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Textures

All sit in Art\Textures itself, not in a subfolder.

  • TWWater01_nrm.dds for TWWater01.tga - (Normal map that replaces the built-in waves, named like unit normal maps. It tiles every ShaderWaterWaveScale units, in the DirectX convention. DXT compressed with mipmaps; the game reads no other DDS layout.)

  • TWWater01_hgt.ddsSwell heights, greyscale DXT with mipmaps, mid grey is the resting level. The height is read from alpha in a DXT5 file whose alpha varies, and from green otherwise. Without it the swell uses the built-in waves.

  • WaterFoam.ddsFoam for every water texture, replacing the built-in cell web. Greyscale, read from red, bright where foam is dense; a tiling DXT with mipmaps. One pattern covers 150 world units up close. TWWater01_foam.dds beside a water texture overrides it for that texture alone.

scripts/water_maps.py builds the normal and swell textures from any image (needs Python with numpy and Pillow).

Notes

  • Many maps pick their own StandingWaterTexture in map.ini, such as twwater01trop.tga on tropical maps, twwater01ice.tga on winter maps and twlava.tga for lava. To change such a map's water, replace that texture; its _nrm.dds and _hgt.dds follow its name.
  • The sky in the reflection is the map's skybox (SkyboxTexture* in WaterTransparency), dimmed by the map's lighting.
  • One water height is mirrored at a time, that of the flat water under the middle of the view. Water at other heights and sloping rivers show the skybox alone, as does a camera looking nearly level.
  • Particles, decals and shadows are left out of the reflection, and only objects near the view are mirrored.
  • Objects standing in or over the water are kept out of the refraction, so hulls and props don't smear into the waves.
  • Effects drawn after the water (smoke, fire, translucent models) are not bent by the waves.
  • AdditiveBlending = Yes water keeps the old look.
  • Lava maps should set IsWater = No in the WaterTransparency block of their map.ini, so the lava keeps the old look instead of reflecting the sky and gathering foam. The next map gets shader water back.
  • The CONTRA_WATER environment variable picks the water: 0 the old water, 1 pixel shader 2.0a water, 2 shader model 3 water with vertex waves on each water area's own grid, 3 (the default) with them on the grids around the camera.