Worst textures in Doom/Doom 2?

[joepallai]

STARTAN--I just hate that texture family (I know, heresy....)

[Marcaek]

It certainly doesn't tile very well.

I share the opinion that no Doom texture is inherently BAD but can be used poorly. On the other hand, those transitional snake flats are VERY inflexible.

[CorSair]

traversd said:

You can scroll flats to suit with Boom linedef actions.

RjY said:

gif

Oh.
I wasn't aware of that kind of possibility in Boom. I stand corrected with this insight.

[scifista42]

I don't think the IWADs have any "objectively bad" textures. There are just textures/flats that are harder to use in an eye-pleasing way. Some mappers excel in finding astonishing new ways how to use stock textures, and I admire them.

For example, I never liked that skull flat at all, I couldn't imagine how such a flat even would be used in a good way. Then I saw it in Pirate Doom "Lost City" map (MAP49) and it was enough for me to change opinion.

So in my view, all the mentioned "worst" textures are just "hard-to-use" textures. (It may be considered one and the same thing, though.) Any texture can turn out beautiful or ugly depending on its particular usage.

[Phobus]

Whilst the IWADs have a pretty solid texture set that I'm still finding new uses for to this day, it does have a lot of gaps (WFALL1-4 being by far the most obvious, but certainly not the only one) and I have to say some of the textures are remarkably difficult to use. Non-vertically-tiling ones like GRAYTALL and GRAYBIG are pains due to limited application as are at least half of the CEMENT textures, with the hazard stripes along the bottom making vertical tiling less appealing. Ones like BIGDOOR1 that are less than 128-units tall (but taller than 64) also suffer from dodgy vertical tiling in vanilla and some ports due to the texture system, hence limiting their usage.

The CEMENT textures also bother me because they're remarkably hard to match to a flat without consciously aiming for contrast rather than my preferred "materials" approach.

What annoys me more is the way some textures (and a lot of flats) don't align to any form of grid very well. SHAWN1 (the one with UAC written on it) is one I always end up aligning 4 units to the right, as the logo is 120 units wide and there's a very obvious bit of vertical tile on the SHAWN2 patch on the right-hand side. If it's split in half it looks a little less amateurish. I personally preferred the original version in the first IWAD that had an 8 unit STONE stripe, as it tiled vertically better and probably stands out less overall. Particularly bothersome with the wooden-square ceiling that is offset by about 4 units north and west, as the damn thing doesn't match to the equivilant WOOD wall textures, making the obvious wooden cubes you could create not quite work properly.

I could probably go on in this vein, having mostly mapped with the default textures for some 15 years or so now.

[Magnusblitz]

My main pet peeve would be the "doesn't tile well" category. A lot of these are ones not meant for vertical tiling, but some also don't work because they've got a few random "streaks" that looks really dumb when repeated over a long horizontal wall, like BROWN144 or GRAYBIG

COMPTALL is a really nice texture, but it kinda annoys me that they offset the bottom and top rows which makes it difficult to use just parts of the texture on 128-high walls.

I also got annoyed when I found out the bricks in GSTONE aren't uniform height - some rows are a nice 24 height, some are about 20ish.

And why why WHY did they put that line down 3/4ths of the way across MARBLE1? It's not on the edge (which would allow for a nice "marble block" look), and it also ruins the chance to just make a long unending marble face.

I agree with Phobus that SHAWN1 (both versions, actually) are somewhat annoying with the right side edges.

[LexiMax]

TEKWALL1 literally looks like somebody took a picture of a motherboard. TEKWALL4 is superior in pretty much every way.

[fraggle]

ROCK5 looks like some kind of bad colour conversion.

AASTINKY/AASHITTY because they only exist to cover up engine limitations.

[129thVisplane]

The COMP01 flat with its repeating rows of pixels on the right and lower edges which make the flat look horrible on any surface bigger than 56x56. Is the flat even used anywhere in the official maps?

[Da Werecat]

129thVisplane said:

Is the flat even used anywhere in the official maps?

Unfortunately, yes.

[MFG38]

joepallai said:

STARTAN--I just hate that texture family (I know, heresy....)

So do I, quite frankly. Then again, it might only be because it's the initial default texture in DB2.

[fraggle]

You don't really hate STARTAN. You've just seen it so many times that you're thoroughly bored of it.

[schwerpunk]

I've gone so long without using STARTAN that it actually looks cool again. In a retro Doom sort-of-way.

[CorSair]

STARTAN and its derivatives are just tricky to work with. It's just matter of implementing it.

[joepallai]

fraggle said:

You don't really hate STARTAN. You've just seen it so many times that you're thoroughly bored of it.

There is some truth to this; but whenever you see STARTAN, you will inevitably end up inside some E1 clone. Which might not be so bad if it weren't for the E1Police that show up and complain about cacodemons not being canonical to the episode, or that plasma weapons aren't suppose to show up until level #xyz, or the tech elements are mixing incorrectly instead of it just looking cool as a set piece, etc. Just a lot of bad associations with this texture for me--also the fact that it's the default texture in most editors makes it extremely tiresome after nearly 2 decades.

GSTONE, while difficult to work with at times, looks great when tiled--even in large amounts like 512 unit high walls that run 2000+ lengths.

Then again I prefer the fantasy elements in the game more than the tech...each is good on its own. It's just a matter of preference.

[nicolas monti]

Memfis said:

That red stripe on GRAYTALL is pretty bad, I think Nicolas Monti likes to use it.

haha you're right, I like some of the alpha textures as well, even that version of GRAYTALL with brown parts which was sniffed at by Romero himself on a presentation together with Tom Hall when showing the history of doom.
FIREBLU rocks.
Textures I dislike: most of the textures used in MAP05, MAP14 (those ocher bricks..) and MAP22 of Doom2.

[Da Werecat]

I really like STARBR2 for some reason.

But I dislike STARTAN3 and STARG3. The first one is a good example of why you shouldn't tile a texture by simply duplicating and mirroring it. And the second one is a good example of why you shouldn't drift off while using an aforementioned technique.

By the way, I was replaying Suspended in Dusk recently and saw a few neat ways of using TEKWALLs:





In both cases textures were modified, but still.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Da Werecat said:

But I dislike STARTAN3 and STARG3. The first one is a good example of why you shouldn't tile a texture by simply duplicating and mirroring it. And the second one is a good example of why you shouldn't drift off while using an aforementioned technique.

I doubt they were ever intended to be used in the wallpaper-like way Romero did in E1, which plenty of custom maps latched onto. Go look at how Petersen uses them in E2M3 and MAP08 for better usage. They're great for blending between colors or looking like rust/slime/white shit on the primary color of a room.

[Snakes]

Am I the only one who was tempted to yell STEPTOP at the top of my lungs in response to this question? I've never found a useful way to use that ugliness.

[Dragonsbrethren]

STEPTOP is my texture of choice for 16 tall steps in hell maps. I hate all of the 16 tall step textures in Doom 2 that are just two copies of the same patches, since those steps were originally only 8 tall in Doom. And in that same regard, STEP4 in both games; it's fine as 8 tall but it looks stupid doubled.

Back to STARTAN3, my biggest complaint with it is that it blends to STARBR in the last 16 columns, not STARTAN. There isn't enough blend in the 32 middle columns to do a good transition to STARTAN1, IMO.

[Phobus]

129thVisplane said:

Is the flat even used anywhere in the official maps?

E2M6, as seen here:

[Koko Ricky]

I really like the skin textures, but hate that they don't tile vertically. Seems like it wouldn't have taken much effort to do so.

[Graf Zahl]

fraggle said:

AASTINKY/AASHITTY because they only exist to cover up engine limitations.

I wouldn't call it engine limitation, but rather incompetent implementation.

That said, the really worst textures are the dummy Doom1 switches in Doom2 which only exist because the person writing the switch init code must have been the dumbest programmer the earth has ever seen. Instead of just skipping unknown texture names the code just aborts and to handle different WADs instead of doing the obvious stuff, cooks up a new parameter in the list defining what 'category' the switch belongs to. Ugh...

[Phobus]

Graf Zahl said:

That said, the really worst textures are the dummy Doom1 switches in Doom2 which only exist because the person writing the switch init code must have been the dumbest programmer the earth has ever seen. Instead of just skipping unknown texture names the code just aborts and to handle different WADs instead of doing the obvious stuff, cooks up a new parameter in the list defining what 'category' the switch belongs to. Ugh...

Very good point actually! It's amazing the errors that come up in the various ports when you omit the switches and/or animated textures from a custom texture lump. In the end I realised why everybody who makes a TC or texture set that doesn't obviously mix with the original textures leaves them in the editing resource anyway!

[Xaser]

This motherfucker right here:



"Oh hey, that's a nice ceiling tile texture. I think I'll use it over this teleporter pad I have here and..."




OH FUCKING FUCK SHIT THAT ALIGNMENT


MARBLE1 bothers me for similar reasons. Wonder why they decided to do it the way they did? That had to have taken effort to offset it so oddly. :P

[Tarnsman]

Hey I recognize that area.

[CorSair]

Xaser said:

This motherfucker right here:

heh. I always thought I have good ceiling texture, but when you see the alignment... :P

[gemini09]

fraggle said:

ROCK5 looks like some kind of bad colour conversion.

ya stinkin' Brit.

But yo, guys. This whole problem is the reason I'm so appreciative of UDMF format, as it lets you use "wall" textures on ceilings or floors and vice versa, and it lets you align 'em in any way ya please.

Man, has it been long since I strayed from vanilla, but those days came simulatenously with the step forward from Windows 98 to Windows XP, where the DOS prompt no longer was available. :p GZDoom's pleasant gameplay/ mouse control and the like was also a factor - though I gotta freakin' check out Chocolate Doom, but then I'll have to sacrifice GL graphics and high resolution.. :)

As for bad textures, I like 'em all - the obscure ones only offer an opportunity for authors to slam ahead with some sudden pioneering.

[Unholypimpin]

Id have to say I dislike the concrete textures the most because they make buildings look ghetto as shit and aligning them is a bitch sometimes.

[wesleyjohnson]

Biggest problem is the lack of general purpose textures and flats. Then searching for something that will do. Alignment problems then crop up.
Need more color variations of FLAT1.

One problem with StarTan is that there are not enough palette colors in that range. It ends up repeating only a few colors. The blending looks rough for a tech-base wall.

Too many one-shot use textures, not enough multi-use textures.

Use compspan for almost every piece of equipment because there is no alternative that matches the other faces.