Reduce texture file sizes in games by up to 70%?

[Tap In]

One of the most interesting talks at London’s GDC (Games Developers Conference) this week came form one of the lesser known companies called Allegorithmic, who claim they will be able to reduce texture file sizes in games by up to 70%.

Their new programs, that they hope development artists will soon be using as an industry standard, are called ProFX and MaP Zone 2. Their ambition is to keep the graphical quality of game textures at the same standards as current games, whilst dramatically reducing the amount of data required for the game to work.

The implications of such a technology would be far reaching. As the current trend of digital distribution gains momentum a huge emphasis is being placed on games being made smaller and thus downloadable quicker. Their claim is that the current tool of choice for most games artists, Adobe Photoshop, is not ideally suited to making textures for games.

I was doubtful of this technology; however the company ran a demo that persuaded me otherwise. In the demo they had a bathroom full of beautiful textures, then with the flick of a button the bathroom took a more hellish look – all the while the textures looked the equal of Half Life 2.

The next demo was of a game that is due to come out for the XBOX Live Arcade called ‘Roboblitz’. Due to the requirement to get the game under 50MB, the developers needed to keep the textures as small in filesize as possible. Using the new texture system the overall size for all the textures was less than 280KB – watching the game (which runs on the Unreal 3 engine) I was amazed.....

more here


http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/10/04/Game_file_sizes_could_soon_be_70_smaller/

so anyone know... is this viable for full games in the near future?

is it a true compression technique or procedural generation?

 

[AlNom]

That they used Roboblitz seems to indicate procedural generation.

Using the new texture system the overall size for all the textures was less than 280KB

Definitely sounds like procedural generation to me.



Besides, the name Allegorithmic sounds like math.

 

[Tap In]

That they used Roboblitz seems to indicate procedural generation.



Definitely sounds like procedural generation to me.



Besides, the name Allegorithmic sounds like math.

checking their website... indeed it is ... thanks :smile:

http://www.allegorithmic.com/v2/news.htm

 

[Neeyik]

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=34313