Are the new liquid flats an improvement?

Recently I played the new version of Freedoom a bit, and frankly I cannot say that the new water flats are a significant improvement over the old ones.

New:

Old:

Perhaps neither is a realistic representation of water, but the old one feels "smoother" to me. It is also worth noting that the new water flats are more similar to their Doom counterparts than the old ones:

(old left, Doom centre, new right)

I've also noticed that all the other liquids' flats in the game have been replaced by what is essentially a recolour of the water flats. Sodaholic argued that the reason for this is that the old flats lacked consistency (which apparently means they were not derived from the same texture set, unlike Doom).

However, I think that these flats don't have to be consistent, because they are meant to represent liquids with very different physical properties. The old blood and nukage animations gave an impression very thick, non-transparent liquids, which is lost with the generic new flats. Both sets of old flats require minor fixes of incorrect colours on some pixels but are otherwise of fine quality.

It also seems to me that the old blood and nukage flats fit better with the waterfall animations (old above, new below):




With all respect to Sodahlic's other great work, I would probably prefer at least these three liquid flats restored to their old versions, with fixes where necessary.

feel free to use the ones from aquatex https://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/72477-aquatex-small-texture-pack/ (example in OP spoiler)

i've decided to put a cap on work i'm doing on that texturepack, so i'm happy for all of the resources to be used for freedoom if desired.

Eh, I never liked the previous flats. Aside from the slime and lava, I suppose they weren't bad.

Perhaps we should seek permission to use these waterfalls? https://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/70830-post-your-doom-picture-part-2-read-the-image-posting-rules-in-the-faq/144/

jmickle66666666 said:

feel free to use the ones from aquatex https://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/72477-aquatex-small-texture-pack/ (example in OP spoiler)

i've decided to put a cap on work i'm doing on that texturepack, so i'm happy for all of the resources to be used for freedoom if desired.

Those are some very cool textures, thanks for donating them! ^_^ The water seems to be glowing with some energy though?

I still like the old Freedoom liquid flats though :)

BTW Sodaholic, do you think this Aquatex pack would fit what you had in mind with the partial retexture project?

thats very generous jmickle :)

soda i think the new textures should be added as aditional ones, instead of replacing the ones in, just to give mappers more options, what do you think?

raymoohawk said:

the new textures should be added as aditional ones, instead of replacing the ones in, just to give mappers more options, what do you think?

I agree with that, but at the same time if it's possible to use some to replace existing textures that are too similar to their Doom counterparts, then why not. (However, I got the impression that the problematic textures are mostly from the castle/hellish sub-sets, although I'm not sure.)

raymoohawk said:

soda i think the new textures should be added as aditional ones, instead of replacing the ones in, just to give mappers more options, what do you think?

We can't do that for animated textures, given the vanilla target. Because the animations are hard-coded, we can only have one set.

damn, i hadnt considered that, oh well

MrFlibble said:

BTW Sodaholic, do you think this Aquatex pack would fit what you had in mind with the partial retexture project?

Absolutely, as long as he's fine with it. He mentioned only liquids, I hope he's willing to expand it to the rest of the pack.

Sodaholic said:

We can't do that for animated textures, given the vanilla target. Because the animations are hard-coded, we can only have one set.

That's the main reason I'm disappointed by the new vanilla direction and now hope a fork actually happens.

The older water caustics are brighter, blurry, and more friendly looking. What effect do you want to achieve?

guys lets keep the soda liquid flats for now and add all the jmickle textures we can

Actually, I was thinking something like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8q194t49v9wfqu7/liquidvariety_fd.wad?dl=0

Would have to get permission from FuzzballFox for the waterfall and the nukefall (which is a mixture between his and Freedoom's current one).

seems like a good in between, have you already contacted fuzball?

Sodaholic said:

Absolutely, as long as he's fine with it. He mentioned only liquids, I hope he's willing to expand it to the rest of the pack.

Yeap, i mentioned in my reply that i'm happy for all of the textures to be used in freedoom

edit: just to clarify, all the textures are made entirely from scratch, no edits of IWAD resources or similar.

Nikita_Sadkov said:

The older water caustics are brighter, blurry, and more friendly looking. What effect do you want to achieve?

The new water flats have this pattern very dark blots that looks a bit weird. perhaps if it were more bluish (e.g. a blue recolour of the the new blood flats) that would work better.

Also I'm concerned that the flats themselves are noticeably more similar to Doom ones than the earlier versions.

Sodaholic said:

Actually, I was thinking something like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8q194t49v9wfqu7/liquidvariety_fd.wad?dl=0

Would have to get permission from FuzzballFox for the waterfall and the nukefall (which is a mixture between his and Freedoom's current one).

Those are some very nice assets altogether!

MrFlibble said:

The new water flats have this pattern very dark blots that looks a bit weird.

The original Doom and Hexen used similar coloring. I guess the idea was to make water look deep and gloomy.

raymoohawk said:

seems like a good in between, have you already contacted fuzball?

Fuzzball sent me a PM saying he's fine with it.

Great!

Regarding your partial retexture idea, do you plan to edit exiting maps to introduce new textures from the Aquatex set? I suppose it's also possible to create entire levels only using this texture set.

MrFlibble said:

Regarding your partial retexture idea, do you plan to edit exiting maps to introduce new textures from the Aquatex set?

Largely what I had in mind, yes.

I suppose the levels can be given quite an extensive refurbishing with this new texture set.

Sodaholic said:

Actually, I was thinking something like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8q194t49v9wfqu7/liquidvariety_fd.wad?dl=0

Would have to get permission from FuzzballFox for the waterfall and the nukefall (which is a mixture between his and Freedoom's current one).

So... are you going to commit those, now that FuzzballFox gave permission? The nukage/waterfalls are a definite improvement, and the flats are nice for variety.

Big bump, I know.

But who made flats? FuzzBallFox or Soda?

Soda. Fuzzball made the falls.

Edit: ignore this reply.

I still think that the falls could do with some work, but they look okay.

I feel like the old water is better, but the new one is better for blood. I also feel like the *FALL textures could be reworked altogether. I might try and whip up something for it and see how you guys feel.

Yeah. I kinda like the older water/blood myself to be honest. They did fit well with the fall animations.

All in favour of replacing the current water, lava and nukage flats with the Aquatex liquids, say aye?

The liquids are among the weaker textures in Aquatex IMO. Any of the options in the OP are better and look more like what they're supposed to represent.