Wad Limit?

CWolf · July 2003

I'm curious to know how to keep the number of used .wads down in a map.

When I was reading some data I read that if I use textures from more than 8 different .wads strange and unpredictable things can and will happen in my map. Is there any way I can keep the .wad limit down or any way I can create my own .wad containing all the textures I will be using?

Inafiscisis · July 2003

Just keep track of what wads you have loaded up, and what textures you use.

If you use custom textures, you should put all of them in a custom wad that should
ship with the map. Makes life easier for those poor devils with 56k. <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/nerd.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='nerd.gif'>

Shadowics · July 2003

You could create your own wad with all the textures you use, however it wouldn't be a good idea because you'd either have to distribute that with your map or -wadinclude all those textures. Just keep track of what textures you're using and try not to use a lot of different ones. I've never had a problem personally so it might just be a Hammer/WC thing (since I use Quark), as opposed to a HL/NS thing.

Papercut · July 2003

You could use <a href='http://www.planetquake.com/wally' target='_blank'>Wally</a> to create a new WAD, lotsa tutorials on their site.

CWolf · July 2003

thanx for all the replies, I will prob. create my own .wad so thanx!

Shadowics · July 2003

I'll say it again then. Creating your own wad with the textures you use is a bad solution. It would solve the problem of using too many wads. However, when someone else went to play your map it would look for the textures in the custom wad you made. This would mean either you would have to distribute your custom wad with your map, which would just be a waste since it would probably contain duplicates of textures people already have. Or you could -wadinclude the textures from your custom wad, which would make your bsp huge and take forever to download from a server. As you can see, if you make your own wad it would require people to download more than they would have to otherwise in order to play your map, which would probably result in fewer people playing your map.

Inafiscisis · July 2003

Shadowics, you don't have to put ALL the textures you use in the custom wad, just the one that
not everyone has (those you've downloaded, those you made etc. etc.). Thus, you won't have
any duplicates unless whoever dls the map has lots and lots of dled custom wads. You seem to be
thinking backwards here. Or maybe i'm misunderstanding. Textures aren't that big, and you usually
won't use an overwhelming amount of custom ones. But since there are all these custom wads
available, of which you just use a few, it would be a good idea to gather all custom textures you use
in a single .wad, to make sure no unnnecessary textures are in the wad(s). The alternatives would be
to:

1. Use no cusom textures, make the player stare at what s/he has seen already.
2. Make the map ship with ALL the downloaded custom wads.

I guess 1. isn't that bad. But alternative 2 will make the dl file HUGE.

What do you mean when you say it is a bad solution? Please explain. A regular custom wad is not very big.

Shadowics · July 2003

NS comes with 6 wads, and HL has 4 you might use. If you're working with a limit or 8 wads you don't need to be using any custom wads to hit the limit. Textures are quite big, the NS wad alone is over 20 MB, and if you're on a modem 20 megs takes forever to download. It would be better to -wadinclude for any textures from custom wads, unless you'd make alot of custom textures yourself for your map and you want to share them.

SNiperMarine · July 2003

waht ns wad where is it in your folder cause is it really 20 mb?

SNiperMarine · July 2003

nvm it is like 20 mb....

Inafiscisis · July 2003

Hmm...still seems like a very rare sirutation that anyone would actually use all the .wads that comes with NS
and all the .wads that comes with HL. After all, HL textures usually look out of place in an NS map
(theres some earth-theme city map using HL-textures in development (looks...well, not so good)).
Mostly, you'd probably use a few .wads (I use ns.wad, halflife.wad, and a custom wad with my custom
textures (that makes 3)). I find it very hard to hit 8 wads, since I only use 2-3 of the ones that ship with the
game, and I put all my custom ones in a separate one (only a few 100 kb atm). And if you take a look at the
ns.wad...count how many textures there are in there...several hundred, right? now, do you really think
anyone in their right mind will sit down and make several hundred custom textures for a single map,
and really use them? I don't think so. I'd say maybe a few dozen, if you decide to use mostly
custom textures.

here's the wads that come with HL:
*cached.wad : useless
*decals.wad : useless
fonts.wad : useless
gfx.wad : I can't find any use for this one.
halflife.wad : a few you might need here. clip perhaps.
liquids.wad : water and stuff. You might want something here. Might.
*pldecal.wad : useless.
spraypaint.wad : good luck with finding any good use for this one.
xeno.wad : xen in ns? yay! not...

That makes 9. Of which are 1 useful, and 1 neccesary (almost).
(slight miscount there shadowics)

here's the wads that come with NS:
*cached.wad : useless
*decals.wad : useless
ns.wad : You guess.
ns_bast.wad : bast textures...
ns_eclipse.wad : eclipse textures.
ns_hera.wad : hera textures.
ns_nothing.wad : nothing textures.
ns_tanith.wad : tanith textures.
*pldecal.wad : useless.

9 ones there (3 useless). I don't think you will use all.
(You got a problem counting shadowics?)

* = nothing to see here.

Now, show me a map that uses all the ns and hl wads and ill give you..eh...i'm broke...emh...a cookie!

*EDIT* Snipermarine, why didn't you just use the EDIT function instead of adding another bs post?
Geez...

Cildan · July 2003

I think he was guessing.

Inafiscisis · July 2003

I think he is just some kid that needs better parents.

NerdIII · July 2003

soso teh snippermarine is heer agani
Eh what was the topic? Wad file limit... hmm ok. Might I repeat the best solution in short?

In Hammer make sure you only load up to 8 WAD files and you can't do anything wrong.
Or... if you use my favorite, hard to configure map editor QuArK you can load as many WADs and QuArK will only add references to them in your map if you are actually using them. (So it is up to you not to use textures from more than 8 WADs)

Also there are some textures that should not be used. For example the hera logo. The designers of these textures did not make them for public use but accidently they were included in the ns.wad. Maybe someone knows where I read this?

Wad Limit?

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