Ages ago, I made a series of photoshop curves that, when applied to a greyscale image, map the greys to a certain line of colours in the q1 pallete, in a way that gives the most accurate possible colour preservation when the image is then reduced to the q1 pallete.

When applied wholesale to an image, of course that image will only use one colour line and be fairly boring - but when used on isolated elements of a texture in an overall composition that probably has different elements using different colour lines, it starts to look rather cool indeed!

Here are the curves:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/61424391/Temp/photoshop%20curves/photoshop%20curves.rar

It's pretty wonderful to have a greyscale image, with a brightness/contrast layer, and then one of these curves on top of that - and you just slide the brightness/contrast around and watch the quakey goodness dance perfectly in time to its tune :} 

I understand that the files are ACV (Adobe Curve files) but got no idea how to load them in CS5.5 I try to double click them and PS won't load them. Can't find any forum help either. Any clues? 

I use CS5:

Simply create a new curves layer, then in the curves edit window you should see a small drop-down button in the top right corner. Clicking that should lead to a "Load Curves Preset" option. 

these colour tables allow you to do the palette conversion in photoshop which i find is so much better than letting say TexMex have its wicked way:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/61424391/Temp/photoshop%20color%20tables.rar

There's a lot of different colour tables in there, all for subtley different uses (like if you want no brights, no red, no black etc.) The readme explains what all the different tables are for. 

Maybe this is the wrong place to ask but in any case :

where can I find high-res textures to change the default Quake 1 textures, to be used with QuakeSpasm ? 

where can I find high-res textures to change the default Quake 1 textures, to be used with QuakeSpasm ?

Ewwwwwww. You could try asking around QuakeOne.com - I believe they have a penchant for...that sort of thing.

A very brief googling led me to here: http://qrp.quakeone.com/retexture/ I've no idea if any of that's any good. Although to be honest, "good" in the context of hi-res Quake textures is a bit like asking what's a "good" type of colon cancer to have. 

Ok, I've found the way to change the default textures. Now I know what you mean by "good" type of colon cancer ! LOL

I may use just a few of the high res textures though, for the crates and items, water, lava and skies, but not all textures.

And the loading process is much slower with all the large textures anyway. Yuck ! 

The contortions I see people do to convert textures ... like the 36 posts here ... or like what JPL did a while back with the Doom 3 texture set ... it is disturbing to me.

Really disturbing actually.

Converting textures shouldn't even be necessary.

I'd like to be able to map for Quake just having some folders of different textures.

http://quake-1.com/docs/utils/highres4quake_beta_prerelease.zip

Source included.

It isn't immediately obvious what this does, but it will blow your mind (about 3 or 4 times once I explain all the details and then you will probably laugh -- because most of our tools are frustrating as hell). When I get 3 more hours to polish up the output and harden it against oddball situations I'll start a new thread. And explain how it can be used.

Unfortunately, I have Memorial Day weekend stuff to do right now. Posting this just means I know the source code bundled up and on the internet. 

What does it do, Mister Mysterious? 

If we didn't have people attempting contortions to convert things to the quake palette the ikblue textures would never have been invented. 

 

 

Some description of what this actually does would be much more useful than a bunch of assumptions and assertions. 

SleepwalkR is right. In particular you run the risk of some jackass only looking through your source code for 2 minutes, then declaring that it just performs flat nearest-neighbour conversion - which skirts the core discussion in this thread. 

*zing* 

You can zing me. I don't care.

I was short on time when I did the post and had to leave in 5 minutes for being gone for 10 days but wanted the security of knowing my source code was uploaded.

I'm in the final stages of polishing this up completely. 20% chance I'm done tonight --- except I don't feel very motivated at the moment -- 80% chance this tool is part of a 2-part Friday release.

It's rather funny what it does and doesn't do what you think. But if I explain, then it would be anti-climatic. But most mappers will smile when they see it in action. 

you could have explained in one sentence but instead you made it worse. 

This can't be anything other than a let down at this point. 

This can't be anything other than a let down at this point.

Lately I've been kicking ass at underestimating time frames to polish up things how I want them while over-estimating my free time.

So perhaps you are right, from a certain point of view.

I join you in my displeasure with myself meeting my own time frames (I discovered a frustrating problem, which I certainly wasn't willing to release "as-is" once I noticed it.)

I may have been wrong to get excited about the tool's imminent release, but I still feel excited about the absurd thing the tool does.

Real-life seems to enjoy throwing me curve balls lately.

This kind of thing doesn't discourage me, I file it under "Ok that sucked, so I don't do it as fast at I wanted but I think the sun will still rise in the morning" department".

It does upset me some, but I am more than willing to rub life's face in the dirt the second it stops paying attention.

Is that worth anything today? No, not really. 

you totally misunderstood Willem...