How to edit music/sprites/sounds etc.

I know this might be the most newby question to ask but how would one edit sprites and make a seperate file to play this modification without messing up with doom 2's original sprites. Take for instance xwe, When I use it and edit sprites and save as, it keeps telling me that I can't and I don't want to save the doom2.wad because that would end up messing with the original wad. Any ideas?

Open Doom2.wad in XWE, highlight the sprites you want to modify, ctrl+c them, create a new wad, make a new entry called SS_START, paste sprites, create a new entry called SS_START. Hopefully I'm not totally misunderstanding what you mean and making an idiot of myself. :D

Are you trying to create a mod for the original DooM/2 executable (i.e., no source port)? If so, you will need to append your new sprites to doom.wad or doom2.wad using one of the many utilities to edit the DooM/2 executable (DeHacked, WhackEd, etc.) In other words, you will create your replacement sprites in a separate wad that will be appended to the original.

If you are using a source port that supports replacement sprites, then you can use any wad resource editor to create the replacement items. Of course, you should never mess with the original IWAD (i.e., doom.wad, doom2.wad) - instead, create a separate wad with the new graphics, and run it with the IWAD in the usual way (e.g., zdoom -IWAD doom2.wad -file <newsprites.wad>)

Would making a copy of the doom.wad work or should I just go with the way you just mentioned?

tehhobo said:

Would making a copy of the doom.wad work or should I just go with the way you just mentioned?

Well, it's a rule of thumb to backup your IWADs if you're doing any serious editing. You don't want to be stuck with invisible Cacodemons with no way to go back.

Yeah, umm... How do you edit the sprite itself? I've got this paint tool but it's not working for me and how do you import images into the sprite as well?

tehhobo said:

Would making a copy of the doom.wad work or should I just go with the way you just mentioned?

Making a copy of the IWAD to edit would only solve one of the problems. If you intended to use the wad with the replacement sprites for your own use you'd be fine. However, if you intended to distribute the wad you'd have to distribute the replacement IWAD in its entirety. This is not only a waste of resources, it is also unacceptable by the idgames archives, the main repository of DooM/2 wads.

Yeah, umm... How do you edit the sprite itself? I've got this paint tool but it's not working for me and how do you import images into the sprite as well?

See my reply to your questions in the XWE forums. Sprite (or any graphics editing) needs to be done in an external graphics editor. MS Paint is the easiest to use, and comes free with any Win OS. However, MS Paint is very rudimentary and can be quite tedious to use.

Exporting sprites as a bunch of .BMP files and using Paint works for me. You can also use PSP if you are so inclined, as long as you know what you're doing with the palette. Importing them back is exactly the opposite process: load a bunch of .BMP files as WAD lumps. Either WinTex or XWE work for me.

The only case you will almost certainly run into trouble is if you're trying to use "hi-res" or "true color" graphics.