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Ty Matthews
Neal White III
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| June 10th, 2000 |
My email inbox over-floweth! | |
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If you've sent me an email in the last few weeks and have not yet gotten a reply,
I'm sorry. I've been very busy and just can't seem to keep up with my email.
Many of the questions I've gotten lately are answered here (lots of good info), so go take a look: GameDesign Half-Life Texture Info I'm going to try and empty my email inbox this weekend. Thank you for you patience. - Neal | |
| June 2nd, 2000 |
What's next? | |
|
I haven't had time to work on Wally lately, but I plan to start up again soon.
I've got a *real* need for a Crop command, as well as Histogram and HSV Adjust filters,
so those are the features you should expect in the next release(s).
The new filters will be highly techical and very powerful.
The reason I want them is that I'm feeling constrained by the filters in PaintShop Pro.
I need more control than PS Pro allows.
I suggest you check back in 2-4 weeks for more news and perhaps a new version. It really depends on how much free time I can scrape up. :-) - Neal | |
| May 15th, 2000 |
Off Topic: Boy this stinks! | |
|
I was just thinking about game design and got an idea. We need someone to
write a computer game that has monsters that can actually *smell*! It's kind of wacky at first, but the idea has some very cool aspects. For example, a monster with a really good sense of smell could track you even if you were invisible or hiding in the dark! Perhaps your scent could linger and a monster could follow you all the way across a level. Of course, water would wash away the odor and walking in a stream would break the trail. You could do things like drop food so that the monster would stop tracking you. You might roll in smelly things (yuck!) or spray perfume on yourself. You might even be forced to take a quick dip in slime, acid, lava, or some other noxious liquid just to modify your scent. The smoke from a fire would truly drive *some* monsters away... and *attract* others. No zones or triggers would need to be placed in your maps; it would be done all in the base monster AI. The programming is easy! Here's how to do it: Each actor (player, monster, etc.) in the game-world gets a "smell" property that ranges from 0 to 100 (human) to 10,000 (a monster that could smell all the way across a level.) They would also get a "stinkiness" property that indicates how long their scent trail lingers. The trail could be coded as particles or way-points that disappear after a few *seconds* up to a few *days*, based on an actor's stinkiness and the kind of surface that the particle is resting on. You might even want to make the particles visible and drift through the air in visible smoke trails. Imagine: Some sort of fire-critter (or dragon) could leave a smoky scent trail, with *no* additional coding required. I'm sure several of you are working on teams that could implement this idea. If anyone *does* decide to do it, *please* email me, I'd really like to know. I can keep it a secret or post the info here. Whatever you request. I wonder if the folks over at Ritual (who are working on FAKK2) could set up their "hippy monster" to follow you around when you lit up a joint of whatever it is that he's smoking? It sure would fit in with their "Heavy Metal" theme. Would you buy a game like that? Please feel free to discuss this idea in our Forum (or on Björn's if you came from over there.) - Neal | |
| April 25th, 2000 |
Version 1.51B is done! | |
|
Sorry about the delay. Ty just posted the newest version of Wally in the
downloads section. Although it's a beta, it should be *very* solid. I've
worked hard to fix every known bug. If you've reported a bug in the last
couple of months, *please* make sure I really fixed it. Thanks! Now that Wally is rock solid again after all of the 24-bit changes, I'm planing on spending a little more time on real-life stuff and a little less time on Wally. I am *not* quiting Wally development. I just need to devote more time to my wife and my new job. I hope you all understand. I'm certain that Ty and I will be adding some cool new stuff in the coming months, so I'd suggest dropping by every few weeks just to see what's up. - Neal | |
| April 9th, 2000 |
Quick News Update | |
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I've *finally* tracked down the resize/undo crash bug and fixed it. I also
fixed a divide by zero and a few other minor bugs. If all goes well, Ty and
I should have a new release in a few days. Thanks to all of you who wrote about my wife and new job! Alaine is doing very well and my new job is great! Now that I've gotten those nasty bugs fixed, I'm hoping to start adding some more features to Wally. I haven't decided what I'm going to do first, but it will be something FUN. I'm getting a bit sick of these bug-fixes (they're too much work)! - Neal | |
| March 29th, 2000 |
I have a new job! | |
|
I've started working at Eagleware, a software company that makes EE software
for RF and microwave designers. I really seem to fit in there; I hope I'll be
there for a long time. Also, just so you all know what my life's been like
lately, my wife is going to have knee surgry next Monday. It's a simple
peration that my wife has had before; we're not too worried. In Wally news, this news page was screwed up, but (obviously) I've fixed it. I've been working on all of the recently reported new bugs and hope to have another release of Wally in the next week or two. - Neal | |
| March 18th, 2000 (updated) |
WARNING: Bad Bug in Version 1.50B | |
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There seems to be a crash bug in the new version of Wally :-( If you do a resize or adjust canvas size followed by an undo, Wally crashes. I'll post a new version ASAP. UPDATE: The problem only seems to happen if you're making the image SMALLER and it appears to be a 24-bit only bug. UPDATE 2: This bug is related to the new 24-bit code and is likely to be in all versions of Wally that have 24-bit support. You might as well download it (for all the other bug fixes) and come back in a few days for a newer version. You can still use the resize functions, just don't UNDO the resize operation (undoing later operations seems to be OK.) I'm afraid it may take me a while to fix this problem, due to the complex nature of this bug. I *did* test resize and adjust canvas size prior to the new release, but missed this bug (which only shows up when you use UNDO later.) Sorry. - Neal | |
| March 17th, 2000 |
Happy St Patrick's Day, 1.50 is here! |
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I've just posted version 1.50B. This latest Wally incarnation has all of Neal's latest n greatest bug fixes. Grab your copy today while it's
hot! This is all Neal's work; I've been slacking off lately playing too much Counter-Strike :-)
Speaking of CS, I'm thinking about adding a sprite editor and font/background image support to the existing WAD editor. So that you can edit console fonts, crosshairs, all kinds of things.
- Ty
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| March 14th, 2000 |
Almost there... | |
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I just sent Ty another code update. I've fixed all the known bugs --
about 3 dozen in all. Hopefully, we'll have a new version in the next few days.
Most of the bugs were minor and were recently introduced withall the 24 bit
changes. A few were crash bugs, so you'll definitely wantthis latest version!
The only new features are an improved status line and clickable color swatches
below the palette which allow you to select colors that aren't in the palette
(24 bit only.) Because Wally is freeware, we can't afford a "real" QA department. That's where you come in... If you've found a bug in Wally, please retest it. It should be fixed, if it's not, please let me know. Also, everyone should beat on Wally and try and shake out any remaining bugs and remember, any unexpected behavior may be a bug (not just crashes). We want Wally to be rock-solid, therefore, we need you to report any bugs. The best place to do it is in the forum. That way others will see it and can avoid the bug. It will also reduce the number of duplicate bug reports. Thanks! I updated the TODO list yesterday; if you've submitted a suggestion and you don't see it on the list, please email me. - Neal | |
| March 2nd, 2000 |
Quick note... | |
|
The company that I was working for, Softblox, has gone out of business. I still
plan to continue working on Wally, but right now, my life is in chaos. If you
need to reach me, my new email address is Neal_White_III@HotMail.com - Neal | |
| Febuary 27th, 2000 |
WARNING: Bad Bug | |
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I've finally tracked down a crash bug. Wally becomes unstable after
doing a Paste-As-New-Image. It sometimes crashes duing the paste or it
may crash later when you do an undo or apply a filter. It also may make
Windows unstable! There's an easy work-around: Just create a new image of the correct size and then do a Paste-Into-Image. (Ctrl+E) This has taken me a long time to track down because I thought it was a bug in undo and I couldn't get it to happen often enough to track down the problem. I sincerely hope no one else has lost work due to this bug; I have. :-( Please be patient; we'll release a new version soon (hopefully in the next few days.) - Neal | |
| Febuary 26th, 2000 |
I'm on a BUG HUNT... | |
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I've noticed a few bugs in the drawing tools, most of which were recently
introduced when I upgraded the tools for 24 bit support. So far, I've
fixed about a dozen or so, most of which are minor. I have NOT found any
crash bugs, but you should definitely grab the next release when we post it
(in the next week or two), especially if you are working with 24 bit images. Here's list of some of the things I've fixed: The eyedropper was converting the color it picked up into a palette index. The drawing tools were using palette indexes instead of 24 bit rgb values (I had to rework a LOT of code to fix this). The edged solid rectangle wasn't drawing its borders correctly. The scratch tool wasn't drawing correctly. I've improved recolor and spray recolor to blend in a little of the saturation of the drawing color. I also implemented some speed-ups. I'm trying to develop a better method of selecting colors in 24 bit. I really HATE PaintShopPro's color selector, so I'm trying to come up with something that we all can enjoy using. I want to thouroughly test everything before the next release, since I've made so many changes. Please be patient; we'll release it when it's ready. - Neal | |
| Febuary 15th, 2000 |
Beta Version 1.49b is here! | |
|
Yep, that's right... it's a Beta now. We've gone over two weeks with the Alpha, and found/fixed nearly all of the bugs. There's
still an issue with some undo pieces, but the major stumbling blocks have been accounted for. We don't have anything terribly new
in here, as both Neal and I have been tied up with that Real-Life thing recently. I've been hunting for a new day job, and as such
have been spending time online looking around and flipping through the papers.
Go grab the latest n greatest, purge that Alpha thing, and build some textures!
- Ty | |
| Febuary 13th, 2000 |
A Quick Update... | |
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I just fixed an ugly bug: In 24-bit, when you load an new color palette, your image is rebuilt using ONLY the 256 colors in the new palette. I just sent the bug-fix to Ty; I hope we'll have a new version soon. Until then, when working with 24-bit images, you should pick a good palette for your image FIRST and NOT load a new color palette later to get "more" colors. - Neal | |
| Febuary 1st, 2000 |
Quake3 Shader Program | |
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This is not Wally news, per se, but there's a great looking Quake 3 shader program
available here.
This program offers an animated view of the shader using OpenGL. Here's a
screenshot of Q3ASE in action.
I read about it over at
sCary's Shuga Shack.
Be sure to check this out if you're working on Quake 3 textures! - Neal | |
| January 30th, 2000 |
My 100th code update! | |
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I just sent my 100th code drop to Ty. I guess that means I've done a lot of work on
Wally over these last two years. Ty will probably be posting a new alpha in the next
few days, so watch for it. I've fixed numerous BAD bugs, including the various
resizing / assert bugs, so I strongly recommend it over the last alpha version. Wally
should be up to beta quality fairly soon now, since the program seems to be moderately
stable now. :-) - Neal | |
| January 25th, 2000 |
Alpha Version 1.49a.01 is here! | |
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Yep, you read right! The long-awaited 24-bit version of Wally is now in Alpha test mode grab your copy today!
There's tons of info about the test, what we've added, et al on that Alpha test page, so head there for all the goodies!
- Ty
Warning! Warning! Warning! This is an alpha program, which means Ty and I think it's likely to have bugs. We've written and changed thousands of lines of code. We've made every effort to find and fix the bugs, but it's very likely that there are still several significant bugs lurking somewhere in all that new code. That's where you come in. If you'd like to help us track down and fix these bugs, please download it and help us test it.
The main reason you should use this version of Wally is to help us test it. Do not use this version unless you can afford to have Wally crash and lose your work! Ty and I hope that won't happen, but we certainly cannot promise that this version is crash-proof
If you want to use this version to for "real" work, this is what I recommend: Create a test image of the type and size you plan to be working on. Use all the tools, filters, and options that you normally use. Save the file and exit Wally. Run Wally again and reload the test image; does it look OK? Try it in your game level. Does it still look OK? If so (and I hope it works fine), then you can begin making "real" textures. Remember to save frequently and use a new file name every so often, so that if Wally crashes or trashes your file, you won't lose too much work.
I plan on adding image conversion menu commands in the future, but if you need to convert between different file types today, here's how: Load the source image, copy it to the clipboard. Then do a paste as new image and select the destination file type. That's all there is to it. Also, you can use batch conversion to convert entire directories at once.
Note: JPG files are stored using LOSSY compression (at the highest quality setting). That means that the image saved will not exactly match your original. I recommend using PCX or TGA as your original image format and then making a JPG version when the image is finished. Keep the original, in case you need to edit it in the future.
- Neal
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| January 20th, 2000 |
Wally's Birthday | |
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I missed posting this a couple days ago... Wally was "born" two years prior on January 16th. Happy belated
birthday, Wally!
We're getting close to putting a new release out. We've added quite a few things, the main one of course being 24-bit editing and all of the internal conversions that went with it. This version is likely to have more bugs than the US Embassy in Moscow circa 1962. Most of our time these past couple weeks has been spent digging them out and fixing them, but inevitably, some escape. As a result, we've decided to do something new with the next release. We're going to put out an alpha version for public consumption. The reason for this is simple; we haven't had an official release in nearly a year, as our beta format pretty much is our production run. We just can't stop adding stuff long enough to brand anything completely bug-free. This alpha release is really just a private test that we decided to make public, to get the widest audience possible. If you use Wally for anything important and absolutely can't afford to work with a potentially broken version, we suggest waiting until the beta comes out. Sounds weird saying that :) We'll have more details as the release approaches, including a real list of all the stuff that's been added (a few surprises, as always!) - Ty
| |
| January 1st, 2000 | New Year's Day |
Happy Y2K! | |
I hope you all had a great time last night and that the new year will be good for
all of you. I took a little break from coding on Wally the last few days to look
at the newly released Quake1 source code. I hope you don't mind (I'll be working
on Wally today and tomorrow.) Anyway, I plan to make additional texture related
improvements to the engine (over time). For now, I've gotten fullbright colors
working in GLQuake, by adding glowmaps just like Quake3. It was actually more
work than I'd anticipated, but I'm quite pleased with the results. See for yourself:
I've only enabled this feature if your video card has multitexture support. I'm afraid it would be too slow to be playable on older single-texturing cards. It uses more memory too, since the glowmaps are additional textures. I recommend using this new feature only on capable cards (say, at least a Voodoo2 8 MB.) If you need to turn it off, use -noglow on the command line. Please use the forum to give me feedback. Are any of you interested in an upgraded version of Quake1? Should I just work on Wally? I'd like to read your opinions (but no flames, please.) - Neal | |
| December 25th, 1999 | Christmas Day |
Merry Christmas! | |
|
I'm continuing to work on 24 bit editing and have also started working on Alpha Channel support.
Ty has hooked up Color Tolerance and has been working on plug-in support (which won't be ready
for months). He's going to be working in tandem with me, so that when plug-ins are ready, we can just
drop them in. Of course, he will also be helping me hook up all the new stuff for Quake3: Arena.
We hope to have a new release in a week or two, so please check back again at that time. - Neal | |
| December 12th, 1999 |
Another News Update | |
|
I just updated the TODO list. If you're curious as to what features we'll
be adding to Wally, go check it out. As always, suggestions are welcome. Last night I was able to load a 24 bit TGA file and edit it in full 24 bit on-screen! That's a major milestone. :-) There's still a lot left to do: File Save, all of the effects tools (like darken) need to be redone, cut-n-paste, gamma, etc. That means don't expect a new release quite yet. ;-) - Neal | |
| December 11th, 1999 |
Plodding along on 24 bit... | |
|
I've been making good progress on the 24 bit tools. Ty has been working on
displaying 24 bit images. I have high hopes that we may actually get all the
24 bit code done by the end of the year. Software developement is never easy
and there's always the potental for long delays due to a bad bug. Let's all
keep our fingers crossed for good luck. :-) - Neal | |
| November 27th, 1999 |
Version 1.48b is here! | |||||
We've got some cool stuff in store for you, the Wally faithful. Here is 1.48b:
Pak EditorIn response to a news post by Autolycus over at the Half-Life Editing Resource Center, and also because I've had it on my ToDo list practically since Day One, I've spent the last couple weeks adding a new PAK editor to Wally. I've made it work, look, and feel like Explorer. Copy, paste, drag-n-drop, create new text files and folders, delete stuff, multiple selections, rename files, open files, quick-play for WAV files, import, export, et al. Drag files from Explorer. Vice-versa. Wally is built in the multi-document architecture (IE more than one PAK file can be opened at the same time) so you can drag-n-drop or copy/paste between PAKs right there in your Wally desktop.There are quite a few PAK editors out there, and that was the main reason I held off on doing one myself. It was fun and educating going through the code, and hopefully someone out there finds it useful :-) Here you'll have the benefit of knowing the Wally dudes update constantly and without fail. This PAK editor pretty much does everything I look for. As with anything, we're open to ideas and suggestions, so don't hesitate to send them in! Now for the more technical details. PAK files are enormous. Well, most of them are. Half-Life's giant PAK, for instance, is over 300 megs. That said, we can't load the whole file into RAM. We could try, but I'm sure you wouldn't like the results. Instead of RAM, Wally works with temporary files when building a PAK. These are stored in a unique directory located under c:\wally\temp. Every PAK file that is opened creates a new, unique directory name. When the PAK file is closed, those temporary files are deleted and the directory is removed. The unique directory name is an 8-digit hexadecimal number that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the original filename. It's just as well, seeing how most mods use pak0.pak as the main file. This added directory is needed because you can open any number of PAK files at one time. The only reason you'd have to even pay attention to the above paragraph is if something went terribly wrong while building a PAK file (Wally crashed, you lost power, Windows crashed, etc.) and you needed to get at one of the temporary files. Wally doesn't clean out the temp directory when first starting up, so if something went wrong and you needed to salvage some files, just find the 8-digit directory name and move your files out of there. When you double-click on a file in the PAK editor, Wally fires off the default application for that file type. WAV files are the exception when you've enabled Quick-Play, which is the toolbar button that looks like a string of musical notes. Quick-Play does just that; it plays the sound without opening the default application.
When it comes time to save your PAK, Wally will perform a quick check to see if any files have been removed/added/changed, or if a quick-save can be performed. A quick-save is when only the names of items in the PAK have been altered. This means only the directory needs to be updated, which saves a considerable amount of time. If a full save needs to be done, Wally actually writes to a temporary file first. In case something goes terribly wrong, the original PAK file is left unmolested. Only when the entire PAK has been successfully written to a temporary file is it then taken and put in place of the original. This also means that you'll need enough space on the drive where Wally is located to fully fit the PAK file you're working on. I've been working on a new FAQ/Help file, which is coming along slowly now that I'd rather be coding than writing help stuff. Once it's finished and in place, all of this kinda stuff would go there instead of in the news section :) | |||||
| November 25th, 1999 | Thanksgiving Day (USA) |
Happy Turkey Day! | |
|
Here's something to be thankful for: Ty should be posting a new version of Wally this
weekend (if all goes well). I'm personally thankful for my wife, Alaine, my partner Ty, my friends, and all of the thoughtful users of Wally, who have said so many kind things about our little project. :-) - Neal | |
| November 23th, 1999 |
Site Clean Up |
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Maddes from the Quake Info Pool
reported a problem with our pages when using
Netscape browsers. He was kind enough to do some HTML clean up and email the fixes to me.
Please let me know if you have any problems on this site with your browser. I've moved the older news to the "News Archive" section, so the main news page now loads a lot faster now! :-) - Neal |
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| November 18th, 1999 |
Wally Delayed |
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I'm afraid that the new version of Wally is going to be delayed a little longer, sorry.
Ty's changes are taking longer than expected.
We'll release it as soon as it's ready, but Ty just went on vacation, so I doubt it will be posted until next week sometime.
Nothing is ever certain with software development; it might even take a bit longer.
I do think you'll find the new functionality very useful (and well worth the wait)! Since the holidays are coming up, I should have quite a bit of spare time available. I plan to spend a lot of it on Wally developement. I really want full 24-bit editing available by the end of the year. We'll just have to wait and see if I can get everything finished by then. - Neal |
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| November 5th, 1999 |
Send In The Clones! |
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Ty and I will be posting a new version of Wally soon (within the next few days if all goes well)! Please be patient, we're testing it. We just want Wally to be nice and stable. :-) I've been busy implementing two new clone tools; Ty will fill in the details later when the new version is posted. I took a couple of shortcuts to get clone working. For now, you can only clone from one part of an image to another part of the same image. (You cannot clone between two different images). Also, the clone brush does not "build up". As a work-around, you can click the clone tool in the drawing toolbar and Wally will apply your changes to the effects buffer. Then when you clone again the new effect will be merged in. (I hope that's clear -- just try it, I'm sure you'll get the hang of it). Some of you have been requesting a "make seamless" filter. Try using clone to copy parts of your texture from the middle areas to the edges (using tiled view). You should be able to get rid of those nasty seams fairly easily now! I *will* go back and add clone-from-another-image in the future (months from now). Right now, I feel that 24-bit support (and a few other things) are more important. - Neal |
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| October 16th, 1999 |
Version 1.43C is here! |
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This is a small update, but an important one nonetheless.
We've fixed a bug with the new WAD editor where non-mip images (things like CONCHARS, etc) were not displayed properly and actually caused Wally to crash.
Whoops! There's a couple cool new things in here as well. Here's a list of stuff we've done:
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| October 7th, 1999 |
Version 1.43 is here! |
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The fun never stops at WallyWorld.
Neal and I have added some cool new stuff the past two weeks (aside from the emergency bug fixes last week) and have a new version ready for release.
Here's the lowdown:
WAD files now have a split-pane view (like the browser) where the image list is on the left like before, but the right side now has two different modes for viewing the images. One mode is the "browse" mode, which is identical in look to the browser, where you can browse the list of images from your WAD. The second mode is the "tile" mode, which displays only a single image, but that image is tiled as many times as there is space to tile. You enlarge the window size, and the image keeps tiling. Along with the tiled view comes some new viewing features. Half-Life and Quake1 WAD files have animation textures. These are named with a leading +, plus a digit for the sequence, then the rest of the name. If you enable tiled animation, those images that match the criteria will animate in the tiled view. Wally goes through the WAD and finds all matches for that particular name and finds the images it needs to animate. Another new feature is random tiling. A feature specific to Half-Life, this is where a set of tiles is used to randomly paint a wall as opposed to having just a single texture fill the entire wall. A really cool feature to use when you have a large wall with a repeating texture and you want some randomness to it without having to split up the brush. These textures are named with a leading -, plus a digit for the sequence, then the rest of the name. If you enable random tiling for the WAD, Wally will again search for all matches, then randomly fill in the tiled view with selections from that set. 
So how do you enable animation/random tiling?How do you flip back and forth between browse view and tile view? Answer: with the four new buttons we've added. Check out the cool image on the right. From left to right, the four buttons are:
The last new feature is the ability to zoom in/out on a tiled view. We've turned on the magnify glass button on the toolbar to allow you to zoom in/out on the tiled image. Works just like the one when editing an image. I'll spare you the agony of detailing how to use that :-) Go forth and texture! |
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| September 28th, 1999 |
Bug fix: 1.42C is here! |
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There's an ugly bug with 1.42; Quake2 (aka WAL) file support was busted when I cleaned up the code to support non-16 images.
As a result, WAL loading and probably saving does not work properly with 1.42.
You might have seen problems when converting images to WAL files, or loading existing WAL files.
Hence 1.42C, which fixes this problem.
Even if you don't edit/load WAL files, you'll want to download this latest revision, as I cleaned up some other potential problems with loading other game types.
Some of the 1.42 code assumes the texture header to be structurally sound, which may not always be the case. Note: if you created any Quake2 WAL files with 1.42, you will probably want to delete them, as they are likely corrupt. No other game types were broken with 1.42, just Quake2. As a side benefit, there's a new enhancement that I worked on late last week which I've enabled for 1.42C... file associations. Currently, Wally assigns .WAL and .WAD as its own supported file extension, meaning when you double-click on a WAL or WAD in Explorer, Wally is fired off to load that document. I've added the option to allow you to pick and choose which file types you want to be associated with Wally. Find it under View|Options, on a new tab called "File Associations". Just check the game types you want to be associated with Wally, click on OK, and we'll automatically update the registry to make the proper associations work. In the near future we'll be allowing direct editing of BMP, PCX, and TGA files in Wally, so those associations will appear at some point, as well. |
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| September 22nd, 1999 |
Wally is SiNful... 1.42 is out! |
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Wait no more, 1.42 is here. This latest revision adds quite a few things:
Some of these unique settings are the texture color fields, as shown in the image below. The Auto button automatically calculates the overall color of the image. There is a little slider underneath the button that can be used to tweak the color generated. With the slider all the way to the left, the color output is an exact average of all pixels in the image. I found that none of the original SiN textures matched what I had calculated they should be, so I added the slider to compensate for this. The original SiN textures always had a brighter overall color. So as you move the slider further to the right, the color generated will get brighter. It's not an exact science, so the setting may not be applicable for all textures... but it's the best I can do for now until I get the actual algorithm used.   The second image above shows the various fields within the SiN flags dialog. There are eight or nine different fields, with various meanings and descriptions for each. As you click on an item in the listbox, the description for that field will show up under the listbox, and the edit box to the right (labelled Value) will fill in with the appropriate data and data type. You just change the data to your heart's content, and it will automatically be applied to the selected field.
Drag-and-drop is done by selecting (aka left-clicking on a thumbnail) the images you want to copy. Holding down CTRL while clicking will allow you to make multiple selections. The drag is done just like any other Windows drag. You can drag the files to an open WAD file, to the Wally desktop, or outside of Wally completely to another application (like Explorer.) Be careful, however, when dragging to Explorer. This will actually move the selected files, as Explorer turns around and deletes the original. It's just like if you left-click dragged files in Explorer, basically. Dragging to a WAD file will import the selected images directly into the desired WAD, without deleting the originals. You can now browse a directory, choose the items you want to import, and just drag them right onto the WAD. Comes in handy. Dragging the other way works, as well. Recall that dragging with WAD files is done with the right mouse button. Select the images from the listbox, right-drag them to the browser, and an Export dialog box will pop up, allowing you to select the output type.  When right-clicking in the browser, you get the menu on the right.
Information is for the currently selected image.
Copy Image is also for the currently selected image, and will copy the image data to the clipboard.
Delete Files, Copy Files and Paste Files is strictly for the browser, package view, or Explorer, and supports multiple selections.
This is similar to right-clicking on a file in Explorer and choosing Copy or Delete.
This copies the full path of the file(s) to the clipboard in the Windows compatible format.
Note this doesn't copy any image data.
You can then right-click in another browsed directory, right-click in a WAD file, or right-click in Explorer, choose Paste, and those files will be copied to the new location, or imported if it's a WAD file.
The last enhancement to the browser is an automatic grooming feature that we added (see image on the left.)
This is strictly for the cache files that are generated whenever you browse a new directory.
If you're concerned about taking up disk space, you can have Wally automatically find old cache files and delete them.
Choose the top option and enter a value for the number of days to wait before deleting a file.
Whenever you browse a directory, the appropriate cache file is updated to show that it was last accessed on the current date.
Part of Wally's idle processing time is assigned the task of finding any old files to delete.
If you've got tons of disk space, or don't care how many cache files sit out there, you can choose the bottom option and not have Wally ever delete older cache files.I mentioned this in the last update, but it's worth saying again. There's probably going to be a few bugs with this release (hey, it is a Beta.) We've added/changed quite a few things, and I will be amazed if we've already caught all the bugs. I suppose that's where you come in :-) Have fun, enjoy the release, and let us know if anything comes up! |
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| September 13th, 1999 |
Update |
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This is just a quick update to fill everyone in on what's been happening in Wally world the past few weeks.
I've been jamming away on new game support, and have finished up two new games... SiN and Heretic2.
I've also tidied up a few things with the browser code; drag and drop between Package views and the browser, copy/paste files via Explorer, 24-bit support, right-click popup menu, multiple image selections, and non-16 images.
More details and info on these new features will come with the release. Neal's been busy with support for editing of images that are not evenly divisible by 16. What does this mean, exactly? Well, it's the next stepping stone in Wally's future. First off, Quake3 textures do not have the same size limitations that previous Quake engines have had... IE images don't have to be multiples of 16. It also leads us to forming Wally into a more general-purpose editing tool instead of being tightly wrapped around game textures. We are not dropping any trace of game support. In fact, we'll be adding support for as many games as we can fit in. The Genesis3D engine is likely going to be my next target; I've already got some of the basic reading functions done. Suggestions for new games are always welcome... I think we support the most formats out of any texture editing tool, but I'd like Wally to be the ultimate tool for every game people like to make levels/mods for. I'm getting ahead of myself here, as we haven't even posted 1.42... but I'll say it anyways. This next version is likely to have a few bugs in it, as it's the first version that will support those non-16 images. That said, Neal and I are spending quite a bit of time tying up the loose ends hoping to catch them all before we zip it out. Shouldn't be long now! |
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| August 20th, 1999 |
Beta Version 1.41B is here! |
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Well it's been a while, but we've wrapped up the latest version.
The main piece with this release is the new browser code.
This is a total rewrite of the image browser.
What once was strictly Quake2, and pretty awkward with all the typing of directories, is now a full split-pane explorer-like tree view with thumbnails on the right and directories on the left.
There are nearly 5000 lines of new code for the browsing stuff alone.
Every supported image type is now browsable.. PCX, BMP, TGA, WAD, et al.
WAD files show up as an icon (see right) and palette files (LMP, PAL, ACT) show up as a 16x16 array of the colors in the palette.
I'm working on putting together a better palette editor, so for right now you can't actually open them.
To open an image, simply double-click like the old browser.The browser makes use of cache files to speed up access the next time you browse a directory. Every image gets a thumbnail, which is 96x96 or smaller, depending on the original image size. These thumbnails are dynamically sized down or enlarged from the original source image. A 256x256 image thus can be reduced to 96x96, compressed, and then stored in the cache file. In most cases, our code for size reduction results in thumbnails that are more reflective of the original than those generated from Microsoft's internal API functions to squish bitmaps. All of the cache files are stored in a subdirectory underneath the main Wally folder. A "Browser Cache" directory is created when you start Wally, and contains all of the cache files (one per unique directory name.) It is safe to delete these files at any time to recover disk space. A grooming process is in the works to automatically delete files older than a user-definable date. In the next couple releases I'll be adding some more enhancements: support for file information (date/time, size), texture flags (for things like Quake2), deleting images, moving images, renaming images, etc. I wanted to get this version out first so that we can get some feedback and testing done on it. The last piece of this update are a couple enhancements to Batch Conversion. You now have the ability to recurse subdirectories during a conversion. It starts at the root directory you chose, and will traverse any subdirectories that it finds. Find this option on the "Batch Conversion" tab when going to View|Options. Along with this is the option to retain the directory structure if you're converting to a different destination directory. For example, say you have a directory structure like this:
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| July 8th, 1999 |
Happy (belated) 4th of July! Beta Version 1.40B is here! |
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Neal and I have had some time recently to add some more cool things to Wally.
I've been working on a complete overhaul of the texture browser, which currently only supports viewing .WAL files.
I'm changing it so that all supported textures (and probably image sizes that aren't multiples of 16) are displayed, and also adding a full explorer-like view off to the left in a split-pane fashion.
Selecting folders and drives is just like Explorer.
I'm close to being done, but I have a few more days worth of work.
I will probably enable it next week after some thorough testing. Here is Neal's addition to the post: I got some time this past weekend to do some real work on Wally. I decided to take (another) break from the 24 bit stuff and added a new freehand blend tool. If you've used other editors, you'll recognize it as the "WaterDrop Tool". You can adjust the Amount, Shape, Brush Size, Line Style, etc. (just like any other freehand tool). If you draw using the RIGHT mouse button, it blends more (compared to the LEFT button at any given amount setting). I've also noticed a bug in "mouse wheel zooming". It works fine on Windows NT with a Microsoft Intellimouse, but doesn't work on Win98 with a Logitech MouseMan+. When you scroll the middle wheel, the zoom level of the current texture should change. If there are scroll bars on the window, it sometimes scrolls instead (which is OK, just hold down the CONTROL or SHIFT key while spinning the wheel and it WILL zoom). If you have a mouse with a middle wheel, PLEASE test this zoom feature for me and email me with the results (or post it on our message board). I need to know: Mouse manufacturer, model, windows version, and whether or not it works for you. Thanks! - Neal |
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| May 25th, 1999 |
Beta Version 1.39B is here! |
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Q: What to do while waiting for Win32 Q3Test?
I needed a break from 24 bit, so I implemented zoom-out.
You can now display textures at 1/2, 1/3, .., 1/16 of their actual size.
And of course, edit them.
This is especially nice for viewing those large textures that don't quite fit on-screen. |
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| May 6th, 1999 |
Beta Version 1.38B is here! |
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I finally got a little time to work on Wally!
Many of you may want to skip downloading this version, since I've mostly worked on changes for 24 bit support (which is all "behind the scenes"). Here's what's new:
- Neal |
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| April 21st, 1999 |
Quick Update |
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This is just an update to let you know what's been going on the last couple weeks.
Neal and I have both been swamped with real-life work, and have made a little progress with Wally.
The updates aren't coming as fast as they were for a while there, but by no means are we stopping production :-) Here's Neal's post: I'm in "crunch mode" at the office, so I haven't had a lot of time to work on Wally lately. :-( BUT, I HAVE been working on the new 24 bit infrastructure. It seems to be coming along nicely, unfortunately it will be weeks before I'm done. I also tweaked the toolbar palette so that it fits on-screen at 800x600, for those of you who need to work at lower resolutions. Even though we haven't updated lately, we have NOT dropped Wally. Please be patient. - Neal |
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| March 30th, 1999 |
Beta version 1.37 is here! |
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I had a fairly productive weekend. :-) New Feature:
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| March 24th, 1999 |
More news on 1.36... |
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Our news update of last night was so huge, I ran out of time to finish it all up.
I wanted to expand on the latest game support added, so I'll do that here. The latest support is for Build© engine games. This is the Duke Nukem 3D genre, which includes Redneck Rampage, Shadow Warrior, Blood, and a slew of TCs/add-ons. The Build engine is a few years old, but it's still popular in the gaming community for its ease of use and fast development time. This, and just because I wanted to do it, are the reasons it's been added to Wally :-) We never sleep here at Wally World, and I've already added a few more features that didn't make it into 1.36... you'll see those in a week or two when we tidy up for another official release. For more specific details/instructions on .ART file usage, head to the FAQ area and look for the section on Build .ART files. Just don't pay much attention to the rest of the stuff in that FAQ... it's woefully out of date! There's new advanced support for custom palette files during Batch Conversion. Check out the FAQ area for custom palettes for more details on using this new feature. Another thing we mentioned in yesterday's post but didn't really expound upon are the new tutorials that Neal put together. He made six new tutorials that cover all of the new decal tools, how to put them to good use, and some starter info on how to create your own decals for Wally. Check 'em out! Okay, enough news for now... get busy! :-) |
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| March 23rd, 1999 |
Beta version 1.36 is here! |
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Oh man, you've GOTTA download this!
(I think you'll agree it was worth the wait) New Stuff:
And if you haven't read ApocX's interview of Ty and I, head on over to Texture Central and check it out. :-)
If you have an active selection, CUT and COPY will copy the selected area onto the clipboard. If there is no selection, the entire texture is copied. Right now, you must START A SELECTION to designate the desired PASTE area and THEN do the PASTE operation. The cutout on the clipboard will be placed at the upper left corner of the current selection or (0,0 is there is no selection). Opaque and invisible backgrounds and "Fade Transparency" are both handled by combo boxes at the bottom of the color palette toolbar. A pixel will be INVISIBLE pixels if it matches the right button color (and Invisible is ON). All settings must be specified BEFORE you do the Ctrl+E to paste. If you don't like the results of a paste, just Undo, adjust, and paste again. This will be greatly improved in the near future!
If Wally starts beeping repeatedly SAVE your work and EXIT NOW!
At this time, the decal effect mode is determined by your choice of tools. The decal uses standard color mode (what you see in the decal image is what you get when you draw, color #255 is transparent). The Rivet, Bullet Hole, and Patterned Paint tools are more complicated. I've set it up so that these tools can emboss and/or draw shapes using the current left and right button colors. Shades of gray lighten/darken (emboss effect). Reds map to shades of the left button color and blues map to shades of the right button color. Purples map to blends of the two colors. This is how I managed to implement colored rivets with shadows. In the future, you will be able to change the drawing effect modes yourself, AND the creator of the decal texture will be able to specify the default effect mode when he designs the texture! I'm planning to add new effect modes in the future. Use "F" to flip patterns for the Patterned Paint tool (as always). 
To choose a decal to use, bring up the Tool Settings bar (see above) if it's not already open.
There's only one tab right now, which is the Decals tab.
It is here that you choose the decal set to use (which WAD file, basically) and then which item out of that WAD.
The right side shows a preview of the decal, based on your current color choices/palette usage.
This is intended to be a fairly realistic representation of what the decal would look like on your image.To actually use a decal, you first select the tool you want to modify (rivet, bullet hole, or decal), select the WAD you want to load from, and then select the item from that WAD. Click on the little picture of a mouse in the lower-right-hand corner to then "pick up" that image into the tool, based on what mouse button you clicked. Basically, you can have separate images for both left and right mouse buttons, and separate images for every "decal" tool! Whew! Sounds confusing at first, but once you get used to it and start playing with it, it really becomes a powerful tool. Here's a common decal question: What if you combined the rivet, bullet, and pattern tools all into one, calling it the "Decal" tool? No, because this method is more versatile. Don't think about the fact the data source is a bitmap; think about the mouse click/drag operations. Think about how the tool is actually used instead:
Here's another common question: Why all the different palettes for the decals? Shouldn't you just have one if the decals are only based on a set RGB value? The reason is to give you better precision (think gradients). Why should you waste half of your palette on green transparency values if your decal has no transparency. When Wally allows 24 bit decals, this point will be moot, but until then, more palettes == higher quality decals.
Important: It may be tempting to insert your custom decals into one of our existing texture wad files, but you should resist this temptation. That way you have no chance of accidentally losing work (when upgrading to a future version of Wally). Because of the need to map left and right button colors to a general image, this is much more complicated than general image editing. It took me several hours of editing to produce my first good looking rivet! The palettes are usable; you can now create your own rivets. Just follow my samples... Red shades map to left-color, blue to right-color, purple matches a blend, grays adjust shadows and highlights, and the green channel value is used as the transparency. It's the best "general" method I could come up with after weeks of thinking. This approach lets me do everything I want to, but it's a bear to edit! Here's how the palette colors are interpreted (on a per-pixel basis):
First start with simple "emboss" type textures:
Here's a tip: When I'm drawing the decals, I try to envision that the item I'm drawing is molded out of red and blue plastic. I find that helps me to get the shading right. Remember to avoid white highlights, keep you red/blue/purple colors PURE.
If you wish to avoid this feature, the easiest method is just to build square decal images. Ty and I will probably wait a few days for any bugs to show up and then begin the final steps to implement 24 bit support. Once underway, many things will be broken until we're completely finished. This means it may be a few weeks before you see a new release. I'm also in crunch mode at the office, so I have less time to work on Wally than usual. Please be patient. :-) - Neal |
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| March 17th, 1999 |
Happy St Patrick's Day! |
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This is just a small update to let everyone know where we're at.
We were planning to release 1.36 early this week, but we've run into a couple issues and need to take care of them first.
Hopefully by this weekend (or early next week) we'll have them all worked out and 1.36 will be golden. Here's a few of the things we've wrapped up recently:
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| March 4th, 1999 |
Quick Update |
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Ty and I have been making great progress and hope to have a new beta version of Wally up early next week.
I'm not making any promises though, because nothing is ever certain in the software development process. If all goes well you can expect colored rivets and limited clipboard cutout support with the selection tool. You heard me right! You will be able to cut out a rectangular area and paste it back at a new spot, into another texture, with opaque or invisible background, and transparency (think tint or fog effects). I'm also working on a few short tutorials to show you how to use all this new stuff. Ty's added an Advanced button to batch conversion, which will allow you to override the palettes for not only Quake1/Quake2, but also any supported 8-bit image... BMP, PCX, and TGA. You can specify a different source palette for Q1/Q2, and a different destination palette. This will basically allow you to convert textures made with one palette to textures made with another. Currently there's no way to do that; you get one palette all the time for Q1/Q2, and the palette for BMP, PCX, and TGA is always built from the 24-bit data. Oh yes, there should also be a new drawing tool (it's a surprise!) - Neal |
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| February 23rd, 1999 |
Beta version 1.35B is here! |
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Neal and I were busy little coders over the weekend, and we've got a really cool release for everyone. First here's Neal's post: The new beta has the paste bug fixed. Yeah! I also fixed a minor gamma bug (status bar was reporting gamma-corrected numbers instead of the actual palette values). I did some more code clean-up, too. I've been working on updating the tool sub-system for 24 bit support and to add some really cool new features. The stuff I'm working on is NOT available in any other paint program anywhere. I'm sure you'll like it! :-) Don't expect to see it for another 2-6 weeks though, I have a lot of work to do yet. I've also made our AboutBox "active". There are now hot-links to send email to us and navigate to the Wally web site and the discussion board. There is even animation and sound effects. I'd like to publicly thank Todd Hollenshead for giving us official permission from id Software for us to use the Quake 2 rail-gun sounds. Thanks Todd! - Neal I got a lot done over the weekend; here's some of it:
There's a new checkbox on the package editor form (see pic) that will allow you to filter the list of images.
This is helpful for really large WAD files (can you say HalfLife.wad?)
Just check this box, and start entering text.
Wally will wait for you to finish typing.
After you've stopped for more than a second, the list will filter based on what you've entered.
Only those items that contain the letters you've specified will be listed.
The status info underneath the list will reflect the new count, plus the text (filtered) next to it.
If you'd like to force the action with no popup menu, you can hold down the [Ctrl] key to force a copy, or hold down the [Shift] key to force a move.
If you've made a change to which palette to use, there's a button labelled Apply that will make that change immediate. Otherwise, the new palette will be loaded the next time Wally is started.
Tom Cleghorn, who created our first true Wally help file, has admirably volunteered to create a new, updated help file built in html. We'll link to this new html format once it's ready, and pretty much do away with the old .hlp format entirely. This will allow us to make changes more quickly and easily than with the compiled nature of the .hlp variety. Thanks to Tom for helping us out! |
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Wally is © Ty Matthews and Neal White III. Quake2, Quake, id, and anything related to the Gods in Texas is of course their property.