Skybox bug

[Mr. Cowboy Zombie]

I dont know why happens, but when you in this case, go to top of stairs you can see a blue and white line on skybox.

Before that skybox had a similar line but this time was visible all time, so I was download an older version of slade.

 

TEMPLESCRF_help.rar

[Kappes Buur]

The same thing happens with HERETIC sky1 when you lower a bounding sector with the sky image.

Spoiler

You could try

1. to raise the bounding sector to maybe 384
2. to redo the sky image to tile seamlessly both horizontal and vertical
3. to resize that sky image to 256x128

 

edit

Spoiler

shows a combination of items 2 and 3

 

 

Edited July 29, 2023 by Kappes Buur
screenshots done with GZDoom

[plums]

IIRC, it's something to do with the way SLADE does tall patches properly, but that doesn't work for Heretic skies, because they themselves are a hack of sorts. I remember this bug from a while ago, a bit surprised it's still here. @Gez any workarounds other than downgrading SLADE to an even older version?

 

Version 3.1.1.5 should probably still work, looking through the changelogs version 3.1.2 beta1 is the first to support vanilla tall patches.

https://slade.mancubus.net/files/?dir=3.1.1.5

Edited July 29, 2023 by plums

[Mr. Cowboy Zombie]

8 hours ago, plums said:

IIRC, it's something to do with the way SLADE does tall patches properly, but that doesn't work for Heretic skies, because they themselves are a hack of sorts. I remember this bug from a while ago, a bit surprised it's still here. @Gez any workarounds other than downgrading SLADE to an even older version?

 

Version 3.1.1.5 should probably still work, looking through the changelogs version 3.1.2 beta1 is the first to support vanilla tall patches.

https://slade.mancubus.net/files/?dir=3.1.1.5

I downloaded version 3.1.1.5

[Mr. Cowboy Zombie]

Btw I use chocolate-heretic

[plums]

I figured it out: move your flats (including FF_START and F_END) to the top of your wad in the entries, so that the SKY1 entry comes after. Something to do with how the Doom engine loads extra flats -- it basically loads all data up to F_END as a potential flat -- is interfering with the way that Heretic loads it's skies I guess. nope!

 

In general it's a good idea to have new flats at the top of your wad.

Edited July 29, 2023 by plums

[plums]

P.S. I made you a tiling version if you want it

 

 

[Mr. Cowboy Zombie]

I made that but keep appearing me same lines

[plums]

Sorry, my mistake, I must have tested with Crispy Heretic.

 

After further testing I think this is just a limit of Chocolate (and vanilla) Heretic. Here's a shot from a map that's just a tall tower so you can see the sky, with no new graphics, using vanilla Heretic in DOSBox:

 

 

[Mr. Cowboy Zombie]

1 minute ago, plums said:

Sorry, my mistake, I must have tested with Crispy Heretic.

 

After further testing I think this is just a limit of Chocolate (and vanilla) Heretic. Here's a shot from a map that's just a tall tower so you can see the sky, with no new graphics, using vanilla Heretic in DOSBox:

 

 

So it means it doesn't have solution?

[plums]

2 minutes ago, HERRGOTT said:

So it means it doesn't have solution?

Correct, or if there is one I don't know what it is. Sorry :(

[Mr. Cowboy Zombie]

Just now, plums said:

Correct, or if there is one I don't know what it is. Sorry :(

Anyway thanks ;)

[Worst]

After testing a bit with Chocolate-Heretic, I found that you can get rid of the horizontal two lines if you make the SKY1 texture 256x256 and use two 256x128 patches at 0,0 and 0,128 offsets to fill the texture. However, a vertical glitched line still persists in the bottom side of the sky. (Which happens with the original sky too.)

[plums]

@Worst nice! I was wondering if changing the texture size would help but I had to stop playing around with it. Next step is to try a 1024x256 sky with 8 patches to see if that reduces the vertical lines?

[Mr. Cowboy Zombie]

Anyway I finished wad, I incremented ceil height. 

[Worst]

16 hours ago, plums said:

@Worst nice! I was wondering if changing the texture size would help but I had to stop playing around with it. Next step is to try a 1024x256 sky with 8 patches to see if that reduces the vertical lines?

Unfortunately making the sky texture this big with this many patches does not work in chocolate-heretic (and I assume vanilla either), because it triggers the R_GenerateLookup: texture <number> is >64k error when trying to launch the game.

 

I did however find a couple of setups that work well:

• A tall but not wide 128x256 sky image that is split into two 256x128 patches in which the top and bottom half repeat once horizontally, and these two patches are put into a 255x256 texture. The 255 width results in chocolate-heretic only rendering the sky as if it was only 128 wide, but avoids the vertical glitch line. (I suggest making sure to actually repeat the sky texture so that it looks consistent in sourceports that actually support this odd size for the sky texture.)

• A wide but not tall 256x128 sky image that is placed 4 times into a 511x128 texture, patches go at offsets 0,0 ; 0,128 ; 256,0 ; 256,128. Chocolate heretic only ends up rendering it as a 256 wide sky. (Two of the patches are completely outside the texture, but they are still necessary to avoid glitches!)

[plums]

@Worst wow nice going! Did you find those by trial and error, or something else?

 

It makes some amount of sense that the 2nd example needs patches below the texture, since vanilla Heretic's skies are a hack that reads below the texture normally. Hopefully no ports try to render a 511px texture (or even worse, 255px), that would be a mess tiling-wise.

 

 

[Worst]

20 hours ago, plums said:

@Worst wow nice going! Did you find those by trial and error, or something else?

Yeah, I found these setups pretty much just by trial and error, trying to make good guesses on what could work, based on previous attempts. It was rather quick to test through some of the setups, since I'd get the "R_GenerateLookup: texture <number> is >64k" error message before the game even finished loading. I did try to look at the source code briefly, but I didn't really grasp how the code worked, and decided that it'd just be faster to try some different setups in SLADE.

 

20 hours ago, plums said:

It makes some amount of sense that the 2nd example needs patches below the texture, since vanilla Heretic's skies are a hack that reads below the texture normally. Hopefully no ports try to render a 511px texture (or even worse, 255px), that would be a mess tiling-wise.

GZDoom seems to actually tile odd sized sky textures like these. But one extra or missing column of pixels might not be that visible in most skies, if the neighbour columns still kinda fit next to it.

Btw. I found an even better setup:

• A vanilla resolution 256x200 sky image that is placed 4 times into a 258x200 texture, patches go at offsets 0,0 ; 0,200 ; 256,0 ; 256,200. This makes the original heretic skies render without any visible glitches. (Only thing I noticed was that every time the sky repeats vertically, the 'layer' below is offset by 1 pixel to the right. Probably unlikely anyone will notice this if not looking for it.)