Gloss maps?

Apologies if this is a repeated question; my access to the org is highly limited just now thanks to a tech issue with my firewall.

What do gloss maps do? I've installed 1.2 and turned this option on and I see nothing different at all. If I turn it off mid battle there is no difference at all. I thought it might be the 'glints' option from 1.1 fixed so it works, i.e. shiny reflections on the metal parts of units but there is nothing.

For reference I've got a radeon 9800 pro with the cat 4.11 drivers

I think it has to do with the bright reflection of snow that burned your eyes.

Thanks, but I don't think that is it either; I tried a snow battle and I saw no difference with gloss turned on or off. Now I am really getting curious...

Perhaps the gloss map setting will only be noticeable if all graphics options are turned up very high? Or maybe all turned down very low? Might be worth a try. I wonder which maps it refers to-presumably the battle map, but maybe it means the campaign map.

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Originally Posted by frogbeastegg

Thanks, but I don't think that is it either; I tried a snow battle and I saw no difference with gloss turned on or off. Now I am really getting curious...

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If you modded out that glossy snow this option may not work

Not all the troop types have correctly filled-in gloss maps (we kinda ran out of artist time while doing them). If you look at the Legionaries they should certainly have them. You have to have shaders on in the preferences, and the end result should look like a specular & reflections map on the metallic parts of the armour. Any shader-capable graphics card should be able to display it...

Wee! An official answer! Thank you for stepping in to save my poor little mind :bow:

I checked that unit shaders was enabled in preferences.txt and it is. Both types of legionary are not showing any of the gloss effects, though I did not really expect to see it on the mail clad early legionary. I tested it in a custom battle with the Julii with unit detail to 'high', just for reference. I remembered the Roman auxiliary archers used to have the gloss effect working on their helmets so I checked the Julii version of that unit too; gloss was present, correct and really quite beautiful.

B_O_L_T and MAsta_KFC over at TWC made the gloss texture masks for all the units that should have them. Gets B_O_L_T's gloss files here and MAsta_KFC's gloss addendum files for the missed units here

Mmmmm, eyecandy. Thanks, Puzz3D.