OSJC's 'Alternative' Torches

[osjclatchford]

SO, what is this?

well, it's just a minor patch that changes the look of the vanilla torches (tall and short) for different animation, without "breaking the bank" of the doom assets.

get it here --> https://www.mediafire.com/file/y7lzfk1a ... s.pk3/file (just slap it at the end of your load order like any other mod)

I wont say 'improved' as, tbh, theres not much of a change occring here. really all it is, is amuscaria's flames (from hellforged ep1) recoloured with some additional 'smuts' (lifted from brutal doom) on some slightly altered torch/stick 'bodies'.

why bother then? well, why not eh? you could say that about any visual patch, but, the reasons this one was done are twofold;
One, I've always found some of doom's mismatched art a little jarring, espescially on things like flames. I wanted to use those flame sprites so they matched the design of the fire-can and archvile fire a little more and two, keep them sperate to the stands/sticks so that I can have nice transluscent flames, yet keep the torch or stick solid.
This is actually a rather nice effect that creates great silhouettes of the stands when viewed from afar.
The incusion of the 'smuts' was a way of better homaging the original sprites some, albeit with, IMHO, better quality animation. I've also made it in this patch so that the firecan has these to better blend the styles together even further.
heres more shots to show off the transluscency and the aforementioned shilouetting in some more well known maps...

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The use of translation to make the alternate colours based on doom's green colours means that any colours you fancy could be created off of the back of this.
also it's 'seperate'/modular nature means that you could quite easily use completely different flame sprites if you so wished or even do some code to create torches that can be lit and extinquished as switchable decorations as you see fit...
so, yes, do feel free to use.

*edit*
now includes gldefs thanks to Craneo!

[BrettBotTheCryonaut]

These are, in my opinion, the perfect example of a "vanilla plus" visual enhancement for Doom. Better looking than the original, but 100% fitting to the game as if they were meant to be there since the beginning. With the idle animations that's two now that we can thank you for!

[osjclatchford]

why thank you!
thats a real nice thing to say! all creds to amuscaria really! Its his sprite flames that really made this happen!
but yeah, twas a no brainer to remove the torch flames from the sticks/stands and, as such, I'm surprised this has not been done afore now.
yeah Ive seen it done to replace the flames but always with ott highres content that has no place in doom, visually.
also god bless translate! all you need is a good green to start with and the rest falls into place, no trouble!

also, re. the idle anims, Ive an update for that real soon. I've vastly improved a few frames and it should be done soon...

I've done something similar with skies too but I'm on the fence about releasing it. noone ever seems to care for skies much as far as I can tell...

[Craneo]

These look very good, thought, do they have dynamic lights? they seem to lack them and I do wish I could see them with them since they may look out of place when used with mods that add (or more like, keep) dynamic lights on other props and light sources

[osjclatchford]

I've not implemented such things as I'm afraid thats not my department...

I'm old fashioned and simply use the old glquake cheapo trick of fake light corona sprites on my lightsources, thus:

shown here in major crisis (map is tnt's map20). it gives a very 90's fps look that I feel fits in with doom rather nicely. much better than it did in quake. It was god-awful in that and I always used the proper lighting for quake. But, that being said, I'm one of those that feel that dynamic lights have no place in doom. so thats why I overlook them... but thats just me.

so do feel free to edit thus and post if you wish to. I'll take any help I can get...

[Craneo]

Here, I quickly edited this GLDefs into the mod, pretty much taken from the LIGHTS.pk3 but edited to work with the torches from your addon:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xogulqrr5wi4v ... s.txt?dl=0

EDIT: also I think they (the flames and particles) would look better with additive rendering instead of translucid, since it gives more of a glowing feel rather than just looking transparent, with an alpha of 0.8 to not make them barely noticeable, just my opinion thought lol

[osjclatchford]

well, I've pasted that txt into the mod and reuploaded it. (link on OP)
Its not doing anything on my machine and I'm not sure why tbh. I went through the hardware display options and checked that dynamic lights were on but nothing changed for me.
can someone confirm please. dont really know what I'm doing with gldefs...

[Craneo]

Hmm, what sourceport are you using? they worked for me, if it's Zandro or other non-GZDoom ports I think stuff like Attenuate doesn't work in those ports IIRC, it's a somewhat new GZDoom feature so...

EDIT: Ah, I see now, I was using an older version of your mod when doing the GLDefs, and it seems I missed you adding a new flame spriteset and/or actor, I'll try to fix it in a bit

[osjclatchford]

LOls, that'd do it! I'll wait till you fix and then put it in the main file as before.
thanks Craneo.

its these little additions and fixes that help to round out and really finish to make the patch more of a mini-mod. ;D

[Craneo]

Here, deleted the old link and reuploaded it with a fix to the new actors https://www.dropbox.com/s/s5stsh52zzn0b ... s.txt?dl=0

[BrettBotTheCryonaut]

Why not just give the actual flame actors the same name as the torches, and then have them spawn the torch/stick? That way the built in lights.pk3 that comes with GZDoom would still provide the dynamic lights for them.

*Edit: That was dumb I don't know why I said that. You can't give new actors the same name as existing ones.

*Edit2: But you could just set the flame actors to generate the same dynamic lights from the lights.pk3 - that way you wouldn't need to define new ones and also you'd only have the dynamic lights if you choose to load up lights.pk3.

[osjclatchford]

well I know not of such things but have included Craneo's fix as intended.
again I see nothing in game and don't understand why.
Im using gzdoom (and the light in doom64 mod work fine) so have no idea as to why it doesnt but as long as its ok for you guys I care not!

[Craneo]

Ah, fuck, I uploaded the old version, I'm dumb as fuck

Edit: Ok, OK, this should be it, it seems my dumb ass saved the new one making it replace an image of a sprite I was working on (it was just a copy thought so no worries) instead of the replacing the old GLDefs and I ended up uploading the old one, so here is the properly fixed version: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9tjtzc1onotps ... s.txt?dl=0

[osjclatchford]

done. still nothing on my end but uploaded nonetheless...

[Craneo]

Well, it kinda depends on the default GZDoom Lights.pk3 being enabled since it just calls for the default dynamic lights of the original torches to be added to the flame actors in your mod, idk if you have those enabled or if you even have that pk3 at all

EDIT: some in-game images:


(also, if the flames and embers look brighter is because I changed the transparent renderstyle to additive)