10 Year Doomer asks the stupidest question!!

...Yeah, you guys are probably reading this post and saying to yourselves "who the heck is this noob!?" Well I've been playing DOOM for too damn long but there was one thing that I always wanted to do and that was to create my own DOOM wads!!

So my question would be how the heck do I do it and where do I get the software for such vile acts!!

I got like 26 levels all drawn up in a notebook: level maps, item and monster placements, triggers, etc. and yet I'm still nowhere to bringing these crazy ass setups to life! Somebody help me out here. Thanx!

...(I sound like suck a friggin' noob right now!! Why Me!?)

...so sayeth Khaoscythe!!

Try doombuilder.com]Doom Builder or sbsoftware.com]Deepsea for your editing needs.

More power to you.

Smartest. Newbie. Ever.

Doombuilder is the correct answer.

Unfortuniatly, I know not where the manual for this piece of software resides, as that would probably be the best for you.

However, let me give you a run down of what the basis of a doom level is.

The main building blocks of a level are called sectors. A sector is just an area of a level that has a specific floor height and texture, ceiling height and texture (including a transparent texture that allows you to see the sky, the sky is nothing more than a picture that is painted before the rest of the picture), light level (dark, fully bright, or anything in betwen), and a special property, such as "blink lights" or "damaging floor".

So those are sectors. The borders of sectors are called lines. Lines are connected by vertices. Basic Geometry. Verticies have no special properties, they just connect lines together. But a line can have many properties, most of which are related to texturing the wall and weather that wall will appear on the automap. Lines can either be a wall (one sided) or an invisible connection between two sectors (two sided).

That covers the structure of a level. But the actual decoration, monsters, weapons, and stuff like that are called THINGS. They have a few properties of their own, such as an angle (Monsters and Players will be looking the direction of the angle when the level loads), and a few difficulty flags that determine what items appear in which difficulties, as well as a few other odd things.

If you think about it, that basically just about covers what you have seen in a map. However, interaction and making the level change (such as a lift) is done by a tag team job by lines and sectors. Bascially, lines and sectors have 'tag numbers'. A normal line and sector have an action tag of zero, but if you make a line and a sector (maybe multiple sectors) have the same tag number, they are 'connected'. In order to make them actually do something, you need to change an 'action property' of the line, which could be 'When the user presses "use" while standing next to this line, make the sector that has the same tag open like a door' or 'When the user walks acorss this line, make the sector that has the same tag lower like an elevator, wait a few seconds and then raise again.

That is a quick rundown of a Doom level, and if you don't understand a part of this, don't worry, it'll become clear once you have some mapping experience. Making doom levels is a lot easier than making quake or unreal levels, and it's possible to do very cool stuff with a lot less effort.

Now, this didn't cover the 'new' doom standards of making levels like ZDoom and Hexen. Those are a little more complicated, but I suggest getting good at making vanilla doom levels, and then moving on to bigger and better things.

Doom Builder Manual

You could also try wadauthor, ite easy to use, but once you've had WA you'll never go back, even though other editors have flashier features..(i use it to build my levels, but have doom builder installed for the sole reason of texture alignment, or poking about in levels i cant complete by playing them)...its like the heroin of the doom editors

WA is a drug.

Take acid then create a doom map but you have to be carefull because sometimes you computer tries to eat you.

Ralphis said:

WA is a drug.

And I'm high on it!

No, seriously, I have used many better Doom editors but I always go back to Wadauthor! Agh!

I use wadauthor. Check out any place where you'd find bargain books or really really cheap obsolete stuff. Look for a copy of a really REALLY fucking thick book called ALCHEMY. It's a great big fat frigging bible for doom heretic and hexen editing. I destroyed my first copy making use of it, and I rendered the CD within unusable from wear and tear. So I went to Ollie's and and get another copy for 99 cents. I could vomit. A full registered copy (albeit an old one) copy of WADAuthor is on the disc. Make use of that, and download the upgrade for it. Besides WADAuthor, the ALCHEMY CD has Tons of other stuff including graphics, loads of maps *Some of which really suck, but Memento Mori is on there!* lots of other Tools Including a Linux based Doom Editor, nodes builders, WINtex, and DEHacked.

Summary: Go Buy alchemy. It's damn cheap out there, look in places you can get really really old computer books. It has a dragon with green ooze dripping from it's mouth on the cover. Make sure the CD is inside the back cover of the book. BUY IT. READ IT. Split it in half from over use like I did (Right down the section on monsters. heh)

Enjoy.

Gah. Forgot. I'll prolly buy a copy of DEEPsea when I get the chance (and a job)

Heh, why don't you try to see if there's any files on that CD not in the archives? Some make have been taken off the old CompuServe archives.

Submerge said:

Summary: Go Buy alchemy. It's damn cheap out there, look in places you can get really really old computer books. It has a dragon with green ooze dripping from it's mouth on the cover. Make sure the CD is inside the back cover of the book. BUY IT. READ IT. Split it in half from over use like I did (Right down the section on monsters. heh)

That book is damn good! btw. where can you get the patch to upgrade it? (Im so fucking stupid sometimes)

The address for the WADAuthor patch is in the doomworld listing I believe.

I cant comment to any great extent on this subject. I have only downloaded 2 editing programs for DooM, DeeP97 and WadAuthor. Every level I have made has been on Wauthor. BTW, thanks for the tip. Ill see if I cant find a copy of Alchemy.

:) Mmm. Doombuilder Manual. :)
Mmm. Doombuilder.

Mmmm. Anyone still supporting Doom. :D

You could also use DoomED...no,wait,that was years and years and YEARS ago...and I haven't made maps since :(

Khaoscythe said:

...so sayeth Khaoscythe!!

...you know, I hated seeing that on the edo forums and it doen't make it any better seeing it here... :/

Anywho, at least I can say that the internet is a small world after all. :D I have TONS of maps that I've drawn on paper from ctf doom maps to deathmatch maps, and entire megawads all mapped out on paper. Unfortnetly, I rarely demonstrated the ability to show depth, and thus all maps look like just a bunch of lines to me now. ^^; I hope you put the ceiling and floor heights on the maps, otherwise it'll be fun to try and make it look right. :) As for how to make maps, use doom builder considering it's the best for visual editing, which is what you'll need if your going off of drawings. :)

(whistling It's A Small World After All!!)

now the only other problem is finding a new DOOM box set!! Just found out a short while ago that all of my discs where corrupted like hell...don't know how the fuck that ever happened!! It's a pity! Now I shall be deemed biggest screwup ever!!

......yeah, you're right DemonDemon...it does get friggin' annoying after a while...gonna have to come up with a new catch phrase!!

P.S.- MY DOOM...WHY!!!!!!!?????...TURNS ON Game Boy Advance...plays DOOM 2!! Die Cyberdemon...DIE!!

I think this is a pretty good basic tutorial: http://legacy.newdoom.com/der/levels/begin.shtml

It uses WadAuthor.