Underused high quality resources

[MattFright]

As good as alternatives like cc4tex, otex, or some realm667 stuff like suicide bombers and other (honestly overused) assets there are, i'm always trying to look for new ways to make my maps look and feel more unique, also because i'm a bit addicted to that feeling of "oooo shiny new toy!!".

 

Here's some i feel deserve far more use and attention than they currently get:

 

Spoiler

Texture packs

Jimmytex - Vanilla aesthetic flavored, i'm surprised this barely gets used by anyone at all, because a lot of these edits are beautiful and super fun to use, as well as fitting lots of niches left unfilled by stock Doom 1 or 2 textures.

 

Cagetex 1 and 2 - While this gets a boost from being partially integrated onto cc4tex, most of the textures that i actually consider to be the prettiest are left to gather dust as i don't see them used in any maps whatsoever, which is especially sad to see when they refine the "Doom mars base" aesthetic just enough for it to look and feel fresh again.

 

StalungCraeft - Pretty good set of medieval brick and wooden textures that doesn't get the attention it deserves. It might be small, but nothing that pairing it with another larger pack can't help with.

 

NMN Corp 1 and 2 - Granted, some of these are unusably bad, but some of these are also some of my all time favorites, and others are very easily salvageable/modifiable with a few tweaks. I'd say this combined with something like Doom 3 Retro or Otex could make for a really unique looking type of gritty military techbase aesthetic.

 

High Resolution Textures w/o the High Resolution - Look. Some of these look so terrible that they might explain why barely anybody uses these, but at the same time, some of these turn some of Doom's most amateurish and ugly looking textures (such as the animated fire textures, lots of the flats that look like they were drawn in ms paint, etc) into beautiful, superior versions that are everything that the original wished it was.

 

May20res - Mayhem 2020 had a really beautiful reimagination of the classic Doom aesthetic to me, using most of those unused/scrapped Doom graphics, and in the end with this resource pack you can make some decent looking cityscapes, extremely colorful and detailed techbases, and generally abstract but appealing designs in typical Doom fashion, except in a fresh new flavor.

 

DevTex - Really good texture pack for doing blockouts, stylized like those Source orange blockout textures.

 

OAGB Textures - A really handy and colorful converted Quake blockout texture pack (w/ some of Remilia's own thrown in, too) used for the Oops! All Greyboxes! community project.

 

Wireframe Texture Pack - Small little texture pack on the same style of Valiant's MAP31, but with a lot more variety! This one has actually been used in a few maps i've seen but i'd love to see it used even more. :)

 

ComTex - New but huge texture pack with tons of good really good and unique textures in it. It's still frequently updated and worked on, too! 

 

The Kerberos Complex - Very colorful and techbase-y texture pack that i think really should get more use.

 

 

 

Sprites and Misc.

NMN's Workshop (assortment of goodies) - Some of the best looking and rarely ever used sprites for enemies, pickups and decorations that i've seen. If you want custom monsters in your wad i urge you to at least give these a look!

 

Hellstorm Cannon, Gatling Laser, Freeze Rifle, Plasma Repeater (and a few other beautiful Realm667 weapons i don't see used anywhere) - Guys, please give these a look. Some of these look so beautiful, yet they don't seem to ever get used anywhere in any capacity, meanwhile a lot of the time i just see the same weapons that get reused for a million different wads everywhere. I'd love to see more people making use of these or modifying them to add a bit more personality to their maps, if they want custom weapons at all.

 

Cryocubus - I don't quite know whether this is really possible to adapt to Dehacked (classic, expanded, MBF or whatever other flavor of it) because i don't have that much experience with that, but if it could be i think this would be a monster i wouln't mind seeing overused everywhere. It fits a very specific role that is left unfilled in the Doom 2 beastiary, that is an exclusively short ranged tanky demon. Absolutely harmless over a distance, but extremely deadly in close quarters, and an absolute beast at infighting.

 

Kuro's sky textures - If you want an even bigger pool of skies to choose from, you can't go wrong with choosing from these too. Some are very clearly mirrored, but honestly, i find it weirdly appealing as it reminds me of skies from wads from 1994-2000 (except without the horrible palette choices).

 

Hell-Forged Resources - These are some of the best looking resources i've seen in a good while, yet nobody's ever used them (aside from Hell-Forged itself) for some reason!!! These include really nice looking textures and even better looking enemies!

 

Doom 2016 skydomes - Okay, this one might be a stretch, but hear me out. These take some editing to get working on classic doom as it should be obvious, but you'd be surprised with how beautiful some of these look on Doom 2 after properly converting them to Doom GFX and maybe tweaking some colors before or after. I've started bulk converting these (got to around 80 variations) but lost motivation after a while, hopefully i get around to finishing it someday and post it here so other people don't need to go through the annoying process of editing them until they find the right one for their map.

 

Aaaand probably some others that i'm probably forgetting about. Might update the OP if i ever find anything else worth pointing out. 

 

Anyways, the question i want to bring here is: are there any high quality but criminally underused resources you know about and think should be used more often? I'd love to hear some of you guys' suggestions!!

Edited November 28, 2021 by MattFright : added more stuff!! again!!

[Omniarch]

Since you have already mentioned CageTex and May20res, my nomination would be Useful Doom Edits, which is simple, but incredibly helpful.

[1Destro3456]

Thank you, I'll try to see if I can text them out later, I already am using Jimmytex.wad on my next map, I have to keep a close eye on this thread.

[Doomkid]

Fantastic post, I love to see roundups of resources like this.

 

Here's some more high quality texture packs, a shame to see them not used all that often:

 

Parallel Phobos Texture Pack (Basically a bunch of really useful alternate Doom textures)
Erratic Texture Pack
Realistic Texture Pack

UAC Ultra Textures

Echelon Textures

[Catpho]

Yeah, having a place that points out cool resources is, well, cool. Here's some stuff i stumbled upon while wiki-editing:

(Yes i could've spoilered all of this but i like texture window shopping)

 

Ed_C Resources (link)

Ed: Collection of 300+ sci-fi / tech-base textures in 8x resolution. Many of these textures are shaped to fit angles & cuts that are pretty standardized in everyday mapping.

Screens (from Ed's website)

More:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

LKTex (link)

Textures local wizard lupinx-Kassman used to wrought entire worlds, at your fingertips!

Screens (by kassman):

 

lostres 

 

Doom Alpha/Beta enthusiast's dream come true. Used in MAYhem 2020.

 

Junkcity (link)

Victorian sutff from prolific texture artist jmickle. She's made some cool stuff for wads like MAYhem 2018. Search her name!

 

 

zekhmet project (link)

Spoiler

 

Crazy mid-90s fever dream stuff from Yakfak. Probably the most niche of these, but pretty fun to look at.

 

Tip of the iceberg only. As always, Post your Doom textures is a good place for resource shopping, though stuff in there is less centrally packaged, as part of the charm. There's also a sidebar mention from rd in the 2019 Cacowards linking some pretty sweet packs (some mentioned here!).

Edited April 29, 2021 by Catpho

[The Lone Wolf]

I loved this topic honestly, original and outstanding as well as interesting. Thank you.

[Redneckerz]

7 hours ago, MattFright said:

As good as alternatives like cc4tex, otex, or some realm667 stuff like suicide bombers and other (honestly overused) assets there are, i'm always trying to look for new ways to make my maps look and feel more unique, also because i'm a bit addicted to that feeling of "oooo shiny new toy!!".

 

Here's some i feel deserve far more use and attention than they currently get:

 

  Hide contents

 

Jimmytex - Vanilla aesthetic flavored, i'm surprised this barely gets used by anyone at all, because a lot of these edits are beautiful and super fun to use, as well as fitting lots of niches left unfilled by stock Doom 1 or 2 textures.

 

Cagetex 1 and 2 - While this gets a boost from being partially integrated onto cc4tex, most of the textures that i actually consider to be the prettiest are left to gather dust as i don't see them used in any maps whatsoever, which is especially sad to see when they refine the "Doom mars base" aesthetic just enough for it to look and feel fresh again.

 

NMN Corp 1 and 2 - Granted, some of these are unusably bad, but some of these are also some of my all time favorites, and others are very easily salvageable/modifiable with a few tweaks. I'd say this combined with something like Doom 3 Retro or Otex could make for a really unique looking type of gritty military techbase aesthetic.

 

High Resolution Textures w/o the High Resolution - Look. Some of these look so terrible that they might explain why barely anybody uses these, but at the same time, some of these turn some of Doom's most amateurish and ugly looking textures (such as the animated fire textures, lots of the flats that look like they were drawn in ms paint, etc) into beautiful, superior versions that are everything that the original wished it was.

 

Hellstorm Cannon, Gatling Laser, Freeze Rifle, Plasma Repeater (and a few other beautiful Realm667 weapons i don't see used anywhere) - Guys, please give these a look. Some of these look so beautiful, yet they don't seem to ever get used anywhere in any capacity, meanwhile a lot of the time i just see the same weapons that get reused for a million different wads everywhere. I'd love to see more people making use of these or modifying them to add a bit more personality to their maps, if they want custom weapons at all.

 

May20res - Mayhem 2020 had a really beautiful reimagination of the classic Doom aesthetic to me, using most of those unused/scrapped Doom graphics, and in the end with this resource pack you can make some decent looking cityscapes, extremely colorful and detailed techbases, and generally abstract but appealing designs in typical Doom fashion, except in a fresh new flavor.

 

Cryocubus - I don't quite know whether this is really possible to adapt to Dehacked (classic, expanded, MBF or whatever other flavor of it) because i don't have that much experience with that, but if it could be i think this would be a monster i wouln't mind seeing overused everywhere. It fits a very specific role that is left unfilled in the Doom 2 beastiary, that is an exclusively short ranged tanky demon. Absolutely harmless over a distance, but extremely deadly in close quarters, and an absolute beast at infighting.

 

Doom 2016 skydomes - Okay, this one might be a stretch, but hear me out. These take some editing to get working on classic doom as it should be obvious, but you'd be surprised with how beautiful some of these look on Doom 2 after properly converting them to Doom GFX and maybe tweaking some colors before or after. I've started bulk converting these (got to around 80 variations) but lost motivation after a while, hopefully i get around to finishing it someday and post it here so other people don't need to go through the annoying process of editing them until they find the right one for their map.

 

Aaaand probably some others that i'm probably forgetting about. Might update the OP if i ever find anything else worth pointing out. 

 

Anyways, the question i want to bring here is: are there any high quality but criminally underused resources you know about and think should be used more often? I'd love to hear some of you guys' suggestions!!

I have just started this page since for some reason the Wiki didn't cover yet. Texture packs. Who knew that cc4-tex would be the defacto standard in a lot of mapping projects?

 

This also goes for @Catpho's links (Thanks!)

 

Impeccable timing of this, haha.

[Kuro_mahoh]

These all look really cool! This thread in general is just...


(Imagine Michael Rosen saying "nice" the imgur link I got broke or maybe I don't know how to use it)

[DMPhobos]

In my opinion the Doom 3 textures have been criminally underused despite how long they've been out there, there's been only a few maps and one very recent community project that have made good use of them. I would love to see more maps using them

[Somniac]

Cage's textures are great, I used them a lot on a recent map I made. There's some great alternative techbase ones in there. CC4 tex is a very useful one to have around too, though I understand it has been used a lot.

 

I'm always up for trying new textures so I'll have to give some of these a spin, quite a few of them are new to me. I'd like to do a map with the Doom 3 textures one day for sure.

[Egg Boy]

https://www.wad-archive.com/amp/wad/CR8-Quake-Texture-set-compiled-for-Doom

was going to make a set using textures from this, have since moved on to other stuff (may come back to it) I know @Aurelius is working on something with it, and I've seen Tarnsman maps with it. Really nice, grungy aesthetic. 

 

Edit: also wanted to mention 32in24-15tex_v2, its basically better CC4tex

http://esselfortium.net/wasd/32in24-15_tex_v2.zip

[NeoWorm]

NMN made some really nice new monster sprites that I never saw being actually used. And that's a shame.
https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=69433

[MattFright]

7 minutes ago, NeoWorm said:

NMN made some really nice new monster sprites that I never saw being actually used. And that's a shame.
https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=69433

 

Holy shit. These look SO GOOD, that's such a great find that i'm gonna include it to the main post. I'm very very tempted to use some of these for an upcoming project too, thanks for sharing!

[roadworx]

you don't see requiem's custom textures being used very often

[ReaperAA]

9 hours ago, roadworx said:

you don't see requiem's custom textures being used very often

 

Or The Darkening E2's textures for that matter (even though I understand that OTEX already has many similar but more polished textures).

[roadworx]

1 hour ago, ReaperAA said:

 

Or The Darkening E2's textures for that matter (even though I understand that OTEX already has many similar but more polished textures).

actually, all this makes me wonder - are mappers able to use resources from perdition's gate and hell 2 pay? resources from other iwads and games are regularly used in custom wads, sooo...

[Gez]

They're not resources you could use if you wanted your work to become an official add-on; but otherwise there's no real reason you can't use them. None of the original developers would object.

[printz]

Those tall skies worry me, because they're going to look different between Boom (no freelook, so they cover the whole normal screen) and Eternity (shifted to fill the looking-up range, so they'll repeat from the horizon down), and I don't know how to fit them properly...

[SilverMiner]

27 minutes ago, printz said:

Those tall skies worry me, because they're going to look different between Boom (no freelook, so they cover the whole normal screen) and Eternity (shifted to fill the looking-up range, so they'll repeat from the horizon down), and I don't know how to fit them properly...

For Boom: squeeze them vertically

For Eternity: use the tall variants via EMAPINFO

[printz]

4 minutes ago, SilverMiner said:

For Boom: squeeze them vertically

For Eternity: use the tall variants via EMAPINFO

No, actually for Boom they're probably not meant to be squeezed, but to actually fill the entire screen as you look ahead. But Eternity reuses Heretic's convention of starting them from the vertical centre up to the maximum sight range, since both in Heretic and Eternity you can look up and down. So a map with tall mountains and skies will look correct in Boom, but shifted up in Eternity (so the mountains will fill the whole view). And any areas with visible sky on the lower half will look like shit in Eternity, while correct in Boom.

[SilverMiner]

3 minutes ago, printz said:

No, actually for Boom they're probably not meant to be squeezed, but to actually fill the entire screen as you look ahead. But Eternity reuses Heretic's convention of starting them from the vertical centre up to the maximum sight range, since both in Heretic and Eternity you can look up and down. So a map with tall mountains and skies will look correct in Boom, but shifted up in Eternity (so the mountains will fill the whole view). And any areas with visible sky on the lower half will look like shit in Eternity, while correct in Boom.

I mean you squeeze the graphic to use it in Boom as SKYx and use the untouched tall variant in Eternity via Mapinfo

[Walter confetti]

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/graphics/koultex

Koultex by Rottking, a series of hell-ish Doom textures edit

 

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/graphics/2mbrown

Too much brown by Tormentor667, a series of Quake-like textures that was used pretty a lot back in the day iirc, but not so much nowadays

 

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/graphics/freetex_pack1

A very small pack of another Quake-ish style textures made by Kaiser, feels ideal for techbase maps

 

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/graphics/gloom

Very obscure textures set by Rick Clark, surprisingly very good.

 

Also, i always wondered why people uses CR8 textures, since the author asked to not use it in the readme, quote:

Quote

Authors may NOT use the contents of this file as a base for modification or
reuse.

And so, why people use it? Even a old edition of Abyssal Speedmapping Session used it as a base!

Edited May 7, 2021 by Walter confetti

[SilverMiner]

@Walter confetti Don't you know are people allowed to use MM2 content? Just in case

[Gez]

8 hours ago, Walter confetti said:

Also, i always wondered why people uses CR8 textures, since the author asked to not use it in the readme, quote: 

That's obviously an error out of a lazy use of the readme template. (I absolutely think the default for the template generator should have been to allow reuse instead of disallowing it). What is the point of making a texture pack -- a pure texture pack without even an example level! -- and then disallow reuse? "Look at all these textures I'm not allowing anyone to use! Bwahahah! I worked on them so that they'll never be used! I'm releasing them just to forbid their use! Also I didn't even make them myself since they're from a Quake texture pack anyway, but I can still forbid their use! Woohoo!"

[SilverMiner]

23 minutes ago, Gez said:

That's obviously an error out of a lazy use of the readme template. (I absolutely think the default for the template generator should have been to allow reuse instead of disallowing it). What is the point of making a texture pack -- a pure texture pack without even an example level! -- and then disallow reuse? "Look at all these textures I'm not allowing anyone to use! Bwahahah! I worked on them so that they'll never be used! I'm releasing them just to forbid their use! Also I didn't even make them myself since they're from a Quake texture pack anyway, but I can still forbid their use! Woohoo!"

Ah, that was a texture pack

Lol

Anyway, quoting myself, are people allowed to use MM2 content? I seen some wads were using it

[Gez]

The text file I found for MM2 only forbids reusing the levels, so the rest should be fair game.

[roadworx]

4 hours ago, SilverMiner said:

Anyway, quoting myself, are people allowed to use MM2 content? I seen some wads were using it

i actually asked someone this who used mm2 textures in their megawad - their response was that, because the möller brothers haven't been active in the doom community for 20+ years, nobody is really gonna care one way or another. resources from both memento moris, requiem, and anything else they worked on are more or less public domain at this point, and unless they come back and tell all of us that we can't use their stuff (although as @Gez pointed out, they never really said that the textures were forbidden to begin with, so they won't) then it's fine

 

tbh, if it's been at least 15 years, and it doesn't explicitly say not to use the graphics like dystopia 3 does, then i'd say go ahead and use them

Edited May 8, 2021 by roadworx

[Mechadon]

13 hours ago, Walter confetti said:

Also, i always wondered why people uses CR8 textures, since the author asked to not use it in the readme, quote:

And so, why people use it? Even a old edition of Abyssal Speedmapping Session used it as a base!

Yea sorry about that!  I put together that texture pack many years ago and then bunged up the readme file.  From what I remember I used the readme generator and, like Gez mentioned, the default must have been to disallow reuse.  I just missed it before I uploaded.

 

I've always wanted to go back and redo that texture set anyways (and get proper permission to port it, which I didn't do back then).  I knew very little about what I was doing at the time and there's a ton of stuff that could have been converted over better (ie. I'd get rid of those awful D64 switches that I recolored).  Maybe one day I can redo it if I get some spare time.

 

So anyone reading this that wants to use that texture pack, please just ignore that usage clause.  You're free to use them in your project (and be sure to give proper credit to Speedy as well).

[Walter confetti]

13 hours ago, SilverMiner said:

Don't you know are people allowed to use MM2 content? Just in case

 

Sure, i know it. You can take everything except levels, same goes for Memento Mori iirc

 

7 hours ago, Mechadon said:

Yea sorry about that!  I put together that texture pack many years ago and then bunged up the readme file.  From what I remember I used the readme generator and, like Gez mentioned, the default must have been to disallow reuse.  I just missed it before I uploaded.

 

I've always wanted to go back and redo that texture set anyways (and get proper permission to port it, which I didn't do back then).  I knew very little about what I was doing at the time and there's a ton of stuff that could have been converted over better (ie. I'd get rid of those awful D64 switches that I recolored).  Maybe one day I can redo it if I get some spare time.

 

So anyone reading this that wants to use that texture pack, please just ignore that usage clause.  You're free to use them in your project (and be sure to give proper credit to Speedy as well).

 

Thanks for the explanation, Mech! And i hope to see a new version of CR8 textures set sooner or later!

[VanaheimRanger]

9 hours ago, Mechadon said:

Yea sorry about that!  I put together that texture pack many years ago and then bunged up the readme file.  From what I remember I used the readme generator and, like Gez mentioned, the default must have been to disallow reuse.  I just missed it before I uploaded.

 

I've always wanted to go back and redo that texture set anyways (and get proper permission to port it, which I didn't do back then).  I knew very little about what I was doing at the time and there's a ton of stuff that could have been converted over better (ie. I'd get rid of those awful D64 switches that I recolored).  Maybe one day I can redo it if I get some spare time.

 

So anyone reading this that wants to use that texture pack, please just ignore that usage clause.  You're free to use them in your project (and be sure to give proper credit to Speedy as well).

Isn't it possible to get admins to change a file that's already uploaded?  I thought I had seen that happen with a few wads.