Textures

From Armagetron
Revision as of 02:13, 19 May 2006 by 1148021051 (talk | contribs)

Texture is just a fancy way of saying "picture". In 3d modeling, you create a representation of an object in three dimensions, and one of the parts of that representation is its surface. When you look at, say, a table in real life, you don't see a bunch of wires and points, do you? No! You see color, patterns, bumps, and various other parts of the table. By looking at the table, your brain determines what it feels like to touch, approximately what it smells/tastes like, and other things. In 3d modeling, we accomplish that by creating what are called textures. A texture isn't anything fancy, though it certainly sounds fancy. All it is is a picture made with your favorite paint program that is laid on top of what would otherwise be just a wire model.

Location of Textures

Armagetron Advanced has two places where you're likely to find textures. One of them is installed by default in a directory aptly named textures. If you look in that directory, you'll see a whole slew of regular graphics files that you can view in a web browser, image file viewer, or whatever. You can modify them in a paint program such as the GIMP, or Adobe's Photoshop. Finally, you can just put completely different images in that directory, and as long as you name them the way the game expects them to be named, your special images will be loaded and rendered onto the models in the game.

Here is a list of texture files that ship with the game:

  • cycle_body.png
  • cycle_wheel.png
  • dir_wall.png
  • floor.png
  • floor_a.png
  • floor_b.png
  • font.png
  • font_extra.png
  • font_s.png
  • icon.png
  • KGN_logo.png
  • rim_wall.png
  • shadow.png
  • sky.png
  • title.jpg
  • wrap.png

Now what are all these files exactly?

Splashscreen

The game's splash screen is the file title.jpg. If you want your own customized splash screen, just put one in there. There are probably some resolution requirements, but I don't know them (hint hint).

Cycle Textures

The default cycle model needs two textures to render. They are:

  • cycle_body.png
  • cycle_wheel.png

Obviously, cycle_body.png is used on the body of the cycle and cycle_wheel.png is used for the wheels.

Wall textures

Example of a different trail texture
Another shot of a different trail

There are two kinds of walls in Armagetron Advanced, therefore there are two different textures for them. Cycle walls are rendered using dir_wall.png and other walls are rendered using rim_wall.png.

Floor Textures

There are three floor textures. The exact textures that are chosen depend entirely on your game settings, so when you work with these textures, you need to work with all possible floor settings. They are additionally rendered onto a colored surface, so when you disable these textures there is still a colored surface underneath.

  • floor.png
  • floor_a.png
  • floor_b.png

Other Textures

TODO (sky, shadow, and the rest)