[Question] Limited Color Range in Doom? XWE + SLADE stuff

[Gez]

Export exports.

Import imports.

SLADE does not try to be smarter than the user and guess what he wants to do. Older software did so and it only caused problems.

"Um, a truecolor PNG using colors out of the palette. Obviously the user wants to convert it to Doom graphics! Let's turn it into a grey blob." "Oh, a hi-fi stereo OGG sound! Let's downsample it to 11KHz and mono since it's definitely what the user wants!" "Hey, some weird lumps named DECORATE and MAPINFO. Certainly it's jump random garbage included by mistake, let's delete it out of the wad."

SLADE makes no such assumptions. However, you do not lose functionality. Such content-type dependent features, however, are put in the special content menu. For example, if you want to export an image in a format that can be opened with image editing tools, use Graphics -> Export as PNG.

[RV-007]

I assume you are implying that the image export only allows .png as the image file format?

How do I change the type of an entry to DECORATE? I made the entry name as DECORATE, but I do not think it is that DECORATE lump.
Nevermind, I found the Text Language Option Labels.

[edward850]

How do I change the type of an entry to DECORATE? I made the entry name as DECORATE, but I do not think it is that DECORATE lump.

DECORATE is just a text format. Click 'Edit as text', and if SLADE doesn't auto detect the syntax (usually if it's empty), you can change it in the bottom left of the editing window.

I assume you are implying that the image export only allows .png as the image file format?

He never said this. He said you could if you wanted to. However, exporting any lump (by clicking export), it will keep the file as-is. SLADE will never assume what you want the file to be.

[RV-007]

I kept getting 'Graphics(Doom)' and I think that is the cause to prevent the render of that sprite image.
See what I mean:
url begone!

[edward850]

They are called 'Graphics(Doom)', because they are in fact in the doom graphics format. However, that doesn't matter because Doom will have no idea what they are supposed to be. You need to enclose spites with [wiki]S_START[/wiki] and [wiki]S_END[/wiki] markers for most (all?) Doom source ports to identify what lumps are the sprites in a WAD.

[Xaser]

Quote Tree Time! P:

When I use XWE for a wad, that wad becomes unusable in SLADE and maybe vice versa.

XWE's fault, if anything. It's been known to muck up wads on occasion.

Note that as long as Doom recognizes the wad, any utility should be able to read it too. Don't blame just XWE for that.

XWE has a known problem where it mis-parses/mis-saves lump names in the wad directory. It makes the assumption that each lump name must use the full eight characters, which isn't actually the case, so it'll read the garbage bytes if a null-term shorter string is used.

[RV-007]

Does the SS_START and SS_END marker lumps work too? That seems to work for XWE.

The sprite images are now working although that does not excuse me to dump any images of a certain file format away.
Thank you everybody for your help; I am getting the hang of SLADE. I managed to create a live tentacle monster that ocassionally calls in its friends to beat up targets during the SLADE learning process.

[printz]

Why SS_START and SS_END and not S_START and S_END? What's the deal?

[RV-007]

I just see that it somehow works.

[ChronoSeth]

They both exist because of a quirk in Doom's IWADs, and both work identically.

[RV-007]

Can someone help me know how to export/import images into the .bmp file format?

[Gez]

Why do you want BMP? Every image editing software under the sun can open PNG. Unless you're only comfortable with some paint program made for the Amiga in 1988 and never updated since.

Anyway, conversion to BMP format hasn't been implemented in SLADE because it was deemed kinda useless. It can convert from BMP just fine, but if you want to export to view or edit in some non-Doom-related programs, the idea is that PNG should be the best option.

If you really need BMP for some unfathomable reason, please explain and that may get added. In the meantime, you can use any imaging tool you want to convert from PNG to BMP. I suggest IrfanView; but even MS Paint can do it if you don't mind losing the transparency.

[RV-007]

I don't know if it's me, but I feel that .bmp always hold more bytes than .png. I assume that the extra bytes point to higher visual quality and attributes to more pixels/colors in each bit. I am not so sure about .png being able to uphold the pixel-editing as .bmp. I go for editing .bmp on MSPaint b/c of these beliefs. I just read about .tiff, but I doubt that is supported for most pcs.

These are my assumptions, but I did not intend to push a farce like a lobbyist. I thought there was already a way to use the other high quality image file formats. Whatever the case, I would still use SLADE for those images w/ 32-bits.

[Gez]

I don't know if it's me, but I feel that .bmp always hold more bytes than .png. I assume that the extra bytes point to higher visual quality and attributes to more pixels/colors in each bit. I am not so sure about .png being able to uphold the pixel-editing as .bmp. I go for editing .bmp on MSPaint b/c of these beliefs.

These beliefs are erroneous, though.

PNG uses lossless compression. In fact, a PNG is basically a zipped BMP (to oversimplify a bit*). You don't lose visual quality by zipping and then unzipping a BMP, do you?

(* What it actually does is compress the pixel data with the same algorithms that zip files use.)

[NeuralStunner]

Technically BMP and PNG are both bitmap formats. (Though PNG is compressed.) Or "Raster" if you don't want to confuse people.

... What am I saying? Who knows what raster is, either?