SoftFX, or Bigger and Badder Software Lighting FX!

[Muusi]

A couple of days ago i made a WAD that gave enemies glowing eyes in software renderer made possible with colormap editing. This is an expanded version that gives the original textures in Doom and Doom II some lighting too. Switches, computer screens, everything that kinda looked like a light source is now fullbright. Tell me what you think :)

 

Once again i'd like to thank Noiser for teaching me how to properly edit the colormap and his "Doom 4 Vanilla" mod for the inspiration and the lava texture which i stole :D

 

The switches came out really nice in my opinion :)

 

Makes the sewers kinda moody.

 

Chompy boi also has glowing eyes now since he didn't have them in the previous WAD.

 

Nukage looks good and poisonous.

 

Big and small Cell packs also kinda looked like they have lights in them. Note the glow coming from the Cacodemon's mouth too.

 

Makes the door easier to find in the dark i guess.

 

Angery dudes.

 

The Arachnotron has blue eyes now as he should.

 

What i like most in this WAD. Makes these dark computery areas look interesting.

 

Please tell me if you find any sprites etc that have fullbright pixels where they clearly shouldn't be so i can fix them :)

 

All feedback is very welcome!

 

Download link to the fixed (again) version:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Uxe3KLtdfEaxvhD8f49BupTmMKug_wOy/view?usp=sharing

 

 

EDIT: In the past i mentioned not getting the mod to work on Choco and DOS Doom. This was due to me not knowing how to actually load PWADs properly in those. Armed with more knowledge i managed to load SoftFX properly and can confirm it's indeed fully vanilla compatible :) 

 

EDIT 2: I was notified by @Emperor S P O O N that my WAD contained unmodified resources and now that problem has been fixed. In case i missed something please let me know.

Edited December 8, 2023 by Muusi

[Wavy]

Awesome!

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

For Gzdoom I guess? Or does it work with vanilla? (I assume it doesn't, but still, it'd be good to know)

Edit: Forget it, I just tested the wad

Edited April 4, 2021 by Lol 6

[Muusi]

On 4/5/2021 at 1:50 AM, Lol 6 said:

For Gzdoom I guess? Or does it work with vanilla? (I assume it doesn't, but still, it'd be good to know)

Edit: Forget it, I just tested the wad

The only thing where i couldn't get it to work were Chocolate Doom and the original DOS executable :) If someone knows how to do that, i'd be glad to modify the WAD!

 

EDIT: they work, didn't know how to properly load in Vanilla. 

Edited November 4, 2023 by Muusi

[Gifty]

This is so sexy, holy crap.

[VentoliN13]

You sir, have just became a legend in the Doom community. . .

[Muusi]

27 minutes ago, VentoliN13 said:

You sir, have just became a legend in the Doom community. . .

Haha i wish😅 Been a silent member since the early 2000's and only just now i've started to contribute in a small way😁

[Redneckerz]

It gives a lot more sparkle, indeed. Love to see more COLORMAP effects from your end, Muusi!

[Korozive]

This is pretty darn kool actually. :o)

[Juka]

this looks cleannnn nice job!

[NOLONGER]

thats cool can you add freedoom?

[Muusi]

5 hours ago, Freedoomguy said:

thats cool can you add freedoom?

Hello, the only person who actually likes Freedoom😆 If there's demand i could do it but for now i'm doing the original IWADs and maybe versions for popular megawads like Valiant and Eviternity.

[P41R47]

On 4/6/2021 at 3:57 PM, Muusi said:

Hello, the only person who actually likes Freedoom😆 If there's demand i could do it but for now i'm doing the original IWADs and maybe versions for popular megawads like Valiant and Eviternity.

Been playing with this, and its a total blast!

I tried it on chocolate and vanilla with great effects ;)
Only problem is that it clash with those mapsets with different colorpal and playpal
So, there is a chance you make something like this for Back to Saturn X?
It would be a complete enhancement for an already awesome mapset :D

[VanaheimRanger]

On 4/6/2021 at 1:57 PM, Muusi said:

Hello, the only person who actually likes Freedoom😆 If there's demand i could do it but for now i'm doing the original IWADs and maybe versions for popular megawads like Valiant and Eviternity.

I'd love to see this implemented in both of those, Ancient Aliens and BTSX.  Keep up the good work.

Edited July 2, 2021 by VanaheimRanger

[MattFright]

On 4/6/2021 at 3:57 PM, Muusi said:

and maybe versions for popular megawads like Valiant and Eviternity.

 

If you're already working on those please disregard this comment, but i think if you're going that far i'd suggest doing "software brightmaps" for mappers (by making a modified version of 32in24-15tex and/or otex for example, given those the the biggest and most widely used) so it's used a lot more widely and treated less like a novelty. I'd personally love to see it and maybe even use them for my own projects if you ever were to make them!

[Muusi]

12 hours ago, MattFright said:

by making a modified version of 32in24-15tex and/or otex for exampleby making a modified version of 32in24-15tex and/or otex for example, given those the the biggest and most widely used) so it's used a lot more widely and treated less like a novelty. 

Please tell me what this means i'm interested. I've never heard of 32in24-15 or anything like this.

[princetontiger]

To constantly see progress and evolution on a near 30-year old game blows my mind. Nice stuff!

[RDETalus]

22 minutes ago, Muusi said:

Please tell me what this means i'm interested. I've never heard of 32in24-15 or anything like this.

It's the name of a popular texture pack used by mappers. The previous version was named cc4-tex.wad. You can find 32in24-15 tex at the link below:

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Cc4-tex

Edited July 3, 2021 by RDETalus

[Muusi]

1 hour ago, RDETalus said:

It's the name of a popular texture pack used by mappers. The previous version was named cc4-tex.wad. You can find 32in24-15 tex at the link below:

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Cc4-tex

Thanks for the info! Do these texture packs use the same colormap?

[MattFright]

1 minute ago, Muusi said:

Thanks for the info! Do these texture packs use the same colormap?

 

I dont think they modify it, so it should be the same as vanilla

[Muusi]

Interesting... I might look into this. Custom monsters will still be a problem and a couple of Vanilla sprites need minor fixes too so they don't have fullbright pixels in wrong areas. 

[MattFright]

11 minutes ago, Muusi said:

Interesting... I might look into this. Custom monsters will still be a problem and a couple of Vanilla sprites need minor fixes too so they don't have fullbright pixels in wrong areas. 

 

At least once you get the universal texture packs done it'll all be easier to adapt to specific wads through small patches :D

[Wadmodder Shalton]

It's better than GZDoom's default Brightmaps.

[esselfortium]

44 minutes ago, MattFright said:

 

I dont think they modify it, so it should be the same as vanilla

32in24-15-tex does use a modified palette and colormap, importing BTSX's red range fix to prevent red stuff from abruptly turning brown, as well as a slight change to the blue ramp.

[LexiMax]

I always wondered how difficult it would be to get a widely-agreed-upon standard for brightmaps.  Some chocolate forks have them, but the textures to which they apply to seem hardcoded.  Seems like if you can parse UMAPINFO, you could also parse a brightmap lump that maps texture names to palette ranges to fullbright, and get effects like this in a more targeted way.

[Redneckerz]

1 hour ago, AlexMax said:

I always wondered how difficult it would be to get a widely-agreed-upon standard for brightmaps.  Some chocolate forks have them, but the textures to which they apply to seem hardcoded.  Seems like if you can parse UMAPINFO, you could also parse a brightmap lump that maps texture names to palette ranges to fullbright, and get effects like this in a more targeted way.

I propose UBRIGHTMAP or, for the British, UBRIGHTMATE to be the name of this standard.

[Muusi]

I agree, brightmaps (also on monsters) should be standard everywhere they can be done!

Edited July 3, 2021 by Muusi

[mankubus]

What is the difference between this ad brightmaps.pk3 from gzdoom?

 

Btw brightmaps do nothing on my end. I load brightmaps.pk3 on RocketLauncher and I see no difference.

[Muusi]

10 hours ago, mankubus said:

What is the difference between this ad brightmaps.pk3 from gzdoom?

 

Btw brightmaps do nothing on my end. I load brightmaps.pk3 on RocketLauncher and I see no difference.

The difference is that my WAD doesn't contain true brightmaps, it's an edited colormap that makes some colors appear bright even in dark areas and sprites and textures have been edited with those fullbright colors in mind. That means you don't need GZDoom for this and it works even in the original DOS executable.

 

For your brightmaps problem, i can't say where the problem might be. Have you tried just launching GZDoom.exe and enabling brightmaps on the startup window? 

Edited July 4, 2021 by Muusi

[mankubus]

2 hours ago, Muusi said:

The difference is that my WAD doesn't contain true brightmaps, it's an edited colormap that makes some colors appear bright even in dark areas and sprites and textures have been edited with those fullbright colors in mind. That means you don't need GZDoom for this and it works even in the original DOS executable.

 

For your brightmaps problem, i can't say where the problem might be. Have you tried just launching GZDoom.exe and enabling brightmaps on the startup window? 

When using Rocketlauncher 2 i dont see that startup window but anyway when launching gzdoom i see the window and both load lights and load brighmaps are enabled yet i cannot see them.