Texture Help

[Halfblind]

I am currently working on an archive of all my favorite textures from Heretic, Doom, Hexen and various texture packs for use exclusively in Heretic with Zdoom.

First off what is the best file format to use bmp or png. I have a few Quake3 texture resources that I am scaling for doom but saving it in 8 bit bmp files will make the textures really gross. Which means that I will have to use them in 16 bit.

Second; I have noticed that I cannot insert 16 bit bmp files into XWE so my other alternative is to stick them in a .pk3 file instead. Some of the textures that I extracted, like ones in Bakers Legacy are in 16 bit png's meaning that I can insert png files in a wad with XWE.

Third; How do you make animated textures and flats work with XWE in a wad and with a standard .pk3 file. Both ways would be nice to know.

Fourth; How do you make double sky's to work properly. I have noticed that it only inserts 1 sky and not the other depending on what I insert first in my mapinfo lump. Does the mountain texture that I want in the middle-ground have to be cyan in color where the background sky is to be. Or is it something completely different. I also know how to get them to scroll.


And finally what are some other good texture resources, that are not found at realm667 or simonoc.com that would be really good in Heretic,

[tempun]

Protip: You can't use BMPs with ZDoom.

[Halfblind]

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tempun sais: Protip: You can't use BMPs with ZDoom.
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So why exactly can't I use BMP's with ZDoom.

PNGs would be better due to the file size but I've seen others use 8 bit BMP's in their ZDoom Wads.

[45th Parrallel]

Halfblind said:

So why exactly can't I use BMP's with ZDoom.

PNGs would be better due to the file size but I've seen others use 8 bit BMP's in their ZDoom Wads.

The ZDoom Wiki wrote:
The BMP format is not supported. This is deliberate. This format does not support offsets, transparency, or compression, and is therefore cumbersome and useless. (The BMP specs actually allow for transparency in 32-bit mode, and compression is theoretically possible. However, the most common tool used for editing BMP files, MS Paint, does not, rendering the question irrelevant.)

[GreyGhost]

Halfblind said:

So why exactly can't I use BMP's with ZDoom.

Because ZDoom is unable to read BMP files, here's a list of supported image formats

Moving on to your other questions -

1 - PNG if the image looks terrible under the Doom palette, otherwise convert the image to Doom's native format.

2 - Use Load (raw data) for images you don't want XWE to palette rape.

3 - There are three ways - replace an existing animation sequence (vanilla compatible), define the animation in a ANIMATED lump (BOOM compatible) or define the animation in a ANIMDEFS script lump. All three approaches can be used in wad or pk3 files.

4 - Haven't used double sky but from what I've read it's Sky1's colour 0 (which isn't necessarily cyan) that's treated as transparent.

Hope this helps.

[Gez]

Halfblind said:

I've seen others use 8 bit BMP's in their ZDoom Wads.

You haven't. But you are using XWE. XWE leads you to believe that Doom's native picture format is 8-bit PNG, because it silently and automatically do the conversion between both formats on import and export.

If you use a better wad manager, such as SLADE 3, you'll be able to export a Doom graphics without automatic conversion. Try to open that in MS Paint afterwards, see what happens.

GreyGhost said:

1 - PNG if the image looks terrible under the Doom palette, otherwise convert the image to Doom's native format.

Actually, if you're modding for ZDoom, you can use PNG for Doom-paletted images too. If you're planning on translating these graphics, they'll be a lot smaller.

[Halfblind]

Thank you all for helping me with my texture issues. It looks like I have my work cut out for me. Here is what I learned so far.

I initially thought BMP's were the best due to XWE always saving WAD resources to my hard drive that way. I learned that PNG's are the way to go. I find that I can save my BMP images into a 16 bit file then convert them into a PNG later. Knowing now that I can insert 16 bit images into my pk3 file changes the scope of what I can do.

I prefer 16 bit now because it is the smallest bit size without losing any color definition but still being small enough to not make my mod file too humongous. I can now insert Socks egypt textures from his Quake resources into my maps without losing color quality. 16 bit pings are roughly twice as small as their BMP cousins and they can be further compressed in a standard zip file.

They also allow for transperency layers which helps me make double skys. That was my initial mistake in the first place. My initial BMP images could not have transparent layers to show the sky texture behind them. My current double textures look like crap now but with work I can make them look really cool.

I also found out that since ZDoom can render images in true color, that I do not have to include the Heretic color palots in my pk3 file. This is a releaf because now I can insert any PNG file into the pk3 without having to tie it to a limited color palot.

With animated textures, I use ZDoom so I have to use the ANIMDEFS lump. I actually found the script that I need in Agent Sporks 'Ultimate Simplicity' but I did not realize it at the time. The ZDoom wiki also has some good scripts for what I can do in this ANIMDEFS lump. If I wanted to take it further.

I always forget to check the ZDoom Wiki and often times go to the regular Doom Wiki instead. Thanks GreyGhost for the ZDoom Wiki Links. Now to sit down and work on all my scripting and maybe I can learn more than just basic map scripting as well.

As for my final issue of finding more textures resource files.

Here is a list of all the resources that I might be using in my future projects. If I can only find the time to make more maps.

I will be using around 10 percent from these resources.

-Blood Resource Pack
-Cage
-GothicTX
-Shadow Caster
-Too Much Brown
-Udet
-Witchaven

I will be using the bulk from these texture resources.

-Heretic
-Bakers Legacy
-Midevil Resource Pack
-Recolored
-tp-egypt (EgyptSoc)

And various textures from

-Doom-Doom2 and Hexen

[Eponasoft]

Not being bound to palettes helps a lot. I use a lot of hi-color textures and images in most of my stuff... really gives you freedom to pull off cool stuff and not have some graphics coming out looking like crap because you had to conform to a palette that wasn't designed for your project. And building on what Gez said... drop XWE, snag yourself SLADE 3 instead. Although it still has a few minor problems, it's generally a better WAD manager.

[Nick Perrin]

Eponasoft said:

Although it still has a few minor problems, it's generally a better WAD manager.

I miss WinTex :( Despite its limitations, it still had the best workflow for most types of projects. It's actually what I primarily used all the way up until I got a new PC and Win7 a few years ago. Slade only needs a few features to make it as quick as Wintex was for me.
(Make no mistake I would choose Slade over Wintex any day now, of course)

[Eponasoft]

Nick Perrin said:

I miss WinTex :(

I've never used Wintex for more than a couple of minutes... back when I first started modding, I was using FreeBSD, so the commandline was my friend... I did everything in deutex... had a "build script" and everything. Deutex for wad management and yadex for map building... those were the days. :) Back in Windows-land, it's DB1 and SLADE3.

[Halfblind]

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Eponasoft said: snag yourself SLADE 3 instead
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I actually had an older version somewere after 1.1 that I was trying out. I was actually introduced to it thanks to TheCupbord but that version was very slow on my PC for some reason. XWE was unable to run on my Vista system so I ended up having to put it on my XP system instead. I will try out Slade3 sometime and if it works well on my Vista system I might consider it over XWE. I am also quite comfortable with Doom Builder 1 for mapping and I am beggining to understand the pk3 file stucture and script setup for zdoom. So that only leaves me an editor that I can extract WAD resources on the fly. I hope that Slade3 will do the trick. But anyways I have got still a lot of work ahead and I will try it out over the weekend, thanks. ☺