An alternative would be to load some external texture, and bind it over the original one in the engine. Of course to do that, you need to know how to do code that in.
It wouldn't be worth the time and risk, unless of course, you plan on adding features such as normal mapping (or parallax), specular...
Also my general advice would be to keep the WAD textures lower resolution, around 128x128 or so, and use high-res detail textures, because if you have to use low texture scales in your levels you'll use lightmaps more, and get an AllocBlock: full error eventually.
+1, I think "Counter-Strike - Condition Zero" and it's "Deleted Scenes" are great examples of combining low res textures from WADs with detailed textures. Worth checking them.
@Highlander but you can check tutorial by Trampler! I remember Trempler's cs map with whole detail textures and it hasn't problem no Allocbloc: full error.
I don't see any tutorial made by Trempler here, if you are talking about "de_retrostation", I think the textures are using normal "scales" preventing the AllocBlocks error to happen.
If you have problem sometimes Allocbloc:full error than you can use Xash engine because Xash engine has expanded unlimited lightmap 64 to 512. I hope you know how does it work with detailtextures
Using Xash is the lazy/easy solution to the problem, the best solution would be to use "normal" scales and "normal" lightmaps sizes.
"ArrangeMode: REBIRTH" made the HUGE mistake of having the vent "borders" textures scaled to 0.1 (and a lot of minor details) resulting in huge compile times and huge FPS drops. This is why (in my opinion) maps were small and only the textures were detailed (not the map in general) to prevent engine errors from happening. Worth a note that REBIRTH was still using the standard HL renderer (not PARANOIA/Trinity or whatever).
