Weirdity about naming flats in original Doom

[The_MártonJános]

It has came accross me since I've started my mapping career off, but could be mentioned only for now.

Firstly, making imagination about how DooM editing would be done, I believed a "similar by similar" order of textures and flats. Textures do have this, but look at flats and think for some time. I'm writing here the weirdest canon of them:

FLAT5 - little brownie hexagons
FLAT5_1 - wooden floor, 32x32 square tiles
FLAT5_2 - 16x64 tiles of randomly placed wooden pieces
FLAT5_3 - red floor, maybe manmade stone with blood covering it
FLAT5_4 - gray floor, seems to be manmade stone
FLAT5_5 - inexplicable looking light brown floor, maybe rough carpet
FLAT5_6 - skulls gathering
FLAT5_7 - rough stone, maybe rubble
FLAT5_8 - softer stone than FLAT5_7, might be ground-up.

Also, it can be ecountered sometimes that there are some gaps between flat names, e.g. FLOOR4_1, FLOOR4_5, FLOOR4_6, FLOOR4_8. Maybe it's in connection with the game development dating back to early nineties and some rejected ones as well.

[EarthQuake]

Many graphics were cut from the game because they did not tile well, or were not in usable dimensions, or were too similar to other textures, or just didn't look that great. If you look through the Doom alphas and beta iwads, it sometimes becomes clear why there are gaps in the naming convention, or even where some textures got their name. Flats are particularly bad though, following no real patterns or nomenclature. But don't really think about it too hard. Id was more concerned with getting the game out, rather than coming up with a standard for naming textures/flats (or making every original texture work for the final game).

[Use]

heh, skulls gathering.

[The_MártonJános]

Don't get me wrong EQ, I didn't mean to blame them. Everyone makes mistakes because they can learn of them. While studying texture artism, I've come across some further problems in which it became quite obvious why it's needed to tile well. Otherwise, horrible visuals appear.

Use3D said:

heh, skulls gathering.

How else you could describe FLAT5_6? :D

[Vaporizer]

.

[The_MártonJános]

Next time I'm just gonna say it's skulls' sea! :D

BTW, what do you think of FLAT5_5? So far the weirdest Doom flat I've ever seen and seems to be having multi-usage purposes.

[EarthQuake]

Looks like stucco to me. Nothing really unusual about it.

[printz]

FLAT5_7 and FLAT5_8 are actually wall textures from Wolfenstein: Spear of Destiny. I believe you can find more variety in there, IIRC.

[elic]

Cell said:

BTW, what do you think of FLAT5_5? So far the weirdest Doom flat I've ever seen and seems to be having multi-usage purposes.

Looks like a carpet. Whenever I need to make a carpet, or some sort of fabric, I use it. Don't see how it can be anything else.


Anyone know what's up with FLOOR0_5, FLOOR0_6, and FLOOR0_7 being all nearly identical? Same with GRASS1 and GRASS2, and a few others.

[The_MártonJános]

Heh, those bathroom-tile flats are not even aligning to the grid, unlike FLAT3 (which is their cousin, I suppose). But yes, all the difference you would recognise amongst them is two bruises and a little amount of nukage.

In this spirit, what do you think visually distinguishing FLAT5_2 and FLAT5_3?

* 30 seconds *

And what do you think, why the damaged one has the former index???

[elic]

Yeah, I wonder what Adrian Carmack was thinking when he made those. If they were concerned about space, why did they waste it with textures like those.

Other weird texture stuff:

In Doom, the first BROWN texture is BROWN1, followed by BROWN96, and then BROWN144. The LITE textures go LITE2 through LITE5, and then jump to LITE96.

[Xaser]

96 and 144 likely refer to their former dimensions in earlier versions. In the Alphas, a lot of textures had different heights than we know them as today.

[The_MártonJános]

Maybe BROWN96 and BROWNGRN didn't have that beautiful sladwall-like 32-units heigh heading on top of them before, that equals 96 units.

About BROWN144... so far the weirdest texture. What is it supposed to be in the first place?

[Never_Again]

A mouldy brown wall.

[elic]

Cell said:

What is it supposed to be in the first place?

Frozen chocolate milk.

[kb1]

Tiling was funky (or maybe non-existent) in the alphas. At least, I can say that it was "evolving". If you examine the textures in the alphas, you'll find some super long ones, like they had to make new multi-patch textures for every wall length, as if tiling was not available.

I suppose some alpha wad hacking could reveal some clues... :)

[The_MártonJános]

Processingcontrol said:

Frozen chocolate milk.

I bet that! It doesn't even tile vertically.

So far I've got these flats in the "carpet" category:
FLAT14
FLOOR1_1
FLOOR1_6
FLAT19
CEIL4_1
CEIL4_2
CEIL5_1
FLAT5_3
FLAT5_5

[myk]

I've never really been very aware of tiling issues. I play exclusively at 320x200, and I'm sure these chinks become evident at higher resolutions where the details become more evident. Maybe I've noted some tiling issues in liquid flats from some angles, but comparatively they look like shit in higher resolution, where you easily see a sea of squares. Mouse look doesn't help hide these inconsistencies either, as it adds to the angles from where you can see the texturing.

EarthQuake said:
Looks like stucco to me. Nothing really unusual about it.

Stucco is a kind of plastering, as seen in the RW20_* patches from DOOM II. I'd say FLAT5_5 is just a rough type of rocky surface. The texture may be based on sandstone or something like that. They often used "over-sized" texturing to get the point across in the low resolution environment, such as with the shiny metal "Shawn" textures.