| Author: UNKNOWN () |
Builds .wad files for use with WorldCraft.
buildWad [-x] [@]source file.wad
| -x | Build a unique palette for texture |
| [@]source | This argument can be either a texture, a directory, or if proceeded by the @ symbol, the name of a text file which contains a list of textures to load. If this argument is a directory, the directory's entire contents is packed into the wad. |
| file.wad | The name of the wad file to build |
WorldCraft only loads .wad files and will not load individual textures. The buildWad tool is used to pack textures into .wad files. Copies of the textures are stored in the wad file, the original are left unchanged.
BuildWad will read either .jpg or .png files.
BuildWad is the tool that will make unique .wad(texture reference) files for use in WorldCraft. If you set up your environment as described in this document buildWad.exe will be located in your torque\tools directory. The texture sets created in buildWad are not the final images used in the game, they are a set of reference images used when creating your world craft shapes.
Source .png files should be based on powers of 2. 8x8, 16x16, 64x64, 128x64 for example. BuildWad will support up to 512x512 images, however textures of this size have a very large memory footprint and should only be used sparingly. There are some texture sizes that buildWad doesn't like. Ratios of 16 to 1 or greater will cause buildWad to crash. For example sizes like 16 x 1, 32 x 2, 64 x 4 should be avoided.
You should include a "null" texture in your custom texture sets. A null texture is a texture with the RGB value of 255 0 255, and should be named "null.png". This texture does not need to be more than 16x16 pixels in size. This color is bright pink. Faces with a null texture are not rendered in the same way as a standard textured face. There are fewer computations involved in drawing and transforming a face with a null texture resulting in better performance. Use null textures on faces that will never be visible to a player in your shape. For example if you design a shape that is always embedded into terrain apply a null texture to the faces that will always be occluded by the terrain. Another area where you will want to use null textures is on portal brushes. Portal brushes are easier to see this way when you are editing a shape. If you run into an invisible wall in a shape it is probably a brush that should have been turned into a portal brush.
You will use buildWad from a dos prompt. Navigate to your mod directory, this should be located the v12 root, such as torque/arena. Then assuming your textures are in the textures sub-directory, activate the tool by typing "buildWad textures textures.wad" then enter. This should process all the .png format files in the target directory and create a "textures.wad" file in the current mod directory.
To load a .wad file, launch WorldCraft, go to the options dialog box, go to the textures tab and add "textures.wad" from your mod directory. It is not normally a good idea to have more than one wad loaded at a time, simply remove the other wads listed and restart WorldCraft. This will make certain only the new wad file is loaded.
The original source textures need to stay in the mod directory so that they may be loaded by the Torque engine. The textures stored in the .wad are not used by the Torque engine, the .wad file is built only for use with WorldCraft.