

 

I can't see any reason why not.