Aligning Textures

[insertwackynamehere]

Is there a trick for aligning textures? Or is it all trial and error?

[sargebaldy]

uhhh, heh. you'll figure it out eventually. just mess around with x and y alignments, and particularly wall above and wall below tags until you get stuff right. trial and error is how i learned everything i know about mapping :P

[NiGHTMARE]

The best way to do it is to use a level editor which can automatically align textures ;) If not, you'll either need to be reasonably good at maths or be prepared to use a calculator a lot.

I'll give an example:

\_/

p

p represents the player, who's looking towards the lines.

Lets say these lines are 45 units, 64 units and another 45 units long respectively. The first line has an x-offset of 0, so the second line should obviously have an x-offset of 45. 45+64=109, so the third line should have an x-offset of 109

Having said that, if the line is using a texture which is only 64 pixels wide, you may want to change this to 45 (109-64=45), 13 if the texture is only 32 (109-96=13) or 16 (109-112=-3, so you then do 16-3) pixels wide, etc - but you normally don't have to.

[insertwackynamehere]

Oh, I got. thanks!

[DooMBoy]

Of course, if you're using Deepsea, simply highlight all the lines going in a straight direction and hit x and y as needed. Simple.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

If you're using WA, you can auto-align the x-offsets, but only for iwad textures (you can get around this though) and you still have to work out the y ones manually.

It also depends on preferences - in NiGHTMARE's example, you may want the middle linedef to have a 0 offset (eg. a switch), so the left linedef has an offset of 19 (64-45) and the right linedef has an offset of 0 (for a 64-unit switch). For a 128 unit switch, the middle linedef has an offset of 32 (the middle 64 units of the texture, which is where the switch itself is), the left linedef is -13 (32-45) and the right linedef is 96 (32+64).

It helps to be good at maths anyway, as even with an auto-aligner you'll come across situations where you'll need to align stuff manually.

[Sparky_KISS]

Maths 101 with sargebaldy...

-----------------------------------------

Question: How do I balance my cheque book?

sargebaldy: uhhh, heh. you'll figure it out eventually. just mess around with the dollars and cents.

-----------------------------------------

Question: How do I calculate a value for pi?

sargebaldy uhhh, heh. you'll figure it out eventually. just mess around with the diameter and circumference.

------------------------------------------

Question: How do I make words with my calculator, like 01134?

sargebaldy uhhh, heh. you'll figure it out eventually. just mess around with the buttons.

[The Flange Peddler]

That old beast WIndeu 5.24 actually has a pretty good auto align x and y tool. Although it only works with normal textures (you can actually align lower and upper too by adding a middle texture then getting rid of it), but it does work with non IWAD specfic stuff too.

[sargebaldy]

heh, that's how i learn stuff. it's slower but in the end worth it. i'd much rather learn how to align properly than rely on an auto-texture-graphic-aligner which probably isn't even going to work right for everything.

[NiGHTMARE]

DeepSea's auto align tool is great - it even lets you align different textures, even ones which are different widths and heights :)

The only problem I've ever experienced with it is that it won't align the Y offset if the texture is lower or upper unpegged. Of course I'm using a slightly old-ish version (11.03), so this may well have been fixed by now.

[insertwackynamehere]

How do you use Deepsea's Auto-align tool?

[Enjay]

insertwackynamehere# said:

How do you use Deepsea's Auto-align tool?

Select all the lines you want to align and press X to x-align or Y to y-align.

If you want more options, use the misc menu to align textures with an initial offset, align the side2 textures and so on. I think some of those extra options have short keystrokes too, but I forget them ATM.