DDS texutres

[Guest]

I wanted to bump this thread I once made, but it got archived, so I'm re-posting it before the whole thing is deleted.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/40239-DDS-textures

DDS is a flexible texture format that can be edited by most image editing programs, with a decent compression algorithm. That's not the best thing about it, though. Essentially, it's the format all texture files are decompressed to before being loaded into memory, meaning that disk size = memory size, for both compressed and uncompressed DDS. Smart usage of DDS files could both decrease loading time and memory usage, while keeping the files readily editable. I used this format quite a bit for modding another game and the only issues I've ever had with it were some compression artifacts on extremely dark surfaces (by that I mean almost pitch-black, not what you usually see). It also has some specialized compression methods, for example one specifically for normal maps. I think it'd be nice if KSP could use this format.

I'm re-posting, because I think that this is an important matter that requires serious consideration. DDS is a very efficient format for saving loading time and memory. KSP should definitely not only support this, it should be made standard that all stock parts and most mods would use. It's proven, efficient and editable, the current MBM standard is none of this. And it gets converted to DDS anyway, during loading.