Texture .TGA Format

[A Void]

Why isn't it allowed to upload texture files aka Skins in .tga (Truevision TGA) image format?

Warcraft 3 supports .tga, it works with tilesets. .tga also saves a lot of quality while keeping the size at normal.

 

[Ralle]

You mean the skins resource section?

 

[A Void]

yes, it only allows uploading .BLP files.

 

[Dr Super Good]

What is the difference quality/filesize wise between TGA and BLP? As far as I knew BLP supported pretty much everything you could ever use including DX compressions (maybe WoW only?), JPEG compression, pallet colours, lossless etc.

 

[GhostWolf]

BLP1 only supports a palette and bastardized JPEG.
TGA supports only RLE compression, which is usually not used either, so it doesn't "keep the size at normal" whatever that means.

I don't see how that's relevant though, if WC3 supports it, it should be valid.

 

[Dr Super Good]

TGA supports only RLE compression, which is usually not used either, so it doesn't "keep the size at normal" whatever that means.

Except the MPQ can apply RLE from various compression types... Which is why palette blps often compress so well.

With exception of some artificial art (eg commics, cartoons, things with few colours), JPEG is usually the most efficient way to compress images. Setting the compression factor low will still lower quality, but to such a small extent that no one would notice the difference. You can even raise compression quite a bit with minimal difference (only visible close to screen with side-by-side comparison).

In any case I am not really arguing about compression, I just wanted to understand what Void meant by ".tga also saves a lot of quality while keeping the size at normal". By "normal" is he saying that it is not compressed (bitmap) or that formats exist for WC3 that somehow managed to be bigger than an uncompressed image?