Creating new textures with transparency

[ukiro]

I have trouble importing a patch with transparency into both XWE and SLumpEd. It worked fine with WinTex but these days I run 64-bit Vista so I can't use that anymore.

Either the texture is all black (the TEXTURE1 editor in XWE won't display the patch) or the 00FFFF colour is displayed as one of the light blue ones in-game.

I suspect a problem with the image header is causing a broken patch when I import. So what file format should I use? I've always been using BMP since the WinTex days but neither that nor 8-bit PNG has worked. The image is of course in the Doom palette.

I have tried some of the lesser lump tools but to no avail. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[kristus]

Hi Ola. Long time no see etc. :)

The image format shouldn't make any difference, but I always use 8bit .bmps myself when I work with XWE. I'm not sure what your issue can be because I never experienced anything like this myself with XWE.

But if you send me a pm with links to the files involved I could take a looksee.

[ukiro]

Kinda want to keep the whole project a bit secret for now, but here are some screenshots:

This is the texture I'm trying to put in my WAD:
http://ukiro.com/doom/OWALLI02.bmp

Yet when I import the patch to XWE, this is what it looks like (notice the edges get fucked up):
http://ukiro.com/doom/texture_error_XWE_import.jpg

After going back and forth between all LUMP editors I could find, I somehow got it to look OK in XWE:
http://ukiro.com/doom/texture_error_XWE_fixed.jpg

But this is what DoomBuilder renders it as (completely black):
http://ukiro.com/doom/texture_error_doombuilder.jpg

Still though, Zdoom gets it right:
http://ukiro.com/doom/texture_error_zdoom.jpg

...and in SLumpEd, it still looks jagged and messed up:
http://ukiro.com/doom/texture_error_slumped.jpg

Trying to start it in PrBoom reveals that going back and forth between XWE and SLumpEd has destroyed the TEXTURE1 data for all the standard textures, but I have a backup of that.

[ukiro]

Actually, nevermind - the version that looks fucked up in the LUMP editors looks OK in all engines, so it seems to be a bug in the editors more than anything else. I guess there was an error in combining hot pink with satanic symbols...

[kristus]

Like I said, you could have sent a PM. ;)

That was quite interesting.

I think it is that there's a conflict/confusion going on with the programs. The background color commonly used as cyan isn't actually in the Doom palette at all. Since it's not needed as those pixels aren't actually there in the Doom format. But I think a color space in the colormap is still reserved to it... I THINK. And it's possible that it's this color. It's just never cropping up as an issue otherwise cause it's so rare that anyone use those colors. (Everyone mostly use brown)

Though I am just speculating now, and it appears you got it working anyway so. :)

[Gez]

kristus said:

But I think a color space in the colormap is still reserved to it... I THINK.

No. Doom uses an image format which only describes opaque pixels. All 256 colors of the palette are available; the engine just skips over the undescribed pixels. See the wiki for technical informations.

[DuckReconMajor]

I once used that same pink color in a titlemap, which rendered in ZDoom as a cyan-like color.

[myk]

kristus said:
But I think a color space in the colormap is still reserved to it... I THINK. And it's possible that it's this color.

Well, when exporting, XWE and the like hack color 247 to be cyan instead of black. If an exported DOOM graphic were to be somehow converted to the real DOOM palette instead of the slightly modified one WAD utilities usually use, the surrounding cyan color would become black because its marked as color 247.