OTEX texture set to be released December 10, 2018

[ukiro]

When I write this on September 1st 2018, we have 100 days left until Doom's 25th birthday. I have been playing and modding Doom—on and off, admittedly—for 3 months short of that milestone, and feel I should do something to celebrate the occasion. I decided my best way I could commemorate Doom would be to release the set of textures I have been fiddling with for the better part of  two decades, (although honestly 95% of them are made in the last 3 years). Somewhat surprisingly, after 25 years of Doom there still seems to be room in the "market" for a comprehensive, high quality texture set that isn't a collage of assets ripped from other games, feels like Doom in style and spirit, and that is universally useful across a range of projects. OTEX aims to be exactly that.

 

^{Intended to be part of Eviternity map31, by me.}

 

To those who don't know me (and that's probably most of you by now) I released my first map publicly in 1996 (though it was completed in the fall of 1995), called Tantrum, contributed textures to Gothic DM 2, and ended up being the project lead and texture designer for The Darkening Episode 2, among other things. After that I was involved in several failed projects, and haven't released anything for Doom since 2000.

^{Untitled map by Derek "afterglow" MacDonald, who has very patiently been testing my textures for the last 15 years or so.}

 

While I don't consider myself an artist, Doom's limited palette and resolution makes it possible to just throw shit at the wall until something sticks (literally and figuratively), so very patiently I have kept making textures for the last 18 years until some of them turned out quite alright (if I may say so). I'll do a full write-up on my process and philosophy for making textures at some later point, but for now I'd just like to set the expectations for this release.

 

OTEX currently sits at around 1700 textures and 850 Flats, and it's all made for the vanilla palette and resolution. The target is Boom compatibility, with no special concessions for engines like GZDoom. Hence it comes in a WAD and not a PK3, but mappers are obviously entirely free to map for whatever Doom engine they want with these. All screenshots here are taken with GZDoom actually.

^{Eviternity map17, by Joshua "Dragonfly" O'Sullivan. This Wad uses an altered palette for the green and blue range, so the original textures here are green and not teal.}

 

The idea is to make OTEX all-encompassing enough that it can serve as the single texture resource even for a fairly ambitious project, essentially to be for new textures what something like CC4-TEX is for remixes and extensions of IWAD textures. I've prioritized making textures that are universally useful over one-off specialized use. There's a lot left that I want to do that is unlikely to make it in by December 10, and of course there are always going to be themes and custom textures that someone wants but that aren't included. But it's my hope that the breadth and consistency will prove to be a step up from other options.

 

For now, OTEX will be intended as an external resource rather than something you merge into (and distribute with) your projects. There are two main reasons for this: First, it's still a living project that I will keep refining and adding to, meaning that embedding the textures into another project robs it of future refinements. Second, it's a rather bulky file and while modern bandwidth and disk sizes makes that point mostly moot, it's inelegant to strap a big chunk of duplicate data to every level. There are exceptions to this where inclusion in a Wad is permitted, and I can grant more such exceptions if they are justified. But I ask that those interested in using OTEX please respect my wishes in this regard, and reach out if they want to discuss distribution options.

 

^{Untitled map doodle, by me.}

I gave some people early access to OTEX so that I could get testers beyond my own map doodles, and so that there would be some nice levels released in conjunction with the textures themselves. The selection process for this was quite haphazard, and I sincerely hope nobody felt dismissed by not getting the nod. Ultimately I do want as many people as possible to make maps using these, but it had to reach a certain state of maturity as a set before broad distribution felt like a good idea. Dragonfly's ambitious Eviternity project is already announced, but there are some other smaller things being built as well. More on this later.

 

It's my hope and aspiration that these textures will inspire mappers and players alike to continue keeping the original Doom alive for many years to come. In the coming weeks I will use this thread to share some details and answer questions.

 

 

Edited September 1, 2018 by ukiro

[Phade102]

These textures are definitely going to be a major resource for me. I cant wait.

[Pegleg]

I am very much looking forward to this texture pack. Absolutely great work.

[Bridgeburner56]

Ungggh it's finally happening! I'll definitely be spraying these textures around with liberal abandon. 

[Tango]

textures look beautiful :D as do the screenshots you've used to show them off.

 

I am not really sold on your reasoning for enforcing the textures be separate though. the Darkening E2 texture set had this restriction for a while and iirc a lot of folks made a stink about it on the archives, and it deterred me from using the texture set for a long time too. I think enforcing this ultimately just creates unnecessary hassle for players, who have to track down and download an additional file every time they want to play a map using these textures. an author can of course mitigate this by being diligent about including a link to the resource wad alongside their own work, but it's an extra step nonetheless. every time I see a map posted that says "requires cc4tex.wad," even though I already have cc4tex, it makes me a little more hesitant to bother playing the map, and would be even more the case if I had to potentially also update my cc4tex version when a new map came out. as a mapper, I imagine in most cases I would really rather be able to release my work as a single, complete package, especially for any larger works. if a player has to rely on some external source of information to tell what version of otex my map requires - rather than being able to just fire up the wad and have things work - that's another barrier for the player, too.

[esselfortium]

Yyyyyyyeeeeeeesssssssss

 

These are beautiful and I hope they get a lot of use.

[ukiro]

17 minutes ago, Tango said:

the Darkening E2 texture set had this restriction

 

No, it did not. It's very different, in fact. This is what the original darken2.txt said:

Please do NOT extract textures from darken2.wad and do NOT create levels that
are depending on darken2.wad to run.

This effectively meant nobody else could use the textures. (This restriction was eased years later.) What I am saying here is that I do want people to make levels using these, and that embedding the textures in the level wad can be permitted under certain circumstances. But I am also saying that I don't want that to be the default use because I intend to continue to refine and add to OTEX for a while longer, which I hope is to the benefit of everyone.

 

You are free to believe that this is still to restrictive, of course, but I'd like to offer a counterargument:

 

23 minutes ago, Tango said:

unnecessary hassle for players, who have to track down and download an additional file every time they want to play a map using these textures

 

I'm not disputing that from purely a players viewpoint it's more convenient to have everything as a single file, but I'm not so sure I buy this "hassle" argument. I'd argue it's not a lot to ask of a player, as it's not much more demanding than specifying a specific source port. I'd also point out people play with all sorts of mods all the time, and those too are "additional files". Sure, for single maps that you don't know whether they're crap or not, having to include a second wad might be enough of an obstacle for some, but that just tells me you weren't exactly itching to play that wad anyway.

 

Lastly, this:

 

27 minutes ago, Tango said:

release my work as a single, complete package, especially for any larger works.

 

As stated, I can grant permission for this where it seems reasonable. Eviternity will be released in this way, for example. But it seems silly to do this for single maps or smaller projects, especially while this remains a living project under development.

 

 

[Cage]

This looks really nice, good job!

[Urthar]

Can't wait to get my grubby hands on this and play with it at some point.

[Pirx]

This will probably be the new standard resource pack.

[elend]

Oh my, this is really some gorgeous work, which I would love to try out at some point. I want to mature and learn to become a better mapper first, since I have the feeling, that my inadequate mapping skills don‘t do those textures justice!

 

Regarding the restrictions: I don‘t think that‘s too great of an idea as well, since it is indeed one extra step for potential players. And we all know how incredible lazy people tend to be, but there is also the compatability issue having different versions of a texture pack. Minor misalignments and such.

 

Of course it‘s your decision, but I hope in the future those restrictions will be eased a little. 

[Phade102]

its an extra step that a lot of people simply wont listen to sadly. People will put the textures into their projects, especially pk3's because they sort of need to be in there. Its a sad situation, but if that is the decision you are making Ukiro, its 100% your choice

[Misty]

I'm looking foward to it when it will be released for public ;)

[Pegleg]

18 hours ago, Tango said:

if a player has to rely on some external source of information to tell what version of otex my map requires

Admittedly that would be a bit of a hassle, but as long as the mapper is diligent in stating what version of OTEX he or she is using and ukiro is diligent about clearing stating somewhere what the version of OTEX a particular file is, then it shouldn't be too bad.

 

Granted, I don't think this diligence I'm asking for is too much, but it may be more than some would be willing to do (unfortunately), but that's a different story.

 

The interesting wrinkle will be if, in subsequent versions of OTEX, ukiro starts changing textures or removing textures he doesn't like, which would render a map to suffer from misalignments or HOMs (as has been said by others). Hopefully, ukiro provides a changelog for new versions describing textures and flats that have been changed or removed, if there are any.

 

 

On 9/1/2018 at 10:57 AM, ukiro said:

For now, OTEX will be intended as an external resource

For those, who missed it, ukiro did say "for now," which means that his stated policy of directing players to download the pack separately may be relaxed at some point. I would figure it would probably be a long while from now, but it may come at some point.

[ukiro]

40 minutes ago, Pegleg said:

The interesting wrinkle will be if, in subsequent versions of OTEX, ukiro starts changing textures or removing textures he doesn't like, which would render a map to suffer from misalignments or HOMs

 

I won't make changes that cause errors in maps based on a prior version. If I change an existing texture it will be to fix a flaw or otherwise improve it, but it will retain its overall look in terms of pattern, luminosity, dominant colors, and so on.

 

And, yes, once I feel it's time to move away from updating OTEX (a point I hope to reach soon, to be honest—this has been going on long enough) usage rights will be updated.

 

As for some of the other comments here: Yes, I realize some people will inevitably feel entitled to do whatever they want with these, and I'm not taking pleasure in arbitrary restrictions. I feel that I have a pragmatic justification for this approach and I can only hope people take a few seconds to try to understand my reasoning.

 

To help my cause, I fully intend to incentivize this and not just declare these to be the rules. By working with me, instead of just snatching the textures and running off like a hungry racoon, you should be getting something more out of it. For example, if you're needing some texture variant or combination that isn't included, I can add it for you if it's not too specialized (again, trying to avoid bloating the wad with one-off trick textures). Since I can do this from the Photoshop source files, the quality will be higher than if you try to frankenstein something together based on the patches in the wad.

 

Additionally, I actually can help with one-off textures for projects where we've agreed the textures can be bundled. Eviternity will have some examples like that, and it should serve as the model example of how to use OTEX in a major production.

 

["JL" was too short]

On 9/1/2018 at 3:51 PM, ukiro said:

What I am saying here is that I do want people to make levels using these, and that embedding the textures in the level wad can be permitted under certain circumstances. But I am also saying that I don't want that to be the default use because I intend to continue to refine and add to OTEX for a while longer, which I hope is to the benefit of everyone.

 

 

I'm not sure I understand.  Nothing about embedding textures in a release would preclude you from continuing to add to the original OTEX resource. 

 

It does feel like it would put a chilling effect on mapping with these textures.  I think the textures look gorgeous and would like to experiment with them, but if it's going to be a hassle for me to put together an actual release that is both ethical and user-friendly, it greatly increases the odds that I'll just reach for cc4tex or something instead.  (To be fair, in my particular case it's unlikely to be any great loss to the community since I hardly ever release any finished maps.  However, I'd bet dollars to donuts that there are some competent mappers out there who feel the same way.)

[ukiro]

“Refine” in the paragraph you quoted refers to tweaking and updating existing textures. 

[Bauul]

While I totally get your wish for people not to merge OTEX into their own wad file, would it be ok for authors just to include the OTEX wad in the same zip as their map? Best of both worlds!

 

[Nevander]

This looks very well made. I may even consider using it as my primary texture resource when I revisit my personal megawad project in addition to standard textures.

["JL" was too short]

10 hours ago, ukiro said:

“Refine” in the paragraph you quoted refers to tweaking and updating existing textures. 

 

Yes, I did understand that that's part of it, but my point still stands: it doesn't prevent you from doing those updates, it just means there will be a project out there that contains a slightly older version of this or that texture. 

 

I can certainly understand not wanting to have work in circulation that embarrasses or dissatisfies you, but is that really a worry here?  You're being so meticulous with these textures already that I assume nothing that's actively substandard is going to be released.

 

Again, you can obviously feel as you like, and if you say "yes, the thought of this bothers me too much" then that's your prerogative as the creator, and neither I nor anyone else can compel you to feel otherwise.  I just think it'd be an overall negative influence on the presumable end goal of people being able to use these textures to create lovely maps for us all to play.

[Nevander]

Who includes entire texture packs in their projects anyway? Shouldn't any good modder only include the new textures that they actually end up using? Surely that is permitted?

["JL" was too short]

1 hour ago, Nevander said:

Who includes entire texture packs in their projects anyway? Shouldn't any good modder only include the new textures that they actually end up using? Surely that is permitted?

 

My understanding was that that was specifically what ukiro was encouraging against.  

[HavoX]

Oh... OH SNAP

[Nevander]

2 hours ago, jerrysheppy said:

My understanding was that that was specifically what ukiro was encouraging against.  

Then what's the point? A texture resource that doesn't let you pick it apart is no longer a resource, it's like a proprietary file that contains only textures. Pulling textures out of texture packs is a given, it's part of the result of making a resource for such an easily modded game.

 

Making maps with it but then telling users to "go download this texture pack to make the maps look right" is rediculous nonsense. You expect a mapset to be all inclusive without needing more files to run it with the intended experience.

 

People will do it anyway even if told not to. It's something a resource author must accept.

[ukiro]

7 hours ago, Nevander said:

Then what's the point? A texture resource that doesn't let you pick it apart is no longer a resource, it's like a proprietary file that contains only textures. Pulling textures out of texture packs is a given, it's part of the result of making a resource for such an easily modded game.

 

Making maps with it but then telling users to "go download this texture pack to make the maps look right" is rediculous nonsense. You expect a mapset to be all inclusive without needing more files to run it with the intended experience.

 

People will do it anyway even if told not to. It's something a resource author must accept.

 

There's a difference between a texture WAD and a texture repository; They might both come in WAD form but their intended use is different. I hear you, and other in this thread, loud and clear on your objections, but calling this approach "rediculous nonsense" [sic] is not an argument, and saying texture ripping is something I "must accept" reeks of a rather unflattering kind of entitlement. I recommend you re-read what I've said in this thread, as a bit more nuance might tamper your outrage.

 

[bioshockfan90]

no complaints here, just comin in to say that although i got denied when this was in the works (i sucked at mapping 100%), this might draw me out of my hole when it releases. cheers, ukiro! :)

[Kristian Nebula]

Might have to work on a hell-themed map eventually when it's out. Somepoint in 2019 or 2020 :)

[Novaseer]

I made Depths too early.

I needed this.

[DooM_RO]

Great stuff!

[Nevander]

Guess I'll just wait for the usage rights to be changed post release. In the meantime, still will use cc4.