Custom Textures

[Shadow Hog]

Hi. Long-time-lurker, first-time-poster. Just in case you cared.

Anywho. While I'm sure this topic's sprung up before... well, it's not so much that I don't know how to ADD the textures - no, I think I've got that much covered (open XWE, add files to WAD, maybe a few DOOM-style markers to ensure it knows what's what, then right-click and select "add to TEXTURES", then ensure all is well with the patches and everything) - it's that whenever I have TEXTURES1 and PNAMES in the WAD, it starts whining about not being able to find certain textures. Doom Builder gives me:

WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch BLUEW2 W
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch BLUEW3 W
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch COMP4 EN
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch COMP5 EN
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch COMP6 EN
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch DCTOW 1
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch DCWIN1 W
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch DCWIN2 W
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch DIRTW RW
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch WEB1 W
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch BLUEW1 W
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch DIRT3 L1
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch DIRT4 L1
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch MMA AL11
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch MM9 AL11
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch MM8 AL11
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch DIRT2 11
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch RED1 4
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch RED2 4
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch RED3 4
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch YEL1 4
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch YEL2 4
WARNING: Could not find the required lump for the patch YEL3 4

In addition the game complains about BLUEW1 W if I try to use the WAD.

So... why exactly would it be doing that? The textures SEEM to work if I just forget custom textures but instead rely on just the IWAD (SRB2.SRB for the uninformed), but the instant they're in a PWAD along with TEXTURES and PNAMES (which are completely unedited from the original IWAD), the game and DoomBuilder start getting on my case about them. Also kinda odd is that opening the IWAD up in XWE shows that the textures aren't really there in it, either (the patch shows a big, empty black square, no textures), yet for some reason they still show up in DB and the game if I used them.

Any tips here would be nice, please, I kinda want to get on with my DOOM E1M1 conversion that I was making for kicks. The level just doesn't feel the same when it relies on GFZ textures instead of some ripped from the v1.9 Shareware WAD.

Also if you want it, you can get the WAD in question at http://mywebpages.comcast.net/shadowwing/misc/textest.wad. Ya know, in case you want to open it up and see what's wrong with your own two eyes instead of relying on me understanding everything.

 

[JetKrazy]

That happens. there are in-gameonly textures I'm guessing. I get that too. I just ignore it. It still doesn't affect my level making (much)

 

[hotdog003]

How can he ignore it when it causes the game to crash?

Actually, I don't know how to fix this. Ask a441 or SSNTails.

 

[a441]

This is a bug in XWE. It's corrupting the patch list. I am not aware of any Doom utilities that can successfully add textures in PWADs for SRB2's use.

If XWE is actively maintained, you might want to report the bug to the authors.

 

[Shadow Hog]

Beh.

Well, it does seem XWE is updating regularly (latest update is 11/8/04, a mere 4-5 days ago or so), so yeah, I think I'll be contacting them. Or downloading the latest update, seeing if I get any more luck with that, and if not then contact them. Considering the sheer list of games this thing seems to support, adding on another one might not bother them too much...

 

[a441]

Tell them they're using strcpy() on fixed-length strings, because that's what it looks like. Notice how the junk at the end of each patch name comes from a previous patch name (e.g., MMA AL11 is showing the last four characters of THZWAL11).

SRB2 does not, as yet, change Doom Legacy's texture and patch handling in any way. I cannot be sure why the XWE bug is not seen while working with the Doom series, but it may simply have to do with the fact that SRB2 uses a greater number of patches. This problem did not exist with the last release which had significantly fewer flats and textures.

The only reason WinTex and DeePsea cannot be used is they try to add the textures and patches from DOOM2.WAD. You might be able to use them if you make a PWAD and copy over not only the PNAMES and TEXTURE1 from SRB2.SRB, but also every single patch, and then add to that PWAD.

I'm considering the idea of storing texture definitions in a text format, potentially using SOC, for the next release. If you can't hold off several months for that, I wrote a "textools" program suite awhile back that converts PNAMES and TEXTURE1 to text files and back, for editing them directly. I don't distribute it anymore, but you can see if anyone still has a copy.

 

[SSNTails]

Woo! SOC! *punches the air*

 

[akirahedgehog]

THERE IS NO VIBRENT VENDETA!!!!

*Kills AJ with Pizzia Cutter*

 

[hotdog003]

Wrong topic, Akaira?

Anywho, I gots a copy. You want it? It's complicated, but it has a good readme.

 

[Shadow Hog]

Sure, lay it on me. I recall hearing about it in the past, though never actually seeing the download (I believe it was more an "e-mail me and I'll give it to you").

 

[JetKrazy]

I think I'll agree with Akira. I looked at the map in Doom Builder and WadAuthor and checked the source code. There seems to be no special linedefs or programming lines are far as I can see

 

[Mystic]

Why are you talking about that in here? This has nothing to do with VVZ.

 

[JetKrazy]

You mean there is a Vibrant Vendeta Zone?

 

[Ritz]

Don't you get it? There is no vibrant vendetta zone. It is just a figure of your imagination. Repeat. It was probably just swamp gas or a weather balloon.

Then again, perhaps this is what AJ was hinting about...?

 

[Shadow Hog]

I think the point was to drop VVZ since this is about custom graphics, not said level.

 

[JetKrazy]

good point. Back to this 'mod'

When's the release?

 

[Shadow Hog]

To quote John Carmack (and a good deal of the staff here):

When it's done.

No real release date. I was just doin' it for fun.

Though, come to think of it, I should probably get to work on finishing it...

 

[JetKrazy]

Hey, I said that too!

 

[Shadow Hog]

Well, it seems I can't even add Flats right. I tried it earlier, since it didn't look like XWE could screw those up, and sure enough...

...can you say "ew"? (Don't worry about the red sky; my map header lump was lowercase, so it wasn't being recognized. That's since been fixed.)

Ah, well. I've nearly finished a completely SRB2-textured version of the level to let people drool over (and then promptly complain that the level's too cramped; not my fault, it IS an exact conversion... maybe I should expand it sometime in the future). All I need to do is make this one last pool of slime (the one with the zig-zagged walkway, nearby a window to the large room (which you can jump through in this version, instead of it being impassible like in DOOM)) a water FOF tagged with sector-type 983, fix all these rings that somehow became Bomb rings, and then I can let you see it (along with some other levels I've done in the past, which are a bit too plain in architecture (i.e.: everything's a 90 or 45 degree angle) but are still really fun from netgames I've had at the MoFo))...

 

[a441]

If you have a program that can at least get your image into the proper 256-color palette (I use GIMP), flats are easy. First of all they have to be square with dimensions a power of two, from 32x32 to 256x256 (512-2048 only if you're crazy and don't mind them being cut down in OpenGL for Voodoo compatibility). So now you know the size, color depth, and palette. Rotate your image 180 degrees and save a bmp file with those attributes.

To check that it saved correctly: Bmp files have a 1078 byte header and at a color depth of 256 colors use one byte per pixel. So the size in bytes of the bmp should be the product of the dimensions plus 1078. For example, for a 64x64 image, 64x64 = 4096, + 1078 = 5174 byte bmp file.

Flats are stored in wads and internally by the game in a raw format. All you need to do now is remove the 1078 byte header. My favorite way to do this, based on the convenient fact that 77x14 = 1078, is to go to a command prompt, in the proper directory type "edit /077 whatever.bmp" (the /077 opens as binary with a line length of 77), select the first 14 lines, delete, and resave. Now the file size should be a product of the dimensions, such as 4096 for a 64x64 flat.

From there, just insert the file directly with LumpMod. It doesn't matter where you put it; there is no need for it to be between F_START and F_END markers or anything like that. Any lump big enough can be interpreted as a flat if necessary, which is why you can use TRANSFIR, TRANSFX1, TRANSHI, TRANSMED, and TRANSMOR in levels and they work. Those are in my gfx.wad because when I was first making it DeePsea showed them as flats and I thought they actually were.

The only possibly nonsensical part is the rotation by 180 degrees, which is necessary because bmp files' contents are stored in reverse. I have no idea why. Until recently, I hadn't even noticed that part because for the flats I was making it didn't matter.