new graphics editor ?

[sargebaldy]

is anyone ever going to make one? most people in the community are still using good ol' wintex for graphics but it's a real pain, and in some case impossible to make it do what you want for modern ports. i guess deepsea is an alternative if you want to ware.. i mean, purchase that. but the interface in that blows. a lot of people try to make frontends and level editors, but a new graphics editor or possibly a nicely revamped wintex wouldn't probably be terribly difficult to do and would be more beneficial for the community.. is anyone at all working on a project like this that i don't know about?

[The Heretic]

Shhhh sir. Not so loud in the barracks.

[Enjay]

sargebaldy said:

i guess deepsea is an alternative if you want to ware.. i mean, purchase that.

The graphics stuff in DeePsea is not limited in the shareware edition.

sargebaldy said:

is anyone at all working on a project like this that i don't know about?

What about XWE?

[sargebaldy]

Enjay said:

The graphics stuff in DeePsea is not limited in the shareware edition.

well, even if it's not limited, it's set up pretty piss-poor.

Enjay said:

What about XWE?

i tried the editor but not the graphics editor bit of it. i suppose i'll give that a shot later.

[ReX]

sargebaldy said:

is anyone ever going to make one?

Nigel has already mentioned XWE, which I highly recommend. Despite what you say about DeepSea, however, it works well for a lot of people, and includes a lot of cool features.

[Draconio]

XWE is good for many things, but if I recall correctly there were some conversions you have to specificly use to make functional graphics, that WinTex did automatically. Still a good choice, but perhaps a bit less user friendly.

[Cyb]

there are a couple people working on things (myself included) though if any of them will reach completion obviously remains to be seen.

deepsea's magic F7 editor isn't overly horrible either (though it's attached to the level editor), though the only time I used it was to scale some textures for a joke level I made when screwing with zdoom's scaling features, I haven't actually used it to import/export anything

[Scuba Steve]

What's wrong with Wintex?

[Gokuma]

I mostly just use dmgraph to insert graphics and then arrange the wad with NWT. I use Wintex for getting offsets right and sometimes for insertion.

[sargebaldy]

Scuba Steve said:

What's wrong with Wintex?

i like wintex, i just wish it would be easier to put in mp3s or even midis without having to convert to mus, and have better support for modern lump files.

[Gokuma]

Try NWT, Sargebaldy.

[Cyb]

sargebaldy said:

i like wintex, i just wish it would be easier to put in mp3s or even midis without having to convert to mus, and have better support for modern lump files.

You can do both easily, you simply need to import them as lumps, rather than as music.

http://zdoom.notgod.com/zdkb/wtlump.html

that shows how to put in a mapinfo lump, but the same applies for mp3s, midis and other data that doesn't get converted (ie everything but gfx and sounds)

NWT by the way doesn't run under NT

[Stealthy Ivan]

I think Wintex/Paint Shop Pro is the best graphics editor combo I have found, and thats what I will continue to use...

[ReX]

Scuba Steve said:

What's wrong with Wintex?

I used WinTex all the time when I was editing for vanilla DooM. When I started editing for ZDooM I quickly learned that WinTex messes up multi-map ZDooM wads. I switched to DeepSea, which I found to be a very capable program for ZDooM maps. When XWE was released I discovered that it too is a very good program.

[deep]

What some people don't appreciate is that specific tasks need specific interfaces geared for the job - even though it's staring them in the face:-)

For example, Wintex switches interfaces to handle different aspects because a single interface won't do. Textures is a good example here. Problem is that for merging/copying it doesn't do that and you have to hunt around the menus, not quite sure what it going to happen or when it's going to happen.

I prefer specific different dialogs that have ALL the required options for THAT job and not try to force fit it into an existing screen. And I prefer a system that's geared towards PWAD lump manipulation with choices right there vs buried in the menu system. Wintex actually did the same thing with the little button choices on the bottom, only that's limited to only that dialog vs a master choice system - so you see, even he thought the same way there - just didn't go far enough.

For Merging stuff, what you really need are 2 list boxes - one showing the stuff that's being imported and the other the existing target lumps. Everything is then right in front of you and it's easy to verify what you are going to do.

Wintex is "easy" for some things because it has hard-coded names for sounds, etc (Both XWE and DeePsea autodetect and are not name sensitive - giving both a lot more flexiblity here). Now the hardcoded names comes back to haunt because it takes a tortuous path to do some very simple things to add stuff that DOOM never had. Not saying it can't be done, just that it's pretty unwieldy.

The biggest issue with any NEW system, is that people learn one method and then bitch and moan about NEW better methods not realizing that their "favorite" is pretty hard to use (especially DOS versions of any kind).

For whatever reason, it takes a lot to move people off their asses to try something new. I've noticed it's common for complainers to never really try what they bitch about (weird but true). For the ones with open minds or starting out, if you are using the newer ports like ZDOOM, LEGACY,etc (and who isn't), it's worth your time to check out the way XWE and DeePsea give you more choices and usually easier choices, especially support for the newer port features. If you see room for improvement, email us with a detailed explanation and how it would really be better (not just "sux"). Both of us respond to requests - which is how changes get done.

[sargebaldy]

deep said:

some stuff

good advice deep, i'll give xwe a try.

[Scuba Steve]

Can anyone tell me if therre is anything Wintex can't do in terms of Sounds/gfx/sprites/lumps ?

[deep]

Can't do (some of this already listed):

1. Hires graphics/flats (gets very unhappy)
2. Hexen format levels (merging)
3. doesn't merge TEXTUREx/PNAMES correctly all the time
4. Has to be mucked with to insert anything that's using a name that it thinks is in 1 format, but is actually in a completely different format - for example to keep it as MIDI or WAV or MP3 or you name it.
5. Can't preview graphics over 128 tall, nor very wide
6. Long file names - you better have a good memory:)

probably some more that I forget--

[Apothem]

ok on that note, what about importing weapons stats and weapon sprites from another wad?

[uac_marine]

well, I was and probably still am (occasionally) working on a WAD editor, the url for it is in my sig, so yeah...

other than that, I was thinking whether or not to do just straight lump insertion like SargeBaldy said he has problems with midis being converted to mus's and so on, just wondering if the newer doom ports nowadays support plain bitmaps (rather than the original doom custom format for sprites), WAVE sounds (rather than, again, the VOC like format) and music (midis, not mus's!), the patches/flats are ok, they are in PPM afaik.

[uac_marine]

I emailed Matt Tagliaferri (spelling should be right) the other night about the DoomCAD sources, he said he will kindly send them to me once he finds them on his old PC.

[sargebaldy]

uac_marine said:

I emailed Matt Tagliaferri (spelling should be right) the other night about the DoomCAD sources, he said he will kindly send them to me once he finds them on his old PC.

oh seriously?? are you going to do something with the source? i've been using doomcad for over 6 years and i'd be ecstatic if someone could just make a few modifications to it :)

[uac_marine]

yeah, I'll give it a go, I will also ask him if he can release the sources directly to the doom community itself..

[sargebaldy]

uac_marine said:

yeah, I'll give it a go, I will also ask him if he can release the sources directly to the doom community itself..

oh wow, i've been hoping for a long time someone might try to tweak with it :) i'd love to see zdoom support and better support for alternative textures, i can never seem to manage doing those.. and a grid that isn't forced to base 8.. /me drools