OTEX texture set to be released December 10, 2018

["JL" was too short]

13 hours ago, ukiro said:

saying texture ripping is something I "must accept" reeks of a rather unflattering kind of entitlement

 

FWIW, although I can't speak for Nevander, I didn't take it as saying that people are entitled, but rather that it's something that inevitably will happen whether you like it or not. 

 

Personally, I certainly won't release anything without your permission to include the resources, but in practice that simply means I'm less likely to release something that uses OTEX, period.  And as I said before, while I myself am a nobody, there will certainly be others in the same boat, some of whom might have created and released stuff that would have been really enjoyable for us all to play.  For that reason I wish you'd chosen differently, and I hope you still will, but it's your right to feel as you will and ask the users of your textures to respect that.  Namaste.

[elend]

To ease the waves here a bit: I think this discussion only shows how eager everybody is to really, really use those incredible textures. See it as a compliment. :p

["JL" was too short]

2 hours ago, elend said:

To ease the waves here a bit: I think this discussion only shows how eager everybody is to really, really use those incredible textures. See it as a compliment. :p

 

Oh yeah, for sure, in the sense that if we didn't care about using these textures, nobody would say anything.

[Cage]

What's the problem with having the texture pack on-hand in your Doom folder, or even in /autoload/ ? Naming your textures in a way that doesn't conflict with stock Doom textures is a basic thing so I'm completely sure that this pack does this, just like any other texture pack, so where's the problem? I'm sure all the mappers using this pack will let you know in their threads.

 

If you're using ZDoom based engines, just autoload it and you're done, in other engines you just have to load two files instead of one, which already is the case with wads that come in multiple files (BTSX for example) or have .deh patches outside the wad, so if you find that a deal breaker, I find you ridiculous? The aforementioned BTSX has it's wad in two parts, and a deh patch outside of the wad files, so you might have to load up three different files using in some of the Doom ports, oh no! I guess that makes it the worst wad ever. :P

My impression is that most people who make it into a some real, big problem, just really have a problem with respecting the author's terms and conditions about his own work.

[Dragonfly]

On 9/7/2018 at 12:52 AM, jerrysheppy said:

Personally, I certainly won't release anything without your permission to include the resources, but in practice that simply means I'm less likely to release something that uses OTEX, period.

 

If taking five minutes to obtain permission to use someone else's thousands of hours of effort is too much effort for you, even compared the hours upon hours of effort one usually puts into making maps then you certainly need to rearrange your priorities.

 

There's literally nothing about this situation that is arguable in your favour. If you want to slice, dice, and embed OTEX into your WAD, you only need to ask. It's the smallest hurdle and honestly the amount of effort put into trying to debate this point is greater than the effort it takes to just adhere to Ukiro's wishes.

["JL" was too short]

5 hours ago, Dragonfly said:

 

If taking five minutes to obtain permission to use someone else's thousands of hours of effort is too much effort for you, even compared the hours upon hours of effort one usually puts into making maps then you certainly need to rearrange your priorities.

 

There's literally nothing about this situation that is arguable in your favour. If you want to slice, dice, and embed OTEX into your WAD, you only need to ask. It's the smallest hurdle and honestly the amount of effort put into trying to debate this point is greater than the effort it takes to just adhere to Ukiro's wishes.

 

If it is literally as simple as making a courtesy request and getting a reply, then I might have been given the wrong idea.  But you're painting a picture that's different from the impression I get from Ukiro's own words, like these:

 

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.

 

"exceptions", "if they are justified", "reach out if they want to discuss" are all word choices that signify a pickier, more protracted gatekeeping process than "you only need to ask".  I really don't understand why you're being snide at me for taking those sorts of statements at face value.

 

[Memfis]

People can say that the restrictions are minor, but the simple truth is that mappers will prefer texture packs with no restrictions over texture packs with minor restrictions, and players will prefer standalone projects over projects that require a little more effort to run. When there are thousands of wads available for download, there is not much reason to bother with anything that needs additional steps to run. It's much easier to just move on to the next release, and that's what a lot of people will do in this case. Of course you're the author and you can demand whatever you want, but understand that you're definitely limiting your audience.

Edited September 8, 2018 by Memfis

["JL" was too short]

Also, would it maybe be better to start a separate thread about ethics and preferences for texture pack usage, if that's something that people are interested in discussing?  I worry it might seem like ukiro's thread is being hijacked.

[baja blast rd.]

 

21 hours ago, Memfis said:

People can say that the restrictions are minor, but the simple truth is that mappers will prefer texture packs with no restrictions over texture packs with minor restrictions, and players will prefer standalone projects over projects that require a little more effort to run. When there are thousands of wads available for download, there is not much reason to bother with anything that needs additional steps to run. It's much easier to just move on to the next release, and that's what a lot of people will do in this case. Of course you're the author and you can demand whatever you want, but understand that you're definitely limiting your audience.

 

Limiting your audience... by filtering out people who wouldn't care strongly enough to ask to use otex.wad. Not seeing how that is a bad thing. 

 

Any good creator who puts lots of effort into their work would just ask... And I don't see how it would be particularly desirable anyway to maximize otex usage and exposure in less ambitious, more throwaway stuff, or in projects where the author is mostly indifferent between otex and any existing alternatives. 

 

This is a moot point anyway, because the alternative, which would be justified, is that Ukiro could just hold otex privately, until the textures are set in stone, for five more years (Doom's 30th anniversary has a decent ring to it). So you are comparing (a) a small extra inconvenience (if one wants to call it that) added to using otex for the foreseeable future, relaxed some years from now, to (b) NO use of otex for the foreseeable future, released some years from now. So...  

 

 

Edited September 9, 2018 by rdwpa

[Marcaek]

Quote

 is that Ukiro could just hold otex privately

 

 

Pointless. Anyone who has permission to use the textures will be the vector by which they are ripped.

[baja blast rd.]

I'll quote from a version of this post I was drafting yesterday, which happened to talk about that (yes these puns are horrible, I know :P):

 

Quote

... until otex is set in GSTONE1. In the event of that, people could still rip stuff from Eviternity... in theory. But BTSX has been out for ages and no one has done that, so I doubt it would happen. It turns out good contributors are generally respectful of people's wishes. And ones that aren't get marked -- Sgt. Marked -- as pariahs. ...

 

I think that if otex were meant to be held privately, it's also likely that Eviternity wouldn't have come to fruition at this time. In either case, even if it did -- hell, even if a few other private projects with otex showed up in the next few years of that alternate reality -- people in the DW community generally don't rip from stuff of that nature without permission. 

Edited September 9, 2018 by rdwpa

["JL" was too short]

1 hour ago, rdwpa said:

Limiting your audience... by filtering out people who wouldn't care strongly enough to ask to use otex.wad. Not seeing how that is a bad thing. 

 

 Any good creator who puts lots of effort into their work would just ask...

 

OK, so, it might be good to follow up this post with an explicit request for clarification since I've seen both Dragonfly and rdwpa say "just ask!", which suggests that it might be less harsh than I was assuming.

 

Is the "approval process" for incorporating OTEX textures going to be just a matter of making a request and assuring you (ukiro) that it won't be a terry wad or anything?  Or is there going to be a high bar to clear?  Either would be your right as a creator, of course, but there are significantly different implications for people wanting to use the textures

 

[ukiro]

During the time after release where I still consider OTEX to be in active development, I am very unlikely to grant embedding permission for single levels, regardless of author. I have explained why elsewhere in this thread.

 

For more ambitious projects, chances improve. Factors I will consider are who's on the team (i.e. track record of participants), intended theme, realistic chances of getting completed, special requests, and more. If I am not given sufficient reason to think the project will amount to a basic level of quality, I reserve the right to not grant distribution permission. This is in part because projects  that I do give permission will also get my support, where needed, and I don't want to get tied up in crap projects.

 

Also very much worth noting: Considering the development time of an ambitious project, something that begins production now is unlikely to be out in less than a year. (Few people, or even full teams, are @Dragonfly fast—Eviternity was started in March of this year.) This means that for such projects you can feel more certain that when it comes time to release, I will consider OTEX done and distribution permissions will be much more lenient.

 

Basically, when the textures are out and you feel that this is something you want to use and you feel strongly that distributing the textures with the level(s) is paramount, drop me a line to discuss. If you are fine with your text file saying "requires OTEX" then you can just dive in right away.

 

 

 

["JL" was too short]

Fair enough.  It seems like my original impression was correct or close to it.  Thank you very much for the clarification. 

Edited September 9, 2018 by jerrysheppy

[MrDeAD1313]

Awesome! I'm normally not one for many of the custom textures, but this here is looking fantastic! Looking forward to some excellent maps putting these to use :)

[ukiro]

Today marks 50 days to release. While I'm scrambling to wrap everything up, here's some additional info, with assorted screenshots.

 

As stated, the set WILL be given a free-for-all sort of license soon enough, but I'll let the first period post release be sort of a public beta phase. I'm still discovering little tiling issues etc and want that ironed out before I completely release my grip on this. There will also be feedback around needs for "texture X with a trim from texture Y" etc, and it'll be nice to get some more of that in before restrictions are loosened.

 

A custom COLORMAP lump might be useful since I do a lot of stuff with orange, pink and yellow that the vanilla COLORMAP doesn't fade very gracefully. Undecided still on whether to include this, as people might want to make their own and I don't want to discourage that.

 

^{Untitled map by Scotty. He's boosted light levels around the orange to avoid the IWAD COLORMAP butchering the texture.}

 

I'm approaching 2000 texture entries and 1000 FLATs. Some of this boosted by multiple frames in animations, but it's still a decent chunk of stuff. In total I've probably made around 6000 textures and 3000 FLATs, but I try to filter very heavily for quality and consistency.

 

Some words on how I made these

With Otex I’ve strived to capture that original DOOM art vibe. But the inspiration comes from elsewhere too: I’ve opted to borrow styles and techniques from later Adrian Carmack game art rather than from Raven or 3D Realms games, as the latter were either more cartoony due to being entirely hand drawn, or less polished photographic sources. I’ve also mostly avoided 3D modeled source material. All of those styles are fully valid for texture set, just not what I personally chose to pursue.

 

PHOTO SOURCES

To achieve the grit and organic feel that the original textures have, many (but far from all!) are in some way based on photos. This is also the case with many of the IWAD textures, and I have deliberately tried to stay true to them in terms of vibe. Too often, I find photo based textures made by the Doom community to be poorly adapted to Doom's resolution and palette. I find that to make photo sources work well it's important to do all scaling very carefully to maintain detail while avoiding artifacts, to keep contrast quite low in each texture without causing banding, and to exercise extreme care with palette utilization.

 

Many source photos are my own, while others are stuff I've collected from the web over the past two decades. Had I been a professional making a commercial game I'd have kept good track of sources and usage rights, but this has been more of a guerilla effort and I've thought of this as visual sampling. (Notably, it seems even id didn't have usage rights to all of their sources!)

 

That said, there's also plenty in here that is hand drawn from scratch, and hopefully it'll be a bit tricky to tell what is what, at least in some cases. Again, I'm aspiring to achieve the same overall aesthetic as the vanilla assets, where it's often hard to say what is based on a photo and what isn't.

 

^{Eviternity map by Joshua "Dragonfly" O'sullivan. This project uses a modified palette to desaturate the blue range. Mostly (but not exclusively) photo sources here, but all heavily edited and overpainted.}

 

DITHERING

Dithering was very rarely used in any vanilla assets so I’ve avoided it almost entirely, with only a small set of exceptions. It can look good on occasion, but I find that too often it looks overly noisy at DOOM’s texture resolution and with its bold palette. You could get away with more of that in the far more subdued Quake 2 palette. Texture filtering on GPU rendering is almost a must to make dithering look good but DOOM should be played without texture filtering in my opinion, so that is what I’ve designed for.

 

^{Map by Kristian Nebula, previously shown here.}

 

TOOLS

I’m still mystified as to how Adrian achieved some of his techniques using Deluxe Paint, but I’ve almost exclusively used Photoshop instead of going fully retro. The tools affect the work of course, so this alone accounts for some key differences in style. I have a wacom tablet and some stuff is drawn using that, but for the most part this is all done with a mouse or, more often, the trackpad on my laptop since texture work has mostly happened when I've been traveling for work.

 

^{Eviternity map by Joshua "Dragonfly" O'sullivan. Most textures seen here are hand drawn.}

 

A NOTE ON SKIES

There's close to 50 skies included in OTEX, and they are mostly 200 pixels tall. Some are taller—240 or 256—but since I'm an old geezer who thinks Doom should be played without mouselook, that is mostly what I've designed for. So if you want to use this for some fancy GZDoom project, you might want to supply a different sky. More thoughts from me about sky rendering in this thread.

 

^{Eviternity map by me.}

 

 

[elend]

What a thoroughly interesting read! Since I really, really like these textures so far, it has been quite interesting to read more about them. One thing I can assure you, you definitely matched that Doom style and yet created something entirely new. That‘s actually my gripe with many texture resources, that they are sloppily mashed together from all sorts of sources (photos, other games, etc.) and most often than not haven‘t even been Doom palette or resolution optimized. It just shows how much effort you put into them. 

 

So, very great job, I can‘t wait to see more of them and good lord, 2000 textures and 1000 flats?! That‘s enough to last another 25 years of Doom...

[Bridgeburner56]

Release HYPE!

["JL" was too short]

Super interesting!  And still super looking forward to seeing the whole set and playing all the stuff that will be made with them. :)

[DANZA]

What a cool looking texture set and a great talent behind them. Can't wait!

[Gabenslair]

I'm honestly hyped about this texture pack. Well hyped for the "free for all" thing to be announced anyways

 

[Gothic]

Those screenshots are pure eye-gasm.

[PeterMoro]

I always thought the release date was Dec 4 and i got excited today when i got home. Doh! oh well, 6 more days to go.