New Testing Map

[Catoptromancy]

Load up in Freedoom2 to check out the all the sprite based resources. Get a good close look at the monsters without getting attacked. Nice area full of the TNT placeholder textures.

Load up in Freedoom1 and idclev to last map of each episode to check out end-game sequence. MAP30 also has placeholder for quick sequence.


We need texture artists! Can alter or edit existing patches as well.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/wve9hj

[fraggle]

This is great, thanks.

I think we should add this to the Git repository so that we keep it around for testing purposes (and extend as appropriate if we add new textures or resources).

The status with the TNT textures is interesting. It seems that lots of the TNT textures are just mods of the original textures. Given that the placeholders are kind of ugly and we've had them around for ages now, perhaps we could just ditch them and use the original unmodded versions?

[Catoptromancy]

Multiple copies of the same texture? I see no reason to ditch them. Only TNT pwads that actually use them will be seen.

Those are quick and dirty placeholders for someone to see and hopefully make good ones in a similar context.

Another big reason is that someone making maps will be able to create their own, or customize an existing texture without needing to add an entire new texture slot.

[esselfortium]

Catoptromancy said:

Another big reason is that someone making maps will be able to create their own, or customize an existing texture without needing to add an entire new texture slot.

What possible benefit could this serve? If someone is making a new texture that isn't an equivalent to one of the TNT resources it's named after, it's both going to confuse mappers and work against PWAD compatibility.

[Catoptromancy]

It was just an idea and would be better than a stock placeholder. By compatibility I meant it can actually play pwads on boom202 without crashing.

Most tnt textures are crate variations or Egypt themed non-tiling murals. Instead of making different Egypt themed textures for Freedoom, maybe a set of something else entirely.

[fraggle]

Catoptromancy said:

Multiple copies of the same texture? I see no reason to ditch them. Only TNT pwads that actually use them will be seen.

It's true that there aren't many TNT pwads out there (I can't even name any), but those that do, won't look very nice. If most of the textures are crate variants, we're not losing much by just using the normal crate textures, and at least it will look okay.

Fact is that the placeholders were put in in 2009 and there doesn't seem to have been much progress in replacing them with proper textures. The TNT/Plutonia textures are a pretty obscure compatibility use case so that's not too surprising. But are they ever going to get replaced? If not, why bother with placeholders?

In general I've learned across the course of the project that placeholders are usually a bad idea. For example, in the early days of Freedoom people wanted to use the PovDoom sprites as placeholders for the monster sprites. You might also remember that older versions of Freedoom (a long time ago) used to use a "beep" sound for all missing sounds. The logic was that making missing resources visible and obvious would encourage people to replace them.

But in practise, that logic doesn't work. It just makes the game unpleasant for players and gives the appearance of a lack of quality control - making people less likely to contribute to the project.

[Catoptromancy]

1 single blood patch with transparency will fix most of those crates. Almost all of them use the same blood patch over them.

We can swap in whatever for the rest of the textures instead of placeholders.

[fraggle]

If we want TNT/Plutonia compatibility, we need to include compatible patches in the IWAD, in case the PWAD file replaces TEXTURE1. So we can't just do it in TEXTURE1: we do need some kind of new graphics, even if they're just straight-up duplicates.

It shouldn't be too hard to copy/paste some of the blood graphics we already have over the crate textures. For Egyptian murals, maybe find some source material from Project Gutenberg or Wikimedia Commons: Ancient Egypt is well out of copyright now :)

[chungy]

As I recall, the Final Doom placeholders were even more of an attempt to stop HOMs from appearing than anything, but certainly they're there in a vain attempt to get replaced as well.

I have to agree with fraggle that most of these are rather useless modifications by TeamTNT in the original and nothing in particular will be harmed if we just reuse the existing Freedoom textures.

Just an example from tnt.wad here: the door can just be the regular AGM one and the wall... doesn't even need branding. If anything, the wall can be AGM as well if it's really so important.

[fraggle]

I spent some time this evening making the missing Egyptian textures. The others remaining now are mostly just crates and variants on the vanilla textures.