Using XWE or Slade? Which is Better?

[SkwisgaarScampini]

I've been dabbling with building maps for a good 5 months now, but I haven't really done any WAD editing..There's not many tutorials online that are useful..

I have XWE but whenever I have tried to use it in the past, it screws my sourceport up, so I'm too scared to mess with it anymore...

Are there any good tutorials in using slade or XWE? I'm a musician so I'd love ot make custom midi tracks for my maps, so any help would be much apreciated

[printz]

SLADE is the one you should use. I don't know if XWE is still under development by anyone, and it has been having weird bugs. SLumpED I believe has been made obsolete by SLADE, same author.

[AD_79]

Use Slade 3, don't bother with other programs of the sort.

SkwisgaarScampini said:

Are there any good tutorials in using slade or XWE? I'm a musician so I'd love ot make custom midi tracks for my maps, so any help would be much apreciated

Huh? Slade and XWE aren't for MIDI creation. I recommend Sekaiju for that purpose.

Slade is very easy to use and should be fairly self-explanatory, by the way. Still, if you've got a question about its usage, ask about it!

[SkwisgaarScampini]

I know they aren't for midi creation but they are for integrating my midi...I use Guitar Pro personally...But thank you, is Slade free for download? If not, how much does it typically cost?

[Kappes Buur]

SkwisgaarScampini said:

...But thank you, is Slade free for download? If not, how much does it typically cost?

Slade3 is indeed free in every sense, except space on your harddrive.
Also note that you need to have Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 Runtime installed.

[scifista42]

http://slade.mancubus.net/

This is SLADE3 official website. It's a free and open source program, and the best wad content editor nowadays. Tutorials can be found in the Wiki section on the website, and some more ones on Youtube.

[Fuzzball]

XWE imports flats easier IMO - SLADE for me has been taking a bit of time to get used to...but it has it's perks~!

[GreyGhost]

SkwisgaarScampini said:

I have XWE but whenever I have tried to use it in the past, it screws my sourceport up, so I'm too scared to mess with it anymore...

XWE is a bit flakey if you're running it on anything newer than Windows XP and has a bad (but not entirely justified) reputation for corrupting wads, so it pays to backup wads before editing them.

printz said:

I don't know if XWE is still under development by anyone, and it has been having weird bugs.

I think Maes attempted to resurrect the source but ran into a bunch of hard to resolve dependencies.

[Gez]

Keeping backups is always a good idea, anyway.

[Doom_Dude]

What happened to Csabo? I wish he would update XWE or come up with XWE 2. I really prefer it over Slade when it comes to doing simple stuff like adding textures to a wad. Maybe I should just spend more time with Slade.

[Gez]

Doom Dude said:

What happened to Csabo?

Csabo said:

This wasn't really a "decision", more like a realization - I don't have time for it anymore.

[HorrorMovieRei]

Slade all day erry day. Although XWE is useful for opening .ART files from build engine games.

[Memfis]

XWE seems easier to use. In Slade you always need to do additional steps, like add markers, convert to palette or some bullshit. Also it calls wads archives.

[Gez]

And that's great for when you don't actually want to convert a truecolor graphic made mostly of cyan tones to the Doom palette, because it'll be displayed by a truecolor port and a palette conversion would just turn it into a ugly gray blob.

[Xegethra]

Doom Dude said:

What happened to Csabo? I wish he would update XWE or come up with XWE 2. I really prefer it over Slade when it comes to doing simple stuff like adding textures to a wad. Maybe I should just spend more time with Slade.

I've never used WXE, but using Slade is still simple as all Hell to do that in. Even though I can't compare the two, I still think Slade is incredibly simple and easy.

[Graf Zahl]

Memfis said:

XWE seems easier to use. In Slade you always need to do additional steps, like add markers, convert to palette or some bullshit.

That 'bullshit' is necessary to avoid having a limited tool for a narrow purpose. No good tool should ever auto-convert any file without even asking.

[VGA]

I think my main gripe with SLADE was when working with multiple texture packs. I was trying to combine their TEXTURE lumps in one, I finally found out I could copy from one and paste inside another such lump directly and I think the patches were automatically copied in that wad as well. It has been a while.

Is there a way to just merge 2-3 big texture packs in one and just casually work on a map in the editor? The program would automatically ignore duplicates and automatically rename to avoid name collisions. And then before the final test for release, use an "remove unused texture/flat resources" function to slim it down.

[TimeOfDeath]

XWE can also import without converting the palette.

[Yuki Senmatsu]

Said this a bunch of times like I sound like a broken record but, XWE is also great for making ENDOOM screens, but SLADE 3 is the way to go.

There's another utility for ENDOOM screens, ENDOOMER.Exe, a DOS executable.

[sirjuddington]

Memfis said:

Also it calls wads archives.

Well yes, because it deals with many other things than just wads. Seems silly to have something like 'Open Wad' then opening a zip file. Archive is a good generic name to encompass all game data files.

VGA said:

Is there a way to just merge 2-3 big texture packs in one and just casually work on a map in the editor? The program would automatically ignore duplicates and automatically rename to avoid name collisions. And then before the final test for release, use an "remove unused texture/flat resources" function to slim it down.

This is something I'd like to address with the 'project' system for SLADE 3.2.0. Basically you could import a bunch of texture packs (or anything else you want) as 'resources' for the project, without needing to worry about the actual low-level wad/pk3 itself. You could then export the project as a wad/pk3 which would build it only including the textures/sprites/whatever that were actually used in the project (eg. in maps, DECORATE, etc).

[Doom_Dude]

One thing I really appreciate Slade for is being able to replace textures in a set of maps (Archive/Maintenance/Replace In Maps). I have a crap-load of custom textures and flats in Vilecore 2. My naming scheme is all over the place, which makes it difficult to find textures at times. So I'm currently renaming textures with names that make more sense and similar textures are now more likely to be grouped together. That replace function goes through 32 maps and swaps out what I'm changing in seconds. Would be brutal to have to go in and do that by hand.

[<inactive>Player Lin]

HorrorMovieGuy said:

Although XWE is useful for opening .ART files from build engine games.

If speak with Build engine ART files, use dedicated tools for ART files would be better idea, I think.

http://www.dukertcm.com/knowledge-base/downloads-rtcm/duke3d-tools-editart/
http://wiki.eduke32.com/wiki/Utilities#Art_Files_.28.ART.29

[Gez]

If all you want from art files is accessing their resources, SLADE 3 has a nifty right-"graphic->extract all" feature to get all the subimages as separate PNGs.