Just uploaded all textures I ever got from Sylon into the dir 2d_art/sylon. I think most of them are in there in double, once in 128x128 and once in 256x256 (which I think our Doomsday version can't use for higher quality looks). Janis, could you add them to the SE wadfile? Also, some of them have several different versions (with corrections), pakk.zip should contain the latest versions (the big zipfile contains 5 or 6 smaller ones). If anything else is unclear about them, just put the Qs here.

BOOM! Done that! You can grab new wad file on koraxedv! [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

2 more things... could you put in the 256x256 versions of the textures as well, without shrinking? They'd make for less repetitive motives on large surfaces, and at least with some of them it shouldn't look too bad (I guess it'll be a no go with stone wall textures, but the rest will most probably look OK).

Not a problem. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

Also, some kind of a naming convention would be important for the textures, as currently it's very difficult to locate one in WadAuthor. How long can the names be?

8 symbols.

Whoa... [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] I just noticed you also put in the doors and bookcases from Mago (though I guess you did it months ago). Some of the textures were looking strange though, and at least for one of them I think there was a better version in one of the ZIP files (in the pakk.zip one, I think), but I'm not sure.

2 more things... could you put in the 256x256 versions of the textures as well, without shrinking? They'd make for less repetitive motives on large surfaces, and at least with some of them it shouldn't look too bad (I guess it'll be a no go with stone wall textures, but the rest will most probably look OK). Also, some kind of a naming convention would be important for the textures, as currently it's very difficult to locate one in WadAuthor. How long can the names be?

OK here the suggestion: TOWNyxxx for town textures CAVEyxxx for cave/mines textures DESEyxxx for desert/wasteland textures MOUNyxxx for mountain/hills/rocky textures FOREyxxx for forest textures SKYTyxxx for sky textures Where y a letter is (to have subtypes within a category), and xxx gives the possibility of up to a 1000 textures per subcategory. I strongly think renaming all existing Hexen textures to HEXEyxxx after the same principle would make it immensely more easy to find a texture when editing. A better organization could easily mean tens of hours saved on map editing throughout the whole project. If you find the idea OK, I can make a list of the Hexen textures and the existing custom textures how to rename them.

1000 textures per category? I think that 100 is enough. And I think that it's better to leave original hexen textures as is.

OK so how about taking away the last x from the names and adding an underscore at the beginning (like _TOWNyxx)? This would be another way to avoid custom textures getting lost in the maze of Hexen textures, as in the case of a single alphabetical order it would happen (as it does currently).

Well, they don't. In WadAuthor there's an asterisk behind the names of the custom textures. And also that will mean that you will have to rename textures in you existing maps. If you want this I will do so. I think that with those name bases there's no need for that. Also I don't have idea what textures are meant to be cave or desert ones, so in the newest wad that I just uploaded I named all them as MOUN textures. If something needs to be renamed, then tell me so.

My problem is, there are over a 100 Hexen textures in the original wadfile and the majority of them I'll never use and they take a lot of time scrolling and are good at "hiding" a custom texture or 2 between them. I mean, 50 different switches or 20 different clock settings are not really what I want to encounter all the time when looking for a new texture, but that's what I get, becuz of their sheer amount... not to mention puzzle items, teleport/water/slime/lava states and the like. It might be that I'm just stupid, but it seriously disturbs me and disrupts my concentration when I'm looking for a good stone texture for the mines and from 50 textures I'm looking at 30 are utter crap (like a clockwork moving around or a teleport pulsating) and another 15 have nothing to do with what I want. Ordering textures into categories by naming them after certain criteria would IMO help a lot in this situation, especially if the custom textures would be clearly defined in one group, divided from the original Hexen ones. BTW regarding the original Hexen textures, I think I understand why you don't want to rename them all, it'd mean renaming all textures in all the 40 or so maps we've got too, right? As for naming custom textures, OK here a simplified suggestion: A_TOWNxx for town textures (though they might go over 100 and then we've got a new prob) A_NATRxx for nature textures, be it grass, rock, caves, mountains, rivers, whatever A_SPECxx for special textures that don't fit into the other 2 categories (especially meant for many-states stuff so that they don't clutter the other categories) The A_ part would be so that they come on top of the list in WadAuthor, if there is a better way for separating them, just ignore my version.

I think that it might be better without that underscore, i.e. ATOWN, etc. Renaming original textures is a bad idea because then it will be very hard to find a texture. For example if I need for some sewers texture, I will look for such a name. Another idea is delete from texture list those textures that we will never use. Maybe in SE with that naming style it's not needed, but how about making TSP a completely standalone game (i.e. no need for hexen.wad to play)?

This is a fine example how sluggish the human brain can be... the underscore was for making the names appear at the beginning of the list, but the A makes them obsolete, I still was stuck in the previous thought circle and thus the underscore. [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] As a side note, underscore puts items at the top of a list only in Winblows (maybe MacOS too, I'm not sure). On Linux, all upper-case letters come before the underscore (lower-case letters come after). Highest priority have file names beginning with a dot, but that dot marks them also as important system files. So in Unix, actually a capital A is the best way to begin a filename with so that it comes at the top of an alphabetical list. Deleting textures from the list is IMO not a really good idea for SE... since we're going to use dozens of maps made by other people, there is no single texture we can assume isn't used anywhere. I guess the best compromise is to leave Hexen textures the way they are, and begin the name of all custom textures with an A, right? As for not needing a hexen.wad, it's a copyright issue. By the time we're near finishing TSP (which won't be in less than a year, I'm pretty sure, and could easily be even more), I might take the Q up with Raven... the farther away in the past the original game release is, the higher the chance they won't care, but I still don't see the chances too high they'll agree to using Hexen stuff and not requiring people to have Hexen. That's BTW one of the reasons I'm interested in a solution where we use 3D models exclusively, I mean if someone makes an MD2 version of the Hexen sprite monsters, those models aren't Raven copyright any more. Anyway, what OTOH is legally OK with Raven is to use stuff from one of their games for a mod of another game, even if it means using a SoF model or an EF texture in a Heretic mod (and vice versa), at least this is the theory. I'm still not sure what they'll say to Korax Arena, which will merge 4 Raven games in one. I was rather thinking about writing a prog that checks at installation (or maybe even at every startup) whether at least 2 of the 4 games are installed on that machine (like looking for a random entry in the Hexen wadfile or the Heretic II pakfile and if it isn't found, the game won't start up). This would immensely broad our base for KMOD as well, and still make an even better protection of the Raven copyright. Since it's about very old games (and they get older every day) that isn't even the profile of the company any more, it might even get so far as the check would be only for 1 game. And I mean someone who doesn't own at least one of the 4 Serpent Riders games legally should really not be able to play a mod that uses a lot of stuff from those games, especially that Heretic can be gotten for as low as $9.99 in online stores.

Is there any way to arrange the textures into directories, similar to how Heretic 2 is set up? For instance, the Hexen textures could be in a directory (probably called 'original' or something), and certain types of textures could go into different directories, like cave, city, swamp, etc. I know WadAuthor doesn't do texture directories like Quark does for Hexen 2, but I'm sure there has to be some way around that.

Hey Rob, haven't seen you in a while... sounds like CG3 Release 1 is rather near to completion, right? [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] The directories is a good idea, though I guess WadAuthor doesn't support that. OTOH it should be possible for the MD2 models of which there will be a lot in SE.

Ok, new wad is waiting for you. I also included script for rentex utility for automatic renaming. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

As a side note, underscore puts items at the top of a list only in Winblows (maybe MacOS too, I'm not sure). On Linux, all upper-case letters come before the underscore (lower-case letters come after). Highest priority have file names beginning with a dot, but that dot marks them also as important system files. So in Unix, actually a capital A is the best way to begin a filename with so that it comes at the top of an alphabetical list.

In the code table underscore is between upper-case and lower-case letters. Since in DOS/Win file names are case insensitive, sorting them is done by lower-casing them. OTOH Unix is case sensitive, ant that's why they are in the middle. And in Unix file names beginning with a dot are hidden files. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

Deleting textures from the list is IMO not a really good idea for SE... since we're going to use dozens of maps made by other people, there is no single texture we can assume isn't used anywhere. I guess the best compromise is to leave Hexen textures the way they are, and begin the name of all custom textures with an A, right?

Right. And, BTW, in Final Doom also new textures begin with A. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

As for not needing a hexen.wad, it's a copyright issue.

It isn't. That is, if we replace everything with our own stuff, we simply won't need anything from hexen.wad, i.e. all new graphics, maps, music, models. Sounds - that might be a problem.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

The directories is a good idea, though I guess WadAuthor doesn't support that. OTOH it should be possible for the MD2 models of which there will be a lot in SE.

Directories are really good thing in Quake engine. Too bad that it can't be used in Doom engine (i.e with original data structures). And of course mudels must be sorted in directories, like it's done in Vavoom. The way how they are now is really a bad thing, that I hate much.

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That is, if we replace everything with our own stuff, we simply won't need anything from hexen.wad, i.e. all new graphics, maps, music, models. Sounds - that might be a problem.

The question arises, what does TSP have to do with Hexen in such a case? Not to mention most probably story and world are also parts of the copyright. As far as the codebase goes, you're the one who can say how much of the original Hexen code is still contained. OK, so to the obvious question, what are your arguments for a TSP w/o the need for hexen.wad? The foremost that comes to my mind is that just about anyone could download and play it (which is a BIG advantage if the game really looks more or less like a contemporary polygon-based 3D game), but I guess you've got more arguments up your sleeve... [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

And of course models must be sorted in directories, like it's done in Vavoom. The way how they are now is really a bad thing, that I hate much.

Feel free to change it in any way... the amount of 3D models I used this far in the maps is really small, or rather, 95+% will be thrown out anyway (like the hundred or so chairs in a room of the mines that bring the 3D card to its knees, or the dozens of roof pieces in the town map which will be replaced with better ones the moment someone makes them).

By the way, I don't know the username and password, so I haven't been able to look at these new textures. And yes, the first episode is almost done. I'm on the last map now, and after I'm done, I just need to test it some.

Well nothing is perfect... if I actually want to start up the town map, I get following messages in the outfile: R_TextureNumForName: MOUN13 not found - TryRunTics - DD_GameLoop - DD_Main I'm positive the conversion itself worked as I clicked on a couple of linedefs in WadAuthor and the textures with the A-names were there.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>The question arises, what does TSP have to do with Hexen in such a case? Not to mention most probably story and world are also parts of the copyright. As far as the codebase goes, you're the one who can say how much of the original Hexen code is still contained. OK, so to the obvious question, what are your arguments for a TSP w/o the need for hexen.wad? The foremost that comes to my mind is that just about anyone could download and play it (which is a BIG advantage if the game really looks more or less like a contemporary polygon-based 3D game), but I guess you've got more arguments up your sleeve...<hr></blockquote> Yes, the fact that everyone can download it and play is what I mean. OK, maybe in TSP we still might need something from hexen.wad, but how about Korax Arena? <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

Feel free to change it in any way... the amount of 3D models I used this far in the maps is really small, or rather, 95+% will be thrown out anyway (like the hundred or so chairs in a room of the mines that bring the 3D card to its knees, or the dozens of roof pieces in the town map which will be replaced with better ones the moment someone makes them).

Will do so. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

Oh yes, something I wanted to ask for a long time now but always forgot... what's better, a lot more linedefs and smaller textures or a lot less linedefs and larger textures? I'd think if the 3D card has enough memory than larger textures don't slow down the game any, but there might be other factors.

The best is to have less linedefs and smaller textures. Especially if we want it to run well also on old video cards. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>Well nothing is perfect... if I actually want to start up the town map, I get following messages in the outfile: R_TextureNumForName: MOUN13 not found - TryRunTics - DD_GameLoop - DD_Main I'm positive the conversion itself worked as I clicked on a couple of linedefs in WadAuthor and the textures with the A-names were there.<hr></blockquote> Already used the new textures? Simply add the following line to the script: MOUN13 ANATR20 Basicly all MOUN textures map to ANATR textures with 7 added to the number. And please merge those lines with window textures so I can remove textures ACOMPAT1 and ACOMPAT2.

username: koraxdev password: bull-djinn Hey I just downloaded the new stuff and ran the utility and everything seems to be fine. [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] Oh yes, something I wanted to ask for a long time now but always forgot... what's better, a lot more linedefs and smaller textures or a lot less linedefs and larger textures? I'd think if the 3D card has enough memory than larger textures don't slow down the game any, but there might be other factors.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

Yes, the fact that everyone can download it and play is what I mean. OK, maybe in TSP we still might need something from hexen.wad, but how about Korax Arena?

Well my idea was (I'll have to talk to Raven about this though) that we'd include everything in the distributable, it's just that the prog would check at every startup whether at least one of the 4 Serpent Riders games is installed. I think it's a fair thing to ask, and I don't think too many people would be interested in Arena who didn't play at least one of the games anyway. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

The best is to have less linedefs and smaller textures. Especially if we want it to run well also on old video cards.

OK, here the rundown... the town is mostly a collection of boring cubes and they'll stay that way becuz making a town of this size with more advanced architecture would take an immense amount of time it isn't worth IMO. To improve looks in a big way with relatively little effort, a wide variety of textures can be used. The parts I did before were done from relatively few and small (mostly 64x128) textures, with a lot of linedef splittings (sometimes a whole building consists of 64 unit long linedefs). Even if I don't bother about the rendering time, making those many small linedefs is a lot of work, and in the time node building takes on this machine, I could create a new texture variation from the existing parts (and a texture variation can be used several times throughout the city). So unless you know of a limit I'd be running into, I'm rather for the many large textures less linedefs version. I'm speaking only about the town map, none of the others. Since there will be no fight or any kind of instant action in the town, it would be a lot less prob if it'd be choppy on many machines. Of course I won't build such things in other maps where there are fights and similar. Did the conversions... you can remove the compatibility textures any time. I also uploaded the current version of the town (dunno how much changed since the version on koraxdev). Hey I checked that old file and found out virtually nothing changed in the town map these last 4 months... oh my... [img]images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img] [img]images/smiles/icon_eek.gif[/img] Another thing... Every time you send me a new binary, I have to remap the keys anew... could you add following to the default config: X - jump PgUp - look down PgDn - look up Home - center look Ins - fly up Del - fly down End - drop from flight ...unless these collide with your preferred default settings, than I'm in trouble, LOL. Also, Mouselook should be enabled by default IMO. BTW just noticed a prob, I set mousewheel up/down for the previous and next weapons, but when I go to the next weapon, it just cycles through the gauntlets and the powered axe, and when I go to the prevoius weapon, it goes up to the gauntlets and then never moves.

There's a town map in ichor.wad (E3M3) that might help. The only problem is just about the entire outside is slippery ice. Other than that, it should look nice with new textures.

Took a look at it... the same prob arises here, if there are houses you can go into, they have to look like something from the inside as well ==> approx. 5-10x more work than houses you can't enter (not only the creation of rooms, but also their texturing, furnituring, etc.). Another point is, I feel myself hampered by the limitations of the Doomsday engine... I see real-world structures all the time that'd look cool in a game and most of the time they aren't really possible with one floor, one ceiling in a sector. It's one thing to have such a limitation when you know there is just nothing better, but it's another thing to know that as soon as SE is out, I can start mapping for an engine that has all this stuff. It makes a lot of my motivation go away, I'm really glad we've got a pool of 35+ maps at the moment to sort through (and Darklord217 is currently on the lookout for more), if half of them can be used we already have enough stuff for 3 hubs. And as for the town map, I readily acknowledge I put so much work in it this far that I'm unwilling to drop it unless there's a real good reason for that. I know this is not the best of attitudes, but OTOH you really can't make a that much better town with this engine anyway, I mean you could work on it for years and houses still wouldn't have roofs or balconies, nor could you go into a house, walk up the stairs and look out of a room that's above the door you came in through. You also can't really make houses with radically different heights (though I used a couple of tricks to achieve a more or less similar effect), you can't go into houses that are significantly smaller than the others around them, etc etc... p.s. Janis, I loaded Ichor's map in Vavoom and experienced myself the sprite blinking prob others reported.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

Well my idea was (I'll have to talk to Raven about this though) that we'd include everything in the distributable, it's just that the prog would check at every startup whether at least one of the 4 Serpent Riders games is installed. I think it's a fair thing to ask, and I don't think too many people would be interested in Arena who didn't play at least one of the games anyway.

There's no way for progs to check anything, and also for engine there's no usable way how to check this, for example I'm running on Linux, and I have installed Heretic 2 on my Windows 2000 partition, which is not accessible from Linux. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

OK, here the rundown... the town is mostly a collection of boring cubes and they'll stay that way becuz making a town of this size with more advanced architecture would take an immense amount of time it isn't worth IMO. To improve looks in a big way with relatively little effort, a wide variety of textures can be used. The parts I did before were done from relatively few and small (mostly 64x128) textures, with a lot of linedef splittings (sometimes a whole building consists of 64 unit long linedefs). Even if I don't bother about the rendering time, making those many small linedefs is a lot of work, and in the time node building takes on this machine, I could create a new texture variation from the existing parts (and a texture variation can be used several times throughout the city). So unless you know of a limit I'd be running into, I'm rather for the many large textures less linedefs version.

Well fine, just tell me what combinations you need. Are you using WadAuthor's internal node builder? If so I strongly recomend to switch to glbsp. Go to 'Tools'->'Options', in 'Files' tab choose External node builder, in command write 'glbsp $_Wadfile -o $_Wadfile', and make sure that 'Show External Node Build' checkbox is checked (otherwise there may be problems). <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

Did the conversions... you can remove the compatibility textures any time. I also uploaded the current version of the town (dunno how much changed since the version on koraxdev).

Just tried the map with some people walking around. Too bad they ain't very talkative. You must assign a TID to make them speak with you. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

Another thing... Every time you send me a new binary, I have to remap the keys anew...

They are not lost. Most likely this happened when I created single .exe and switched to 'ScatteredEvil.cfg' meaning that in order to keep your settings you had to rename 'korax.cfg' to 'ScatteredEvil.cfg', but you didn't. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>X - jump PgUp - look down PgDn - look up Home - center look Ins - fly up Del - fly down End - drop from flight ...unless these collide with your preferred default settings, than I'm in trouble, LOL. Also, Mouselook should be enabled by default IMO.<hr></blockquote> These doesn't colide with my prefered settings. Actually only spells did colide with movement keys (i.e. WSAD) so I had to rebind them on numpad. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

BTW just noticed a prob, I set mousewheel up/down for the previous and next weapons, but when I go to the next weapon, it just cycles through the gauntlets and the powered axe, and when I go to the prevoius weapon, it goes up to the gauntlets and then never moves.

It seams that with Remi's new weapon code it was messed up. Will fix it. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

p.s. Janis, I loaded Ichor's map in Vavoom and experienced myself the sprite blinking prob others reported.

That net buffer hack that I added actually didn't work, but in next version it will be fixed and that will radically minimize blinking in single player games. In multiplayer they will still blink. [img]images/smiles/icon_sad.gif[/img]

How about this? The engine is crashing at startup if it doesn't find a defined entry in the wadfile anyway, right? At latest when you try to start up a level that needs that texture... [img]images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img] When installing Korax Arena, you'd have to specify a wadfile or a pakfile from one of the 4 games. The settings of which game and what path would be saved in an ini or cfg file of Arena, and at every startup a certain entry would be read out of that file - and if it isn't found, it'd crash. Would something like this work? Else in worst case I could always try to get a little utility from Raven that checks for those games. As for your example, why is an NTFS partition not accessible from Linux? [img]images/smiles/icon_confused.gif[/img] <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

Well fine, just tell me what combinations you need.

I'm going to make the textures and send them to you, that shouldn't be a prob. Ehm, when using GLBSP the results were rather "interesting"... it took but a second, and I thought "whoa"... also, the file is now only half as big as before. If I start up the map, it even looks just fine --- until I go near any walls, becuz clipping works in maybe 10% of all cases. Hey, I just saw a city mage disappear through the wall of a building! LOL [img]images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img] I also tried to add the -hexen and -v1 parameters I had in my GLBSP shortcut, but besides making the wadfile 4x bigger, there wasn't much of a difference. Yep, I wanted to ask you why they stopped talking, they did it before the latest binaries. [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] Wait, I assigned them now tag numbers and still not working... [img]images/smiles/icon_sad.gif[/img] Oh... just realized I've been working with WadAuthor 1.10 instead of 1.30 this far... OK, let's start again... "operation failed"... it works even less than in 1.10. WTF going on???

Just a quick update to say something positive, if I disable the external node building and add a tag to the NPCs, the talking part is working fine. [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

How about this? The engine is crashing at startup if it doesn't find a defined entry in the wadfile anyway, right? At latest when you try to start up a level that needs that texture... [img]images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img] When installing Korax Arena, you'd have to specify a wadfile or a pakfile from one of the 4 games. The settings of which game and what path would be saved in an ini or cfg file of Arena, and at every startup a certain entry would be read out of that file - and if it isn't found, it'd crash. Would something like this work? Else in worst case I could always try to get a little utility from Raven that checks for those games.

Then distributing it as standalone game looses sense. [img]images/smiles/icon_confused.gif[/img] <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

As for your example, why is an NTFS partition not accessible from Linux? [img]images/smiles/icon_confused.gif[/img]

NTFS, same as linux, has user rights on files and other secutity stuff, and most likely it's encrypted somehow to prevent from hacking. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

I'm going to make the textures and send them to you, that shouldn't be a prob.

OK, I'm waiting. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>Ehm, when using GLBSP the results were rather "interesting"... it took but a second, and I thought "whoa"... also, the file is now only half as big as before. If I start up the map, it even looks just fine --- until I go near any walls, becuz clipping works in maybe 10% of all cases. Hey, I just saw a city mage disappear through the wall of a building! LOL [img]images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img] I also tried to add the -hexen and -v1 parameters I had in my GLBSP shortcut, but besides making the wadfile 4x bigger, there wasn't much of a difference.<hr></blockquote> [img]images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img] I've been using glbsp since begining, and had no problems. Most likely there's something wrong. If glbsp is not available on path, you must enter full path to it. Also make sure that parameters are correct. Oh, and delete any existing gwa files for that wad file, since it's out of date, but engine still loads it and uses that old data. BTW I can tell one good thing about Win2k - WadAuthor doesn't have that stupid editing area limit like it's on Win98.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

Then distributing it as standalone game looses sense.

Why? Think Counter-Strike or Team Fortress Classic. [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] Anyway, this topic won't really be actual before next year, and by that time Raven might just say "do what you want" (though I don't think so, I mean as old a game as Black Crypt, I wanted to make them to release the source code to the public and in the end though they wanted they couldn't becuz EA who published the game over 10 years ago didn't allow it). <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

NTFS, same as linux, has user rights on files and other secutity stuff, and most likely it's encrypted somehow to prevent from hacking.

NTFS has an IMO stupid and cumbersome way, the Unix way is much easier. Just as an example, if you make a directory closed to the user "anybody" and make a subdirectory viewable by "anybody", that won't work... you'll never be able to access the subdir, not even if you type the direct path to it. Last time we had to make the root dir (C:\) and half a dozen dirs protected unless you're admin or a certain user, and freely available a subdir. Instead of simply making the subdir 777 and the rest 444 as it'd be a piece of cake in Unix, no I had to manually close all directories for the average user, which took WAY longer than the sensible way would've (but isn't supported by the bunch of idiots who wrote Winblows). So I guess that's the answer why you can't access your NTFS partition from Linux... if you'd make the root of the NTFS partition and all subdirs and files readable by "anybody", it might work. OTOH what you get afterwards I wouldn't call "security". [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] As for the "encryption", I don't think it uses anything that couldn't be emulated by a simple Linux app. M$ is not that smart... <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

If glbsp is not available on path, you must enter full path to it. Also make sure that parameters are correct. Oh, and delete any existing gwa files for that wad file, since it's out of date, but engine still loads it and uses that old data.

This is what I put now into the box: 'F:\wauthor_new\glbsp $_Wadfile -o $_Wadfile' I opened town.wad, then deleted the one from the HDD along with the gwa, wav and bak file and tried to save it as town.wad. "save operation failed" <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

BTW I can tell one good thing about Win2k - WadAuthor doesn't have that stupid editing area limit like it's on Win98.

I fixed that prob by opening my wadfiles in the old WadAuthor version, selecting all and copying it then pasting in the new version and saving. As for Win2K being better than Win98, we've got Win2K at the office, with SP2 and all the other updates, Office XP and IE 6, and it's all just so much crap... mind you, these are expensive high-profile brand workstations (IBM IntelliStation M Series, and some old SGI Visual Workstations), so you can't even point at the h/w and say that's the culprit. Things I never noticed in Win98, like programs you start just disappear in a black hole and don't show up in the task manager neither... in Win98 when a prog locks up the machine and I have to hit reset (BTW in 3/4 of the cases it's Doomsday [img]images/smiles/icon_razz.gif[/img] ), I sometimes wish I had an NT-based Winblows installed where you could shoot it down... then I remember the countless times at the office where you couldn't shoot down such locked-up progs, becuz either they didn't react at the command or you couldn't even access the task manager... Do you know what I'm running on this machine? Win98 original release, no service packs or any kind of patches... I mean, if there is no Winblows version that works at all, then why bother? My old workstation has Win95 OSR 2.1, that version was somewhat better than the average release, but it just doesn't support new h/w like AGP or USB right. I could never get a USB device to work on that release and when benchmarking Unreal on a PIII with a G400 with Win95 OSR 2.1 and Win98 first release, the first gave 20 fps and the 2nd 40 fps, the only thing different being the OS support for AGP cards. Before that, I always thought those error messages in the device manager are just blah blah and don't mean anything, but obviously they make for a rather big leak... Winblows thought me not to care about upgrades or newer versions becuz they don't work neither, so why bother... OTOH my Linux server runs the latest 7.3 RedHat with the latest updates, patches and fixes that are available from RedHat (though not always the newest, in Apache e.g. it's still at 1.3.23, if I'd want the latest 1.3.26, I'd have to deinstall the RedHat rpm and manually compile one from apache.org). Uh, I think I've somewhat digressed from the actual topic on hand, sorry. [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

Why? Think Counter-Strike or Team Fortress Classic.

They depend on Half-Life, but it's only because of the engine. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

Anyway, this topic won't really be actual before next year, and by that time Raven might just say "do what you want" (though I don't think so, I mean as old a game as Black Crypt, I wanted to make them to release the source code to the public and in the end though they wanted they couldn't becuz EA who published the game over 10 years ago didn't allow it).

I heard that Raven doesn't care if Heretic/Hexen data is used by some projects, unless it's a commercial project. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

NTFS has an IMO stupid and cumbersome way, the Unix way is much easier. Just as an example, if you make a directory closed to the user "anybody" and make a subdirectory viewable by "anybody", that won't work... you'll never be able to access the subdir, not even if you type the direct path to it. Last time we had to make the root dir (C:\) and half a dozen dirs protected unless you're admin or a certain user, and freely available a subdir. Instead of simply making the subdir 777 and the rest 444 as it'd be a piece of cake in Unix, no I had to manually close all directories for the average user, which took WAY longer than the sensible way would've (but isn't supported by the bunch of idiots who wrote Winblows).

I haven't worked with Win2k that deep, because I have it only for a short time and I have it only to develop some "serious" applications for NT family since Win9x family is very unstable and limited for such applications. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

So I guess that's the answer why you can't access your NTFS partition from Linux... if you'd make the root of the NTFS partition and all subdirs and files readable by "anybody", it might work. OTOH what you get afterwards I wouldn't call "security".

I don't know what is the reason, but the fact is that when I installed Linux, it normaly made Win98 partitions automatcly mounted, but Win2k partition was displayed as unknown filesystem. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

As for the "encryption", I don't think it uses anything that couldn't be emulated by a simple Linux app. M$ is not that smart...

We'll see it then. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>This is what I put now into the box: 'F:\wauthor_new\glbsp $_Wadfile -o $_Wadfile'<hr></blockquote> Without those single quotes, duh! [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

I opened town.wad, then deleted the one from the HDD along with the gwa, wav and bak file and tried to save it as town.wad. "save operation failed"

Because it couldn't execute glbsp. [img]images/smiles/icon_sad.gif[/img] <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

As for Win2K being better than Win98 ...

It depends on task. NT-family has a lots of good things, especially if we talk about tasks that are time-critical or needs to be stable. But for games and office use Win9x may be a better choice. In my comp I have 3 OS-es: Win98, Win2k and Linux Mandrake 8.0. [img]images/smiles/icon_cool.gif[/img] But I'm also mostly working in Win98. [ July 22, 2002: Message edited by: Janis Legzdinsh ]</p>

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

I heard that Raven doesn't care if Heretic/Hexen data is used by some projects, unless it's a commercial project.

Where did you hear it and from whom? It might be a false track, but it might be one that's worth to be followed. It's true that Win9x is very unstable but I fail to see the much higher stability of NT based Winblows versions. I've seen just too many crashes, lockups, disappearing progs and the like on both NT 4.0 and Win2K to believe the M$ hype on NT any more. OTOH take this webserver. Since late May it's been running w/o any crashes (OK, it was manually shut down last week for a quarter hour or so when the provider added a 2nd HDD, and at one case I restarted it manually but later on found out it was unnecessary, the prob was a user error), and served hundreds of thousands of visitors in this time frame. As implied above, there is a basic difference between Winblows and Unix... on Winblows, I learned to accept years ago that things don't work just becuz the system is buggy and that's it. On Unix (and I don't talk about Linux only, I've been administering webservers also on 32bit and 64bit versions of Sun Solaris), up to this day every time something didn't work I found out sooner or later that I (or another user) made a config/user error. It's a vastly different feeling when I know it makes sense to waste hours trying to solve a prob or to sit down and think about it and where the misconfig may lie, becuz this far I always found the solution. Sometimes in 2 minutes, sometimes in 2 hours or more, but there always was a human error on my (or my users') part. OTOH on Winblows I've had just too many occasions where I got around the prob from all angles and in the end had to find out the prob can't be solved in that environment becuz the error isn't in what I did but in the crap OS/apps other ppl programmed. As for NTFS, it might need a special module... I never tried to read NTFS with Linux, but I simply can't imagine it wouldn't be possible. Update on the WadAuthor vs GLBSP story... the single quotes don't mean anything, WadAuthor removed them itself. I could achieve some success by copying the map wadfile into the same folder where WadAuthor and GLBSP are located, then at last it could be saved / nodes could be built. OTOH when I started up SE with this map, the game crashed with an error message (some kind of exception in ScatteredEvil.exe). Only Linux distributions whose GUI I've seen this far were SuSe and Corel... the webserver has RedHat but I never communicated with that one through anything else than command shell and browser-based apps. [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] 7 years ago, I was using squeezing different OSes unto different partitions of a single HDD. 4 years ago, I had removable HDD racks to swap drives in my old workstation, each HDD with its own OS. Nowadays, I've got 4 different computers and (except for one, my old workstation I still have) they have only one HDD each - again. [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

Where did you hear it and from whom? It might be a false track, but it might be one that's worth to be followed.

I guess it was on DoomWorld forums on a topic wether it's OK to use Heretic/Hexen stuff in Doom maps. <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

Update on the WadAuthor vs GLBSP story... the single quotes don't mean anything, WadAuthor removed them itself. I could achieve some success by copying the map wadfile into the same folder where WadAuthor and GLBSP are located, then at last it could be saved / nodes could be built. OTOH when I started up SE with this map, the game crashed with an error message (some kind of exception in ScatteredEvil.exe).

Are you sure that there's no quote at the end, i.e. after $_Wadfile, because if it exists, glbsp will save file into file with quote at the end such as town.tmp' and the resulting file will have no nodes, and that of course will crash engine.

Taken the source, it's too likely someone just assumed something he didn't know for sure and said it as if it were hard facts. So I'm going to ask my contact at Raven Software (I'm mailing him tonight anyway, so I'll include this Q as well). This question is getting more important BTW... I've just been made aware of the fact that Heretic can't be ordered any more from cdaccess.com and they dropped the great bargain package, Towers of Darkness as well. They still offer Hexen and Deathkings as 2 single packages, but those 2 boxes as single packages cost already more than they did together with Heretic in a single package. [img]images/smiles/icon_sad.gif[/img] And it might well mean that as soon as they sold the current stock, they'll drop Hexen and Deathkings as well. [img]images/smiles/icon_mad.gif[/img] Something else... There was no single quote at the end of the line in the dialogue box (or I'm blind). I guess that means getting back to the internal nod builder and running a GLBSP batch afterwards... <sigh>

Really strange that something that works perfectly for me doesn't work for you. Haven't done anything serious for SE for some time, maybe today?

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

Really strange that something that works perfectly for me doesn't work for you.

That's what I was ranting about at great length before in this topic... <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

Haven't done anything serious for SE for some time, maybe today?

??? BTW this is what I got from Raven concerning the game thingie: <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

Anyone should still be able to use any Raven material with any other Raven game, as long as the mod follows all of the other terms of the EULA, including not to be sold for profit, is open source, doesn't violate anyone else's NDAs, etc.

That means we could make a Heretic mod that uses all player models from JK2, it seems. Or a Quake IV mod that lets you replay the Hexen II maps, complete with artwork and sounds. OTOH it doesn't seem to be a solution to what you wanted, right?

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

That means we could make a Heretic mod that uses all player models from JK2, it seems. Or a Quake IV mod that lets you replay the Hexen II maps, complete with artwork and sounds. OTOH it doesn't seem to be a solution to what you wanted, right?

Right. Today I fixed that weapon cycling problem and did some other changes, and it ended in a serious bug - player view sprites are not drawn. [img]images/smiles/icon_mad.gif[/img] So no new binaries today. [img]images/smiles/icon_sad.gif[/img]

It seems my original suggestion might be the best way, or? Ah, you meant yourself in your previous posting... I wasn't sure whether you wanted to nudge me into doing some work. [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] Don't feel too bad about slipping with the latest binaries, you're still well ahead of the rest of the team. [img]images/smiles/icon_sad.gif[/img]