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Kyka

Using add on textures.

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Major Noob question , I know but here goes.

When you make a wad that uses add on textures, how do you ensure that when you post the map, that the textures are there as well? I dont think that textures automatically attach themselves to the wad file itself when you use them?

So yeah, just wanted to know how you make it so that when someone downloads your wad, all the textures are there included as part of the package.

Any help appreciated. Thanks people!!

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Or just copy and paste them and paste (Using SlumpEd) all the textures, **_START and **_ENDS, PNAMES, and TEXTURE1 lumps into your map from the texture wad :P . Just make sure you give proper credit (or get proper permission where needed) if the textures were not made by you. ;)

EDIT: Or you could make a .zip or .pk3 file which has your map and the texture wad in it. Some ports can load these directly. (Skulltag and ZDoom come off the top of my head.)

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Never used SlumpEd or XWE... may have to go download them and have a play with them...


thanks heaps guys... :)

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Dreadopp said:

Or just copy and paste them

There's that word again. It may be "just" a simple task to you, but if someone doesn't know what they are doing, there's no "just" about it.

Dreadopp said:

**_START and **_ENDS,

For someone who doesn't know what they are doing, how should they know what that means? I assume you mean P_START/P_END or PP_START/PP_END. Remember, if the textures are in a WAD already, there could be other wad markers in there for sprites or flats, depending on which WAD they are coming from.

What's more, for patches, P/PP markers are not actually needed, so they may not even be there.

Dreadopp said:

EDIT: Or you could make a .zip or .pk3 file which has your map and the texture wad in it. Some ports can load these directly. (Skulltag and ZDoom come off the top of my head.)

Or if Zdoom is being used, and he wanted to stick with the WAD format, and have everything in the one WAD (it isn't clear if Kyka's textures are already in a WAD), he could create TX_START and TX_END markers in his WAD and place the textures between them with no need for a TEXTURE1 and PNAMES lump. I don't think most (any?) map editors support the loading of resources from zips yet.

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Enjay said:

Or if Zdoom is being used, and he wanted to stick with the WAD format, and have everything in the one WAD (it isn't clear if Kyka's textures are already in a WAD), he could create TX_START and TX_END markers in his WAD and place the textures between them with no need for a TEXTURE1 and PNAMES lump. I don't think most (any?) map editors support the loading of resources from zips yet.

I'm pretty sure Slade does.

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Enjay said:

For someone who doesn't know what they are doing, how should they know what that means? I assume you mean P_START/P_END or PP_START/PP_END. Remember, if the textures are in a WAD already, there could be other wad markers in there for sprites or flats, depending on which WAD they are coming from.

Yes, I was referring to the P_START/P_END stuff. I sometimes see F_START/F_ENDS or TX_START/TX_END, which is why I used "**_START" and "**_END" because there are different types. I guess I should have explained that a little bit more. Sorry :(.

Enjay said:

What's more, for patches, P/PP markers are not actually needed, so they may not even be there.

Now there's something that I wasn't aware of.

Enjay said:

I don't think most (any?) map editors support the loading of resources from zips yet.

Well, I was not referring to editors that could load them, I was talking about how one could drag and drop a .zip, or .pk3, onto the .exe (of the port) and the port would run it. I know that ZDoom, GZDoom and Skulltag all do it.

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OK... to clarify a little, I use doombuilder, and I have loaded a .wad with all the textures that I want to use. Y' know when you open a new map and it asks if you want to use additional textures.

Other than that, I must confess I'm a little over my head here

<-- is a bit of a technical noob.

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Then XWE or Slumped are your friends : if you choose XWE there is a forum if you have any question.

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I believe that at least some of the markers (I'm not sure which ones) are required for most source ports, though I'm pretty sure ZDoom just ignores them all.

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esselfortium said:
I'm not sure which ones

The sprites and flats markers. The patch markers aren't needed because PNAMES groups the patches. I'm guessing id included them for editing purposes. Various editing tools do use the patch markers, so it's foolish to omit them.

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It is perhaps foolish to omit them but there must be hundreds of WADs out there that have patches in them but no P/PP markers. I'd say it was equally, if not more, foolish for tool authors to rely on them (although I'm not sure which tools do).

Right back to the earliest days of Doom editing people (myself included) were discovering wonderful things like you can just stick a graphic with the appropriate name into your WAD and replace a wall texture. I don't think I even knew much, if anything, about WAD markers. I did know, however, that it didn't work with flats and sprites. Remember all those early sprite mods that used dmgraph and a batch file to modify your IWAD? Ahhhh, happy days. :)

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On a related note, if the textures you are using are already contained within a wad file, then you can just use DoomBuilder's "Save Map Into" function and save your map into the texture wad.

I typically keep my maps and the texture wad they're using separate during development, so it's a feature I routinely use.

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I like your idea nuxius.

Can anyone tell me (or point me to a forum/thread that will tell me) what patches and flats are, and how the differ from sprites and textures.

I am using a couple of texture wad files at the mo, (but I don't know how to make one. I will go have a look at my existing ones.)

BTW has anyone else noticed this. Sometimes when I use add on textures, they will change the colour shading of some of the monsters and even some of the weapons...? Does anyone know why this is?

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Guest DILDOMASTER666

Patches, sprites and flats all are basically just a mess of bytes which represents an 8-bit image (each byte refers to a specific PLAYPAL color entry if I'm not mistaken), and flats are always 64x64 (or in Hexen's case, a few are 64x128 or something bizarre of that nature) and are pure, raw data. I'm just kind of going off the top of my head, but I'm sure that's the rough idea. It would be nice if someone more experienced could help me out too.

Using XWE, and assuming you want to run your level in any port, I would do this.

1) File -> Open. Select a texture wad you want to combine resources with your map.
2) In the little row of buttons at the bottom, select "Patches" to filter out anything that isn't between P_START and P_END.
3) Left-click the first entry (at the top), then shift-left-click the last one. At the top bar, go to Entry -> Save as. Don't worry about assigning a filename, XWE will ignore it. Save inside of a folder you'll remember.
4) Repeat step 3 for Flats, in a different folder.
5) Repeat steps 3 and 4 for every texture wad.
6) Open your map wadfile.
7) Entry -> Add. Name it "P_START".
8) Entry -> Add. Name it "P_END".
9) Select P_START.
10) Entry -> Load. Open whatever folder you saved all your patches. Left-click the first one, then shift-left-click the last one, and press enter.
11) Wait... This could take a moment.
12) They should all appear between P_START and P_END! Now, select "Flats" or "Floors" (depending on which XWE version you're using) from the bottom bar. Do the same thing to Load all your patches in, except this time load your flats. XWE should do the appropriate "Save As Doom Flat" operation for each imported flat.
13) Shift-select all of your patches in the "Patches" view; right click any one of them and press Add To Texture.

Now, File -> Cleanup. This is assuming you are using numerous texture WADs, and that the textures are all single-patches, and retain their patch name in TEXTURE1 as an actual texture. Otherwise, if you want to be quick and use 1 texture WAD, open your map wad, and select File -> Merge.

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A flat is a 64x64 texture used for floors and ceilings. It's saved in a different format than that of texture graphics (and you can convert them to the Doom format by using the "Save as Doom Flat" in XWE's menu).
Patches refer to the graphic lumps you see in your lump editor. Patches are just graphics that are "patched" together to create what we use in our map editors called "textures".

A texture consists of one or more patches as defined by the TEXTURE1 lump. All this lump does is tell Doom how to assemble the patches when you run the game. The PNAMES lump is also an important lump. It lists all the patches to be used by the TEXTURE1 lump.

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Kyka, I don't know if you have said or not yet, but if you are making a Zdoom specific level, you don't need to worry too much about the differences between textures, patches and flats because Zdoom can put any of these (and even sprites) on floors or walls (which is a significant change to how these were originally handled). So, if you are using Zdoom, you can put all your new graphics into your WAD as textures and slap them on the walls or floors as you see fit.

If, however, you do plan on making your project compatible with more ports than just those based on Zdoom, you will need to use textures for walls and flats for floors.

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.... This stuff is at least a little clearer now. I am slowly putting together a megawad (I've noticed that "megawad" is almost a dirty word around here... guess you guys must have seen a lot of projects come and go and not come to much)... have been working on it for a long time, and I gotta be able to understand this technical stuff better than I do. I want the wad to be compatible across most formats. I will just keep building levels and learning about this stuff as I go.

This forum has been such a help.

Thanks heaps guys for taking the effort to explain this

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