Author Topic: RE: Paper Mario maps: .PNG to .JPG? (Read 51105 times)

Peardian · « **on:** December 26, 2008, 11:56:05 pm »

After finishing my latest Paper Mario map, Raccoon Sam put to me the suggestion of using .JPG for my Paper Mario maps (and at the same time, maps of all 3D games). Obviously, small rips like PM's 320x320 map screen would remain .PNG, since they're tiny enough.

PNG

+Lossless compression, and thus perfect quality of map and text.

+Format used for very many maps already.

-File size increases significantly with complexity and size. Most of the Paper Mario maps are several megabytes in size.

JPG

+Compresses to a much smaller size than PNG. Estimated to reduce the size of the mapset by 90%.

-Lossy compression would dull the text and finer details of the map, taking away all crispness.

I'm sure you all already knew the pros and cons of the filetypes already, but I just wanted to list them as a reminder. What do you guys think? Should I keep my maps of 3D games in .PNG, or switch over to .JPG? Right now I'm leaning towards staying .PNG, but I want to get your opinions first.

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YTT (34%) - WL4 (60%) - PM (34%)

TerraEsperZ · « **Reply #1 on:** December 27, 2008, 12:06:29 am »

Personally, I'm always in favour of aesthetics regardless of file size, and would rather never submit a map if I couldn't do it losslessly. Please keep using PNGs.

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Current projects: Bucky O'Hare (NES), Metal Storm (NES), Clock Tower (SNES), Ristar-The Shooting Star (Gen), Sonic The Hedgehog (Gen), Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES)

Revned · « **Reply #2 on:** December 27, 2008, 12:18:30 am »

I don't think lossless-ness is as important with 3D games. The image you would be submitting isn't exactly like something you'd ever see in the game anyway. Just use the maximum quality setting when saving the JPG. Huge PNG files aren't always easy to view.

Maxim · « **Reply #3 on:** December 27, 2008, 03:41:58 am »

Maximum quality JPGs are pretty big.

Try disabling colour subsampling when saving (not all software can do it, Irfanview can; some label it as "4:4:4"). JPEG actually stores the colour at half resolution which adds a lot to the blurriness.

Raccoon Sam · « **Reply #4 on:** December 27, 2008, 08:51:05 am »

Glad you brought this up. It's great to see some good discussion.

But yeah, when comparing maximum quality JPEGs and optimized-to-hell PNGs, I'm pretty sure that when we're going with Paper Mario, which is a 3D game, JPEG will be the optimal choice.

I do not wish to wait for several minutes to see a map load, for I can get the same visual result with a slightly lossy format.

I mentioned this in our MSN conversation too, but I'm pretty sure a 10 000 x 10 000 px 90%-quality JPEG would be even smaller than a 5000 x 5000 PNG. <--assumption.

Or, you could include both. JPEGs as the primary ones, and the PNGs RAR'd or 7z'd to a package available for download.

JonLeung · « **Reply #5 on:** December 27, 2008, 10:34:53 am »

As I mentioned in my email to you, Peardian, my preference is for PNG.

I understand that it may seem "less important" for pixel-perfection when mapping 3D games but I still prefer PNG, as the faster loading isn't worth even the slightest image degradation, in my opinion.

Maxim · « **Reply #6 on:** December 27, 2008, 12:19:58 pm »

Well, why not try it? Here's some (small lossless PNG) cutout parts of Toad Town. Open in tabs and switch between them to compare.

1. PNG (10501KB)

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/2372/papermariotoadtownzx3.png

2. Maximum-quality full-colour-resolution JPG (11542KB = 110%)

http://img396.imageshack.us/img396/7689/444100vo4.png

3. 80% quality (ie. near maximum) full-colour-resolution JPG (2494KB = 24%)

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/3006/44480sk0.png

4. 80% quality blurry-colour-channel JPG (1812KB = 17%)

http://img387.imageshack.us/img387/7660/42080dv7.png

Personally, I can't see any difference between any of them.

For technical reasons, PNG performs badly on wide images. It is based on GZip compression, which is based off the Zip Deflate algorithm. It has a window size of 32KB, meaning that's the furthest it looks back for similar data when compressing. If the image is 3000px across, 32KB is only ~3.6 rows of pixels at 24bpp, not really far enough (you'd hope for at least 8 rows, preferably a lot more). So to maximise compression you need to save as BMP or lossless PNG and then 7z with maximal settings.

TerraEsperZ · « **Reply #7 on:** December 27, 2008, 12:40:40 pm »

Well, I stand corrected. I guess it helps that the N64 uses low-resolution textures with lots of blurriness which hides the drop in picture quality.

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Current projects: Bucky O'Hare (NES), Metal Storm (NES), Clock Tower (SNES), Ristar-The Shooting Star (Gen), Sonic The Hedgehog (Gen), Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES)

RT 55J · « **Reply #8 on:** December 27, 2008, 02:16:53 pm »

Personally, if I was mapping the game, I'd send in JPEGs but keep the PNGs on my hard drive.

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"its a good day to do what has to be done by me and help my brother to defeat the enemys" - John Freeman

Peardian · « **Reply #9 on:** December 27, 2008, 10:39:14 pm »

Yeah, even if I switch to .JPG, I will still keep the raw .PNG files that I made the map with. Now THOSE are large. With all the layer and vector and text data, some of them are upwards of 25MB.

I still haven't decided, so I'm going to let this topic go on longer to see if it helps. As for the blurriness of the textures, I've actually been leaving them pixelly because the program I use can't emulate the bluriness the same way, and it screws up certain objects' tiling (leaving blurry pieces around the edges for objects with alpha transparency). However, it does get blurred a tad when I reize it from the render to the size used for the map.

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YTT (34%) - WL4 (60%) - PM (34%)

Raccoon Sam · « **Reply #10 on:** December 29, 2008, 09:38:52 am »

Wait, you're resizing the renders?

Are you sure that's a good idea?

Tropicon · « **Reply #11 on:** December 29, 2008, 11:24:37 am »

Ouch look at those maps. Peardian man you are hot stuff. You're doing that with camera manipulation right? I've been doing the same with other N64 games but my results are not nearly as nice. Could you give me a consult?

As far as the image format is concerned I never use JPEG under any circumstances. At best it makes images look like they were sent through a 10 year old scanner.

Raccoon Sam · « **Reply #12 on:** December 29, 2008, 06:29:47 pm »

Tropicon Said:

Ouch look at those maps. Peardian man you are hot stuff. You're doing that with camera manipulation right? I've been doing the same with other N64 games but my results are not nearly as nice. Could you give me a consult?

As far as the image format is concerned I never use JPEG under any circumstances. At best it makes images look like they were sent through a 10 year old scanner.

Yeah, with the lowest settings they will.

JPEGs can look great, too. It's just that too many of us got taught that JPEG equals all evil in this world in sprite school.

And these maps are ripped with the N64 emulator's VMRL dump feature.

Tropicon · « **Reply #13 on:** January 11, 2009, 10:06:13 am »

Which N64 emulator?

Peardian · « **Reply #14 on:** January 18, 2009, 03:11:16 pm »

I use 1964. I know other emulators support a VRML dump feature, but this one is the easiest to use.

However, after the VRML is dumped, it still requires quite a bit of work to get it to look like it's supposed to, let alone presentable.

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YTT (34%) - WL4 (60%) - PM (36%)