Trenchbroom: Manual doesn't explain how to add a texture folder for a "Generic" game

[etc0de]

System Information

TrenchBroom 2019.6 on Fedora 31 x64

Expected Behavior

TrenchBroom/manual/index.html#texture-directory-management: I expected this to explain how to add any arbitrary directory on disk for textures. Instead it says If you want to provide your own custom textures, you need to put them in a subdirectory where TrenchBroom can find them. but then explains how to do it for Quake 2 and Daikatana only, not for any generic game with any arbitrary texture folder. What I don't understand at all is do I need to set a "Game Path" in Preferences for my generic game to make this work? I am guessing maybe I do but I expected the manual to tell me.

Way more intuitive by the way would in my opinion be if the "Available Textures" list also had a '+' like the "Enabled" list, and if clicking that would just allow me to pick any disk folder or file directly to add. Because for a "Generic" game it seems like it'd be somewhat arbitrary anyway in which subfolder of the game path textures would be depending on what engine it is, etc, so it seems a little weird to enforce a specific convention there.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open TrenchBroom/manual/index.html#texture-directory-management

2. Try to find out how to specify an arbitrary texture directory (with image files in .png or .jpg or .tga or something) for a "Generic" game rather than Quake 2 and others

Crash Info

not a crash

[kduske]

Agree that the manual needs improvement (volunteers?). Currently, it is not possible to add textures from any location, you have to do it in the same way as for Quake 2 / Quake 3 / etc.

For the generic game configuration, this means you need to have a game directory set, e.g. /home/dudebro1/games/my_game, and within that directory you need a directory called textures which contains a set of subdirectories with textures.

/home
  dudebro1
    games
      my_game
        textures
          level1
            tex01.tga
            tex02.tga
          level2
            tex07.tga

Then, in the editor's face inspector, at the very bottom you can select the texture collections level1 and level2.

[Danimaltl]

We could update the manual to something like this in case #2958 isn't resolved any time soon. Basically just referencing the generic case.

[ericwa]

We should also point out the limitation that the textures need to be exactly 1 level deep (i.e. not directly in the "textures" dir, and no subdirectories of textures/level1

[Danimaltl]

If you want to provide your own custom textures, you need to put them in a subdirectory where TrenchBroom can find them. For Quake 2, this means that you need to create a subdirectory called textures in the directory of the mod you're mapping for, or in the baseq2 directory. Then you need to create another subdirectory with a name of your choice. Then you copy your texture files into that directory. TrenchBroom will then find that directory (possibly after restarting the editor) and allow you to load the textures from there. Currently, for a generic game you must create a textures folder in the game path directory you set in game configuration, or in a directory you loaded as a mod.

You need to place your textures in a subdirectory exactly one level deep in the textures folder. Any loose images in textures will not be detected, nor will any nested in subdirectories of your collection.

The following table lists the texture directories for all supported games.

Game Texture Directory Default
---- ----------------- -------
Quake 2 <MOD>/textures baseq2/textures
Daikatana <MOD>/textures data/textures
Generic <MOD>/textures <GamePath>/textures

How does this Sound?

Also I definitely want to work on some of the related issues to make the file browsing as intuitive as the Quake config, and afford more control over the game configurations.

[kduske]

Yeah, that sounds good.

[Danimaltl]

Closed with https://github.com/kduske/TrenchBroom/pull/3098?