Hello again, guys! I had another question to run by you all, and this seemed to be the place to do it.

I noticed that the recent Vore submission includes a full set of brightmaps--a very nice touch befitting of the overall high quality of the monster. However, this reminded me that I haven't yet seen brightmaps included in any other submission I've had occasion to download and use. I certainly haven't tried every single thing on the Repository, but I've gone through a few dozen submissions, and not one had brightmaps included. This is a bit of a shame, since brightmap support is one of the cooler features of gzDoom, in my opinion. Sadly, because of the lack of consistent support, I really never use brightmaps--I'd rather not use the feature than use it inconsistently. If brightmaps for community content were consistently provided, I would certainly use them.

I'll admit that I'm as guilty as anyone of not creating brightmaps for my custom actors--in fact, none of my current submissions use them either. But, after seeing the Vore use them, I'm extremely tempted to go back and update my submissions with brightmaps (should be easy, since they're still in the queue).

Are there any plans to encourage Realm667 users to include brightmaps with actors that would utilize them? And--this is the big question--are there any plans to update pre-existing submissions with brightmaps? I'm sure this would not be an insignificant amount of work, not even considering the fact that the original authors of some submissions might not even be available to contribute to updates (or even give permission for others to update them).

Anyways, just some food for thought. Thanks for letting me speak my mind. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the matter.

I fully agree with you on this one: Brightmaps are an amazing feature, but as you have already mentioned, it is a lot of work to update all the actors to have one.

Though, I encourage everyone to add brightmaps to their submissions and even updating original submissions with new brightmaps if someone is interested in doing them. I doubt that any author would not agree if someone adds brightmaps to their submissions as it's the same with GLDEFs.

So, if I was to submit an update containing brightmaps to a pre-existing submission, would that be OK? Would I need to get author approval first? I'm certainly interested in trying my hand at some if I would have permission to do so.

Considering you don't have to modify anything in the existing monster, and brightmaps can easily be removed if someone doesn't like them, I don't think we'd really require author consent. It couldn't hurt, but I don't think it would be necessary.

This reminds me, though, I do have a pack of Brightmaps rigged up by Sandypaper that I've been meaning to add to various monsters (He put them all in one .pk3, I was going to put them in the individual wads). I'll need to pick through and list all the monsters that he covered, but I think it's safe to say that if the monster's in ZPack, KDiZD or Stronghold, it's probably already done.

If you have a list, that might be for the best...I feel bad admitting this, since I'm sure it will be somewhat damaging to my credibility (ha!), but I'm not very familiar with ZPack, KDiZD, or Stronghold yet... I know of (and am using) a few monsters from KDiZD, but I'm not familiar with all of them. Let's just say I've only recently started following the zDoom community, and have a fair amount of "homework" to do.

In any event, I have a few things of my own going on, so I wasn't planning on contributing to any updates immediately, but it's something I absolutely would like to help out with in the not-too-distant future (maybe in a couple weeks or so, once I've got some other business wrapped up). I've had lots of fun with the content that the community's created so far, and would like to help out and give a little something back.

There we go, picked through the sprites and listed the monsters already done:

-Apprentice of D'Sparil -Suicide Bomber -Archon of Hell -Cybruiser -Bruiser Demon -Chaingun Major -Guardian Cube -Cultist -Demolisher -Diabolist -Dark Imp (Void) -Dark Imp (Skulltag) -Dark Imp (Nanami) -Enhanced Cacodemon -Ethereal Soul -No idea what this is, but its sprites are "FBRS" -Fusion Spider -Hellhound -Hectebus -Hades Elemental -Hellion -Hell's Fury -Hell Warrior -Death Incarnate -Lord of Heresy -Mauler Demon -Moloch -Rocket Zombie -PyroDemon -Rapid-Fire Trooper -Catharsi -Soul Harvester -I think Nightmare Demon and Blood Demon. SAR2 and SRG2 sprites. -Terminator -Wicked -Dune Warrior (I think) -Zombie Tank

Already went ahead and started adding the brightmaps to their respective wads.

Awesome Ghastly This is a great enhancement for all the stuff that has already been added. While being at it, would you mind also adding a "Brightmaps: Yes/No" entry to the descriptions (for the done ones) and the rules for the Beastiary?

Sure. Also, Sandypaper was the guy who made the brightmaps. I'm just putting them in the individual wads (which is more work than it sounds like, because he put them all in one .pk3 and didn't label which ones go with which monster ).

Edit: Okay, this is going to take a while... http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f= ... 32#p620630

Edit2: Okay, not as long as I thought. Irfanview's batch conversion (which can crop! ) to the rescue!

Awesome