Calling specific lumps (playpal, dehacked) for certain maps only in ZDoom?

[Doomkid]

Hey there, I'm just wondering if it's possible for certain lumps to be called only for certain maps in a ZDoom megawad?

For example, Map01 uses the standard playpal, but Map02 calls playpal2. Map03 calls the behavior from DEHACKED1, and Map04 calls the behavior from DEHACKED2, etc etc etc.

If such a thing is not possible, consider this a feature request - It would simplify many aspects of modding tenfold to be able to recolor things from map to map via playpal lumps and change behavior from map to map with dehacked lumps, and so on.

I understand that color restrictions can be overcome by using PNG format however it would be nice to do so without hours and hours of fucking around and unnecessarily bloated filesize. Same goes for adding all kinds of new actors just for subtle differences in monster and weapon behavior.

Can it be done currently?

[Arctangent]

Yeah there's no way this is going to fly. ZDoom handles a bunch, if not all, of this stuff at load-time. You'd basically be asking it to load someting for one map, then unload everything and do the whole reload process on the next.

Though what you want to do with the second part of this question is actually entirely possible. Not with DeHackEd, but you can certainly make a bunch of actors in DECORATE that are only used in one map and do that for many maps. It can even do translations naturally, so while you'd be limited to one palette, you could still have, say, a bunch of different colors of imps without making different sprite sets for each one.

[Da Werecat]

There's at least one good reason to have multiple palettes: color filters! I'd even allow switching them with a script: fake HDR!

[wildweasel]

You could also use such a feature to recreate System Shock's BSERK combat booster patches. =P

[scifista42]

Doomkid said:

I understand that color restrictions can be overcome by using PNG format

Actually they can't. Software renderer still needs to convert PNGs to the game's palette before displaying them - it doesn't display them as truecolor. And as mentioned before, palette cannot be changed during runtime. Only ports with OpenGL rendering can overcome color restrictions of the game's palette.

[andrewj]

scifista42 said:

Only ports with OpenGL rendering can overcome color restrictions of the game's palette.

Some ports support "truecolor" (24 bit RGB) software rendering.

[scifista42]

Which particular ones? I only know about _bruce_'s Doom in true colour.

And can such ports actually display PNG graphics in truecolor, and shade them properly according to light level?

[Gez]

Odamex, too.

[Jon]

Crispy-doom has a high-colour branch. I'm not sure what bit depth it is.