esselfortium
Cumulonimbus Antagonistic Posting
Posts: 5954
Registered: 01-02 |
I haven't checked the updated one, but...I'm not entirely sure how useful this would be. There seem to be a few textures picked from a whole bunch of different sets, most of which don't match very well with each other or with the original Doom2 textures at all.
There's also the issue that, with a small resource wad like this, many people are likely to try making use of the resources included in it just because they're there, and a lot of the maps will have suspiciously similar themes as a result...
If it were up to me, I'd suggest including more complete sets, and more textures that are either based on or fit well with the original Doom2.wad textures that they're going to be used alongside.
Also, the texture and flat naming could be improved, especially the flats. For example, instead of "GRSTONE1" for the gray marble bricks, it could be "MARBGR01" so that in-editor it will be sorted alongside the other marble textures (presumably with other matching gray marble textures as MARBGR02, 03, etc.)
One notable exception I can think of to this is METAL2-based textures, since there's no real way to keep them separate from METAL-based textures while still keeping their original name. In the resource wad I put together for Eternity Vaporware Project, I named them MTTK****, based on the N_MTTK** naming used for NiGHTMARE's METAL2 variants, with the first three ***s being numbers, and the fourth one being an optional letter, to group similar variants together. (In retrospect I should have only used two numbers, since I'm unlikely to hit 100+ completely unique variants, and the extra 0 at the beginning makes it harder to quickly find one.) It should also be noted that NiGHTMARE's METAL2 variants are offset by 1 unit to the side, and don't match up with the originals or with Espi's variants of them from Suspended in Dusk. If you decide to include any (which I would recommend), it'd be a good choice to adjust those in paint or photoshop or something, just by moving them over one unit to the right.
Naming flats well can be a bit more difficult, as the originals are mostly either FLAT*, CEIL*, FLOOR*, SLIME*, or RROCK*, but a similar approach can be taken. When compiling resource wads, I'll usually put variants of a certain texture, or something that is reasonably similar to it, with a similar name. For example, brown and green recolored versions of FLAT1 would be FLAT1BR and FLAT1GR, hexagon tiles (such as your JFLR_06 and JFLR_07) would be named either FLOOR48* or FLOOR4_* (not ideal but the best organization that can be fit into 8 characters), a metal-based version of CEIL5_2 would be CEIL5_M (as CEIL5_2 is what people normally use as a texture that's sort of close to METAL, so a metal-based variant of it could be placed where they would find it), and a few other textures to be used similarly could also have CEIL5_* names (such as CEIL5_GR for the browngrn flat from Useful Flats).
Generally, the more logical your texture/flat naming is, the more stuff you can add to it without turning it into a confusing mess to work with. Though it can feel like overkill to include more than a couple of textures in each set (I'm guilty of having done this in the past), you'll find that when mapping, lots of variants of textures are very useful to have.
EDIT:
Okay, I think the main issues (including a few that I missed in the rest of this post) that should be kept in mind when compiling a resource wad boil down to:
- General-purpose. Remember that this is going to be used along with doom2.wad for 32 different maps.
- Variation. When you make a resource wad for a project, particularly a community project, people are guaranteed to use the living hell out of it. Including a good number of textures, including lots of variants within each subset, is a very good idea. Different sized panels, bricks, horizontal bars, supports, borders, and outline-less (texture-only, no panel or bar shapes) textures, possibly in several colors (i.e. green, gray, tan, and red versions of each marble texture).
- Consistency. Yes, you have to be varied and consistent at the same time. Confusing, I know! An example of this would be the one NMN computer screen in your resource wad. It'd stick out like a sore thumb anywhere it was used, as it doesn't match with any of the other computer textures at all. (Maybe take a look at KDiZD's new planet1 screens and Demon Eclipse's other new computers for stuff that's new but consistent with the originals.)
- Matching textures/flats. This is an easy one to overlook. It's especially important to have rock and dirt textures/flats that match, but this is a really important thing to have for pretty much all the textures and flats in the wad. There doesn't need to be an exact match for everything, but at least something that's close enough to be used as a border or something.
- Midtextures. This is a more minor thing, but I might as well mention it. Midtexture bridges made from the doom2.wad textures tend to be kind of ugly; I'd recommend including the horizontal 16-tall version of SUPPORT3 from the 5th Episode texture wad, as it's pretty general-purpose and works well for this.
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Last edited by esselfortium on 05-29-08 at 20:18
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05-13-08 04:22 
