oh I understand argh... but the rate videocards are growing in MB in ram etc..
to pattern clone textures, unless you are hoping for crazy, utterly.. C R A Z Y amounts of objects on the playing field... a 1024 or 8 isn't gonna slow you down.
1- if you REALLY believe that the .dds are gonna be a better deal, when you have the time, since you've converted everything allready... (that was like a 2 second convesion with a DDS converter..) and do yourself and me a favor, and prove to me with screenshots of identical images that the framerate does SIGNIFICANTLY improve with DDS files...
2- I enjoy making detailed models as pieces of art... thus the edges of EACH polygon wether crossing across different parts of the same UV map, or just bending around the geometery... they are continiously painted "correct"... a tiling, or something of the like, (if used on something organic like a LEAF, or a building wall with corners and edges, that are set edges without textures wraping around them) its going to cause issues... (Think of wrapping a christmas present in wrapping paper... when you hit a corner, 1 of the edges, WILL not match the pattern, and it WILL cause it to look "off"... now... since thats a square object, and most square objects won't cause issues... (think of most buildings...) but now... take those tyranid towers, or the large shoreline rocks... the irregular geometry will generate SERIOUS stretching, overlapping, or breaks in the mapping... the only way around it, to make it CORRECT is to use a larger map, and hand draw every pixel, one at a time, to match where the joints of the UVW meet. If you are willing to try to do them differently, go for it....
I WILL, don't get me wrong, I'm not denying your advice.. I KNOW I need to use those "workarounds" more often... to stack UVW's on the same space on the texturemap... and I will use that ability at the opportunity when it presents itself... as of now, for the most part... (the tiberium, I'm sure I coulda spammed the crystals with a tighter texture... but meh, I was lazy) there hasn't been much of the chance to do that kind of work...
when I get into the more "structured" models, buildings and the like... you can do that more effectively...
I've worked very hard to get this done, its free material... if you want it in the map, use it... if you don't then don't.. but again... its not my fault to have to tone and twist the artwork I enjoy making into something that can run on a 32 or 64 mb videocard and reduce its quality to that of Quake2...
please understand why I am defending my work, and my judgement of why I took the approach of painting the features in the way I did.
Try not to be frustrated with me, but rather, just aid/help/encourage to get better.
Resizing my textures down to 512x512's WILL reduce their filesize by 4x... YES!! but it reduces the image quality TERRIBLY..
I spent a GREAT DEAL OF TIME to get those models to the quality they are at...
if all you want to do is BUTCHER my work, and then post it as "better" you can blow me... I don't care how tired and cranky you are.
Mose modders will understand things like that ARE NOT TO BE SPAMMED all over the map..
I've got nothing "good" to say about your modification to my features.. you've only deteroriated their quality.. 4+ fold.
I've got a 5.0 GHz machine with 2 gigs of 800MHz DDR2 ram (with fast timings), and a 512 mb Videocard... I can handle running the game with the level of textures I've produced.. and I'd assume most people will be able to catch up, or run along side me without too much effort.
if this game is gonna last much longer than a year more... than these features with the texture size they have, are FINE. I'm planning ahead.
Do me a favor, and don't try to encourage people to build "poor" maps with such textures...
what we CAN do, on a nicer note... is package the features WITH Spring... input a "rotation" ability into the code, and then offer a "high quality, medium quality, low quality" versions of the textures... (1024+, 512, 256) .... and make it a seperate download from the game itself...
so thus:
1- download spring
2- download features
3- download the texture pack for them
play.
if you have an old card, get the low quality, if you have a high end card, get the high quality... using a different texturemap from what someone else uses, will NOT count as cheating, or cause a net-split, crash, or de-sync... it'll just reduce your framerate if you can't handle it....
I'm tired too... and I've put 22 hours of labor into that release in the last 2 days to crank it out...
and frankly I'm proud of it... if you want to release a "lower quality" version... then label it as such. don't take my well crafted work, scale it down, ruin its quality, and post it as "optimized"..
thats the END of that.
) 
