How Do You Create (Or Edit) Textures?

I was just wondering how you could edit or create textures because i have played some wads that have different textures and i am wondering how they created them and what they created them with.

as far as editing textures, you can get textures for doom from a number of resources, or its as easy are making your own or modifying existing textures. you'll need a wad editor like XWE to edit the contents of your wad. textures can be found here

EDIT: i think this is in the wrong forum, this might have to be moved into XWE or something

Janitor said:

as far as editing textures, you can get textures for doom from a number of resources, or its as easy are making your own or modifying existing textures. you'll need a wad editor like XWE to edit the contents of your wad. textures can be found here

EDIT: i think this is in the wrong forum, this might have to be moved into XWE or something

Could you tell me the instuctions for xwe pleese? i dont know how to use paint or something...

Or maybe you could ask somebody to make one or look for one for me...

Doom builder has an option that allows you to add a texture wad in at the beginning i think (i dont use Doom Builder anymore, so I dont know) but you can add a texture wad in at the options, and all those textures will be available to use. if you want to go farther, you can use XWE to open up your wad and view the textures inside of it. you can load textures into the wad that way if you want. if you want to make your own textures, you can just draw them, then load them into your wad using XWE.

Janitor said:

Doom builder has an option that allows you to add a texture wad in at the beginning i think (i dont use Doom Builder anymore, so I dont know) but you can add a texture wad in at the options, and all those textures will be available to use. if you want to go farther, you can use XWE to open up your wad and view the textures inside of it. you can load textures into the wad that way if you want. if you want to make your own textures, you can just draw them, then load them into your wad using XWE.

What type of file to load into wad using XWE?

Cam076 said:

What type of file to load into wad using XWE?

Janitor pointed you to some texture resource files. Just unzip them to get the wad file. Open the wad file with XWE to see what the textures look like. To be used in your own map, open the map with DOOMBUILDER and also point to the resource wad in the opening dialog.


To create your own textures (for ZDOOM or GZDOOM):

1. Create the texture with Paint Shop Pro
Use a program like Paint Shop Pro to create the texture, either from scratch by using your imagination or from an existing source like photographs
or images downloaded from the internet. Usually textures would have dimensions of 64x128, 128x128, 128x256, 256x256, 256x512 or512x512 pixels.
Save the texture in the png format.

2. Loading the texture into a map with XWE
To load the texture into an existing map, open the map, hilite the last entry, then make new markers with Entry -> New and name them TX_START and TX_END.
Then hilite TX_START and load your new texture with Entry -> Load (raw data). Repeat as many times as you have textures to load.

An easy way for beginners to replace textures, is to carefully open doom2.wad and take note of the various textures and their dimensions. Then use XWE to import a custom texture into your own wad of the same patch name and dimensions of the texture you want to replace. The Wolfenstein textures are all good candidates for texture replacements, but they are all 128x128. Take care not to modify your doom2.wad, though.

EarthQuake said:

...is to carefully open doom2.wad...

With what? you did say XWE but what to carefully open doom2.wad?

What about the textures for the players and monsters and stuff?

Before you start doing anything with doom2.wad, make a backup copy. Better yet, make two and keep them in a safe place.

As to loading doom2.wad into XWE: File -> Open and select doom2.wad

Thanks guys!

Thanks a million!
Now i know where the monster textures are (well only Commander Keen anyway).

Heres how it goes, I put the titlepic I want in the wad file and I save it.
The result is I cant get out of the XWE.
If I use the Task Manager, it will not show any title picture!
Even the normal doom one.

The idea of pwads (short for patch wad) is that they are used to replace or "patch" specific parts in the iwad, which would be doom2.wad in this case. Generally regarding Doom, you are limited to "replacing" things, not replacing in a general sense, but that any lumps in your pwad will take precedence over entries in the iwad given that they have the same lump names.

If I wanted to replace the pistol sound for example, I would find a wave file, insert it into my pwad with XWE, and rename it to "dspistol", which is the same lump name used in the doom2.wad. This is how replacing almost anything in your pwads is done.

Textures on the other hand can be a bit more complicated. In Doom, textures are composed of graphics called "patches" and are arranged together to form a texture that you can use in your map editor. These arrangements are defined in a lump called TEXTURE1, which can be replaced like like sounds, sprites, or other graphics.
This allows you to essentially add new textures without replacing the old ones, although you can just replace the patch graphics only, but the doom2.wad's TEXTURE1 will still generate the same texture dimensions, patch arrangement, and number of textures available to you in your map editor. However, you can get around this by choosing textures that are only comprised of 1 patch, so you can just replace that patch and expect it to work with little effort.

Understanding how pwads work will help you climb the learning curve when it comes to Doom editing.

I have a bunch of .bmp texture files in a directory and I've tried everything to get them in-game: In DooM Builder I tell it to use 'additional textures from directory' and I see them in-editor but not in-game! I've tried using XWE as instructed above to make both a stand-alone texture wad file with the bmp's, and inserting them into the level wad in question - that I'd load up DooM Builder and use the 'Additonal textures and flats from WAD file' option.

Again it yields me the same result of seeing the new textures in-editor but not in-game!!!! The only thing I DID get to work was downloading existing texture compilations from The AfterGlow; with those I'd be able to see them in-editor AND in-game. What am I not doing?

I have this arrangement in XWE:

TX_START
AASTONE
AAFLOOR
TX_END

Anyone? :(

Ok I got 'em working! Seems it was really stingy about having stuff in .png format only (I had .bmp's)....

Kappes Buur said:

Save the texture in the png format.

Although I am a great advocate of .png format images, they are not supported by vanilla DooM/2.exe and by some source ports. Therefore, if the project is for vanilla DooM or such source ports, the best format is still .bmp.

ReX said:

if the project is for vanilla DooM or such source ports, the best format is still .bmp.

Strictly speaking, if the project is for vanilla doom, then it won't read BMPs either. It will read Doom format graphics. It's just that most WAD editing tools will convert BMPs to Doom format without the user even being particularly aware of the conversion.

However, that's a relatively recent development. The really old Doom graphics tools worked with formats such as gif and pcx and wouldn't know what a bmp was at all.

Enjay said:

Strictly speaking, if the project is for vanilla doom, then it won't read BMPs either. It will read Doom format graphics. It's just that most WAD editing tools will convert BMPs to Doom format without the user even being particularly aware of the conversion.

Of course; I keep forgetting. I'm so used to working with bitmaps (and more recently, graphics in png format), and seeing wad images in bmp format, that I don't remember the whole DooM Graphics Format.