Adding textures

I'd usually just replace an existing texture that I wouldn't use with a custom one. But I'd like to learn how to add additional texture entries to a wadfile. I was wanting to add an animated waterfall and lavafall.

Thanks in advance.

If you use xwe, just add the texture and name it whatever you want. It wont overwrite any textures, and you can still use it in an editor.

you mean like you want a texture that does the same effect as water1-4flats and the sfall1-4 textures?

depends on the port. for vanilla doom, i really dont know. for zdoom, create a lump, name it ANIMDEFS. in that, i think you write

texture lavfall1
pic 1 lavfall1 tics 4
pic 2 lavfall2 tics 4


or something like that, until you run out of lavfallX textures, or something like that.

adding a new animated texture to vanilla doom is possible by using an existing animated texture and making it wider (for example use the sfall and make it 128 wide instead of 64). You than insert a new patch and put it next to the original.

You can use XWE for example to do this.

To display your new patch set the x-offset of the texture to 64 in your map editor.

The downside of this method is that if you use a wall of sfall which is wider than 64pixels you will see your new texture as well.

In vanilla doom, you can extend animated flats (and I think textures) by inserting textures between the start and end textures. Take FWATER for example. If I want a 8-frame animation instead of the 4-frame one, I believe all you need to do is set up the flats in your wad like so:

FWATER1
FWATER2
FWATER3
MYFLATA
MYFLATB
MYFLATC
MYFLATD
FWATER4

Basically the only thing that matters is that the animation starts with the first frame (FWATER1) and ends with the last frame (FWATER4). The naming of the the frames between do not matter. It's the order that matters. In that example the names FWATER2 and FWATER3 might not be necessary. I believe the same can work for textures as well.
They need to be between FF_START and F_END and converted to Doom flats (in XWE). Texture patches afaik, don't really require lump markers, although it's good to use PP_ and P_ markers just for the sake of it.

Also, something of note, WFALL1 through WFALL4 is unused, but the animation will work if you supply textures with those names.

For adding animated textures for Boom-compatible wads, you can compile a ANIMATED lump for your wad. See the SWANTBLS utility for this.

For ZDoom compatibilty, check out the ANIMDEFS lump on the ZDoom wiki.

For adding new textures without replacing old ones:

XWE let's you add textures this way. After you have imported a tetxure patch in XWE, if you right-click on it, at the bottom of the popup menu there are two options: "Add to Patch Names" and "Add to Texture"

First off, add all of your new patches to the PNAMES list. This is the list of available patches you can use in the TEXTURE1 lump. When you click this option, it will automatically create a PNAMES list with all the stock Doom 2 patches listed. You'll see your newly added patch in this list. Repeat for all patches you'd like to add.

To create a texture from this, you can click "Add to Texture", and like the PNAMES option, it will generate a list of all the Doom 2 textures. Go to the TEXTURE1 lump and you'll see that the patch you added is listed as a texture at the end. You can then edit this texture's name, dimensions, which patches it uses (by default it sets up the patch as a single-patch texture with the dimensions set to the patch's size. Repeat this step for all texture's you'd like to do.

So really it's as simple as selecting all your imported textures, and right clicking, then selecting "Add to Patch Names" and then "Add to Texture".

EarthQuake said:

So really it's as simple as selecting all your imported textures, and right clicking, then selecting "Add to Patch Names" and then "Add to Texture".

Actually, you don't need to do both. "Add to Texture" will automatically add the patch name, too :).

Excellent responses. Back to mapping I go.

On a similar note, how do I get the palette right? Say I want to use a ZdooM custom monster in a Heretic WAD, it's pretty easy to copy over, merge etc so the monster works in-game. But it uses the DooM palette not Heretic so it looks funky. Same with using a sprite from, say, HeXen, in Heretic by renaming it the same thing as something being replaced.

It looks fine in XWE but not the game. How would I convert these DooM-paletted sprites so they look proper in another game?

You can load a palette-ized doom/heretic/etc graphic into an image manipulation program and save the palette to a file. Then you can load the image in question into the program and apply the palette you just saved. Photoshop does wonders with this as it has various dithering options and a good color-matching algorithm.

However, if you're using ZDoom for this, you can always convert the images to .png format and import those directly into the wad with XWE (as raw data, iirc).

(Erm, or was that GZDoom only? D:)

EarthQuake said:

Erm, or was that GZDoom only? D:)

ZDoom can handle true-color PNG images, but unless its a HUD graphic it will get converted to the Doom palette. (Right now HUD graphics are the only thing software (G)ZDoom can handle as truecolor.)

Thanks, will give that a try. :D

MasterOFDeath said:

ZDoom can handle true-color PNG images, but unless its a HUD graphic it will get converted to the Doom palette. (Right now HUD graphics are the only thing software (G)ZDoom can handle as truecolor.)

It's still preferable to do this instead of converting the palette - for those who use GZDoom. In the software renderer the difference is so minimal that it doesn't matter.

Personally I prefer to just adjust the colors so that they look good in both renderers, instead of making them ugly in software. :P

Strange, whenever I try to import the .png images, or anything for that matter, XWE crashes. :?