MegaDoom Add-On 3/MEGADOOM3.iso/graph/texlib/texlib2.doc

Text File | 1995-03-12 | 8KB | 173 lines

                       How to use these textures

Note: this document assumes a familiarity with the basics of DOOM
texture editing.  Recommended reading if you need more info on this
topic: the DEUTEX manual, The Unofficial Doom Specs v. 1.666.

                              Quick Start

Just load them all up in your editor, edit a sidedef and browse through
all the cool new textures (mingled in with the old familiar ones).  E.g.

    deu -file txbig.wad -file your.wad

To play the wad incorporating the new textures, add the texture wads to
the doom command line:

    doom -file txbig.wad your.wad

You can get a quick look at some of the textures by "playing" the
GALLERY wad supplied in TEXLIB2.ZIP:

    doom -file txbig.wad gallery.wad

                        Finer Points: Animations

An animation is a series of textures which has a special status to DOOM.
(Note: There are other kinds of animations, I will only be talking about
textures here).  When DOOM sees the first texture in the series, it
begins displaying the whole series over and over.  For instance, the
glowing green liquid gushing out of a grate in the wall is a series of
three textures, SLADRIP1, SLADRIP2 and SLADRIP3 which DOOM displays in
rapid succession over and over.

It is not possible for the WAD designer to designate a new series of
textures as an animation.  DOOM only animates certain predetermined
textures.

One way to create new animations is to simply replace the patches that
make up the textures of an animation.  For instance, ALIENS DOOM
replaced the patches of the FIREMAG1, FIREMAG2 and FIREMAG3 textures
with three images of a fan, such that when animated the fan's blades
appeared to turn.  With this technique, the old animation is lost.

Another technique is to use X offsets within the texture to add new
patches alongside the old ones.  With this method, the WAD designer uses
the texture X offset field in the sidedef to determine which animation
the player will see.  Advantage: numerous animations available, can keep
original DOOM animations alongside new animations.  Disadvantage:
editing becomes more complex due to the need to type in texture offsets.

It is also possible to greatly increase the number of frames in an
animation.  See TRINITY for an example of this.  DOOM only looks for the
first and last texture of an animation, and any number of textures can
be inserted between these to create an arbitrarily long "movie".

                       Finer Points: Sky Textures

[Some discussion needed here, maybe next release.  Briefly, sky textures
probably are not useful as delivered in this release.  They have to be
named "SKY1", "SKY2" and "SKY3" only, nothing else, which makes it
difficult to use a large repetoir of sky textures.]

                            Aliens Textures

In the original ALIENS DOOM, all texture changes were strictly by
replacement of the graphics patches.  Not one new texture was created,
nor was the arrangement of patches in any of the old textures changed.
(I.e., the DEUTEX WADINFO.TXT did not have a [TEXTURES] section).

Except for a few special cases such as animations, I have created a new
texture for every case where ALIENS DOOM redefined a texture.  Thus,
there are now BIGDOOR8, BIGDOOR9, BIGDOORA ... BIGDOORD, instead of the
same 7 door names as before only with different graphics.

ALIENS DOOM has five animations.  They are

                            before              after

BLODGR1 ... BLODGR4         pipes with nukage   waterfall of dull gray-
                            spilling out        green slime

FIREBLU1 ... FIREBLU2       red/blue, somewhat  matrix of blinking
                            like fire           computer screens

FIREMAG1 ... FIREMAG3       fire                rotating industrial-
                                                looking fan

FIREWALA ... FIREWALL       yet another fire    large animated
                                                computer display

SLADRIP1 ... SLADRIP3       nukage spilling     dull gray-green slime
                            from a grate        spilling from a grate


There were a few cases where, to avoid creating new textures the authors
of ALIENS DOOM crammed multiple images into a single texture, using X
and Y texture offsets in the sidedefs to access the part of the image
required.  I have split out the ventilation duct access panel images
from two into eight textures named GRATE1 ... GRATE8.

DOOR1A: This is two 64 X 72 images side by side.  X offset 0 gives you
the usual DOOR1; X offset 64 is the elevator door texture, like DOOR1
but with the triangular panels replaced by a see-through wire grate.

                    Barney and Clinton/ATF Textures

TXBARNEY.WAD has images of Barney and friends similar to what appeared
in AMBIENT.WAD.  Notice that my understanding of textures has improved
since those days.  TXDISGRU.WAD has images of the Clintons, Algore,
Sarah Brady, Socks the Cat and a ATF recruiting poster from my
Disgruntled Former Employee WAD.  These might be useful to someone doing
a WAD with an anti- (or pro-? <SHUDDER>) Barney or political theme.

                            Trinity Textures

TXTRIN.WAD has textures of the renowned TRINITY WAD, with the kind
permission of Steve McCrea.  Since Steve created new all textures rather
than merely replacing the graphics patches of the existing DOOM
textures, I scarcely had to do more than run deutex once to extract the
textures and again to build the new WAD.

The arresting TRINITY movie is included.  Be sure and check this out by
"playing" GALLERY if you have not seen it in TRINITY.  (Better yet, go
play TRINITY).  I changed the texture from SLADRIP to ROCKRED since one
of the ALIENS animations was already using SLADRIP.

                       Raging Demagogue Animation

This is something I saw in a WAD whose name and author escapes me,
GALAXIA maybe, or OUTPOST?  This demonstrates a technique, also used in
the TRINITY movie, of reusing images from the GRAPHICS part of DOOM.WAD
in a texture.  The player face images from the bottom center of the
screen are superimposed over computer screen textures to give the
impression of a ranting dictator addressing the nation on TV.

                              GALLERY.WAD

This is a totally unplayable little DOOM I level with no exit, no things
and no monsters.  It has the five animations described above on display,
with a zero X offset on one side of the room and a 128 X offset on the
other side demonstrating the two animations in one texture feature.
There are several tunnels showing what the grates look like, and there
is a guard rail running down the middle of the room (this is only one
linedef with the RAILING texture on both sides-- the illusion breaks
down as you approach it because the "railing" is razor thin).

GALLERY also has the TRINITY movie and the Raging Demagogue animation.

                                 Misc.

There were a couple of little surprises in this for me.  Since texture
WADs are so huge, I was hoping to create numerous little texture library
WADs that would give the developer a good selection yet allow him to
deliver just the small subset of chosen textures with his product.  But
I found with both DEU (5.21) and DCK (2.1B) that there were problems
loading multiple texture WADS into the editor, hence the need for
TXBIG.WAD.

When you consider what is possible in an animation (my hat's off to you
Steve McCrea), most WAD designers including ID have barely scratched the
surface.  I really like that ALIENS fan and the computer display.

Real life is crowding in on me these days.  I'm not sure when/if I will
be able to do another one of these.  If there is a next TEXLIB it will
be for DOOM II.

                               References

/ftp.cdrom.com:/pub/doom/utils/graphics_edit/deutex/
/ftp.cdrom.com:/pub/doom/levels/doom/s-u/trinity2.zip
/ftp.cdrom.com:/pub/doom/themes/aliens
/ftp.cdrom.com:/pub/doom/docs/editing/dmspec16.zip (unofficial doom specs)