Kudane

<img src="http://www.eqinterface.com/images/sections/directx.gif" align="right">Nvidia has released a new texture based compression tool with the extention .dds. The Microsoft DirectDraw Surface (.dds) is part of DirectX 9. You can read more about the format it self at msdn.

You can find the photoshop and other plugin info at Nvidia's site HERE

Sokol and I have done some experiementing and found that you can use DDS files in your UIs.

Upside
Files are 10% of the file size of a TGA. (TGAs that are 1meg become 100k)

Possible Downsides
DDS UIs are not cross compatible with TGA UIs. Trying to merge them in experiements caused crashes

If you want to see DDS UI at work, you can download the Solaria test HERE. Its a stand alone version of our UI to test the DDS files.

We have added a category in the forums for DDS discussion.

/bow

- Kudane