Questions concerning Doom Beta textures.

[mrthejoshmon]

I am planning on using the old Doom Beta textures for my megawad but I have a few questions about the Beta textures (And FLATs) and textures in general.

(The intended engine is PrBoom, so this will be questions about Boom format)

- Are the beta textures alright for use? If so then where would I acquire them (be they as separate files or placed in a .wad, doesn't matter which)?

- How would I go about creating extra animated textures/FLATs and extra switches (Boom)? (Examples I could examine and learn from would be very appreciated)

- On top of the beta textures, would it be also ok to include Ultimate Doom textures that are not present in Doom 2?

- Is there also an available location for me to get the Beta sprites (Preferably weapon sprites)?

- What are the best Beta textures? Which ones should I use and which ones should I not?

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated, thanks for your time.

[scifista42]

I know nothing about Doom Beta textures, but I'll try to answer the rest of your questions:

mrthejoshmon said:

- How would I go about creating extra animated textures/FLATs and extra switches (Boom)? (Examples I could examine and learn from would be very appreciated)

Download Boom Editing Utilities. Find a file DEFSWANI.DAT. Make a copy of the file (call it JOSH.DAT, for example), and open it in a text editor. You'll see a list of hardcoded animated textures, flats and switches. Follow the format and feel free to add your own texture names to the list. Then call a program SWANTBLS.EXE with the .DAT file as a parameter: Type "SWANTBLS JOSH" in the command line. SWANTBLS will generate 2 lumps, ANIMATED and SWITCHES. Import these into your wad, and you're done.

EDIT: I've heard that SLADE supports compiling and editing ANIMATED/SWITCHES lumps directly now - I have no experience with that, but you can try it.

mrthejoshmon said:

- On top of the beta textures, would it be also ok to include Ultimate Doom textures that are not present in Doom 2?

Purely rightly - no. But it's been proven that nobody cares, many wads have already included them without a problem, even cc4-tex.wad.

[mrthejoshmon]

Thanks, I will get to creating extra animated textures and stuff.

Thank you for your help, I will search for the Beta material myself and see what I can find.

[Da Werecat]

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?file=historic/doomprbt.zip

SLADE can work with the wad, but XWE can't read the graphics. The installer seems to be working fine under Vista.

[Gez]

scifista42 said:

EDIT: I've heard that SLADE supports compiling and editing ANIMATED/SWITCHES lumps directly now - I have no experience with that, but you can try it.

Yep. Simplest way if you want to do a lot of edits:

• Open your wad.
  
• Archive->New->ANIMATED
  
• Archive->New->SWITCHES
  
• Select both ANIMATED and SWITCHES lumps
  
• Right-click->Convert to SWANTBLS
  
• Delete old ANIMATED and SWITCHES lumps
  
• Edit SWANTBLS lump as appropriate, save
  
• Right-click->Compile to SWITCHES and ANIMATED
  

Alternatively you can edit the ANIMATED and SWITCHES lumps directly, but the UI is still a bit cumbersome so if you're comfortable with editing code it's probably faster to go through the SWANTBLS lump.

In any case, there's no need to use the Boom utilities if you have SLADE 3 working.