The workings relationship of Textures and Patches

[Doom Marine]

I have Wintex 4.4 operating now, and I did manage to rip a few textures and patches out of certain WADs and assimilated them into my own files.

Unfortunately, when I copied the texture(s) + patches and pasted into the WAD file, some textures and patches were inadvertenly the same name and thus got replaced and destroyed.

Such an example is demonstrated when I took a bunch [all] of patches and textures from Biowar, and slopped it into my WAD, this turned out some ugly results... such as a wall texture getting turned into a transparent gate, or the nukage flats being ceilings, etc...

So are there any measures that I can take next time to assimilate foreign patches and textures without inadvertenly fucking up the main textures of Doom II?

And if I were to change the texture's name in Wintex, would the patch aiding that edited texture [name] still support the texture?

[cyber-menace]

Umm... probably a smarter thing to do would be to use Deepsea and make your TEXTURE1 and PNAMES lumps on your own. You can make a patch for all of these textures, and make the textures themselves. Sure, this might take a bit if there are a lot of textures, but it's worth it, because then you have a 0% worry of removing oringinal textures. This is the method I use for all of my textures and now I have made quite a few.

[netnomad312]

I copy the two texture entries directly from doom2.wad - that's a clean slate. Then you just add textures. Copying someone else's texture entries is kinda stupid, unless you also plan to have all their patches...

[Doom Marine]

So are you saying that I should rename the texture + patch I'm importing into something original and that way it won't override the main WAD's files?

[FireBastard]

If he doesn't mind me answering:

Yes, that's the only way to avoid replacing existing DOOM graphics. The easiest way to do this is to make a BMP file of every patch you want and then read them back in to make new textures.

Let's say those ripped new patches/textures had mostly only 1 patch per texture. That makes it pretty easy make a new combined texture and pnames pwad with all your new stuff with deepsea. Even if a few are that way, not a big deal to just edit those later and get the majority converted with little effort. At least you'll have all the patches and pnames created.

If you press F7 and click on the BMPs to textures button. this takes a BMP and converts it into a texture, patch and pnames entry in one step. I just tried it to verify and it warns you if you are creating a name that duplicates an existing name and will stop. If it is a duplicate, just rename. Might be best if you rename the BMPs first in the folder if you know the dups, depends on you. The default name is the first eight of the bmp name.

I always use the deepsea export tool that's on the same dialog to make the bmps. I open the the PWAD with the new patches then click external files only and graphics only (if that's all I want). Click select all (or I pick them) and then press the BMP button to stuff them in a special directory I make. That's just to keep the transparency stuff the same.

Actually you can use anything (so the Wintex images will work too if you made BMPs with those) just be sure to change the transparent color thingy to match Wintex. There's also BMP option button to change the index and color to match Wintex.

[Doom Marine]

I'm quite hesitant to become dependent on shareware that needs money to be upgraded fully, is there a time limit on the usage of DeepSea, like a month's free trial or something? And does the shareware version support creation of textures?

My question is: can you edit/create textures on the DeepSea shareware for an undefined amount of time, because for anything else, I'd use Doom Builder...

[FireBastard]

There is no time limit or size limit in the deepsea shareware version for any of the lump management tools such as texture stuff, merging and importing. Will save you a lot of time and hassle.

[Doom Marine]

all of a sudden, I see a golden light shining from my monitor and and a chorus rising... haha, yeah, thanks for telling me.

Oh, and for all you people who helped me in answering my questions, here's two weeks of progress for you...

http://www.geocities.com/aaarogance/
go on, take a look

[netnomad312]

Wow. VERY nice detail, heh.

Ya know sometimes you don't have to copy the texture lumps and create new ones; I mean, for a single level it's more efficient to just replace one or two patches you never plan to use. But for something like a megawad it's practically a necessity (so I found, anyway)...

[Doom Marine]

Firebastard says:
There is no time limit or size limit in the deepsea shareware version for any of the lump management tools such as texture stuff, merging and importing. Will save you a lot of time and hassle.

Sure about that? On my version of Deepsea, version 11.82a, registration info, it says:

"DeePsea is a shareware program. Shareware is a way of letting you try a program first on a trial basis. You may use DeePsea free of charge for 30 days."

Does that mean that the shareware shuts itself down in 30 days, or can you keep using it? Is there anyone out there using Deepsea for a long time without paying?

I won't use the program unless I am absolutely sure that it won't go AWOL on me in the middle of a project.

http://www.geocities.com/aaarogance

[Doom Marine]

can't delete this accidental double post... heh

[FireBastard]

Converted DOOMer said:

Sure about that?

Is there anyone out there using Deepsea for a long time without paying?

Absolutely positively positive there is no time limit.

[netnomad312]

Nope, just a linedef limit. 800 lines IIRC (from about a year ago since I last looked at Deepsea). IMO, 800 lines is far too small...

EDIT: Well, ok, some of my earlier levels are < 800 lines. Heh...

[Doom Marine]

My map currently has 7,000 linedefs and 892 sectors at ~35% progress and approaching 70% of its actual size... so by using Deepsea, I can create a texture wad, and then proceed to move the Texture Patches over via Wintex? right?

[Fredrik]

You can do anything to the WAD with the shareware Deepsea, regardless of map sizes. The only restriction is that you can't modify large maps.

[deep]

Converted DOOMer said:

My map currently has 7,000 linedefs and 892 sectors at ~35% progress and approaching 70% of its actual size... so by using Deepsea, I can create a texture wad, and then proceed to move the Texture Patches over via Wintex? right?

Like Fred said - only modifying and saving a level is "linedef sized". Everything else works, including the checks and all that stuff.

So you can put all the Texture/Patches and anything right into the PWAD directly using any of the texture tools (just save to the level and it's a done deal) or just use the Merge tool later if you have created an independent Texture PWAD. IOW, none of the F7 tools are limited by level size.

[cyber-menace]

That was probably the smartest decision during the making of Deepsea on your part. I don't even know how to add textures into my wad anyway else. Even if I sometimes input Flats as Textures by mistake, it's still a lot easier than Wintex. I took one look at that program and thought... there's gotta be something better than this!