poisonhead

For some reason when I add new flats etc they're fine if I keep them as bmps/pngs but when I convert them to Doom colours (flat) they get corrupted! The first few are ok, then type unknown and jaguar (tex)??? I've done this before with no problems, imported images are 8bit bitmaps with Doom colours (yet Slade always identifies them as 24bit PNG but this hasn't been an issue yet). Will I have to go back to XWE? I've tried restarting, clearing up hard drive space etc. Could this be because my wad is over 50MB? Still I think it shouldn't be an issue... Please help as all my work with very limited time and energy left came to a complete halt :(

Wow! Never thought someone'd reply with such awesome guide! My hat's off to you and this definitely should go to the tutorials section! (any mods reading this?) Thank you so much (and thanks to everyone who replied). I know understand a few things better and am a slightly better pixel-rapist :) ATM I'd really like to go over my textures and flats in my custom resource file as fast as possible but as I stated earlier, Slade 3.2.0 beta 3 which I'm using is _SLOW_, are there any faster ones? Even XWE runs faster when it comes to textures! (btw. they're in vanilla Doom format) I'm also not fond of the unclear way of Slade's saving, so many times I've clicked save, save all and yet when my cpu crashed it hadn't saved them! Tons of crawlingly slow texture work gone! How do I make sure my work is saved if it isn't quick or that version? Also should I upgrade? Been fearing newer versions might be even slower (also it was really hard to get this to run, I still don't know what the problem was) and tried asking already that would some older build be realiable enough but maybe faster? Or are there better alternative softwares for overheating regularly crashing 2GB Win7 budget machine from 2009 to go through and edit textures? Also is there any option of making the textures separated to categories without breaking vanilla compatibility and going through more trouble? (as going through ~5k images isn't in itself?) It's getting ridiculous trying to make a manual list in notepad of what every nonsensically named texture actually is... And MAYBE MOST IMPORTANTLY, I thought today - Hey, there exists threads for people to send their textures and sprites, whatabout a thread about raw materials for those? Something like 'Share your possible texture/sprite resource images' etc. I dunno how'd I go about mine, got so many tens to hundreds of gigabytes of my own photos and also lot's of cool screengrabs from HDTV shows (4k would be better but I don't have the machinery to work with it) but I'm sure I'd submit more than my so far nonexistial input to other threads and got images I know I've never gonna touch but somebody else might, some cool skies and everything under, below, left, right and behind the sun. Many TV shows and movies have provided cool textures and props which many times can't even be told where they're from (after edits, resizing, more edits and palettization) but sometimes give cool little eastern eggy type of things for hardcore fans of those shows to see. It'd be cool when no more would people have to google for images etc as everyone could contribute possible sprite/texture material for others to edit into game form. (and I'm really not saying this just so someone else would do the work, I like to work on my own stuff myself but so many great images are left unused that it's a waste!) Sucks more I have words for that I'm running ouf of time fast, if no miracle happens I'll die in a week from the doctors suddenly taking away my 20 year benzo/opioid/pregabalin 'scripts even though I have real illnesses and even had they miraculously healed, it'd be many years process to cut down the dosages. I don't have any more possessions (or health, I'm in fever) to sell so I could afford ~400€/week just to stay alive even though anxious and not very functional let alone if I wanna enjoy a moment of this GAD awful lonely life let alone get something really done but I'd hate to let all the work I've put to Doom go to waste even though it's so random, quality varities and some take Doom's aspect ratio into account and others don't even if I'm not the best spriter there are some very usable textures, skies and flats. Sucks that part of them are borrowed but I can't usually remember where and a few times I'm not sure if it's borrowed or not but I remember most of my own textures and I've also done some possibly useful edits etc and would've liked to demonstrate my simple unrealistic but working style of doing shootable dehacked thingies. Also when I should be fixing and securing old assets I just come up with new one :/ Happens especially when using this one realtime rotated-mirror+filter effect app on my phone, I got strong pareidolia and take so much pics that by sheer dumb luck I've got almost ready made replacement textures for IOS with very little effects from PSP, I really gotta make these before returning to the weird world of slade (how the correct procedure of adding a new patches and texture goes? I've seen guides but still sometimes it fails and I gotta go back to XWE... PS. Sorry for feverish messy post. Please don't respond regarding my personal life as there's nothing to be done. But I really help if there's anything better than the literally crawling Slade for quickly going through and editing the textures? etc. Happy Doomin' and hope you're doing better!

Thank you, I'll try that later. Except I wouldn't want to end up with just 1 color blue. I'd like to save even a tiny bit of definition/features/noise/texture to keep the photograph like look instead of going cartoony with 1 color blue. (I could always add noise, gradient etc and borrow features from other images later but that would be sub optimal plenty of extra work).

I don't want to end up with a 2 color image :) I'm not using Photoshop but Paint Shop Pro (7.00). Maybe I'll download GIMP and try that. Thank you! If somebody knows how to do that in PSP7 I'd love you. BTW. I came up with an unrelated question, in Boom is it possible to make player's health slowly drain all through the level (doesn't matter if it's constant or partially random, as long as it'd keep happening) except using damaging floors? (could invisible dehacked monster work?)

Whether taking photographs, screenshots or downloading pics from the net, very often one or two sides are brighter than the other. Sometimes this is fine and when making stuff for Vanilla, having a picture where light shines down often makes for better textures and ambiance but I've been thinking of dynamic lights and in general this has plagued me for years. I know it's possible as some image-pattern-tiling website had an option to use it but how does one flatten an image brightness levels so they're all the same? I'm using PSP 7.0 on an _ancient_ machine that just overheated, turned off and took some of my work with it so I can't run very new/demanding softwares and I'd really like to learn if it's possible in PSP7. I tried to google but didn't find an answer (maybe due to english not being my native language). Here's a quick crappy downsized partial screenshot showing me with an image that's clearly darker on the upper side and how PSP's flatten doesn't do much anything but I don't know if it's even supposed to work that way. So how could I flatten the image to make the light levels match and make the image look evenly lit if it's even possible? It'd sure help at times (especially when making tiled textures) me and I'm sure fellow wanna-be-texture-artists wouldn't mind an answer let alone if there is somewhere or could be a guide for this? Image where upper side is clearly darker due to lighting (and might become too dark if played with modern hardware accelerated ports using dynamic lights etc) PS. Nevermind the fact that Doom's palette don't like blues so much. This image is random example.

I messed up the original post so it didn't show the already failed gradient attempt. Any tips on improving this? What about animating? I don't want it to be one frame sprite as it'll replace some minor power up or sumtin and every else has 2-4 frames of animation. BTW. I'd welcome all alcohol, drugs, tobacco and ordinary house/office/urban etc stuff (not desolated wastelands etc but regular stuff) sprites and textures. I know the most common ones (Duke3D rips and R667 props), was hoping for something more less-used as I've gotten tired of seeing many of the same textures since the 90's. You can DM me if you know good resources etc or reply to this.

I thought that instead of a very pixelated photo-based bong that many can't tell what's it supposed to be I decided to maybe go for the cliché cannabis leaf sprite after seeing such a simple a nice pixel art one in Southpark: Joining The Panderverse so I recreated it. But as a really bad pixel artist, especially creating from scratch, I was wondering how to insert some features like depth, colors etc to the leaf so it wouldn't be just one color? Any good _simple_ guides or tips anyone? (compatible with Paint Shop Pro 7) Or maybe someone wants to take a crack at this if they're bored? Anyway this one color example is free to use as I copied design from SP which probably copied it from somewhere (only so many ways to draw the leaf using so few pixels). Below is example showing the original vs my quick recreation and then the sprite in it's actual dimensions: edit2: I made a version with what little I can do with my skills (awful unnatural gradient) but accidentally first uploaded wrong file, now here it is in it's unglory:

As I previously stated in my less-than-succesfull post (still searching for easiest crude hack to either make They Live reference or just an invisible monster that can only be seen with glasses that could be either triggered by player picking them up or faked with sidedefs, it's just I'm not _reallly_ an expert on anything and I'm doing this for Boom-compatibles, not wanting to take ZDoom route with my first real map) I migrated from XWE to Slade and besides loving features not provided by XWE I have more trouble. ATM I'm using version 3.2.0 beta 3, I wonder if it's just this version but I find it besides _SLOW_ (I've got halfbroken 2009 laptop as computer :/) to be buggy and unreliable. What's up with copy and paste? If I copy a texture and paste it, then copy another and paste it will keep adding them (every copied texture etc) together instead of only pasting the latest copied texture? I have to keep closing and opening it. It also doesn't change the name of the file in texture editor should I save the file under new name and it's unclear to which file the texture editor keeps referencing. Also save and save all are a bit unexplained, like if I also have like iwad or some else open I don't want to be re-saved will save all save all wads or only all the stuff relating to one wad? I also dunno really what went wrong as I'm really tired constantly etc but I lost all my initial textures I was so glad to be able to make as I don't know how to do multi-patch textures and big textures in XWE. Been trying to re-do the work and get my mf resource file ready, it's close to 55MB, I wonder if vanilla would even run it? :D One problem is that I've accumulated so MUCH textures with so random names that it won't be easy to find anything. I wish I could have categories and some much faster program. Slade literally _crawls_ (and I thought XWE was slow) and that's why I'm asking should I upgrade or downgrade and are there alternatives to Slade and XWE when dealing with mostly flats, patches, sprites and textures? Also a few (not many, maybe 2-3 so far, haven't gone through all the thousands of textures yet) patches got somehow corrupted, they looked fine in XWE. But they have been so few it's not important, just wondered why. I'd just wanna learn to understand Slade better and wish there was a build that worked _always_ with one file only so you don't get confused, or would more clearly separate files and more understandable controls. If only there were from XWE to Slade for Dummies book and a free computer upgrade as well as free money. I'm running out of medicines fast :(

Could anyone help me with this? I'm sorry to ask again and beg but could someone help me to do either powerup or a weapon that would enable me to make a monster that can only be seen with the glasses? I've gotten a bit better idea of colormaps but still don't completely understand them in this regard and am lost. I would even settle for a sector lightning trick (make the spot where glasses are have a linedef to enable colormap to show player the otherwise invisible monsters). Maybe with two colormaps? If I'd take the most unnecessary colors/light levels out in the room where the glasses are and then have linedef change to a colormap where the invisible monsters could be seen? But I still _really_ don't know how to do this, to have invisible monster that'd only be seen with item, weapon or in certain sector. Could anyone be so wonderful to provide me the crudest example or try explaining it like to a retarted child? One other thing I was thinking that are there ways of doing some kind of (even semi) randomization in Boom? I was thinking one partial and bad way would be to create monster closets where it would be up to player's sounds and position etc to let monsters roam in a small space where they might or might not cross a linedef that would trigger the "random" event. I'm pretty sure there might be better solutions? Two more stupid questions, what are the bare essential Dehacked function(s) to make a thing walk toward the player? And I forgot what are the bare essentials for (reasonably) reliable invisible ambient sound thingy? (so that it'd make a sound when seeing or hearing a player). I've sacrificed a few monsters and been thinking of using them for ambient sounds and maybe something weird. BIG thanks to all answers and BIGGEST for ones that'd help me accomplish this. I'm trying to finish something of WIP version of my texture pack and start actually mapping but would like to have the glasses have some use and a few ambient sounds from sacrificed monsters etc things.

I feel that there's a very slight language barrier as well, I'm not native english. Anyway, I had a new idea, possibly stupid (and most likely at least partially somehow done in some context) that what if the glasses were weapons? My logic is that if I make an invisible enemy that the ghost-detector (name tbd) would shoot without causing damage but making the enemy flash? If such enemy were merely collection of black pixels or sheer invicibility, how would they light up? I was thinking this for a while when waiting for the bus to come and trying to compile good-enough-to-start-mapping resource pack (~44-45MB of vanilla compatible textures and few sprites and sounds I've done, should surely be enough for a map or ten xD). Someone once tried to explain here how to make a wider skies with XWE but I didn't quite get it. Are there better tutorials? I've got 512px ja 1024px skies besides regular 256px skies. Also can I make longer skies using sky transfer and would that still require making a custom patch or would it accept longer textures (256px>) than normal? Sorry for being so stupid. Any more help would be greatly appreciated and thanks for every answer. BTW. Are there any Finnish communities or Doomers who'd maybe like to chat? I'm pretty lonely and using mother tongue would be easier regarding some things. (little afraid to even ask as I now there are a few truly legendary Doomers from this goddamned country that I greatly look up to)

I can assign color maps to sectors but my damaged tired more-or-less-constantly-intoxicated brain still has trouble getting the concept of how would I go on about making a monster that could only be seen with the glasses if it even is possible? I wouldn't mind hackyness. And if totally invisible monster isn't possible I wouldn't mind using a few dark pixels and maybe render fuzzy but I'd like it to be practically impossible to see without glasses, especially in the dark. I also got a new thing. I base most of my textures of photographs I've taken with various effects and rotating mirror etc, and I've been working two days on a texture which ended up as an "evil map" and I replaced the computer map sprite with it (still have to rename it in dehacked) but I'd _really_ like it have some side effects when Doomguy resorts to evil sorcery to see the map layout - is there anything I can do to the thing(s) with dehacked etc or will I have to resort to Boom level hackery? (make stuff happen with conveyor belts etc if player passes a sidedef when walking to the evil map) Also regarding "power ups" and "armor" (drugs of different kinds), is there anything to be done to make the player feel any side effects? (except doing things with level editing like making a voodoo doll take slowly damage if player walks to a certain powerup but this is tedious). Also coming back to colormaps, which are the ways I can activate them? Is there a walkover sidedef to make it/them change? Whatabout a powerup? Also has anybody done or does anyone wanna take a quick try to make some psychedelic (as much as is possible) or otherwise very interesting colormap that could crudely simulate a drug? If possible I'd like a one that wouldn't affect weapons too much, a few weird pixels here and there is ok but I don't want them to end up a total mess. So how would I go about making one? I'd really settle for very little, don't need anything to be totally convincing or perfect and willing to sacrifice any power up, almost any monster, weapon or whatever to have a little fun while building up my skills with Boom before maybe taking up ZDoom if I survive my very difficult situation, may need a long "vacation", really hoping to release something little as I've been working forever with textures (a bit shame that some are designed for the weird pixel ration and some not and my skills are less crappy than before). PS. Are there any tips or tricks to "de-mirrorize" image? So many of my raw resources for textures are perfectly mirrored and as experienced it may take days to half-successfully do it by shuffling thousands of pixels by hand. I don't need perfect results, if only there was something to give me a start, like slightly warp the image, maybe add a little noise and something. With todays AI's that can generate 4k assets from words, are there any auto-demirrorizers? (even random pixel shuffleler might sometimes save a lot of work) Sorry for such a long post, I have trouble writing shortly. I thank for all the previous answers, hope to truly "get" colormaps so that I could utilize them for the purposes I'm envisioning and wondering how I would go even trying, maybe separate the most important colors to weapons, keep them and fuck with the rest perating trying to generate a quasipsychedelic one? Any tips how to easily do that and other things I've talked about? Also is possible to convert a palette to a colormap? (if such a thing makes any sense, parts of colormaps still go over my head :/)

Editing images etc isn't a problem as I know Doom palette painfully well (and I'm _still_ using XWE as I just got Slade running on this OLD faulty computer and don't know _anything_ about it) and I remember fighting with GIMP's user interface long time ago. I use PSP 7.00 (got CD for 7.04 but no serials etc). PSP7 doesn't certainly have the best tools for repalettization but it's the tool I like. I've spent hundreds of hours manually adjusting colors, fixing things etc. I was wondering if there are there any online (or simple downloadable) free programs that have CIEDE2000 etc so I could use it to to palettize my images? (from 24bit to Doom colours, instead of using PSP7's older algorithm). Otherwise I can make do with PSP 7.00. Anyway I still don't 100% "get" colormaps. I was thinking could it be somehow possible to sacrifice the two colors that XWE uses for transparency and somehow make them visible? I haven't seen them used for anything else. I've been gathering textures, flats, sprites etc for 1-2 years and feel like it's time to focus on mapping and cleaning up the WAD (are there any tools that are faster and better to go through textures to see if there are duplicates etc? I know there are, by name (which I think UDB can warn me about), but whatabout comparing textures to each other? I guess there isn't a tool that'd detect same textures with different names? Anyway going back to my original subject I'd be real happy with crude monster using just 1-2 colors, black and grey would be nice but I wouldn't mind if it was pink or purple, as long as it's seen only with the glasses. What's the easiest Boom way of doing this? I wouldn't mind sacrificing invulnerability or any other powerup or monster, I've already sacrificed a few monsters etc and done sprite, sound etc replacements. Just wish my head worked better, I don't sleep enough, I've got learning problems, _stress_, substance abuse etc. If only there were some quick way of doing this? I already dreamed of an invisible enemy, now if I could use my glasses sprite to see them it'd be swell (maybe even better than crappy They Live tribute). I have to try to re-watch and re-read tutorials but would _greatly_ appreciate any help. I generally don't want to make people do my work for me but if somebody could whip up a simple example you'd be greatly credited :) Anyway thanks for all the help so far even though I'm too broken minded to understand it all.

So could someone help me with this or actually I'd just be happy with an ugly 1-2 color monster that could be seen _only_ through the glasses, would this be easier? Just wanna make some usage for the glasses sprite I spent 1-2 hours doing (besides always feeling goggles as pretty useless item) I already made and I had an idea of invisible monsters long before, could these be combined? I just don't "get" colormaps really, what do they do and how would I go about doing something like this without messing up colors of existing sprites and textures? I've never dealt with colormaps, been wanting to, and with some help I bet it might help me go forward in Doom mapping. I wanna "master" (get adequate) at Boom before going (G)ZDoom route and everything's been done to vanilla/Boom standards so far. Sorry for rushing and several posts, I'm asking for the easiest/fastest solution (asap) 'cos I'm on borrowed time and would like to try to make this one small part of my map.

Thank you a lot. Like I said in my very tired post I've never done anything for ZDoom let alone GZDoom and would be happy to even make this a short eastern eggy tribute part of the level with Boom and the solution you proposed sounds adequate enough (and I never tend to use the brightest light level in my maps). But even with your explaining and taking a look at: I still don't completely get it. Could someone make an example of the easiest and crudest Boom compatible solution? I already made a sprite for the glasses like I said it could be a small crude eastern egg or something. I'd be happy with like still people sitting or standing in a bar or something and with glasses you'd see who to kill (it'd be enough to distinguish it easily from other people, I don't need it to be pretty), just something short and simple to liven up the map and pay a little tribute. I don't need the whole map to work on the same principle, just a small part of a map or a small separate map. I'd _really_ appreciate the help, I'm in a real difficult situation on borrowed time trying to make some kind of a map to accompany very messy texture pack that's taken a long time to put together (if I manage to stop the work before I die, I get stuck in graphics editor a bit too much but was thinking that if there was any hacky way [I could sacrifice a monster if it would help? I'd be happy with something like in beginning of Ghostbusters Doom if only I could use the glasses to detect monsters]). If god forbids I survive and learn ZDoom maybe one day I could do something proper but right now I'd be so happy with the crudest solution that works with Boom (or at least PrBoom+ and most ports and don't require me to go too much out of my comfort zone now that I finally sorta get dehacked and stuff).

I'd like to pay homage as well as push my own vision but in general what I'd like to happen, if possible very gladly with Doom/Boom (de)hackery etc, that the levels would be occupied by civilians (don't need much AI, preferably they'd move around a bit but could be still) and only with special glasses (that would replace the goggles and btw I couldn't even find a sunglasses sprite - do I have to make one myself? no problem really) you'd see who are demons are who are not and when you shoot a demon, they'd attack you attack (and if possible other civilians and in my dreams the civilians would run away and also other demons would reveal themselves or pretend to be civilians). Hope you get my drift. I'd also want to place "subliminal" messages which can only be seen by the glasses and didn't someone do something like that with Boom some time ago? I couldn't comprehend it 100%. I was thinking maybe dissecting Ghostbusters Doom might give me a starting point as it had civilians which turned to monsters when attacked but it has so much going on and I'm not familiar with it, I have limited time, resources and energy and would like to get something made so all help is _greatly_ appreciated. BTW. I got the idea from an episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks, I attached image (I wouldn't need anything this cool, you'd just need to have some way of detecting enemies with only glasses on, and also it'd be cool if shooting civilians would be punished. Could this be done by Boom? I've got tons of vanilla resources and Boom is familiar to me but I _might_ think about jumping to ZDoom if no other way exists but could use even more help.