Problematic textures

I have found a couple of textures that I believe are too close to the originals and should probably be replaced.
(Doom on the left, Freedoom on the right)

I've noticed FreeDoom uses DOOM's icons when you have both a keycard and skull key of the same colour. These will probably get changed before the final FreeDoom is out.

Those double key icons are not actually from Doom but provided by various sourceports such as Boom or Zdoom (vanilla doom only shows the skullkey icon if both keys were acquired of one color), I did make some custom ones in my wad I submitted a while ago but it's not exactly a fault of Doom directly.

And yes, I agree that those textures (and the other handful of similar looking textures) should be replaced with something newer,

They do look very similar, but they're made from scratch. Isn't that what matters in the end?

Yep, the dual key icons come from Boom, because Boom introduced actual difference between skull keys and key cards (e.g., door types that can only be unlocked by a blue key card, and not by a blue skull keys; or door types that need all six keys) so it needed to have a way to indicate all six keys on the HUD. Vanilla Doom just shows the skull key if you have it, regardless of whether you also have the keycard or not.

cr0wb4r said:

I've noticed FreeDoom uses DOOM's icons when you have both a keycard and skull key of the same colour. These will probably get changed before the final FreeDoom is out.

Doom doesn't have any such icons. They're added by source ports.

Freedoom provides other port-specific lumps (for menu items and such), may as well have some extra key icons as well. Should probably wait for those new keys to be committed, the current keys and their icons are crap.

On the subject of the similar textures, they should be replaced in the future, but they apparently were created from scratch, so it should be fine to keep in the meantime.

Catoptromancy said:

Why is your post blank?

i think editing them to look more different should be enough, maybe freedoom rw32_2 could have 3 light rows instead of 2, and the rw15_1 have 2 green panels instead of 3

I could look into tweaking and improving these textures. When I get them finished I'll post them in the Updates and Tweaks thread.

raymoohawk said:

i think editing them to look more different should be enough, maybe freedoom rw32_2 could have 3 light rows instead of 2, and the rw15_1 have 2 green panels instead of 3

I'm not sure about this... maybe in some pwad someone used carefully the green panel we are going to eliminate, and thus using Freedoom would not give the correct visual.

Sorry for bumping this, but perhaps it would be a good idea to make an complete list of textures that are too similar to their Doom counterparts?

Personally I've always been somewhat concerned about the satyr and gargoyle mascarons which are basically redrawn assets from Doom:
https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/blob/master/patches/wall30_2.gif?raw=true https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/blob/master/patches/wall30_3.gif?raw=true https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/blob/master/patches/wall42_1.gif?raw=true https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/blob/master/patches/wall42_6.gif?raw=true https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/blob/master/patches/wall47_3.gif?raw=true https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/blob/master/patches/wall47_5.gif?raw=true

HorrorMovieGuy said:

They do look very similar, but they're made from scratch. Isn't that what matters in the end?

They look like the original Doom textures with a few filters applied. In particular, their geometry matches perfectly.

That is enough to get sued:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_%22Hope%22_poster#Origin_and_copyright_issues

MrFlibble said:

Personally I've always been somewhat concerned about the satyr and gargoyle mascarons which are basically redrawn assets from Doom:

Doom did not create those faces, they were from some statues or buildings dating back a long way (centuries?). There was a thread about it fairly recently (by user Reinchard iirc).

There may be artistic reasons to replace them, but definitely no legal ones.

andrewj said:

Doom did not create those faces, they were from some statues or buildings dating back a long way (centuries?). There was a thread about it fairly recently (by user Reinchard iirc).

I know that. In fact, a while ago I suggested that a similar process could be used to create original replacements for these assets.

It is also my understanding that the photographs that id Software used as sources for the mascaron switches were/are not public domain.

MrFlibble said:

It is also my understanding that the photographs that id Software used as sources for the mascaron switches were/are not public domain.

Given how transformed they are, I don't think the copyright of the photo matters anymore. The copyright of the original work might, but generally it's old stuff (Rodin died in 1917, so the satyr is public domain now).

Gez said:

Given how transformed they are, I don't think the copyright of the photo matters anymore.

I suppose it may not matter for Doom now, but what about Freedoom? These mascarons are clearly similar to their Doom counterparts. Wouldn't it make sense to replace them just to be on the safe side?

While I don't think there's any legal risk associated with those textures, I'd prefer to see them replaced for the sake of being different from Doom.

Nikita_Sadkov said:

They look like the original Doom textures with a few filters applied. In particular, their geometry matches perfectly.

That is enough to get sued:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_%22Hope%22_poster#Origin_and_copyright_issues

The geometry has to match. The test you have to apply: would a PWAD designed and using Doom's textures, look right with Freedoom's? Therefore, the ridges and size and location of the lights on RW32_2 have to match.

RW15_1 and the gargoyles could differ more, I'd agree there, but would fundamentally have to remain pretty similar.

Jon said:

The geometry has to match. The test you have to apply: would a PWAD designed and using Doom's textures, look right with Freedoom's? Therefore, the ridges and size and location of the lights on RW32_2 have to match.

Can there be variation within the specific areas of a texture? Like, would replacing each of the three vertical blue light stripes with two rows of circles (or diamond shaped lights) affect compatibility?

realistically, how meticulously are people cutting out the lights on RW32_2?admittedly i'm lazy and dont ever cut out discrete elements on it too particularly because the lights are an idiotic 9x33 px, or 11x35 if you include the outer bevel. i think i will rework it but if i was designing it from the ground up i'd keep all the geometry as multiples of 4.

anyway, im gonna work on a new version by editing the existing freedoom RW32_1. plan is to keep the more macro geometry the same (or extremely similar) and make the lights themselves more visually distinct, which i think is a good compromise to maintaining asset distinction and pwad compatibility.

quick and dirty edit:


4x:


e (maybe this darker version is better?):


as always heres the source file (gimp .xcf): https://www.dropbox.com/s/y3459ur1mn4b398/hamRW32_1.xcf?dl=0

bigger edit:
also did a whole bunch of panel textures to make them more visually consistent. these were completely hack-jobs of existing textures so im not gonna claim some grand artistic vision fed into this.
RW15_1- looked more like the original doom texture than the other freedoom ones:


RW15_2- resized elements so they were closer to the original doom textures in size, made the top border of the bottom panel consistent with the others


RW15_3- recolored from my new RW15_2 to be green. if people liked the old ones i can recolor it to a lighter gray.


RW15_4- the left side border was reversed compared to other textures in the set


RW16_4- the doom original did not have the top border like this one did, so i pasted the picture over my new RW15_4


RW19 series- made the bottom consistent with the other panel textures and look less like the original doom textures. if people think its a good idea i can try to remake the top half as well.

As for these tiny icons (STKEYS6, STKEYS7 and STKEYS8), I strongly think that Freedoom ought to supply its own versions in order to override on runtime the ones based on the original icons (supplied by the source port itself). The people of GZDoom recently replaced these icons with own versions. And perhaps, it is possible to add them as interim resources. I would create the pull request, but...

(a) I am not sure of the proper offsets to add them (0, 0?).

(b) I haven’t got an account on ZDoom’s forum to ask for permission.