Why are there multiple switch textures that look the same?

[OnionTaco22]

I noticed this a while ago and it annoys me how there are multiple switch textures that look the same. Here is a screenshot of what I mean:

Anyone know why there are all these textures that use BROWN96? And also, when I load into the maps, they look the same, so why are they all different textures when they look the same????

[Gez]

5 hours ago, OnionTaco22 said:

I noticed this a while ago and it annoys me how there are multiple switch textures that look the same. Here is a screenshot of what I mean:

Anyone know why there are all these textures that use BROWN96? And also, when I load into the maps, they look the same, so why are they all different textures when they look the same????

Because of some poorly-coded bits in Doom.

 

Once upon a time, there was just Doom 1, and it was both shareware and registered. Registered Doom 1 had all of the content of shareware Doom 1, but also had more of it. This included switches. There are more switches in registered Doom than in shareware Doom.

 

When Doom boots up, it loads the definitions for switches and verifies that all the required textures are there. But there's a problem: shareware Doom will not have access to the switches from registered Doom! But it needs to work anyway because a shareware game that aborts on startup by complaining about missing switches is not a shareware game that will impress people enough to order the registered version. So the fix was to give each switch a value: 1 for available in shareware, and 2 for registered-exclusive. Now Doom only needs to complain if the switch that's missing has a value lesser than or equal to its game target -- missing 2 switches will not cause issues when playing in mode 1 (shareware); while missing 1 or 2 switches will cause issues when playing in mode 2 (registered).

 

But then there was Doom II. It had even more new switches! So logically those got the value 3. But since Doom II is not an extension of Doom 1 like registered Doom is an extension of shareware Doom, not all of the content from Doom 1 was needed in Doom II. Some of the switches from Doom 1 are not used at all in Doom II. But because of the way the switch loading code works, all the switches from Doom 1 must be found in Doom II, too.

 

So what id Software was to leave the Doom 1 switches, just kidding, they dummied them out.

 

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Switch

[Stabbey]

Did you alter your base WAD, or load some kind of texture pack? Something looks messed up with your textures. Look at the names below: SW1BRN1, SW1STAR, SW1STON2, SW1STONE... Those should be different base textures for the wall, but they're all the same.