Icon Atlases and Compression

[Putmalk]

Hey guys,

So for my recent release of V6 of Ancient World, I compressed my icon atlases uses BC1 / DXT1 compression in GIMP. The result of this worked with fabulous results: My mod reduced its size from 26 MB to 8.5 MB, which fits on civfanatics.

However, the image quality suffered greatly. The icons look bad in-game (I'm willing to sacrifice this now)

My question is this: How would I go about creating low-space .dds files that allows me to maintain high image quality while keeping maximum space? Also any tips or tricks for how to make good looking icon atlases (so that they appear perfectly in-game)? Thanks!

 

[Spatzimaus]

I've always just used BC3/DXT5, and it's worked just fine. But then again, the icons I use in my Alpha Centauri content are very straightforward, clearly defined icons, not the picturesque things the vanilla game uses.

 

[ambrox62]

Look here and Deliverator's link also:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=441147

Imo, to optimize quality and space, atlases should be no-compressed-DDS AND resized upon the exact number of icons they must contain.
I didn't it in my previous mods, but I'll do it in the next (like in Epic Greek -> 8 civs planned = 8 atlas slots)

 

[Putmalk]

Appreciate the responses. I'll experiment around and see how things work.

 

[Moriboe]

After my initial experiments I settled for DXT3. It's been a while but iirc DXT5 gave me pixelated results in a few cases. I agree that just resizing to the number of icons is the most important.

 

[Putmalk]

I liked DXT3. As provided in the example screenshot it wasn't pixelated at all. It did reduce the file size but they're still pretty big, I'll see if I can get it to work without inflating my file size above 10.00 MB (that's my cap. ).