Level Building - Textures

[QuestOfDreams]

Q. The textures in my level look good in the editor but too light or dark in game.

A. In the in-game menu go to options->video and adjust the gamma.

[QuestOfDreams]

Q. How do I make a texture library (.txl)?

A. Open up RFpack.exe and a copy of Windows Explorer pointing to the directory where your textures (.bmp and/or .tga files) are located. The textures must be square and any power of 2 in size (16x16, 32x32, 64x64, 128x128, 256x256 etc.) and can have a color depth of 8 bit, 16 bit, 24 bit or 32 bit (.tga files only).
Drag&Drop your textures into the empty list on the left. Save your .txl file.

Run the editor, load/create a map. Go to Project->Level Options, browse for your .txl file. Press OK, textures will be loaded.
(Note: You can also add textures in World Editor 2, but only bmp files and they must be 8bit.)

[QuestOfDreams]

Q. The transparent textures aren't transparent.

A. Make sure you have marked the face as transparent in the face attributes dialog.
Depending on the color depth of your texture there are different ways to get transparency working:

8bit images (256 colors):
In your painting program, open the bitmap, click colors/edit palette, click on the very last color and change it to RGB 255, 0, 254 and save, reload it into your .txl file, removing the old one first.

24-bit images (RGB):
You'll have to make sure the transparent parts are all color 255, 0, 254.

For 32bit images (RGB plus alpha channel):
Make sure the image is a tga file and the image in the alpha channel will be transparent.

[QuestOfDreams]

Q. Can texture names in a .txl file have spaces in them?

A. No, your texture names can't have any spaces in them. There is also some reported weirdness about if 2 textures have the same letters in the first 8 spaces of their names, one or the other or both won't be available. The thing to do is name your textures wildly different. Not like:

Graygreengranite287834
graygreengranite280822
more like grgrn2882
grgrn2808,

Make them different by the 8th letter.

[QuestOfDreams]

Q. What is a good size for a .txl file?

A. The only disadvantage to having large texture libraries is that the editor seems to cache the entire file into memory when you open the level. This isn't noticeable with smaller libraries, but loading larger ones may take a few minutes.

[QuestOfDreams]

Q. When I run my level, the textures are all gray and spotty, why?

A. This is because you compiled your level with an outdated GBSPlib.dll that doesn't support 24-bit color.

[QuestOfDreams]

Q. I changed the texture of a brush in the editor, but in the game the texture is the old one, why?

A. You probably have 2 or more brushes occupying the same space. This can happen when copy/paste spazzes out, and you click too many times.