by Enjay » Wed Nov 21, 2018 3:15 pm
I remember all this happening at the outset. For further information...
The initial hi-res texture implementation happened and it was initially assumed that the texel offsetting would be wanted/most desirable because it allows very fine adjustment of the texture position on the line (i.e. moving it less than one world unit). One of the first things I did was to try and make some drop-in hi-res replacements for the stock Doom textures. Immediately, I could see that it wasn't working as I expected. It very quickly became apparent that using texel offsets meant that hi-res textures could not be used as drop-in replacements for existing textures because any original textures that had been offset in a map would only be shifted by however many texels the offset number was at and not how many world-unit pixels. I think that this is probably an example of the implementation making assumptions about what mappers were likely to want, and getting it wrong.
Some way had to be created to allow drop-in replacements and also, many mappers expressed a need/desire for world-unit rather than texel offsetting even in non replacement textures. It's my recollection that the issue happened very soon after the initial release of hi-res textures and I certainly remember debating the pros and cons of it at the time. As I recall, Jack Vermeulen of DeePsea was very keen on the texel offsetting and he had been one of the people involved in pushing for the inclusion of big/hi-res textures (there was an ongoing political situation between him and Randy relating to big textures long afterwards that I'm not even going to try to poke with a very long barge pole).
Anyway, as already stated, it was decided to add a flag to the texture definition so that any individual texture could be set to either texel (default) or world-unit offset and it would be possible to have both in the same WAD. Again, as I recall it, there was spare capacity in the id TEXTURE1 lump to allow this flag to be stored. And, as Graf said, the default was the texel offset because it was older. However, I really don't recall it being that much older and I personally think a wiser decision would have been to reverse the decision so that the more useful world-units were the default. There wouldn't have been that many mods affected at the time.
It's also worth remembering that, at the time, editing was in a much more primitive state. There was no UDMF, no TEXTURES lump, no auto-hi res support and being able to use a big graphic on a wall at all was very new (I don't think it had even become possible to put any graphic on any surface yet, so if you were putting something on a wall, it needed to be included in the TEXTURE1 lump). I guess adding a flag to TEXTURE1 seemed like a neat way to use the resources available at the time.
I remember all this happening at the outset. For further information...
The initial hi-res texture implementation happened and it was initially assumed that the texel offsetting would be wanted/most desirable because it allows very fine adjustment of the texture position on the line (i.e. moving it less than one world unit). One of the first things I did was to try and make some drop-in hi-res replacements for the stock Doom textures. Immediately, I could see that it wasn't working as I expected. It very quickly became apparent that using texel offsets meant that hi-res textures could not be used as drop-in replacements for existing textures because any original textures that had been offset in a map would only be shifted by however many texels the offset number was at and not how many world-unit pixels. I think that this is probably an example of the implementation making assumptions about what mappers were likely to want, and getting it wrong.
Some way had to be created to allow drop-in replacements and also, many mappers expressed a need/desire for world-unit rather than texel offsetting even in non replacement textures. It's my recollection that the issue happened very soon after the initial release of hi-res textures and I certainly remember debating the pros and cons of it at the time. As I recall, Jack Vermeulen of DeePsea was very keen on the texel offsetting and he had been one of the people involved in pushing for the inclusion of big/hi-res textures (there was an ongoing political situation between him and Randy relating to big textures long afterwards that I'm not even going to try to poke with a very long barge pole).
Anyway, as already stated, it was decided to add a flag to the texture definition so that any individual texture could be set to either texel (default) or world-unit offset and it would be possible to have both in the same WAD. Again, as I recall it, there was spare capacity in the id TEXTURE1 lump to allow this flag to be stored. And, as Graf said, the default was the texel offset because it was older. However, I really don't recall it being [i]that[/i] much older and I personally think a wiser decision would have been to reverse the decision so that the more useful world-units were the default. There wouldn't have been [i]that[/i] many mods affected at the time.
It's also worth remembering that, at the time, editing was in a much more primitive state. There was no UDMF, no TEXTURES lump, no auto-hi res support and being able to use a big graphic on a wall at all was very new (I don't think it had even become possible to put any graphic on any surface yet, so if you were putting something on a wall, it needed to be included in the TEXTURE1 lump). I guess adding a flag to TEXTURE1 seemed like a neat way to use the resources available at the time.