After-level Text

At the end of all Doom episodes it types out a story for you to read. How do I do this? I particularly want to make it happen after a level is finished, and then have the story dialog pop up before the next level begins. (Like level 7 on Doom 2).

In general, you can use Whacked2 to edit the text, but you can't change the map it appears after (it also has a limited length). Using some more advanced port features you can put whatever text you want after whatever level you want, and even include a picture. This can definitely be done in EDGE (though years ago i tried putting text after every level and it crashed after i had about 6, but that was a very old version) and most likely can be done in Zdoom

I don't recall ever seeing anything new as far as doing those text pages after a map or mission. If there is, it's probably associated with the MapInfo lump. But you can just as easily write a script that prints the text you want and how you want it and then end the level - and even make it real cool and cinematic looking.

Ah - check this out:

exittext <message>

<message> is a message to be displayed when the player has just finished a level in a different cluster from the next one. If the next level's cluster has an entertext defined, then it will be shown instead of this cluster's exittext.

This is found under "Cluster Definitions":
http://zdoom.org/wiki/MAPINFO

How do I access the Mapinfo lump on my level so that I can type that script out?

The MapInfo lump is a text file with all those things defined in it.

When the documentation is too confusing, It's best to find an example .wad with the working feature you want in it. I don't have anything at my fingertips because I never really needed to use MapInfo. But poke around and I'm sure you'll come across a project or set of maps that use it. Then you can look at the MapInfo and see what a working one looks like.

So am I supposed to open my .wad file as a text document and manually edit it?

No, you create an ascii text file called "mapinfo.txt". Notepad works, though technically it's not ascii. You fill out the mapinfo.txt file with the info you want, then use a tool such as XWE or DeePsea to inject that text file into your desired .wad file.

Well I have XWE, but it's the most complicated program I've ever worked with. Do you think you could give me an example mapinfo lump of text being displayed at the start of the third level, and perhaps even show me how to embed the txt file into the specified wad? I appreciate the help.

Open notepad.

Type:

map map01 "My Map Name"

... and anything else you want to define with MAPINFO (see the link above for more stuff you can do).

Save as mapinfo.txt.

Open XWE and load the wad of your choice.

Then click Load from the Entry menu in the menubar. Select the mapinfo.txt.

Done.

But keep in mind, MAPINFO is only supported by a few source ports, primarily the ones based off of ZDoom, although Legacy and Eternity have some type of support for it, and probably some others.