Wanted: A decent TEXTUREx editor.

[Xaser]

So, I know this is a little OT and silly 'cause of its "request" nature, but this has been bugging me for some time and I figured I'd ask.

I've suddenly found myself in need of utilizing TEXTUREx for once, and I've been having a dick of a time trying to get it to work. It seems that every good WAD editor out there doesn't quite have the TEXTUREx editing functionality I'm looking for. They can do it, mind you, but you can't manipulate the entries as well as standard lumps. Oh, what I'd give for a decent copy+paste function...

After experiencing trouble with the two 'mainstream' lump managers, I dug up two more from the 'grave' and checked out another, but to no avail. First, let me inform you of my situation here. My first order of business was to take all Doom1 textures in the TEXTURE2 lump and copy them over to TEXTURE1, leaving TEXTURE2 blank and ready for me to import my own textures (for ease of use). Simple, right? A little too simple, apparently. I tried five different editors and I'm still not satisfied...

My 'results':

XWE -- No copy/paste function and no method to re-order textures whatsoever. Next...
SLumpEd -- Same as above,
WinTex -- Actually a very nice TEXTUREx editor on its own... but again there's no way to re-order them. Ugh.
zWad -- doesn't support TEXTUREx at all. Next...
DeePSea *gasp!* -- Aha! What do you know? A "Move texture" function... but wait. It only allows a single texture to be moved at once and you have to type in the name of whatever texture you want it to be placed after. And with ~100 textures to move, this is as far as my 'journey' got.

After being fed up with these attempts of doing an oh, so simple task, I'd like to issue a challenge to any coders out there who might possibly be interested: a decent, stand-alone TEXTUREx editor. It can ignore all WAD lumps other than patches, but ideally it should be able to do all the basic texture editing functions (automatically manage PNames, drag'n'drop patch editing), plus:

- Auto-create a texture from a single patch (SLumpEd does this)
- Support (and perhaps display) Hi-res textures (SLumpEd probably does this)
- Copy/Paste/Duplicate textures (SLumpEd doesn't do this)
- Re-order textures at will (see above). Preferrably this should be done in the same manner as SLumpEd's lump management ("move up" and "move down" shortcuts are handy)
- Move textures to and fro TEXTURE1/TEXTURE2, at will (ditto, slime)
- Copy a texture from one wad to another, automatically copying needed patches as well. (GOOTERS)

A move to support the new and upcoming TEXTURES (formerly HIRESTEX) format would be a welcome addition as well, but I'm sure there will be much more of a rush to support this new style than the older but still useful (and required for non-ZDoom) format and the fact remains that there is currently no 'perfect' TEXTUREx editor and I say it's well past time to finally create one.

That's all I have to ask. I would do this myself if I had any programming knowledge, but sadly my skills fall short. If anyone's interested in taking this 'challenge', feel free, but I will by no means complain if nobody's interested. I know the feeling all too well, myself. ;P

So, any takers?

[esselfortium]

I feel the same way. I currently have to use both SLumpEd and DeePSea for my texture1 management, and even with both their abilities combined there are *still* things that can't be done without a huge struggle.

A while back I was brainstorming with bagheadspidey about a texture/flat manager that worked similarly to iPhoto, where you could import textures and flats into your main texture library, assign them tags (like "metal2 32x32 dark brown tech"), search based on those tags, set up smart albums (i.e. an album that automatically includes all textures/flats tagged with "metal2"), and manually put them into individual albums (i.e. "textures i'm using for newproject"). It would have nice convenient systems for getting textures directly from one wad into another (both the patches and the texture1 entries themselves, with all the patches arranged properly), batch-renaming textures, and some other useful stuff like that. It'd primarily let you organize textures themselves, with the ability to open up any of them in a texture1 editor to add, remove, or rearrange the patches in a certain texture. Then you'd be able to easily create a new wad, select your (for example) "metal2 variants", "tech supports", "tech borders", and "lights" smart-albums, and drag them onto the wad to add them all (with a means of working out name conflicts if any exist, of course).

[Macil]

Isn't there a text-equivalent of the TEXTUREx lump? I remember seeing that in feature requests but can't remember if it ever got implemented.

[Gez]

[wiki]TEXTURES[/wiki]

[Project Shadowcat]

WinTex -- Actually a very nice TEXTUREx editor on its own... but again there's no way to re-order them. Ugh.

YES THERE IS.
A long-ass time ago before I even discovered XWE, WinTex was my "weapon of choice" for texture handling. In my opinion it is probably the best for heavy TEXTUREx editing, and here's why:
Extract the TEXTUREx lump, and you'll notice a very easy to read text document. It tells you where the patches are laid out, how to order them, etc., and I was able to do some mean hackery of the lump with that and make so many more textures while making more patches of my own. The only catch was that WinTex would read that, not anything else, but it wasn't a big deal at the time because my requirements were very low.
At least, that's how I remember it...

[Enjay]

Problem is (in my experience) WinTex will start crashing and even corrupting the TEXTURE1 lump if you have a lot of textures in it - and that number is way short of what the actual engine limit is. I found out the hard way a few times.

[Kate]

Some other things that need decent standalone editors: PLAYPAL and COLORMAP. Currently, DeePSea and XWE can edit palettes and extract them in a raw format, and XWE can generate fogmaps, but neither allow you to hand-edit colormaps which is a must if you want Strife-style effects like glow-in-the-dark colors, or having colors cycle to different colors as they fade away.

[MasterOFDeath]

Some other things that need decent standalone editors: PLAYPAL and COLORMAP. Currently, DeePSea and XWE can edit palettes and extract them in a raw format, and XWE can generate fogmaps, but neither allow you to hand-edit colormaps which is a must if you want Strife-style effects like glow-in-the-dark colors, or having colors cycle to different colors as they fade away.

Inkworks can do colormap editing like that (making different fades and such) but its horrifically outdated and won't run under XP (at least that I have tried, I think some people have had some luck) without using DOSBox or something.

Something like a Windows clone of Inkworks would be pretty good...

[esselfortium]

Some other things that need decent standalone editors: PLAYPAL and COLORMAP. Currently, DeePSea and XWE can edit palettes and extract them in a raw format, and XWE can generate fogmaps, but neither allow you to hand-edit colormaps which is a must if you want Strife-style effects like glow-in-the-dark colors, or having colors cycle to different colors as they fade away.

DeePSea and the last-released XWE beta actually can do what you're looking for. I recommend XWE; it's a pain in the ass in DeePSea unless you actually want to set every colormap of every color manually.

[Siggi]

XWE's colormap and palette editing is borked.
I just wrote my own scripts for building and editing these lumps as they're that simple to manipulate.

[leileilol]

Some other things that need decent standalone editors: PLAYPAL and COLORMAP. Currently, DeePSea and XWE can edit palettes and extract them in a raw format, and XWE can generate fogmaps, but neither allow you to hand-edit colormaps which is a must if you want Strife-style effects like glow-in-the-dark colors, or having colors cycle to different colors as they fade away.

Inkworks can do colormap editing like that (making different fades and such) but its horrifically outdated and won't run under XP (at least that I have tried, I think some people have had some luck) without using DOSBox or something.

Something like a Windows clone of Inkworks would be pretty good...

qME 3.1 (OMG A QUAKE MODEL EDITOR FOR QUAKE!) can also load palettes, edit palettes, and generate colormaps with optional overbright sampling and specific ranges of fullbright colors.