help with master levels menu interface

i wanted to play the master levels again and heard about this menu interface to play them easily, but i can't make it work. when i select a map it just tells me that it was "unable to open X map" and when i exit, i have a messagge saying zdoom has encountered an error and needs to close. what can i do about that?

What method did you use to build your master levels .pk3 file?

i've heard about that but i m not really into this kinda things, could you please explain to me what i have to do? i know i'm really hopeless, all i did was download the interface , unzip it and then try loading the wads lol.

There's your problem - didn't stop to read the instructions. ;-)

The wads have to be added to a .pk3 file (which is simply a renamed .zip file) in order for the menu interface to find them. I opted to add them to ZDMLMENU.PK3 using this variant of the author's instructions -

1) Make a copy of the Master Level wad files (for backup purposes)
2) Create a folder named "maps"
3) Copy TEETH.WAD to that folder and rename it TEETH2.WAD
4) Move all Master Levels wads into the "maps" folder
5) Using a lump editor (XWE or SLADE3), open TEETH.WAD
6) Delete the MAP32 lump and the 10 lumps that follow it. They are: THINGS, LINEDEFS, SIDEDEFS, VERTEXES, SEGS, SSECTORS, NODES, SECTORS, REJECT, and BLOCKMAP
7) Save the changes to TEETH.WAD and open TEETH2.WAD in the lump editor
8) Delete the MAP31 lump and the 10 lumps that follow it. Same names as in step 6
9) Save the changes to TEETH2.WAD
10) Delete any backup files in the maps folder
11) Use an archive tool which can handle ZIP files to place all the .WADs in the maps folder into the Master Level menu zip's maps folder (where MENU.WAD and TITLEMAP.WAD are located).

My archive tool of choice for step 11 is 7-Zip, though you might be able to do the job by renaming ZDMLMENU.PK3 as ZDMLMENU.ZIP and using the .zip file support built into Windows, then rename the file as a .pk3 when done.

Hope this helps.

thanks for replying. however, i have two questions. first, can steps 3-9 (except 4) be skipped if im not interested in having bad dream listed? second, when i unzipped the file i couldn t find any titlemap.wad or menu.wad. what should i do about that? thanks again and sorry if my questions are somewhat silly

ZDoom has code in the engine to open a directory in the same way it opens zip/pk3 files. So why don't they take advantage of it and use it for a native interface for this? That list of steps is great for anybody that edits DOOM, but no noob is ever going to automatically understand what's necessary.

I can't speak for ZDoom but the reason we don't do that in Doomsday is because we haven't yet found a reasonable way to generalize and integrate it with support for all container types (Wad, Zip, Lump Assembly etc...) and games. Its one thing to do this when you only support DOOM Wads but when there are many containers to support its somewhat more complicated.

The idea I'm currently looking into is treating the master levels as a complete "game" rather than as a set of addons.

DaniJ said:

The idea I'm currently looking into is treating the master levels as a complete "game" rather than as a set of addons.

If you can set the game to strip weapons (basically do a PST_REBORN every map) then there wouldn't be any issue with that at all, really. You could pass between maps without having to pick one between each time as it currently works in Eternity.

You're givin' me ideas, damn it ;)

yuri04 said:

thanks for replying. however, i have two questions. first, can steps 3-9 (except 4) be skipped if im not interested in having bad dream listed?

You're welcome. Yes, those steps can be skipped though taking the secret exit in TEETH.WAD might cause problems.

second, when i unzipped the file i couldn t find any titlemap.wad or menu.wad. what should i do about that?

Assuming the folder structure was maintained when unzipping, those wads should appear in a folder called "maps". If your archive manager supports adding with relative paths, an alternative approach is to select the Master Levels "maps" folder and add that to ZDMLMENU.PK3/ZDMLMENU.ZIP.

Quasar said:

ZDoom has code in the engine to open a directory in the same way it opens zip/pk3 files. So why don't they take advantage of it and use it for a native interface for this? That list of steps is great for anybody that edits DOOM, but no noob is ever going to automatically understand what's necessary.

As far as I know ZDoom has no intentions to support the master levels natively. Everyone has their own idea on how the master levels should play and thus I see no reason to integrate one. For example, my patch (which requires two simple steps by the way) creates an episode yet some people prefer loading the maps individually. If supported in an episode, in what order? Some people like sorting them logically, others such as myself follow the console versions.

Blzut3 said:

As far as I know ZDoom has no intentions to support the master levels natively. Everyone has their own idea on how the master levels should play and thus I see no reason to integrate one. For example, my patch (which requires two simple steps by the way) creates an episode yet some people prefer loading the maps individually. If supported in an episode, in what order? Some people like sorting them logically, others such as myself follow the console versions.

And if they want to load individually, they can just type idclev...

GreyGhost said:

You're welcome. Yes, those steps can be skipped though taking the secret exit in TEETH.WAD might cause problems.
Assuming the folder structure was maintained when unzipping, those wads should appear in a folder called "maps". If your archive manager supports adding with relative paths, an alternative approach is to select the Master Levels "maps" folder and add that to ZDMLMENU.PK3/ZDMLMENU.ZIP.

when i unzip the file, the only thing i have is a file called "ZDMLMENU.PK3" but can't really find the other ones. and also,what do you mean by adding the master level maps folder to ZDMLMENU.PK3? what should i do to start it then?

We've had a bit of a communications failure. :-(

Let's start again from the beginning and I'll try not to leave any steps out -

1 - Copy Zdmlmenu.zip to a temporary folder, extract it's contents (ZDMLMENU.pk3) then rename zdmlmenu.zip as zdmlmenu.bak - that's in case things don't go as planned.

2 - Create a "maps" folder and move the Master Levels wads into it - as detailed in a previous post.

3a - If you're using Zip support in Windows - rename ZDMLMENU.pk3 as ZDMLMENU.zip (so Windows Explorer can treat it as just another folder). Drag'n'drop the Master Levels maps to the "maps" folder inside ZDMLMENU.zip. Rename ZDMLMENU.zip back to ZDMLMENU.pk3.

3b - If you're using 7-Zip - right-click on the maps folder and (from the 7-Zip menu) select "Add to archive...". Browse to and open ZDMLMENU.pk3 then click <OK>.

4 - Assuming ZDoom already knows where to find Doom2.wad, drag'n'drop ZDMLMENU.pk3 onto zdoom.exe. If all goes well - delete zdmlmenu.bak and move ZDMLMENU.pk3 to it's final destination.

GreyGhost said:

We've had a bit of a communications failure. :-(

Let's start again from the beginning and I'll try not to leave any steps out -

1 - Copy Zdmlmenu.zip to a temporary folder, extract it's contents (ZDMLMENU.pk3) then rename zdmlmenu.zip as zdmlmenu.bak - that's in case things don't go as planned.

2 - Create a "maps" folder and move the Master Levels wads into it - as detailed in a previous post.

3a - If you're using Zip support in Windows - rename ZDMLMENU.pk3 as ZDMLMENU.zip (so Windows Explorer can treat it as just another folder). Drag'n'drop the Master Levels maps to the "maps" folder inside ZDMLMENU.zip. Rename ZDMLMENU.zip back to ZDMLMENU.pk3.

3b - If you're using 7-Zip - right-click on the maps folder and (from the 7-Zip menu) select "Add to archive...". Browse to and open ZDMLMENU.pk3 then click <OK>.

4 - Assuming ZDoom already knows where to find Doom2.wad, drag'n'drop ZDMLMENU.pk3 onto zdoom.exe. If all goes well - delete zdmlmenu.bak and move ZDMLMENU.pk3 to it's final destination.

hey i finally mananged to do it thanks to your instructions! i know it wasn't that hard but for me who can barely turn a pc on was extremely confusing! thanks a lot again :)

You're welcome, we had to get it right eventually. ;-)

The master levels menu is cool.

It's pretty easy to set it up in zdoom to have a fresh pistol start at the beginning of each level when you combine all the levels into a single wad.

I think the ideal way for the master levels would be if it was possible to make the levels load randomly in-game. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem possible in zdoom as far as I can tell. My ideal setup up would be to have the master levels selectable as an episode that loads each level in a random order without repeating each time and also have the option to select the levels from a list so you can play play specific level you want.

The only way it seems that it may be possible to make levels load randomly from what I can tell would be to create some sort of hub level that would take you to a random level each time you entered a teleport then take you back to the hub when you complete the level. At least this is the impression that I got from a few forum discussions in the past. Unfortunately, it's beyond my scope since I'm not a mapper.

On a related note, it would be pretty cool to get some musicians together and write a new soundtrack to the master levels since most of them just used the first level music for doom 2. That would make the idea of combining them into a single wad even better.