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SLADE general awareness topic

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MascaraSnake

MascaraSnake

Developer
Sonic Team Junior
Thanks to Katmint, I've been discovering SLADE quite a bit. SLADE is a WAD editor developed by SlayeR of SLumpEd fame. If you're from the Doom community, you might have heard about it already. It was formerly a map editor, but was rewritten from scratch recently as SLADE3. The humble goal of SLADE3 is to create an all-in-one tool by merging SLADE and SLumpEd. Version 3.0 only contains the lump editing function, with the map editor coming in version 3.1.

So in essence, SLADE is nothing more, nothing less than an improved and bugfixed SLumpEd, and it doesn't have following quirks that SLumpEd had:

  • Batch functions are implemented now. No exporting lump for lump necessary anymore, just one click.
  • Files without a .wad ending can be loaded correctly now. The program still doesn't show them in its search window, but you can enter their filename to open them anyway. So no need to rename files.
  • The "Export To New WAD" function works now.
  • Cyan is recognized as transparent now, except for flats.
  • XWE's cleanup function (I assume it's CleanWAD) is now implemented.
  • WAV sound lumps are exported correctly now.
  • Sounds, including OGG Vorbis, can be played back now.
  • An enhanced TEXTUREx lump edit function.
  • You can register SLADE as a program to open WAD files with. SLumpEd couldn't do this, so you always had to open the program and select the file instead of just double-clicking on the file.
I might have missed a few, but those are probably the most important ones. Feel free to mention things I forgot. SLumpEd has features like tabbed browsing, archive support and lowercase support (although that must still be enabled). Apart from the usual automatic palette conversion and offset changes, SLADE seems to have everything XWE has (and, as should be obvious, more). As a demonstration of power, it opens the CLIFF6 texture and it recognizes the DSZ textures as graphics, not as sound files (neither of which XWE can).

To set it up for SRB2 editing, go to "Editor -> Set Base Resource Archive". Click on "Add Archive", go to your SRB2 folder and type in "srb2.srb" (unfortunately, .srb files are not shown, but you can just type it in to open it. Then, you can choose it as a Base Resource from a drop-down in the toolbar. I would also recommend turning off "Preferences -> Editing -> Force uppercase entry names in Wad Archives", so lowercase lumps are supported.

I made this topic to present SLADE as what seems to be a very useful lump editor for SRB2 purposes, probably more so than the ones we have now. Of course, this isn't meant as advertising. I want everyone to share their thoughts and, of course, also mention problems if you find some. From what I experiences, I would recommend it as the best lump editing solution for SRB2. If anyone disagrees, by all means say so and mention why you prefer another editor.

Last but not least, links:

  • SLADE homepage (No installation rights, i.e admin account, are needed on your PC, as long as you have Visual C++ 2010 Runtime installed. Otherwise, I'm sorry. Ask your parents to allow you to install it or you can't use it.)
  • SRB2 Wiki article (Obviously, add to it if you know something useful.)
  • The Wiki's "Palette" article (This shows how to set up the palette for SLADE and how to convert graphics with it). Unlike XWE, you don't have to export any lumps at all. You can just select all graphics to be converted and convert them with one click.)
tl;dr: I think SLADE is cool, what is your experience?

EDIT: I forgot a small but potentially annoying quirk: Text files are displayed as "Unknown". You can still view and edit them by right-clicking and selecting "View as -> Text".
 
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Sky The Destroyer said:
Edit: Added to the wiki. It has some weird code like tags around it, though. I have no clue how to fix it.
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That stuff is already there, although in the "Palette" article. There will be a SLADE tutorial later on, which will also mention it. And why did you put that tutorial between "Features" and "Issues", where it sure doesn't belong?

Apart from that, you completely forgot your method doesn't work if you haven't got the file from your forum topic. I can add a tutorial on how to insert it manually though.
 
Wow, I might have to give this a whirl. It sounds like it's definitely superior to SLumpEd and probably superior to XWE as well.
 
I tried to install it but failed. It complains that it's missing msvcr100.dll and msvcp100.dll. And, even if both files are installed, it gives "_invalid_parameter_noinfo_noreturn" error.
 
Ezer.Arch said:
I tried to install it but failed. It complains that it's missing msvcr100.dll and msvcp100.dll. And, even if both files are installed, it gives "_invalid_parameter_noinfo_noreturn" error.
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Have you installed Visual C++ 2010 Runtime? And if you have, go to the Wiki page and try the alternate link.

EDIT: By the way, converting graphics with SLADE is extremely easy, even easier than Sky thought. Check the third link in the first post.

EDIT2: And another thing: I'm not too familiar with XWE, so if someone could list known issues of XWE and its advantages over SLADE, that would be nice.
 
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Yeah, it automatically sets offsets to images for example. Also, it automatically converts imported images to Doom Graphics Format with the currently used palette. But that's not really an advantage since you can't choose what palette you want the image to be in. Oh, and XWE has a very basic and very useless map editor, but um yeah. SLADE will get a much better editor in the future and XWE's really shouldn't be used at all.

I don't know about other advantages, but there probably are some.
 
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Noticed a bug in SLADE. It seems not to accept \ as part of a lump name, which is essential for character WADs.
 
Using SLADE3 natively on Linux here, my experience could not be better. ;) Can't wait to see what its map editor will be like.
 
Bump, because SLADE 3.0.1 is out. Download here. The following things changed:

Changelog said:
- Support for more game formats: Wolf3D/SoD, Dark Forces, Descent, Unreal/Half-Life WAD3, Half-Life texture, Quake2 wal
- Fixed many problems with the texture editor
- New 'Save Map Image' button on map preview
- The archive menu now has its own associated toolbar
- Swapped the top and bottom bars of controls in the entry viewers (mostly to get the 'save changes' button to a more convenient location)
- Entry names containing / or \ are now valid in wad archives
- Added the ability to drag files onto the program window: dropping files on the entry list will import them to the archive, dropping them anywhere else will attempt to open them as archives
- Many general bugfixes and small improvements
Click to expand...

The bolded entries are of particular interest for us. The map preview essentially the bird's eye image of the map as it is shown in map editors. Useful for showing the general layout or making guide maps without having to make screenshots or something. The \ bug was also fixed, which means that SLADE can now be used for character WADs without a problem. In other words, the only really critical bug is therefore fixed.
 
- New 'Save Map Image' button on map preview
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Isn't it beautiful?

B4.scr_millcitadel_act2_working.wad_MAPB2.png

EDIT: better visualized if used with "Default Style" forum theme.
 
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Yeah, if you were to use that feature for displaying maps here, then you would have to flatten it and make the background white so it can be seen in other themes.

Also, yay I was able to contribute a bug report to something other than SRB2 and have it fixed rather quickly. :P

EDIT: I just noticed something, does the "Cyan is recognized as transparent now, except for flats" mean that if you convert to flats, then SLADE changes the color? I don't know why it wouldn't convert these flats like normal and you would be able to just use whatever linedef special that is for translucent FOFs and make it completely opaque and have the transparent flats work. Am I just reading that part of it wrong?

EDIT part 2: Also I wonder what format raw format flats are saved in anyway. I would like to see how large SRB2 can have flats, since I vaguely remember some claim of it being as large as 4096 x 4096.
 
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Torgo said:
Yeah, if you were to use that feature for displaying maps here, then you would have to flatten it and make the background white so it can be seen in other themes.
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It can be seen fine in all themes. Even with a black background. So I wouldn't worry too much.

Torgo said:
Also, yay I was able to contribute a bug report to something other than SRB2 and have it fixed rather quickly. :P
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Did I forget to thank you in my post? Well, here's a "thank you". I'm gonna report the "SLADE cannot correctly view flats that are not between F_START and F_END tags." bug soon. Or you can do it because you have an account ;)

Torgo said:
Also I wonder what format raw format flats are saved in anyway. I would like to see how large SRB2 can have flats, since I vaguely remember some claim of it being as large as 4096 x 4096.
Click to expand...
SRB2 can have flats up to 4096x4096, but SLADE (just like XWE) only recognizes them up to 256x256.
 
Torgo said:
EDIT: I just noticed something, does the "Cyan is recognized as transparent now, except for flats" mean that if you convert to flats, then SLADE changes the color? I don't know why it wouldn't convert these flats like normal and you would be able to just use whatever linedef special that is for translucent FOFs and make it completely opaque and have the transparent flats work. Am I just reading that part of it wrong?
Click to expand...
SLADE can do transparent flats fine, they show up in the game okay, it just doesn't render the cyan as transparent when viewing the flat in the WAD.

And I also thank you for reporting those bugs. :P
 
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Okay, so... I tried downloading the new SLADE, but it says some sort of .ddl file is missing.
 
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