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8Bits Graphics?

by Tiago Carita · in iTorque 2D · 07/30/2009 (8:15 am) · 8 replies

Hi People... we are developing an iTGB game called Soturi

You can check our ambition here:
http://www.bluesharkstudio.com/bluev3/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=65&Itemid=84

I searched a bit the forums and found nothing similar so;
My question is related to graphics, we worked for Mobile Phones a few years ago and one of the requirements was the use of 8Bit graphics pngs with the less number of color possible, and 1bit transparency...
Now we started developing Torque PC games and those concerns were driven away.... but for iPhone I don't know the real impact, should I try to squeeze full fledged pngs with 8 bit transparency or do I need to get back to the old habit of color reducing everything and the nightmare of 1bit transparency? Does it improve the sprite performance or only the storage?

Thank you
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Torque 3D Owner Marc Dreamora Schaerer
Gayasoft
#1
07/30/2009 (8:54 am)
The iphone has a 3D accelerated GPU and accepts 16bit and 32bit textures though 16bit are more performant but commonly results in worse quality due to the slightly strange format (its not the common RGBA 5551 format but RGBA 4444). if you are worried about graphics memory (you have 24mb which has to hold the back and frontbuffer + your textures), then PVR would be a way to reduce the graphics memory usage.

The iPhone especially it does not like "alpha test" (often called masking masking because all thats below the threshold is invisible, all above visible) based alpha, it is significantly faster when using real alpha blending.

Torque Owner Tiago Carita
#2
07/30/2009 (9:53 am)
I've read a bit about PVR in the foruns... Does iTorque support PVR? is PVR a way to add textures in a single spritesheet?

Torque 3D Owner Marc Dreamora Schaerer
Gayasoft
#3
07/30/2009 (10:31 am)
PVR is a hardware compressed texture format on the PowerVR based GPUs like the one in the iPhones.
Its similiar to DXT on DX based engines and generally S3TC on the desktop.

You can use PVR with iTGB, but right now not with cell sheets

Torque Owner Tiago Carita
#4
07/30/2009 (10:32 am)
OK Thanks...

Torque Owner Ronald Ian Bantayan
#5
07/30/2009 (10:56 am)
if you really want to optimize your graphics for the iPhone platform, you *have* to use PVRs. your PNGs' resolution has to be power of 2, and square. and no, no cell sheets at this time, you have to rely on individual sprites

Torque Owner Tiago Carita
#6
07/30/2009 (11:51 am)
power of 2 ok but square? so i distort the images or leave extra alpha space?

Torque Owner Ronald Ian Bantayan
#7
07/30/2009 (12:05 pm)
it's better if you make the image square yourself, otherwise i think iTGB (or the PVR compressor tool) will do the adjustments. so, power of two AND square:
2x2, 4x4, 8x8, 16x16, 32x32, 64x64, 128x128, 256x256, 512x512, etc.
your images have to fall under these resolutions in order to qualify for PVR compression

Torque Owner Tiago Carita
#8
07/31/2009 (1:51 am)
pvr should work wit 8x16 for example :-(
I will 'troll' the site for more PVR info
Thank's