Changing level names.

As the title says, how do I change the level names in Doom 2. I have a copy of WhackEd2, and have no idea what to do.

I'm making a wad for regular Doom 2, no source ports, and its been going good until now.

To change the map name as it appears on the intermission screen, you need to import your own custom graphic of the name to replace CWILVXX, where XX is the number of the map minus one (since it starts at 00). You can do that with WinTex or XWE.

Level names on the automap, as well as most of the rest of the in-game text can be edited under Strings in WhackEd2. Doom 2 level names are numbers 135 through 166.

EDIT:I didn't realize this... In BEX format, the map names are 135 to 166, but in DEH, they are 692 through 723. But you probably figured that out already.

For creating level name graphics, I recommend using the Bitmap Font Writer and this doom font set that someone made for it.

Oh, ok. Got it. Although, this arises two more questions.

1. How do I use these "DEH" files it gives

2. It seems for the level names, I'm only allowed a certain amount of characters for the name. How can I raise this?

IIRC you can't do that. I think that you are just allowed 15 or so characters at least in the strings array. That is why MAP11 in doom2 has the name "Circle of death" and automap text "O of death".

It's not a fixed number; the number of characters you can use in DeHackEd simply depends on the length of the original text, rounded off to groups of 4 (0-3, 4-7, 8-11, 12-15, 16-19, 20-23, and so on). It's 15 in a case where the original text fits in the 12-15 range (or that plus level xx: , if you're not counting that).

You can't raise it but if you want you can economize by abbreviating the level number or omitting it, such as typing:

01: UAC Factory

UAC Facility

You can also shorten it by using spaces after the last character you type, such as:

Factory     

(Heh; if you select the text you'll see it contains empty characters after the word.)

Thanks for the heads up! Had my clues it worked something like that.

I made those Bitmap Font Writer fonts, not that I want any credit. I am just happy someone uses them.

Bitmap Font Writer is a great, small, and free, easy to use program I am glad to contribute to.

Just as easy as renaming the .bmp to CWILV?? as stated to make a new map name and import with XWE or Wintex.

The level names are not limited by the Doom engine. My friend, Doorhenge, made it possible with Whacked2 to have map names as long as we wanted in our BloodTC project.

I don't know how, but I can find out if you need.