Major screw-up trying to add a new texture

Using XWE, I tried to replace a wall texture (ASHWALL) with a Martian texture, and it showed up in DoomBuilder, but not in testing or regular gameplay. I managed to replace two existing flats with Martian ones, and they appeared in the game. I thought all I had to do was add an image with the same name as the texture I was replacing, and bam, it's in there. This clearly worked for the flats, but not the wall texture. In addition, there are now four ASHWALL entries in the TEXTURE menu, but they stuck around even after deleting the original patch. How do I save this map from disaster by tampering with XWE too much?

By not using XWE and switching to SLADE or something, if you're able.

Arctangent said:

By not using XWE and switching to SLADE or something, if you're able.

I've been having issues finding reliable SLADE tutorials. Any suggestions?

GoatLord said:

I thought all I had to do was add an image with the same name as the texture I was replacing, and bam, it's in there. This clearly worked for the flats, but not the wall texture.

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Adding_custom_textures

When the TEXTURE menu becomes fucked up, sometimes it's easier to delete it along with PNAMES and all textures, and begin from scratch. You don't have to touch the flats, they will be fine because they are not related to TEXTURE and PNAMES stuff.

You need to clearly understand the difference between textures and patches. The game displays textures. Textures are made of patches (one or more). These patches typically have different names than textures.

Like with ASHWALL2: http://i.imgur.com/RjNYdIU.png It uses a patch called RW22_1. What you can do is change it to the patch that you've added.

Or you can add a new patch by double clicking on the "Patches" button below and choosing your new graphic. XWE will typically also create a texture with the same name using that patch.

It's all rather confusing at first. I can definitely appreciate your frustration. :)

I tried to do this multiple times in both XWE and SLADE, and just can't get it working (although the texture will sometimes show up in the 3D preview in DoomBuilder 2). The really weird thing is that in the past, I added several new textures without a hitch. Can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Okay, I think I get it now. I see how there's a distinct difference between texture and patch names. If you don't rename it as the patch's name, it won't show up. I got it. Thanks!

Never, ever use XWE in 2016.

Blastfrog said:

Never, ever use XWE in 2016.

Someone's gonna have to explain this whole XWE vs SLADE thing to me.

XWE is old and hasn't been updated in a very long time, and even when it wasn't so ancient it still had some significant problems that would cause it to eat peoples' WAD files regularly, including just randomly modifying their IWADs when people opened them up to look at them.

SLADE is still maintained, is better behaved and has more features, and is just generally a saner choice, with far less risk of trashing your whole project by pressing the wrong key.

I've never had a problem with XWE in the past (IIRC), but as everyone said (I think essel hit the nail on the head with this one though), it's very old, and shouldn't be used anymore.
SLADE is a much better choice; it's not perfect, but as essel said, it is regularly maintained and has just about everything you'll need to get the job done.

I honestly don't fuck with Slade because I haven't located very comprehensive tutorials. Anyone got links?

There are tons of tutorials (including video tutorials) for Slade if you google hard enough. But the question is: what exactly do you want to do in Slade?

Surely if you know how to edit wads in XWE then you know how to edit them in Slade?

The processes can't be that different!

I've never looked up a tutorial on Slade itself, just learned about wads themselves and everything seemed then self explanatory when in the program.

To be honest I tried to do it in Slade and couldn't figure it out. I looked up tutorials on YouTube and found one for XWE, so that's what I went with. How do you add textures in Slade?

lil'devil said:

There are tons of tutorials (including video tutorials) for Slade if you google hard enough. But the question is: what exactly do you want to do in Slade?

Nothing too ambitious--just changing some textures, flats and skies, and maybe a sprite here and there.

Once you have added the patch between the PP_START and PP_END markers the same as you would in XWE, you open the TEXTURE1 lump, add the patch to the PNAMES list in the Patch Table (PNAMES) tab, and then make a new texture in the TEXTURE1 tab using that patch. I didn't need a tutorial. I figured it out by playing around with it and some trial and error. Of course, you should make a back-up copy before you edit any file with any program, especially a program that is new to you.

You can also right click the patch, Graphics-Add to Texture1, this will create a new texture with that patch and add it to PNAMES if it isn't there already, there's also the add to PNAMES option which only adds it to PNAMES.

GoatLord said:

To be honest I tried to do it in Slade and couldn't figure it out. I looked up tutorials on YouTube and found one for XWE, so that's what I went with. How do you add textures in Slade?

https://github.com/sirjuddington/SLADE/wiki/How-to-Import-Textures

The Slade way sounds so complicated. In XWE I double click on "Textures", select the picture file, click "OK" and that's it. It is immediately converted to the Doom format, stuff like PP_START or whatever is added automatically, the patch for that graphic is added to PNAMES, a new texture gets created in the TEXTURE1 lump using the added picture as the only patch. I think you guys should add some easy button for this stuff.

Texture editing in XWE is all well and good until you want to delete a patch. Then there's a good 50% chance you'll completely screw up your TEXTURE1 entry, with the wrong patches used in all or most of your textures.

If you're having that much trouble adding new textures, then try DeuTex.

It sounds a bit to me like as long as I do an action *perfectly* in XWE (thus requiring use of a backup copy), then I'm good?

GoatLord said:

It sounds a bit to me like as long as I do an action *perfectly* in XWE (thus requiring use of a backup copy), then I'm good?

Why would you want to worry about that? Just learn Slade, it's easy as hell to use.

GoatLord said:

I've been having issues finding reliable SLADE tutorials. Any suggestions?

Chubzdoomer does some nice Doom content-making tutorials, including SLADE tutorials.
He's my main source of figuring out what to do.

Chubzdoomer is the best.

(This is for SLADE but it helps probably)

Make a custom texture definition with the TEXTUREx and PNAMES lump. Afterwards just look for the texture you wanna modify, then remove it and import the texture you want to replace it. After importing it rename it to the original texture's name. Proceed to add it to the lumps.