What are popular texture packs for custom wads that every new mapper should download?

Hello, what are popular texture packs for custom wads that every new mapper should download? I'm tired to find textures from this thread or Realm667 and creating my own texture pack. I just wanna focus creating map and less dealing with "create texture pack from nothing".

It's an obvious answer, but since you didn't mention it outright and since someone will eventually anyway OTEX is probably the most iconic and popular texture set of the last few years.  I've never mapped with it myself but it's attractive and comprehensive and versatile and that much is clear from the many, many wads that have been made with it.

CC4-tex (Community Chest 4) is another texture pack that I've seen a lot and has long transcended the project it originated for.

AA-tex (the texture pack from Ancient Aliens) is massive but has a lot of good bits that I have used myself.

Beyond that, I guess it depends on what kind of maps you're doing and what theme or aesthetic you're going for.  I mostly map with vanilla and vanilla-adjacent texture sets so someone more adventurous than me will have better answers (though I guess these are popular enough for even me to have heard of them :p )

1 hour ago, Jayextee said:

Probably a hot take here, but I don't think newbies should concern themselves about custom textures until they've learned the ropes, as it were, with the stock resources so they at least have an idea of what they're doing in that area and how they're going to use the textures they're downloading.

What difference does it make if someone is learning with stock door texture A or unofficial door texture B? 

1 hour ago, Jayextee said:

Probably a hot take here, but I don't think newbies should concern themselves about custom textures until they've learned the ropes, as it were, with the stock resources so they at least have an idea of what they're doing in that area and how they're going to use the textures they're downloading.

 

I very much anticipate a great many inexperienced newbies shooting me down here, and am very thankful in advance to have notifications turned off.

Maybe. Anyways I'm the one who learned the ropes (I can add textures in Vanilla, I can do self-referencing sector too, etc) but I have no idea what popular texture packs are. Nope I'm not joking, I only ever played few maps from '98.

2 hours ago, Jayextee said:

Probably a hot take here, but I don't think newbies should concern themselves about custom textures until they've learned the ropes, as it were, with the stock resources so they at least have an idea of what they're doing in that area and how they're going to use the textures they're downloading.

 

I very much anticipate a great many inexperienced newbies shooting me down here, and am very thankful in advance to have notifications turned off.

Yeah thats a silly notion lol... While you can do a lot with the base textures, indeed, I'm a huge fan of frankensteining them together to make new-ish ones, or to fit them to different sized walls than 64/128, it's undeniable that you can retexture the same room with custom assets and have it look ten times better than with stock textures. You're experienced enough to know that, why would you actively try to make things harder for newcomers? 

Stupid Bunny got it right, all other replies to this thread are going to be of as little usefulness as the one I've quoted.

50 minutes ago, blueyosh43 said:

What difference does it make if someone is learning with stock door texture A or unofficial door texture B? 

Focus, mainly. Learn to make a map, just one map, and then worry about fucking around with textures. I knew this'd be a hot take.

30 minutes ago, Fonze said:

why would you actively try to make things harder for newcomers?

LOL, trying to get newcomers to focus on one thing at a time, actually potentially making things easier for them! It's perhaps not an approach fit for everyone, but I can imagine a non-zero amount of people who may've been put off making their dream DOOM mod ever because they didn't realise that the texture has to be separate images added to the PNAMES and then then stitched together in the texture editor, etc, whatever. There's even a litany of newbie mistakes that come with texture pack usage as well, e.g. copying the whole pack into their WAD when they've used about three of hundreds, etc.

And with this I draw attention to the OP, emphasis mine:

3 hours ago, Rykzeon said:

Hello, what are popular texture packs for custom wads that every new mapper should download?

There's literally no such thing. Textures are textures. DOOM1/2's got a whole bunch and if you're new, they're good enough. They do the job whilst you're learning. Learn to walk before trying to sprint.

I recommend you give a try to Cage's textures and Noir Pack. They're not the most popular textures, but I mapped with them quite a bit and I find some textures there very useful. In particular, Cage's crate and techbase textures really fit well in Doom, and Noir textures can be used to create gloomy environments.

3 hours ago, Jayextee said:

Probably a hot take here, but I don't think newbies should concern themselves about custom textures until they've learned the ropes, as it were, with the stock resources so they at least have an idea of what they're doing in that area and how they're going to use the textures they're downloading.

 

I very much anticipate a great many inexperienced newbies shooting me down here, and am very thankful in advance to have notifications turned off.

This is tangential to the topic, but I wholeheartedly agree with this. Limiting yourself to vanilla textures when you're just starting off is the best way to familiarize yourself with the concepts of texture choice. There is such a thing as having too many options. The vanilla texture selection is a little more limited, but it can force you to think creatively about how to maximize it, which leads to more creative geometry.

That's not to say having all those options is inherently bad, but it can lead to some pretty undisciplined mapping behavior, such as using a large number of textures just because you have access to them, which can lead to inconsistent theming and haphazard design.

That all being said, that doesn't mean I think you should only release maps with vanilla textures or only make them when you're just starting off, just that it's a valuable experience. Hell, you don't even need to show them to anybody or finish them in that state. Just make a bunch of rooms and try to add things like door trim, wall panels, decorations, columns, etc, and those skills will be that much stronger when you start working with any of the texture packs mentioned here.

Personally, I really like the aesthetic of OTEX and AA-Tex, but they are very widely used, which ironically can cause issues making something stand out.

58 minutes ago, Jayextee said:

Focus, mainly. Learn to make a map, just one map, and then worry about fucking around with textures. I knew this'd be a hot take.

There are hot takes and then there are dumb takes. This is a dumb take.

New textures are part of what inspires people to get into mapping and discouraging their use in order to favour learning how to map "properly" first is silly. They can learn mapping skills as they go along. Same with actual texture usage. Not like the iwads are shining examples of texture use, plenty of vanilla or vanilla texture only wads do better at using the textures than the iwads.

It's better to hand a kid a pack of crayons and say go wild rather than a box of different pencils and say "learn lines and gradients first"

1 hour ago, Jayextee said:

LOL, trying to get newcomers to focus on one thing at a time, actually potentially making things easier for them! It's perhaps not an approach fit for everyone, but I can imagine a non-zero amount of people who may've been put off making their dream DOOM mod ever because they didn't realise that the texture has to be separate images added to the PNAMES and then then stitched together in the texture editor, etc, whatever. There's even a litany of newbie mistakes that come with texture pack usage as well, e.g. copying the whole pack into their WAD when they've used about three of hundreds, etc.

By the same token, we should also tell all newcomers to only use limit removing formats so all the extra fluff won't make things difficult for them too. Or maybe we recommend pure vanilla with all its painful limitations because if people cant make huge, open, overdetailed areas then thatll surely make the process easier on them.

Your post was a hot take because it has some bad advice attached to good advice, cheapenig the value of the good advice and presenting it as something else. A large part of learning is making the process fun so people want to continue to come back and learn more. People don't learn to make doom maps so they can make just another doom map in a sea of them, they learn the hobby so they can make their doom map. Are there priorities on good stuff to learn first? Absolutely. Should one learn to walk before they run? Sure. But adding new textures isn't running, and some texture set creators don't even want mappers adding their textures individually to their wads anyway so those would be made as a standard map with an added resource pack. That's not running at all.

Additionally, given it takes more effort to make stock textures look interesting when they are literally the most overused textures we have, to the point that we can tell flat walls that use them on a cursory glance, it could be as easily argued that using some textures with better baked-in lighting makes the process of actually making a decent-looking room easier. Horizontally banded textures, as an example, look great by themselves and there just aren't as many to work with in stock textures. 

39 minutes ago, Decay said:

There are hot takes and then there are dumb takes. This is a dumb take.

Disagreeing is fine, but there's no need to get insulting with it.

Definitely Colortex.

30 minutes ago, Jayextee said:

Disagreeing is fine, but there's no need to get insulting with it.

Sorry but that is not insulting. If I was insulting I would say you are dumb. I am merely saying the take is dumb.

4 hours ago, Jayextee said:

I very much anticipate a great many inexperienced newbies shooting me down here, and am very thankful in advance to have notifications turned off.

This is more insulting than suggesting a take is dumb. "I believe my opinion will offend a bunch of n00bs who don't know what they are talking about lol, but I don't have notifications on so I can easily ignore negative responses to my opinion get fuckedddddddd"

On topic: Nightmare's textures have always been helpful for me.

Afterglow's site hosted here on Doomworld has a great selection of tex packs old and new. Some of them are his work (scratch, conversion), while others like 32-in-24-15 are links/mirrors for essential updates to classics like CC4-tex (itself a "best of" collection for many legacy resources like GothicDM textures). CC4-tex has generally lost the "overused mappers' pack" status to OTEX in recent times, but it's still distinctive enough to matter now, and arguably easier to work with if you need something smaller yet varied.

I'm personally a big fan of alternate IWAD resources for doom2.wad projects, ex. Ultimate Doom graphics and fixed-up Plutonia assets. Combining the best bits of the official IWADs can do a lot to expand your palette early on without getting overwhelming, and it's been a common practice to mix these textures together since the turn of the 2000s. Zoon-tex is much larger than 32-in-24-15, meanwhile, and has found some usage in WADs already; all the IWAD+ recolors/franken-textures and new additions here make it quite versatile.

WRT whether or not new mappers should stick with IWAD-only textures, all I can say with confidence is that texture packs usually share enough characteristics to make transitioning between them easier than you might think. My first map used just doom2.wad patches + tex, but my following public releases relied on a mix of non-idSoft packs (ex. 32-in-24-15 for most of Modest Mapping Challenge 2's resource WAD, whatever Obsidian/TMD chose for ASS sessions back in the day, etc.) while my private speedmaps stuck to Doom II & Plutonia. Now that I'm getting back into mapping, I'm keen to start making my own composite textures from the IWAD sources, plus any fan packs whose licenses allow for that approach to their textures.

The key to making all this gel is using editor filters to keep everything organized by theme or use category. Let's say I need horizontally tiled walls to take my mind off texture alignment, let alone making non-orthogonal/off-angle geometry. Maybe this next map(set) calls for strict limits on what tex/flats I'm allowed to use at all! I can make a filter config just for those textures within Ultimate Doom Builder, then export the configs to all the map formats I've enabled in case I want to load them for a project. This can also help reveal which common texture name prefixes exist across resources, in case you're browsing an unfamiliar pack and want to quickly identify types of graphics.

A potential advantage of newer art add-ons, beyond just visual stylings, is they help discourage potential pitfalls like over-detailing and rigid on-grid construction. IWAD textures had zero novelty by around a decade ago (or more!), so tricks and flourishes with sector/linedef detailing became one way to forestall using a fresher resource pack for whatever reason. Packs like Zoon-tex, OTEX, etc. are much better about baking in details normally absent in the IWAD-era patches, meaning it's easier to make a "detailed" map with less worries about geometry quantity and placement (new color palettes help as well). Many lauded vanilla-limited WADs have taken advantage of this since Back to Saturn X showed how effective it is (not to forget The Darkening Episode 2).

While I love getting as much as I can out of the IWAD assets to make spaces with certain themes or moods in mind, I think it's overly restrictive to only use base-game textures up until some certain threshold of mapping experience. It's more than possible to fall into the aforementioned detailing/repetition traps using newer resources. Alternating between sets for different kinds of projects keeps mapping fresh for me without disguising any missed potential and fundamentals I should work on.

Why talk as if newcomers are guaranteed to be overwhelmed or led astray should they use texture packs at an early point in their mapping? It isn't going to fuck up somebody's developmental cycle, it's borderline insulting to hear. It is not hard or demanding in any way, shape or form thrifting through OTEX just to find one of the fifty new brick and metal beam textures, just tedious.

I encourage new players to try out and experiment with as many texture packs as possible. A painter should not be afraid of their palette, especially while learning the foundations of an art and expression. Get used to it earlier rather than later, especially since it is not hard.

Diatribe aside, this thread I'm going to link has a bunch of awesome resources to rifle through, and has left me entertained for hours. I personally recommend jimmytex, UDET, UAC ultra textures and OTEX.

Let's keep on topic folks, otherwise the thread will be closed.

If you want any recommendations from me: I'm with PasokonDeacon in the need for Doom textures for Doom II. There ain't no good reason for all those lovely computer and tech textures not be in Doom II anymore

What I would recommend against however is to combine different texture packs for your first map, or atleast set some time aside to learn how to do it without the idea that you're gonna slot this into a current project, because combining textures into 1 texture lump (or god forbid messing with the anims) is a pain in the ass that you shouldn't have to deal with when creating your masterpiece

4 hours ago, genitalgrinder said:

Why talk as if newcomers are guaranteed to be overwhelmed or led astray should they use texture packs at an early point in their mapping? It isn't going to fuck up somebody's developmental cycle, it's borderline insulting to hear. It is not hard or demanding in any way, shape or form thrifting through OTEX just to find one of the fifty new brick and metal beam textures, just tedious.

 

I encourage new players to try out and experiment with as many texture packs as possible. A painter should not be afraid of their palette, especially while learning the foundations of an art and expression. Get used to it earlier rather than later, especially since it is not hard.

 

Diatribe aside, this thread I'm going to link has a bunch of awesome resources to rifle through, and has left me entertained for hours. I personally recommend jimmytex, UDET, UAC ultra textures and OTEX.

 

 

The MattFright thread is extremely good even if some of the links are dead. Usually if it links to a forum thread, there's a mirror link later on. Definitely worth a digging through. The recommendations in that thread and in this one really have me wanting to open UDB and start mapping.

13 hours ago, Jayextee said:

Probably a hot take here, but I don't think newbies should concern themselves about custom textures until they've learned the ropes, as it were, with the stock resources so they at least have an idea of what they're doing in that area and how they're going to use the textures they're downloading.

 

I very much anticipate a great many inexperienced newbies shooting me down here, and am very thankful in advance to have notifications turned off.

Despite my love for custom stuff like OTEX or AA-tex, I actually agree with this. Hell, I will go one step further and recommend newbies to start with limit removed, since it is more basic than Boom/MBF/UDMF, but also don't go for full vanilla compatibility (since VPOs and other limits can be annoying for a newcomer).

Of course this is just a general recommendation and not every newcomer needs to stick to this.

Quote

What are popular texture packs for custom wads that every new mapper should download?

There's no point in me reiterating the excellent suggestions you have gotten already but hear me out... I don't think someone new to mapping should necessarily feel like they need to download any textures to get started. There's a load of textures in the IWADs that can be used to great effect. I also feel like having more textures to choose from isn't going to solve the problem of learning how to apply texture any better. If anything I can see having even more choice just leading to staring at the texture palette even longer trying to figure out what to use, and more importantly how. If you do end up finding yourself limited by the stock texture options then disregard anything I just said, lol.

Not trying to tell you how to live your life or anything of course. In hindsight this is exactly what I should have done, I wasted far too much time browsing various textures and mucking about with it when a simple thing like GRAYx would have sufficed plenty for my purposes. And, I continue to be amazed at what people can conjure up with nothing but stock textures and sheer willpower and determination, haha.

I download all of them, my textures folder is many gb in size

theres many great textures resources

- OTEX

- CC4tex / 32in24-15tex

- Jimmytex

- Zoontex

- Mortiser tex (I like the bricks)

- Darkening E2 Tex

- Gothic TX

- RFHellTX

and much more

Usually i pick one by one as necessity.
I have all (or almost all) from Realm667 unpacked here, if interested.

Hakro..oh wait, nevermind.

this isn't really a texture pack to be used for finished maps, but hamtex is something that i think might be really useful for a lot of people starting out. if you're like me and get bogged down texturing while you make the map,  hamtex will pretty much force you to block things out first before going and texturing. it'll save you so, so much time

I think lightweight texture pack with 50 or less textures and flats could be a minimum for a beginner. I think Parallel Phobos by scifista is a good start cause of how well the textures mesh with stock textures.

On 3/25/2024 at 12:31 PM, Li'l devil said:

I recommend you give a try to Cage's textures and Noir Pack. They're not the most popular textures, but I mapped with them quite a bit and I find some textures there very useful. In particular, Cage's crate and techbase textures really fit well in Doom, and Noir textures can be used to create gloomy environments.

I've never seen the noir pack before. I can get behind that kind of minimalism.