Resource - Skyboxes

Post by **Enjay** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 23:30

Graham Jackson of Risen 3D fame pointed me in the direction of this site and I figured that it might be of interest to some people here too.

http://kell.quaddicted.com/skyboxes.html

It's a bunch of skyboxes, most quite nice, set up to work with Quake 3. To make them work with GZdoom, using the naming system that Graf first used when describing skyboxes read the following. It worked for me anyway

In the main download (~78MB) are a bunch of PK3 files. They contain some info needed by Quake3 but you will only need the TGA graphics in the env directories inside the pk3 files. The skies are named like this when you get them:

skyname_rt
skyname_ft
skyname_lf
skyname_bk
skyname_up
skyname_dn

so, rename them like this

skyname_rt - gzdoomname_n
skyname_ft - gzdoomname_e
skyname_lf - gzdoomname_s
skyname_bk - gzdoomname_w
skyname_up - gzdoomname_t
skyname_dn - gzdoomname_b

(I got that orientation by assuming that the top image was correct, and then matching up the sides with it.)

Remember that GZdoom needs you to edit the top picture to get it to liine up correctly. So, mirror the top image left to right (ctrl-m in psp) then rotate it by 180 degrees (ctrl-r in psp) and save it.

Then make a gldefs lump as follows

Code: Select all

skybox SKYNAME  //this is the name of the virtual texture that you will us in MAPINFO
{ 
   gzdoomname_n
   gzdoomname_e
   gzdoomname_s
   gzdoomname_w
   gzdoomname_t
   gzdoomname_b
}

Stick the textures in your WAD between TX markers or in a zip in a textures directory and you should be good to go.

As an aside, if you have downloaded any skyboxes for the new Risen3D, or seen the ones that come with some Risen3D maps, these are named side1-6. If you want them to work with GZdoom, rename them like so

side1 = gzdoomname_b
side2 = gzdoomname_n
side3 = gzdoomname_e
side4 = gzdoomname_s
side5 = gzdoomname_w
side6 = gzdoomname_t

The top image will need to be edited as above.

And of course, it would be wrong of me to suggest people try all these resources from Risen3D if I didn't also suggest that it was worth trying the port too. The latest version came out just before Christmas and it is working very well. Sitters has updated a number of his maps to take advantage of new features and it's all looking very spiffy.

http://risen3d.newdoom.com/

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 0:14

This flipping issue has been bugging me forever but for some reason I never did something about it until now.

That happened because the graphics I used when implementing skyboxes were already altered to be used on a ZDoom style skybox.

I just added an option to use Q2 skyboxes unchanged. Just specify the keyword 'fliptop' after the skybox name.

Post by **Enjay** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 0:30

Well, that should make things easier. I'll have a build of r292 online in a few minutes [edit] it's up [/edit]. Presumably "fliptop" goes after the skybox name in GLDEFS rather than MAPINFO?

On documentation related stuff, I noticed the line "dontlightself 1" in a few dynamic lights definitions in lights.pk3. I hadn't spotted that line before. It's obvious what it does, the actor with the light attached doesn't get lit by the light. However, I wondered why it was followed by a 1? That implies to me that there are more options for it, or possibly more options planned, otherwise dontlightself without the 1 would surely have been enough? So, is there anything else?

And whilst I'm asking about things, has the autoaim getting lost across savegames been fixed in GZdoom? To be honest, I'm not even sure that the bug exists in GZdoom. I'm just trying to keep a track of things for my own satisfaction.

Post by **Enjay** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 0:34

Ack, fliptop seems to be broken. I loaded up an old skybox WAD and the top panel no longer matches the sky. So I edited the GLDEFS to add the word fliptop and it still didn't match.

So, to be clear, a skybox that had the correct orientation for GZdoom up to revision r291 does not have the correct orientation in 292 with or without the fliptop word.

[edit]

A bit more info. I tried a skybox using the original orientation of the graphics (ie one that would not previously have worked in GZdoom) and it looked OK in GZdoom with and without the fliptop word. So it seems that GZdoom is doing the fliptop routine regardless of whether the word is there or not.

Do you want a bug thread for this?

[/edit]

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 0:44

Uninitialized variables suck, don't they?

You can be almost certain that they have the correct values when you test it but afterwards...

Post by **Enjay** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 1:14

You've certainly fixed it with r293. Without the fliptop word, an old GZdoom skybox looks fine. With it, an unedited Q3 skybox works as intended too.

Uploading r293 right now.

I'll take r292 off the server seeing as how it only existed for a few minutes and the change is so minimal but I'll leave the map file up just in case someone downloaded r292 and reports a crash with it.

Post by **Enjay** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 23:55

Alllllrighty Don't say I'm not good to you lot. I've reconfigured the skyboxes to work in GZdoom. (20 minutes to do the work, almost 2 hours to upload them (mutters about slow internet connection))

http://www.zshare.net/download/54242355007f7d0e/

Just load the zip directly into a new version of GZdoom (r293 or newer - because I used the fliptop command), start a game and type

changesky skyxx

at the console where xx is a number from 01 to 49

Also, I noticed that 2 skies had problems. One had the top panel the wrong way up, so I rotated that, and one, rather oddly, had the correct top panel but the mountains were quite tall and should have gone on to the top panel slightly, but didn't. So I added a little bit of mountain top to it with PSP. Quite how that rendering problem happened in Terragen, I don't know because, otherwise, the panels fitted together seamlessly. Anyway, it's fixed.

Post by **Rachael** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 1:36

Woohoo! Thank you, Enjay! ^^

Post by **Rex Claussen** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 19:34

Are there any skyboxes for DooM Episode 1?

I'm seriously considering switching my project The Phobos Directive from ZDooM to GZDooM (after I'm done with Paranoid, of course), and it would be great to have a true skybox.

Otherwise, I have created a set of very nice 240-high E1 sky textures that are cloudy (like the original), in bright daylight, and in starlight that I will use. (Perhaps someone can make these textures into skyboxes?)

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 20:33

You can find some on the Risen3D download site.

Post by **Enjay** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 20:45

This one, by Sitters, is distributed for Risen3D (available from the Risen3D site and from Sitters' own site). It's maybe not a totally accurate representation of hills in the source photograph used for the original Episode 1 sky, but it conveys a lot of the right feel IMO.

This one is, IMO, a cracker. It was posted here, or on Zdoom, a short while ago but I don't remember who did it. It doesn't really look like the Doom Ep1 sky and its colouring and lighting would mean you'd need to use it carefully. However, it is intended to look more like what you would see if the Episode 1 intermission picture/map was represented in the sky rather than the actual original Ep1 sky. For me, the really nice touch is the planet Mars hanging ominously in the sky above the moon base.

I have seen other attempts at an Episode 1 sky but they have nearly all been blurry up-sized versions of the original graphic pasted on to the inner sides of a virtual cube.

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 23:01

Those hires textures in the first screenshot are just

...

Post by **Rex Claussen** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 5:20

Enjay wrote:This one is, IMO, a cracker. It was posted here, or on Zdoom, a short while ago but I don't remember who did it. It doesn't really look like the Doom Ep1 sky and its colouring and lighting would mean you'd need to use it carefully. However, it is intended to look more like what you would see if the Episode 1 intermission picture/map was represented in the sky rather than the actual original Ep1 sky. For me, the really nice touch is the planet Mars hanging ominously in the sky above the moon base.

Yes, indeed, that is a "cracker". I wonder if I could get permission to modify it to make it a starry sky with Mars above. I'll look through the GZD and ZD forums to see who posted it, then get in touch with her/him.

Thanks.

Chris · Post by **Chris** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 21:40

Hmm, interesting that Sitters' Ep1 skybox works fairly well for Heretic's Ep1, too. Could use a little more brownish definition in the mountains, though. The lack of definition seems to be a problem with the sky in general.. too many gray gradients and no real detail in the mountains (the original had a nice rocky feeling to distant mountains).

Still haven't actually found a skybox for Doom's ep1 that really matches the feeling I got when I first played the game, either. The original moutains really gave a sense of "out there" and depth to the scene. That there was something out there to get to. A lot of the replacements make the mountains large (and in this case, shrouded heavily in fog and shadow) which provides the sense of them being closer, giving a more clostriphopic feel.

Just my opinion, though.

KuriKai · Post by **KuriKai** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 13:25

The one with mars is my one, it needs to be rotated so the lighting matches