Our ReVolt Pub

I'm adding support for additional image formats. We support BMP, PNG, JPG, TIFF and WEBP. For a full list of available formats, check the description in the SDL_image page.

There is also experimental support for GIMP's native XCF file format. This allows you to preview an XCF project file in RVGL even without exporting it. Keep in mind that this format is not guaranteed to load correctly, so use with caution.

How to use different formats:
You can save your picture in any of the supported formats, but the filename should end with .bmp. This is important, otherwise RVGL won't detect your texture. Mipmap names end with .bmq .bmo etc as usual. The correct image format will be detected automatically at loading time.

Because all textures are named .bm[p], using custom support to replace textures is easy. For example, if you want to replace the default fxpage2.bmp in your custom track, you can place your texture in any format in the track's custom folder. Whatever the format, just name it fxpage2.bmp as usual.

Are there any plans for reverse-compatibility? As much as I'm looking forward to png textures, there's still all the people who've stuck themselves on v1.2.

I get frequent complaints about textures not loading as it is, and that's just because of gimp's faulty bmp exporter. If there were to be an actual unfixable disparity between the versions instead of just an easily-fixable error, I can see that leading to confusion and/or frustration. If not community fragmentation.

JPEG is a lossy format, so it shouldn't be used for quality textures.

Gotolei @ 18 Dec 2015, 10:33 PM wrote:Are there any plans for reverse-compatibility? As much as I'm looking forward to png textures, there's still all the people who've stuck themselves on v1.2.

Nope, the additional formats will only work with RVGL. So it's still the creator's choice: if you want to support both v1.2 and rvgl, then continue to use BMP. Or you can do this: release an rvgl-only version with png textures, then provide a "bmp texture pack" for folks using older versions.

I get frequent complaints about textures not loading as it is, and that's just because of gimp's faulty bmp exporter. If there were to be an actual unfixable disparity between the versions instead of just an easily-fixable error, I can see that leading to confusion and/or frustration. If not community fragmentation.

That reminds me: the upcoming release also improves support for extended BMP formats like the ones exported by GIMP. Whether you enabled the "Don't write color space information" compatibility option or you kept it disabled (the default), 24-bit or 32-bit ARGB, either way these bmp's should now load properly in RVGL.

Quite nice to hear about it. I thought once if I could be using tga and png since they use less space and provide quality and I think that time isn't so far.
Certainly this would be one of the important updates for re-volt.
All the best

Huki @ 19 Dec 2015, 01:14 PM wrote: Or you can do this: release an rvgl-only version with png textures, then provide a "bmp texture pack" for folks using older versions.

Except that community sites like rvz or xtg provide no information whatsoever about which version(s) the created content is made for (unless it is specified in the readme but we all know how many people read those).

So assuming rvz doesn't check for valid Bitmap images when uploading a car/track but just the name extension, it will be confusing as hell for many users if people start to upload content that is meant for RVGL only.

Alternatively it might get very frustrating for the uploaders who want to upload a more compatible version along with using RVGL's advanced texture support by including the files in an extra folder, only to get it denied by rvz's uploading system (which apparently is very picky about that).

And if people start to upload their files at random sharing sites it will just end in a complete mess when these links are posted all over some forums, not to mention that depending on the sharing site, they tend die relatively quick.

Anyway, I'm not saying its a problem of how you are planning to include this feature, I think in this case we are in dire need of a compatibility information field on the community content sharing sites.

However considering the lack of updates on their side I would suggest that you keep issues like this in mind when breaking backwards compatibility and try to find a more "common ground" approach.

I'm happy to see that new image formats are comming for RVGL.
Will you add files like SVG (who no longer need mipmaping with bmq/bmo files) ?

But in the same time I'm agree with Kenny...

sebr @ 6 Feb 2016, 12:55 PM wrote:I'm happy to see that new image formats are comming for RVGL.

New texture formats were already implemented in 15.1220a release:

rvgl changelog wrote: - Texture formats support: additional texture formats are now supported. For historical reasons, the textures should still be named with the .bmp extension (and mipmaps with .bmq, .bmo, etc. as usual).
Available formats: BMP, PNG, JPG, WEBP, TIF, GIF, CUR, ICO, LBM, PCX, PNM, XPM, XV, XCF. Support for XCF (GIMP's native format) is experimental. This allows you to visualize a GIMP project file in RVGL without exporting it. However, this is not guaranteed to work correctly in all cases.

Texture file extension still needs to be .bmp to work.
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SVG's ("Scalable Vector Graphics" - vector image format) are quite rare (if we compare with all raster counterparts, that's for sure) and I'm not even sure if they could be used efficiently in non animated/cartoony style video games, as well as with revolt's current graphics engine.