Using ZDL to launch wads with .bats and .exes? (AV, MM2, Icarus, etc) [GZDoom]

Been playing a lot of classic WADs lately, and ZDL is a great launcher. I know about using WADs and pk3s etc, but had some questions about old WADs that came with .bat or .exe files and whatnot.

In a nutshell, does putting all the files other than the bat or exe into ZDL and launching it always work properly? Do any mods require command lines and whatnot, or editing a .bat file in notepad?

Alien Vendetta for example has an exe, clicking it in my GZDoom doesn't do anything. I'd guess it's set to use the original Doom2 exe. AV also comes with a DEH file and the various WADs, so I can just load all those files into ZDL. Does this break anything? I know I'm not supposed to use avmovfix.wad.

Memento Mori 2's MM2.bat simply says "doom2 -file mm2.wad mm2mus.wad" in notepad, so in that case I figure loading those WADs in ZDL should be fine.

Icarus.bat though says "@echo off
doom2 -file icarus.wad %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
SUB" - I don't know what the extra info means there.

Does this all work fine just like loading a wad, or is there anything else I should do? And offhand, do any popular old WADs I might come across involve adding extra command line stuff?

So pretty much, does dumping all the files into the ZDL launcher always work, even in WADs including .bats or an .exe? Thanks.

And a bonus question, is there anything I should know about load order? I've heard the map WAD should be at the top of the list, with stuff like smoothdoom at the bottom of the list. And for some of these old ones there are fix wads which add map name info, etc. And music wads. Is there any case where a particular load order will break something? Thanks folks!

BATs are generally only included for convenience; most of the time, those can be ignored. Alien Vendetta's EXE, IIRC, is a pre-patched Doom2.exe that has the DEH patch installed to change the map names and intermission texts, so if you're loading the DEH with GZDoom you'll have more or less the same effect.

WildWeasel said:

BATs are generally only included for convenience; most of the time, those can be ignored. Alien Vendetta's EXE, IIRC, is a pre-patched Doom2.exe that has the DEH patch installed to change the map names and intermission texts, so if you're loading the DEH with GZDoom you'll have more or less the same effect.

Thanks for the info there.

PsychoGoatee said:

Icarus.bat though says "@echo off
doom2 -file icarus.wad %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
SUB" - I don't know what the extra info means there.

The %1..%9 mean that the first nine extra arguments given to the BAT file on the commend line should get passed over to the call to DOOM2.