Underused Texture Sets

[Impie]

There was a discussion in the MAYhem 1500 thread about the Gothic texture set being overused compared to a number of other under-appreciated sets. So which texture sets do you feel are criminally underused?

Post links to the wads in question if you can, and maybe a map or two that utilizes them well. Maybe it'll entice mappers to do something interesting with those sets.

Advanced apologies if there was already a thread about this recently. I didn't notice one.

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

Koul Textures

[Armaetus]

A lot of the sets on Realm667 that are Doom themed.

[Gothic]

Parallel Phobos and Grasstex by scifista42, they're simple edits but there are some nice textures.

Also I mentioned before CR8 Quake. And from the Zdoom forums, Gothictex Redux (more GothicDM textures, but meh), Doom 2 Recolored and the textures from Zrrion's bunch.

[Impie]

Gothic said:

the textures from Zrrion's bunch.

Did he ever put these in a loadable resource, or do they only exist as tilesets?

[Tango]

ETTiNGRiNDER said:

Koul Textures

those are really fantastic. the only downside seems to be that the "normal" wood textures (the 32 px wide ones, the ones all over plutonia) didn't get the same green color treatment. I would love to see that

[jute]

The Chasm: The Rift textures are professional quality, Doom-paletted, and cover similar themes (tech, dungeon, etc.) but never get used.

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

jute said:

The Chasm: The Rift textures . . . Doom-paletted

Maybe they convert well, but Chasm has its own palette.

I think they may also not have proper vertical tiling? (since as I understand it Chasm is a weird hybrid of a Wolf3D type engine with Quake-like models).

[Angry Saint]

I really like the NMN textures sets, but there are not many wads using them.

[Impie]

jute said:

The Chasm: The Rift textures are professional quality, Doom-paletted, and cover similar themes (tech, dungeon, etc.) but never get used.

Do you have a link to that one by chance? Didn't know there was one.

[scifista42]

^You can find it here: http://realm667.com/index.php/en/texture-stock-mainmenu-152-97360/other-sources-styles-mainmenu-155-26369

[Impie]

Holy crap, I....don't think I've ever actually visited this site (Realm667).

Odd that the chasm wad doesn't load as a resource in doombuilder 2. Says it's blank. Anyone else have that issue?

[scifista42]

It's OK on my end. I suppose you mean chasmtex.wad. Did you check any unusual setting when adding the wad as a resource in DB2, for example "strictly load patches between P_START and P_END", or did you try to load from a .pk3 or from a directory instead of from .wad file? (I mean, you should *not* have done it)

[Impie]

Didn't do any of that. I just loaded it like any other resource wad when creating a new map (it's already on "load from wad file" by default so I didn't have to change anything anyway). Never had the issue before, and it happens with both of the chasm wads on realm667. Maybe the last time they updated the file was a mistake? Did you try downloading it and testing, or use a copy you'd downloaded previously? Mine actually shows a big fat zero for total texture count in the linedef editor.

[scifista42]

I've downloaded and tested them an hour ago. They're OK. The textures are between TX_START and TX_END markers (instead of TEXTUREx lump), which is a ZDoom-specific way to have custom textures. Maybe the editor doesn't list them because you use a non-ZDoom map format (Doom 2, Boom)?

(EDIT)

[Impie]

I see the textures if i open the wad in xwe.

Well, I found the same wad on idgames, downloaded that one, and the textures register in DB2 now. The realm667 ones apparently weren't configured for doombuilder to recognize 'em, and probably were accidentally uploaded on the last update. Or maybe the idgames copy and my doombuilder are both out of date. Hard to tell since the realm667 copy of the wad has no readme.

[scifista42]

The /idgames version has the textures in standard TEXTUREx/PNAMES format, as opposed to the TX_START/TX_END ZDoom format.

Impie said:

Hard to tell since the realm667 copy of the wad has no readme.

The R667 version has INFO.txt and CREDITS.txt inside the wad. It seems that it was created by a different person than the /idgames version. The wads are most probably unrelated, even though they have the same file name.

EDIT: Also, forget about "configuration for Doom Builder to recognize textures", no such configuration exists in any texture pack, and so it cannot be outdated. A map editor should be able to recognize textures from any usable texture resource. Only if the editor's own config tells it not to read certain textures (for example not read ZDoom-format textures when mapping in a non-ZDoom map format), then it won't read them.

[Impie]

Chock it up to my thinking computers work on magic, I guess. Nyuk nyuk.

[Clonehunter]

jute said:

The Chasm: The Rift textures are professional quality, Doom-paletted, and cover similar themes (tech, dungeon, etc.) but never get used.

I tried to use this once, and although they looked awesome went built into the level, I personally did not feel some of Doom's sprite sets and graphics meshed too well. Most worked, but not all. This was also before I learned that it was possible to replicate HeXen doors, as most of the Chasm doors did not actually open like a Doom door )There were some, but a lot opened like a regular door or they opened by splitting down the middle and retracting to the left and right. )

[jute]

I hadn't considered the doors opening horizontally, or the textures possibly being vertically non-tiling. Do you still have the level, or any screenshots of it?

[Clonehunter]

I'm afraid not, but what I mean is you can open the Chasm textures and find the door textures that were supposed to do those things. I didn't implement them, as I didn't know it was possible to replicate in DoomBuilder. I had assumed it was done with some extra coding.

There's a wad I can't remember the name of that I think used Chasm's door textures in horizontally opening doors, though. Kind of like the horizontal crusher doors in Hexen's opening level. Except these doors didn't kill, they were smaller, and faster.

[Impie]

So I tried making a map in Zdoom (Doom in Hexen format) to see if it made a difference, and the Chasm texture packs actually load now...but the regular chasmtex.wad gives this error:

Can't load an unnamed texture from lump index 467. Please consider giving names to your resources.
Can't load an unnamed texture from lump index 3. Please consider giving names to your resources.

I'm still able to use the textures I think, but it'd be nice to get rid of this error. Did I configure something incorrectly?

[scifista42]

You said "regular chasmtex.wad", but you actually mean the ZDoom-specific Realm667 one with PNG textures, not the universal /idgames one with Doom-format textures.

No, it's not your fault, it's a fault of the pack. It has empty markers "WALLS" and "FLATS" inside the TX_ namespace. The markers have no technical purpose, just informative for the person who compiled the wad - but the editor expects nothing else than textures to be placed inside the TX_ namespace. If you want to get rid of the error, open the wad in SLADE3 and delete the "WALLS" and "FLATS" markers.

[Gez]

These error messages are misleading since the problem has nothing to do with unnamed resources.

I'm not even sure unnamed resources are an actual possible problem.

[Impie]

scifista42 said:

You said "regular chasmtex.wad", but you actually mean the ZDoom-specific Realm667 one with PNG textures, not the universal /idgames one with Doom-format textures

Yeah, that one. I said "regular" because they also have a separate "beta textures" wad that's not causing any trouble.

I'll edit the wad and see if it solves the issue.

[Impie]

Well, the good news is, it got rid of the error.

The bad news is, except for the flats and a few random sidedefs, most of the textures are checkerboard pattern when I test the map, but show up properly in the map editor. I didn't check "exclude this resource from testing parameters" or anything. Man, it just never ends with this resource pack, does it?

Doesn't seem to matter what configuration I use, either. It's definitely the resource's problem, but I'll be damned if I can find discrepencies between it and the Chasm Beta texture resource (which has no problems at all).

[Impie]

I figured screenshots might help illustrate the problem in the last post.

http://imgur.com/nliw8gC
^ In DB2 ^

http://imgur.com/Djv5TF9
^ In Doom ^

EDIT: Actually I might ask a mod to break the "Realm667 Chasm Texture Set Troubleshooting" discussion into its own thread, starting at this post.

[scifista42]

Wild guess, but do you still have the /idgames version of chasmtex.wad somewhere on your computer where DB2/ZDoom might be able to find it? If so, delete it. It sounds obscure and improbable, but maybe ZDoom (or DB2 Test Mode) finds and launches the incorrect wad, even though DB2 uses the correct one while normal editing. I assume texture names are different in each wad.

[Impie]

I had also renamed the realm667 wad. I tried deleting the idgames one and re-downloading the realm667 one (and removing the faulty markers again). Still doesn't display the textures. I posted about it on Realm667 to see if they have any thoughts to add.

Either we're about to solve an annoying mystery for the benefit of future Doom editors, or we're about to find out just how big an idiot I really am. Fingers crossed!

[Impie]

No reply yet on the realm667 front.

Can anyone list the known causes of the checkerboard texture effect? Maybe that would help figure this out.