Saving multiple maps (and other n00bish questions)

Hey all,

First off, I apologize if the answers to these questions are in plain sight somewhere and I missed it (in which case please drop me a link), but I scoured the wikis, forums and tutorials and couldn't find this info anywhere. I just started trying to make a PWAD for Freedoom 2 and GZDoom using Slade 3 and DB2, and I'm having several issues.

1. First of all, in both DB2 and Slade, I couldn't find a way to save more than one map. When I go to save a map, it tries to save it as a .WAD, and saving over the current WAD will erase any other content except for the map I'm currently editing.

2. I did at one point find a way to save two maps from Slade, but (a) I don't even remember what I did differently that made it "work" that time, and (b) when I did that, it no longer recognized either of them as the starting map, and just dumped me into level 1 of Freedoom 2, and I can't figure out how to set the map number so that one of them is the starting map.

3. Another thing (that might be related to #2) is that when I managed to create a second map without overwriting the first, the lumps appeared out of order in the entries list, so instead of appearing as

FOREST

TEXTMAP

ZNODES

ENDMAP

CAVE1

TEXTMAP

ZNODES

ENDMAP

it appeared in the order

FOREST

CAVE1

TEXTMAP

TEXTMAP

ZNODES

ZNODES

ENDMAP

ENDMAP

...making it very unclear which lumps belong to which map.

4. If I create a new map in Slade, DB2 won't recognize it, it thinks there are no maps in this WAD, even when I use the "open map in Doom Builder 2" option. DB2 only recognized maps created from DB2, but as stated above, I only ever managed to create multiple in Slade.

Sorry for the long post, any help is greatly appreciated!

First of all, don't have a wad open in both Slade and DB at the same time. They say that there is a way to do it that is safe, but I don't trust it. If you make changes in one of the programs and save it, it will overwrite any changes you made in the other program. So, close DB before you open Slade, and close Slade before you open DB.

In DB, make a map and save it in a wad. Then start a new map, and give it a different name from the first one, like MAP02 instead of MAP01. When you save that map, choose Save Map Into... in the File menu to add the map into the same wad as the other map.

I have used Slade for a lot of things, and I highly recommend it, but I have never used Slade to create a map, so I can't say much about its map editor.

Thanks for your reply!

1 hour ago, Empyre said:

First of all, don't have a wad open in both Slade and DB at the same time. They say that there is a way to do it that is safe, but I don't trust it. If you make changes in one of the programs and save it, it will overwrite any changes you made in the other program. So, close DB before you open Slade, and close Slade before you open DB.

I'll keep that in mind, that may have been the cause of at least one of my issues.

Quote

In DB, make a map and save it in a wad. Then start a new map, and give it a different name from the first one, like MAP02 instead of MAP01. When you save that map, choose Save Map Into... in the File menu to add the map into the same wad as the other map.

Thanks, I totally missed the "save map into" option! Although while taking advantage of GZDoom's support for arbitrary map names, it ended up getting stuck not knowing of my maps was the starting map, and defaulting to map01 from the IWAD, and the only way I found to make it recognize my map as the starter map was to name it MAP01. Is there any way I could set a map as the starting map while still giving it an arbitrary name? Some flag I can add to it, maybe?

What you need for that is MAPINFO. Add a new lump named MAPINFO in Slade. Select View as Text, and in the Text Language drop-down menu, select ZDoom Mapinfo. Then, make the mapinfo following the instructions on the page I linked.

@EmpyreThanks a million!