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d0ck

a few noob questions.

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so i started messing with doom modding for the first time a couple weeks ago, and i found pretty much all the information i needed to get started making my own maps and such here at doom world. i've gone through i'd say about 3/4 of the entire doombuilder guide, and i felt like i was starting to get my bearings until the urge came upon me.

the urge being to make my own total conversion of the game, as opposed to just making a couple maps and wrapping them up in a package. so i found some information here and there on how to do this, (although... its much harder to come upon than map-making help) and i downloaded some programs like slumped, whacked, and wintex just to see what i could figure out on my own.

unfortunately... i was able to teach myself next to nothing. at first my plan was to just edit every single texture sound and sprite in the entire doom2 iwad and create my own similarly complex palette of things to create my game with. so i got into lumped one afternoon and changed about 50 things, and then i tried to save.

"Saving to an iwad is disallowed. Please use save as."

so i did.

"Saving to an iwad is disallowed. Please use save as."

so im at a bit of a stalemate with it at the moment. i've tried for a few days to find a way around this problem, such as just creating my own wad in slumped and then trying to use whacked to set up what the wad was thinking were my player sprites, weapons, etc.

after im done being flamed for my beginnerness, somebody please point me in the right direction for working on my own TC.

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Saving to an IWAD is a major no-no - that's id Software's imtellectual property.
You'll have to create a PWAD for your TC.

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Indeed it is advisable to put all your changes in a pWad. That's how everybody else it doing it, although there are some projects that have been released as stand alone games (Freedoom and Foreverhood come to mind).

Please note that making a TC is an incredible amount of work (unless you rip everything from other sources). So I would suggest starting small.

I have been working on my own TC since 2001 called Harmony and I still don't know when it will be finished. The link also contains some info on how Harmony is build. Though the info is very old/outdated, it might be helpful for you.

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oh i have no time limit for my project in mind. in fact, part of the reason i wanted to start doing this is so i'll have something to do when im sitting around on my computer from time to time for the next few years.

i actually had found the harmony page and have it bookmarked but completely forgot i had come across it. hopefully there's some info there that can get me going. so if i understand correctly then what i want to do... is to use something like sLumped to create a new file (a pwad) and keep all of my textures, sounds, sprites, etc in that?

if so, then will i be using the doom2.wad for anything at all? or i guess what im trying to ask is; if i have something like zdoom (which i do) then are there any elements of the engine i'd have to manually set up? (such as the game knowing mouse1 is shoot or even to display the various layers that make up the hud, weapons, enemies and such.)

i think although i understand the mapping aspect fairly well, im still not really understanding the dynamics of the game/engine.

closing question: can a TC run entirely from a pwad? if it can, then i do not understand the several paragraph explanation i read about the difference between a pwad and an iwad like i thought i did.

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Indeed, you should make a wad to put all of your own files in (=pwad)

I suggest downloading an existing TC (Batman Doom for example) and see how they did it. It is a pwad containing a number of maps and replacement textures/ sounds in the wad. Also there is a deh file containing the modified behaviour of weapons and enemies.

Aside from the dehacked file you can put everything in a wad file (with Zdoom you can actually put the deh in the wad, but it won't be compatible with doom2.exe anymore).
Because it is illegal to upload wads containing original material and because Doom2.exe won't run if files are missing you can only have a playable game if: 1; you replace ALL files (extreme amount of work/ never been done before; although Freedoom is trying) or 2; load your wad (pwad) together with the Doom2.wad (iwad), which will contain all the entries you didn't include. This way the player will always need a copy of Doom2.wad

BUT, IIRC: Nowadays it is possible to go around this with source ports (like Zdoom) which can ignore the missing entries. Your pwad will be regarded an iwad. I'm not sure how this works exactly, but I will need to know this as well when Harmony eventually be released :-)

But since you are just getting started it will be much easier to stick to a pwad.

Changing the dynamics of the engine is a different story. If you want your wad to be compatible with Doom2.exe you will be very limited (your game will play a lot like Doom2), but with source ports you can go a lot further.

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that answered a whole helluva lot of my woes sir. thank you.

i have no intention of making my TC compatible with doom2, as i want to modify the behavior, and im perfectly happy with zdoom thus far.

so when i originally started pulling up guides about this, my noob thought was "oh so i just need to make an iwad with most of the info im gonna use for the game in it. then ill release some betas. then if i ever need new textures ill just add a download for a pwad." now however, i actually understand what the hell is going on.

i'm gonna start messing around with getting my own decent pwad going, and ill probably always be sniffing around for information and such, so if i come across anything about how to get the pwad to be regaurded by any of the source ports as an iwad, i'll be sure to share.

i guess its time for me to dive back in. see you on the other side.

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The PWAD doesnt need to be "regarded as an Iwad". The P stands for "Patch", as in when you run it it will "patch" the bits of the iwad you have replaced, like MAP01 being replaced by your own MAP01, the TROOA1 sprite being replaced by your own TROOA1 sprite

In the olden days, when sprites and flats couldnt be "just run" and really did need to be "patched" into the iwad, people got around it by copying everything 'else' that they didnt change from the iwad into thier pwad and distributing that. But don't do it. EVER.

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just wanted to thank t.v. as i've gotten to work making my own weapon models in anim8or. lot of work but a lot of fun. started by making my arm models and getting those so that i could manipulate them however to be animated with my guns, and so far ive got some kind of glockish pistol (due to it being an easy shape) and a basic sniper rifle. thanks again and i'll be back when i hit trouble.

also deathbringer ill probably have a dumb question for you in about... 2 years or so, so stay alive.

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My advice for how to start a TC project:

First, get a very good understanding of how the Doom engine works, via guides and experiments.
Second, look at how existing maps are put together.
Third, make some of your own simple map projects, which just stick to Doom/Doom 2 resources, to get a handle on that part of the process.
Fourth, get some more advanced editing utilities such as XWE and learn to use them.

I wouldn't start worrying about the more complex graphics and coding work that a TC requires until you've done all this.

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