Hello, Hello!

Hello, I am PoD, or more formally, the Prince of Darkness. I am a bit of an oddball, but I hope to become more of a proficient modder within the next few months.

However, I have some questions.

I have been very interested in modding and making new levels for several years, but was unable to do it with Doom for awhile. But recently I obtained "Tricks of the Doom Gurus" book; this has really provided me with the information needed to help me mod.

However, I do have some problems with undergoing what I wanted to do.

The first is: I use the Collector's Edition of Doom, which I believe to be basically Doom 95. At present, since I have no modding programs to speak of (the disc that should have come with The Colllector's Edition had been taken out several years before) I am not very sure if most, if not all, modding programs will work with it without severe modification. (Heh, modding a mod. I crack me up).

The mod that I wanted to do would be along the lines of Aliens-TC, in the sense of modifying weapons, enemies, and atmospheric textures (walls, floors, ect.). So my questions are-

A. What is the greatest modding program to use for the job?
B. Is it relatively easy to use, especially for a newb?
C. Can it work for the Doom Collector's Edition?
D. If it can't, what will I nedd/require to download?
E. Is it possible for me to recieve help from the 'Masters' of modding if I run into trouble?

Awnsering these questions will be very helpful and will be greatly appreciated. I will also greatfully answer any question you have; heck, even the odd ones.

So you have Doom95.exe along with Doom.wad, Doom2.wad, Plutonia.wad, Tnt.wad.

Prince of Darkness said:

A. What is the greatest modding program to use for the job?

For making levels, get Doombuilder (doombuilder.com, free).

For arranging graphics, sounds and scripts (IF A PORT; SEE BELOW), get XWE (doomworld.com/xwe, free).

For editing monster and thing behaviour, player health and whatnot, get Whacked2 (http://www.teamhellspawn.com/exl/index.php?page=whacked2, also free). I haven't used Whacked2 so far, so I'm not sure, but I use Dehacked. However Dehacked is for DOS and requires Doom.exe which you probably don't have unless you apply a downloading, patching and file renaming/moving way, which while legal, is complicated.

B. Is it relatively easy to use, especially for a newb?

Yeah, all three (hopefully Whacked2 indeed) are meant to be easy to use. You might still need to understand how to make maps, but there's a guide at Doombuilder's site for you.

C. Can it work for the Doom Collector's Edition?

Since none of the above (except Dehacked) address the executable, which can vary, they should work. The map and resource editors (DB and XWE above) affect the game WAD files, which are the main Doom products.

D. If it can't, what will I nedd/require to download?

You need not limit yourself to basic Doom (Doom95.exe, in your case). You can get various source ports, enhancements of Doom, which upgrade it in various gameplay ways. They are zdoom.org]ZDoom, doomworld.com/eternity]Eternity, EDGE, VaVoom and the rest (EDIT: I said above "SEE BELOW". Here's why. Various ports support map or game scripts, by which the game plays in an enhanced way). View their editing documentations, they could be worthy for what you want.

E. Is it possible for me to recieve help from the 'Masters' of modding if I run into trouble?

Masters? :) Haven't read "Tricks for the Doom Gurus" or "Masters of Doom" myself, in case it references them. If you mean members here who know stuff, then they could help you, unless your question is way off.

Hey, thanks, Printz. I should be able to start sooner or later; matters on when my new computer comes in...:p

As for the "master" thing...well, you've probably been doing it longer than most have :)

On the book; it's rather good (But hell, it IS nearly 1000 pages long), and it goes into detail on many programs, including DeHackEd. (It was written by one of the guys who did "The Unholy Trinity" mod, so I think it should be a good help). However, I was wondering if the WinTex/Deutex could do the same thing, if not better than, DeHackEd.

And thanks for all of this :)

Prince of Darkness said:

I was wondering if the WinTex/Deutex could do the same thing, if not better than, DeHackEd.

WinTex/Deutex are old equivalents to XWE. They don't affect game mechanics (as they call them...). They affect graphics, sounds, maybe maps and all that (all that game looks). Dehacked is separate to Deutex. You won't be making "new" monsters with only Wintex, unless an imp with soldier look and articulate voice (but same health, attack, equally predictable) is considered a brand new species :)

WolfenDoom springs to mind whenever I think of Dehacked monsters.

So, I take it that DeHackEd is my way to go, eh?

Here's how. With Dehacked/Whacked2 you create a new patch, find the monster you wish modified, change its behaviour by modifying its "flags" (attributes), stats (health, size, speed...), frames (images and actions; mainly how it acts).

Then you note what sprites that monster and its projectile use (four-capital-letter words found by the frames), then you run XWE, load the game WAD (doom.wad, doom2.wad, preferably the latter), browse down and you'll see a series of "lumps" (which are named blocks of data), beginning with those four letters.

Now create your own series of pictures (bitmaps) with the exact same names as those lumps, representing how the monster and projectile should actually look. With XWE create a new WAD (or load a targetted one), create a SS_START empty lump (if none already), import thereinafter the pictures you created, then append a S_END empty lump (also if none already).

With almost every source port, by loading the TC wad file and the deh file from the command line, the new monster should work, being found in the same places as where the original was. With vanilla Doom, however, you'll need to employ a trick described here before playing the game (also use "doomhack -file .....").

POD, keep in mind that TotDG is an old and outdated book.

unless you have reasons for using others (or preference) then:

doombuilder for designing your maps
xwe for editing the .wad file (importing outside resources)
whacked for modifying behavior

is all you really need.

you can create your textures and sprites with any number of graphics programs, including paint, and you can compose midi and design sounds with, likewise, any number of audio programs (i, myself, am in love with soundforge and renoise.)

Let me be the first to say it. I would highly recommend the use of a Source port, especially ZDoom. i found that it was easier to learn since it has good windows support, it fixes a large number of bugs, it is easier to edit and has a crapload of extra features. I learned how to map with ZDoom before I started mapping for Vanilla or even Boom ... of course i havent mapped in over a year since i started making weapon mods with WhackEd and DECORATE

EDIT: If you doubt the power of ZDoom, then check out a few of my favorites:

Zen Dynamics
Torment and Torture
Scuba Steve's Action Doom (hard hats required)

i think learning to map first in vanilla doom is the way to go. but use a source port to play doom.

Butts said:

i think learning to map first in vanilla doom is the way to go. but use a source port to play doom.

I agree with this completely. Learn how to map for vanilla doom, learn how to make maps that look interesting and are fun while remaining within the doom2.exe limits, and learn about as many of the vanilla doom rendering tricks as you can.

Then once you're ready, you'll be able to apply all those skills to mapping for any source port. :)

Wow! Thanks for the information, guys :)