Black-and-white Minetest/video games

[ABJ]

Okay. I know this is a strange idea, and I may not even properly know what I'm trying to talk about, but what if Minetest, or other video games, used graphics engines (wait, am I correct?) that only rendered black and white, where all we need is a base texture and how dark it is, instead of all this RGB stuff? How much would performance be improved? Could such a thing be done?
Again, note, I'm just a curious newbie.

[lisacvuk]

You'd probably only save memory, I think. Performance probably wouldn't be really improved, at least not noticeably. I'm not expert (or even over the basics level) in this field, so feel free to correct me, if I'm wrong (or actually not wrong).

[MineYoshi]

You'd probably only save memory, I think. Performance probably wouldn't be really improved, at least not noticeably. I'm not expert (or even over the basics level) in this field, so feel free to correct me, if I'm wrong (or actually not wrong).

May be...

In my opinion you can get a bit more of performance, in Black and White...
If you modify the code to make that particles, only be of one color...

Can be a good idea do that...
Try it!

[ABJ]

Yeah.
I was thinking that now we have to deal with four values (RGBA) but then we'd need only one?

[MineYoshi]

Yeah.
I was thinking that now we have to deal with four values (RGBA) but then we'd need only one?

Actually Black Is the absence of the colors, the black is the presence (Totally) of every one...
RGBA means RedGreenBlueAlpha...
If you think about some textures can have "alpha" or transparency, you don't going to only handle one value!

[Ferk]

This makes no difference in current hardware. Even if you use some sort of grayscale in your textures, at some point it'd end up translated into some internal representation that separates it in color channels that mix to give whatever shade of gray (that's how the screens work anyway).

I doubt you'd even save memory unless you use some archaic format to store the image data in memory. And even then it won't make it any faster.. perhaps slower depending how awkward the format is to deal with.

If you want faster image loading better just don't use any sort of image compression (unless you have a slow hard disk). The image will be larger on disk but it will load faster on memory. But even then you probably won't notice much of a difference anyway.

[MineYoshi]

This makes no difference in current hardware. Even if you use some sort of grayscale in your textures, at some point it'd end up translated into some internal representation that separates it in color channels that mix to give whatever shade of gray (that's how the screens work anyway).

I doubt you'd even save memory unless you use some archaic format to store the image data in memory. And even then it won't make it any faster.. perhaps slower depending how awkward the format is to deal with.

If you want faster image loading better just don't use any sort of image compression (unless you have a slow hard disk). The image will be larger on disk but it will load faster on memory. But even then you probably won't notice much of a difference anyway.

But actually can be good for trying to test out how is Minetest when it got to convert RGBA textures to Black/White ones...

[ABJ]

OK.
In any case, we can just have one texture and set how dark it is (eg; pinewood, wood, junglewood, acaciawood, etc) with the same texture and a little coding.

Either way, IMHO all those World War simulators should become black-and-white.

[MineYoshi]

OK.
In any case, we can just have one texture and set how dark it is (eg; pinewood, wood, junglewood, acaciawood, etc) with the same texture and a little coding.

Maybe...
If you change the palete to only 4 greys, i don't know. the game can be faster, starting from the point that when a texture is less bigger, and less colorful... It's faster to load!

[cd2]

To see how it could look, just add this line of code to the end of opengl_fragmet.glsl (for me its line 212):

Code: Select all

col = vec4((col.b+col.g+col.b)/3.0,(col.b+col.g+col.b)/3.0,(col.b+col.g+col.b)/3.0, col.a);

[ABJ]

Thanks and where is it?
BTW what about the sky though.

[cd2]

Thanks and where is it?

client/shaders/node_shader

BTW what about the sky though.

It just changes all nodes, but I think you cant change the sky color via a shader is it?

PS : This wont improve performance

[ABJ]

I knw but it looks cool.

[azekill_DIABLO]

yep. i think shaders should be applying to all elements in game.

[Hybrid Dog]

Try this:
col.rgb = vec3(max(col.rgb.r, max(col.rgb.g, col.rgb.b)));

[ABJ]

Water=blue
Sky=blue
BTW where to paste anyway?

[cd2]

BTW where to paste anyway?

(for me its line 212)

[ABJ]

Ooooooooooooon which file in where.

[cd2]

Thanks and where is it?

client/shaders/node_shader

client/shaders/node_shader/opengl_fragmet.glsl
line : 211/212

[ABJ]

Oh sorry I wasn't reading that well enough.

[BBmine]

Interesting..... I could use a texture pack too :)