Why having two seperate dds files (atlas and regular)

[ExCx]

I don't get the need for a something_atlas.dds file. For example in TechInfos.xml it's written as "<Button>,Art/Interface/Buttons/TechTree/chivalry.dds,Art/Interface/Buttons/RoM_Techtree_Atlas.dds,3,4</Button>"

If I shorten it like "<Button>Art/Interface/Buttons/TechTree/chivalry.dds</Button>" nothing changes in game. So what's the use for it? I add new things without using an atlas and it works well, could this cause a problem?

 

[Voyhkah]

There are multiple reasons, although I really don't know. First of all, it might help the game load faster to have an atlas. Second, the atlas might be left over from an older version of civ.

 

[embryodead]

Non-atlas versions are the original files, they are on the CD/HDD but aren't loaded by the game at all. The game only loads the atlas, if one is provided. You can try it yourself by only providing an atlas and removing the regular button.

Due to the way GPUs handle textures, atlases allow for marginally faster loading and accessing of an atlas with 100 buttons, than of 100 separate buttons. This is one of many optimization techniques, but if you don't make atlases for your new buttons, you won't notice any difference. Don't remove the original ones though, that wouldn't make any sense.

Personally I just never make regular buttons and work with atlases only, takes less time and space, especially with 1000+ buttons

EDIT: pedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_atlas

 

[karadoc]

Thanks for the info. I was wondering about this myself, because I'm just about to add a new button.

I was looking through some of the existing buttons, and I noticed that leadership promotion button doesn't even have matching graphics. The leadership promotion button has the following definition <Button>,Art/Interface/Buttons/Promotions/Combat5.dds,Art/Interface/Buttons/Warlords_Atlas_1.dds,5,16</Button>. The button in the atlas is the one that appears in the game, but the combat5 one is &#8211; as one my guess &#8211; the button used for the Combat V promotion. -- That's a bit weird isn't it? Why didn't they just not specify the non-atlas version if they don't have the right one? Those original devs were a weird bunch...

 

[embryodead]

You cannot specify only the atlas without comma-separated regular entry first. There's more examples like that in Warlords/BTS where they didn't bother making regular buttons and just copy and pasted XML from another button several times, then changed the atlas coords. I do the same.

 

[deanej]

The short of it is, the devs used regular buttons at first, then switched to atlases. Vanilla civ has both. BtS uses atlases only. Not sure about Warlords; probably atlas-only.