WinTex ZDooM woes

After many months of effort I completed my 5-level set for ZDooM. I opened up WinTex and merged the five maps into a single wad. Very excitedly I tried to run the combined levels using a ZDooM launcher, only to get an error message that kicked me out of DooM. I tried running the wad from DOS, and got the same results. "CRAP! CRAP! CRAP!" I thought.

Next I tried opening the combined wad in my level editor (WadAuthor). Nothing opened up -- blank screen. I figured that WinTex somehow had something to do with it. First thought was the scripts, so I deleted the scripts and re-tried to merge the levels. Same problems. I was on the verge of giving up and posting for help, when it occurred to me that perhaps WinTex was unable to recognize the special ZDooM linedefs, etc. But how to undo all the ZDooM features so that WinTex could work its merging magic? It would take a huge amount of work, not to mention making the levels worthless. The alternative would be to release the levels singly, and the texture and sprites wad separate from the levels (but in the same zip file).

In desperation I hatched an evil scheme. I created 5 dummy maps in WadAuthor using the DooM2 configuration and combined them in WinTex. Using WinTex I copied the texture resources and sprites from my completed levels into the dummy wad. Next, I converted the dummy wad into ZDooM format using zwadconv.exe.

Now I had a dummy wad that was fully compatible with my 5 maps. I opened up all these wads in WadAuthor using ZDooM configuration and cut and pasted the maps and scripts. Voila! Evil scheming saved the day. However, I learned a valuable lesson the hard way. KNOW YOUR TOOLS. I did not know the limitations of WinTex, and this almost caused a catastrophe (O.K., maybe moi doth exaggerate a wee bit).

Any other (simpler) way of solving the problem I had?

You could have used DEUTEX and it's -make function to merge all your raw resourced into a new WAD (assuming your scripts are compiled if needed).

Yes, actually the scripts are compiled. Had I used the -make function of DEUTEX, would it have retained all the ZDooM-specific features of the maps? Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that WinTex incorporated all the functions of DEUTEX. Thanks for the tip.

I'm always using Zeth for grouping ZDooM levels. WinTex may be able to do this in Hexen mode, but I never tried it.

ReX said:

Yes, actually the scripts are compiled. Had I used the -make function of DEUTEX, would it have retained all the ZDooM-specific features of the maps? Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that WinTex incorporated all the functions of DEUTEX. Thanks for the tip.

DEUTEX should retain all ZDOOM stuff, since they are basically HeXen format, and DEUTEX can do from DOOM, DOOM2, Heretic, and HeXen.