Merging textures from multiple WADs

[Malefication]

Two questions in one day, here I go!

 

So I'm using the "episode 5" texture WAD combined with the Eternal Doom texture WAD. No issues in making the textures work with my WADs when I just use one through SLADE. I can only get one of them to work at a time, though. If I want the ep5 textures, I won't have the Eternal textures and vice versa. From what I've been able to find, you're just supposed to have both open in SLADE, copy & paste from one TEXTURE1 to the other (assuming I have eg. ep 5's TEXTURE1 and PNAMES combined with my map already).

 

The result I get is this:

 

I'm not sure what causes it. I have my map as well as both texture WADs open in SLADE while trying this. Same result when I tried to paste and save from one texture WAD to the other as well. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

[Dark Pulse]

If you're talking about this link, that's saying not to do it in between map lumps (i.e; don't accidentally mess up the order of map lumps by putting something inbetween them or whatever), but you may also be referring to this part:

Quote

Doom creates a list of patches in the PNAMES lump where it gives an index number to each patch. Then in the TEXTURE1 and TEXTURE2 lumps, it refers to these patches by their index number instead of their name. As a result, careless modification of the PNAMES lump can entirely destroy most of the textures in the game, since they will reference the wrong patches.

However, immediately after this is "SLADE only adds new patches to the end of PNAMES, avoiding the problem." As well as "Here, however, the graphics are stand-alone, so all the textures we'll make will be composed of a single patch, making this system an extra complication to deal with. Fortunately, SLADE automatizes all this so it's still very simple."

 

Basically, just make a backup of your WAD/work/whatever you're combining these for, and then just follow the instructions carefully, and you should be fine. If it screws up, restore your backup and try again. This is all assuming you're trying to make it vanilla-compatible, though - if you're intending it for, say, only ZDoom play, you could pretty much just copy/paste the multiple TEXTURE1/PNAMES lumps and ZDoom will understand what to do; vanilla Doom only reads the last ones defined and discards everything else.

[Dark Pulse]

Patches need to get copied as well, basically.

 

Doom textures can be broken down into two groups: the patches themselves (the actual graphics), and the textures themselves (which are composed of one or more patches). You can think of patches as like graphical layers on a Photoshop PSD, and the texture itself the final PSD, composed and ready to be displayed.

 

Basically, it's got the textures defined and properly merged (the TEXTURES lump), and the actual definitions for the patches (PNAMES) are present, but presumably the patch graphics themselves aren't contained in one WAD, so depending on which one you use, it's missing about half of them.

 

Without the patches there, it has no idea what graphics to draw - and so it says it can't find the patches.

 

A lot of more advanced ports nowadays (like the ZDoom family, probably others) simply let you use regular old PNG graphics nowadays as a replacement - it's not as flexible as the old patch system (since you could compose literally anything you wanted out of the patches for the most part), but it also is easier for people to understand.

Edited April 25, 2019 by Dark Pulse

[Malefication]

When I searched for answers, I read that the patches would automatically get copied over, and that they can be incredibly fickle if you try to change them (something to do with the order of the items in them?). I can't currently remember exactly what I did, but during some fiddling with patches (basically doing trial and error to try and figure it out), SLADE would repeatedly crash on me when I tried to do that specific thing.

 

What do I do, step by step, to copy over patches/PNAMES as well? I can't seem to copy them over in the same manner as I do with TEXTURE1.

[Malefication]

27 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

If you're talking about this link

I think it was somewhere on these forums I read it. That said, you pointed me in the right direction and I managed to solve it now. I was just making it more complex than I had to. It seems so damn easy now that I know the proper way to add textures from multiple WADs! Thanks so much for the help!