Which hold the texture files in Doom3 are just .zip files renamed. There is no special protection there, like say splitting the separate
files in to two seperate coded parts that are rebuilt during execution. I have been told that is how the Myst copy protection works. 

Id used a protection scheme like that, imagine, Marcher Fortress would have had to have been made
with textures rebuilt on snapshots. Kind of like taking a camera into the movies to make bootlegs. 

Marcher Fortress would have had to have been made with textures rebuilt on snapshots

Or even *gasp* textures made from scratch!!! 

in all fairness, not everyone is gifted at textures, as i'm learning myself... lol XD

as for extracting textures used in d3/q4... well, that could be more complex than other games, simply because they use more than just diffuse maps with small effects. for the most part, the diffuse maps alone are useless as they look shit without proper lighting with their respective bump maps.

you'd need to find a way to load up the diffuse maps and apply the bump maps to them, and then cast some light on them to get the shadows to show up and then save the result as a new texture file... a lot of work for poor results if you ask me, since those new textures will *still* be limited by the q1 palette, unless you go the external tga route. (external tgas can yield awesome results though... ne_marb looked wicked with the vivid green doom textures :) 

I've just extracted the .pak4 files... and there's not only the textures, but also the skyboxes (i.e Hell and Mars outside... ) and there are awesome..
And concerning textures, there are a lot of interesting stuffs.. but it is a serious amount of work: all textures are .tga files, and there are 500 MBytes for all the stuff (i.e skyboxes + textures..) Hey guys ! I feel suddenly alone in front of the task... and so I would need some help ;P
Anyway, I will open all these files, and see what would be cool to keep... cause after a quick fly, not all can be used in a wad file...
And concerning HL2 textures.. I need to extract the textures from the bsp files... and this is another story...
In anyway, thanks for the tips ;P 

Email me if you need help to automate pic conversions. 

Good one, Kell. 

Thanks a lot, I keep it in mind.

And now I still have to check all the tga files, to see what can be used or not. As I saw there are generally one "basis" texture, and 3 or 4 derivated from it (i.e a darker, a "UV photo" like, etc..) I guess these additional tga files are used for 3D/lights rendering ingame (I guess necros explained it better tha me in post #4957), and only basis textures would be usefull in Quake. But the task is not so simple: there is 500MB of textures, and each one is around 20kB. If I consider only around 1 on 3 will be used (according to what I said above), it's around 8330 textures to create... OMG ! So I will have to split all the stuff into separate wads... wow...
Anyway, after the "preliminary" selection, I will come back to you ;P 

I think D3 (and Q4 I guess) textures really look too plain and boring without their normal maps and proper ingame lighting, I can't imagine them looking like much in a game like Quake... 

The diffuse map (what you call a "basis" texture) alone is extremely flat and plain looking compared to what you see in quake4, and isn't really suitable as a standalone texture.

Ideally you'd use the normal map and diffusemap together to render out a texture with the sort of baked-in highlights and shadows that are used for quake textures. This could be done as a batch process if such a utility existed either alone, or as part of photoshop or maya or something. 

Well, I will make some tries before starting a full automatic process of conversion. If the textures will not look good, I will simply stop the "process".... I can easily live without Doom3 textures in Quake ! :P

However, I think it could be possible to convert at least some of them (i.e rocks, stones, etc.. that are used in Hell/Cavern level..) ... and also reduce the initial size to something more suitable for Quake... I will see this in time..

Anyway, thanks for the infos.. ;) 

I am looking at some spites in Quake.

I realise that sprites are 2D and that walking 'around' them shows the same 2D image, as opposed to a model which can show different sides.

But what are the merits of using sprites instead of models? Would it just be coding and modelling versus drawing? Are there performance considerations? 

Think about the globe - it's spherical so it would take lots of polys - it was also quick to throw it in? Prolly doom leftovers partly tho. Explosions and particles are sprites btw. 

sprites are ( unless you're making lots of really big sprites ) easier on the rendering. They're also easier to make, and not subject to the vagaries of lighting that Q1 models are.

Even Q3 uses sprites for various different visual features. Features that could be done with models and skins but simply don't need to be, cause they work fine as sprites. 

aren't lit, so they are fullbright everywhere. this can be good, but could also be bad. (explosions = yay, trees/shrubs = aww :( )

also, there are a few different ways to have sprites too, you can have them non-aligned (look the same from any angle), vertically aligned (look the same from horizontal angles, but looking down or up at it will show it's 2dness and a few other alignement options which i'm not quite sure what they do. 

While we're on the topic, FrikaC has released a new tool for editing sprites, so you don't have to use the potentially dangerous AdQuedit. Get the beta from http://forums.inside3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=331

Already given the program a bit of a try, finishing off a mod I tried to make a few months back without success. It probably earns the distinction of being the smallest mod in existence, at only 17k. And they called it Noir Quake ; - )
http://www.btinternet.com/~chapterhonour/noir.zip
It's just a bit of fun since people mentioned it in a discussion thread. But it might have some merit for interesting future maps, altering the palette in such a way that the existing monster skins aren't broken(changed maybe, but still look alright). Perhaps the Schindler's list effect of black and white with just one colour could work well... 

nice 

what about modifying D3's textures for a map in d3? ie: change the diffuse map, but keep the other maps the same, for example.

are you allowed to modify game ressources if they are for the same game? 

called 'fair use', i.e. taping a broadcast for later viewing, loop samples of music, etc, and remixing elements in a game for the purpose of modding would certainly be an example of that.
You are on pretty safe grounds there, even though, EULA's typically have non modification clauses attached. If they were taken verbatim, there would not be any mods at all. 

Preach, that quake noir thingy is brilliant. I've so wanted to play quake in B&W for soooo long. Skyboxes don't get modified, so one has to call a bogus sky and revert to default but who cares.

For a awesome piece of gothic horror movie action, run noir and load gmsp3... f**king brilliant! 

Hadn't thought about skyboxes, but it's a good point! Many new engine features will break this mod, including fancy particles, .lit files and tga textures. Don't try it in darkplaces! On the other end of the spectrum winquake should work perfectly, and gl if you set gl_flashblend to 0.

Gmsp3 is, I agree, very cool in noir, been a while since I've played it too. Another nice one is Adamantine Cruelty. One thing that became apparent while playing with the mod is how hard it is to distinguish red/yellow/green armour and the gold/silver keys. Sounds obvious now, I know...If someone wanted to do this for a serious map rather than a bit of fun, it might be worth doing something about making them look distinct.

One final trick though, since the only files that are changed are colormap.lmp and palette.lmp, you can almost always just add this mod on top of an existing mod, just by throwing the gfx folder into the mod's folder. So it's not just limited to vanilla quake maps. 

When I tried it, it looked more like nearly-black-and-white-but-with-some-yellow-green Quake instead of Noir Quake. :/ 

 

It's not that I don't try, it's just that I'm useless at it.

Anyone know of a large flame sprite for use in Quake1? You know, large bonfire size one.