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Hi-Res EAW Terrain Utility -- README File
This very simple utility will rename EAW add-on terrain set files to use hi-res
tiles. EAW was built with 2 different resolutions of terrain tiles. If you are
using an add-on terrain, these tiles have been created as separate low-res and
hi-res tile files. The low-res tiles are 128x128 pixels and named lr*.ter. The
hi-res tiles are 256x256 pixels and named bn*.ter.
It appears that EAW for some reason does not use the hi-res tiles, possibly a
programming oversite. However, we can trick EAW into using them by renaming the
hi-res tiles to the names of the low-res tiles. This way, the game accesses the
low-res tiles as normal, but gets the hi-res tiles instead. The result is much
better looking terrain, or more correctly, probably the way it was intended to
look in the first place.
INSTRUCTIONS
1) Copy hiresmod.bat into the directory containing the add-on terrain set you
wish to convert (see
note 1).
2) Double-click the hiresmod.bat file.
3) Copy the resulting *.ter files (including the originals) to your EAW
directory.
4) You're Done! Run the game and enjoy the higher resolution terrain tiles!
Notes:
1) You can run this directly in your EAW directory if the add-on terrain files
are currently located there, and eliminate the #3 copying step. However, I
recommend converting the terrain in a separate directory if possible and then
copying the files over to the EAW directory.
2) If you use a terrain management program like STAB or Skins-n-More, you should
copy the resulting *.ter files to the appropriate terrain directory instead of
the EAW directory.
3) This utility also backs up the original low-res tiles as with a .bak
extension. You can change the extension back to .ter and copy them to your eaw
directory if you need to return to the original terrain. Otherwise, you may want
to delete them to save space.
4) It is likely that the bn*.ter files are not actually necessary for the game
to run properly. However, my feeling is that it is best to leave them to be on
the safe side. If you are hurting for disk space, you may want to consider
deleting them.
5) This should work with any add-on terrain set as they all use the same file
format.
6) I have not found that the hi-res terrains cause any performance hit over the
regular terrains in my testing, but its possible that with a low-end system or
video card you may get some performance degradation.
7) If you would like to use the original EAW terrain but with hi-res tiles
instead, you can download my Enhanced Hi-Res Original EAW Terrain set at http://www.xmission.com/~mmagleby/eaw.
The original terrain looks very nice with the hi-res tiles, and you may want to
revisit this "classic" eaw look.
max188
http://www.xmission.com/~mmagleby/eaw
3/12/01 |
