a simple question about floor and ceiling textures

[unidenti7ied]

Hey everybody. Just a simple question:
I added some textures in my pwad, anything works fine and all, but I wonder, if it is important to add an extra 'F_START' and 'F_END' marker, for the new floor and ceiling textures? In older versions of some DooM ports, when u add a normal 'patch' file into your levels on the floor or ceiling, there was an error and the floor and ceiling textures did not appear.

THX for any help, unidenti7ied

[esselfortium]

I'm not sure what you mean by "extra" markers, but yes, if you want your wad to work properly in all ports you should put your flats in between F_START and F_END markers.

[Kappes Buur]

Take a look at the Doom2 IWAD.

There are several groups of flats arranged like this:

F_START
F1_START
|
F1_END
F2_START
|
F2_END
F3_START
|
F3_END
F_END

You could replicate that scheme.

[unidenti7ied]

Thx for the help!
But there is another 'strange' thing about this 'F_START', 'F_END', 'P_START' and 'P_END' markers. Some people say, that it is also important to name this markers 'FF_START', 'FF_END', or 'PP_START' and 'PP_END'. Why could this be important?

[esselfortium]

The odd double-lettered markers used in some wads are, if I remember right, to trickily work around some odd limitations in how vanilla Doom (that being the original Doom.exe/Doom2.exe) handles reading textures and flats.

I think it's that you use FF_START as your opening flat marker, then F_END as your closing marker. The FF_START is ignored(?) by Doom, but the F_END replaces the previously-loaded F_END marker from the iwad and thus allows your pwad's flats to also be recognized as part of the flats list. Something like that..

[Gez]

Yeah, basically everything between the last F_START and the last F_END will be treated as a flat. For fun and profit, try putting F_END at the end of your wad file and using in your map a flat named "MAP01". :P

Everything before the last F_START will presumably be ignored, so that's why you get to use FF_START instead.