Turning Water
into Blood



In this tutorial, you will learn how to modify some of the Heretic II water effects to make them look like blood. The finished products are all included in this ZIP file (249 Kb), so if you want to try all this for yourself then rename the /bloody/ directory to something else, and use it as a guide only.

Programs you will need:

You will need to:


Create a new folder in your Heretic II directory called 'bloody'. All modified files will go into /heretic ii/bloody/ from now on. You will also need the following directories:


PARTICLE.M32
B: Bursting bubbles/drips
C: Water splash / fountain
E: Waterfall/fountain base

  • Load the Htic2-0.pak into QuArK
  • Locate particle.m32 under /pics/misc/
  • Save it as a TGA image (which will preserve the alpha channel)
  • Make a copy of particle.tga, called particlenew.tga
  • Modify particlenew.tga so that the water-related parts (B, C & E of figure1.gif) are red
  • Don't forget the tiny white dot in the upper left corner as well (make that red too)
  • Save it as a 32-bit TGA with the same alpha channel as the original

    • If using Doggwaffle to create the alpha channel, simply:

  • Load up the original (unaltered) particle.tga.
  • From the alpha menu, choose 'store alpha'
  • Open up the modified image particlenew.tga (it will replace the first image)
  • In the alpha buffer window, click 'replace'
  • Save as TGA 32-bit (24 plus alpha)

    • Once you've got your modified TGA image with an alpha channel:

  • Place m32convert.bat, convert.qdt, particlenew.tga and a copy of qdata.exe in the /heretic II/base/textures/ directory
  • Double-click on m32convert.bat
  • Move the newly created particle.m32 to the /bloody/pics/misc/ directory

    • Follow the same procedure for the waterdrop_0.m32 file (which will be under /sprites/fx/ in the PAK). When converting your modified TGA file, remember to change the line in convert.qdt to:


    Assuming you called your modified waterdrop image waterdropnew.tga. It is 32x32 pixels in size, rather than the 128x128 particle.m32 file, and you want the M32 to be called waterdrop_0.m32. Place this file in /bloody/sprites/fx/.

    If you don't want to use SP2 Maker D'lux, then simply make a copy of the new waterdrop_0.m32 in the same directory and call it bubble_0.m32. The second M32 file will take up another 6428 bytes, whereas the modified SP2 file would have taken up only 332 bytes (only 5% of the file size). With just one sprite this won't be much of a difference as far as disk space is concerned, however if you were altering a lot of sprites and really wanted to minimise the size of the download, you could use SP2 Maker D'lux as follows:

    The simplest method of creating a new SP2 file is to trick SP2 Maker D'lux into thinking it's dealing with PCX images. Save waterdrop.tga as a PCX image in your image editor, then change the file extension from PCX back to M32. SP2 Maker D'lux will then read the correct image dimensions from the file (since it's really a PCX image in disguise), however the file it will link to will be an M32. Rename the new PCX file as waterdrop_0.m32, and create two copies of it, naming them bubble_1.m32 and bubble_2.m32. You will now have three identicle files (with different file names) that have the M32 extension but are really PCX files. Place them in the same directory as the hgspr2.exe program.

    Start SP2 Maker D'lux and change the base directory to fx. Then add the 'fake' waterdrop_0.m32, bubble_1.m32 and bubble_2.m32 in that order (using *.* to search for them each time). Change the X Origin and Y Origin values to half the width and height (16 and 16 in this case). Then save the SP2 file in /bloody/sprites/fx/ as bubble.sp2. You will have tricked SP2 Maker D'lux into creating an SP2 file that links to three M32 files instead of the PCX images it was designed to deal with. You may now celebrate your devious victory over a computer program!

    When the player jumps into water, a sprite called wfall.sp2 is used to make a splash. The easy way to change this into a blood splash is to extract bsplat.sp2 in /sprites/fx/ in the PAK, rename it to wfall.sp2, and put it in /bloody/sprites/fx. I'd recommend using something other than QuArK for this, since QuArK tends to put an extra 48 blank lines into the SP2 file. Although this won't crash the game, it may result in a string of error messages appearing while the map is loading. I recommend using QPed (Quake Pak Editor).

    Now you can create a new blood texture. The easiest way is to choose one of the 128x128 water textures already in the game and make it red. Using QuArK, save one of the water textures as a bitmap or a PCX image, change its colour in an image editor, and save it as a new image file. Make sure it has only 256 colours (and that the first colour in the palette is black), then use QuArK to save it as blood.m8, placing it in the /bloody/textures/ directory. If you don't want to create a new texture, then you can always use one of the brstonefl textures in the dungeon tileset (anything but the first one). They are 128x128 pixels in size (a size you'll need if you want to make it wavy and transparent), and are reasonably bloody.

    Now you're ready to create a new map. I use QuArK, but at this stage you can use any editor you want. Make a map with water (using either your new blood.m8 texture, or one of the existing bloody dungeon ones), and add a fountain, bubbles and drops if you want (to demonstrate the full range of water effects). Call the map blood.bsp, and place it in the /bloody/maps/ directory.

    Now you can start Heretic II, bring down the console, and execute the following commands:


    If all has gone according to plan, the splashes, fountains, bubbles and drops will all look like blood instead of water. Now wallow in gore!

    Previous Page | Main Page | Next Page