New Doom wad editing utility (in development)

I've been developing a wad editing tool for the past year or so. At first it was a personal endeavor because I felt I needed to learn more about large projects using guis written in C++. It's made it a lot farther than I thought it would so here I am. I'm asking for features, what you would like to see, what you wouldn't like to see, what you like in current wad editing tools.

The project itself is written in C++ using Qt 4.5. Because it uses Qt it will run on Windows / Unix (both tested), and supposedly Mac OS X.

Current Features:

* Tabbed interface for viewing multiple files.
* Merge multiple files/lumps into one wad.
* Convert BMP/JPG/PNG/WAV to Doom format and back.
* Preview graphics, levels, sounds, midis and more.
* Export multiple selections as raw data or smart auto conversion.
* Palette editor.
* Texture/patch editor.
* Text editor with syntax highlighting.
* Display maps in UDMF map format

Planned Features:

* Import images and automatically store as patch -> texture
* Fully support text based TEXTURE lump (currently can only save, not read and parse)

Updated 8/29/2010. Finishing up the palette editing and cleaned up the gui interface a bit. Now supports png patches. I haven't had a chance to work on it for the past 2 months (until this weekend) due to 'real life'.

Updated Pictures:

Palette editor. Selecting a range and applying a blue gradient over the original:
http://i768.photobucket.com/albums/xx321/hobomaster22/xlump2-1.jpg


The new blue gradient applied:
http://i768.photobucket.com/albums/xx321/hobomaster22/xlump2-2.jpg


Texture editor. Editing patches in texture.
http://i768.photobucket.com/albums/xx321/hobomaster22/xlump2-3.jpg

Searching through available patches using a filter. All patches containing the search string are shown.
http://i768.photobucket.com/albums/xx321/hobomaster22/xlump2-4.jpg

I'm looking forward to this project. Good job.

Looks great. I've long wanted an easy to use program like this and this looks like it will be the one.

Uh oh, competition.

Interesting. You probably know SLADE3 currently in development can do or should eventually do most of the same things. :)

hobomaster22 said:

Merge multiple files/lumps into one.

Not sure what the point of merging multiple lumps into one is.

hobomaster22 said:

Import images and automatically store as patch -> texture

Careful with automatic conversions. They may not be wanted. Example, someone making a GZDoom/Vavoom mod using trucolor PNG texture will probably not be happy at all to see them shoehorned into Doom's native palette just because the tool assumed that it was what one would want to do...

Looks great, keep it up.

Looks wonderful!
Hope to use it in the future!

Gez said:

Interesting. You probably know SLADE3 currently in development can do or should eventually do most of the same things. :)

Had no clue! Like I said, I originally was developing it personally and I figured since I've made into a usable app I might as well go all the way and get some input from the community.

I guess I meant to say "Merge multiple files/lumps into one wad".

For the import images into patches -> textures automatically there will likely be options for any conversion that may need to be done. I haven't started this yet. Still quite a few things to finish up!

A pretty simple suggestion: When importing music, pop up a window where you can pick what map number the song is for. Then the tool would automatically rename it to fit that slot (This shouldn't be forced though, for ZDoom and other wads that for a reason or an other use custom song names).

This looks great. Definitely looking forward to trying it out whenever you get it in a releasable state.

As always, I'm definitely interested in a good palette editor.

I LOVE YOU. Keep going at this :) Qt4 ftw, about time someone decided to make a Doom utility :P

Pretty nice to see someone finally taking up the task of producing a more modern WAD editor. Keep going.

This looks pretty neat. I can't wait for you to release it.

A key personal requirement for a good WAD tool is the possibility to define the index and the color used for transparency in the palette, when importing and exporting. I don't use cyan and I don't use index 247 (I use 255 and its corresponding reddish-brown DOOM palette color).

Another important feature is the ability to open and edit supported lumps as single files, or in raw format if they aren't specifically identified, while not part of a WAD. While some dependent ones like TEXTURE1 and map lumps are almost pointless to edit this way, many others, like graphics in the DOOM format, music, demos or text, work fine as standalone files.

Finally, new and advanced stuff is cool, but make sure all vanilla functionality is supported properly and without undue interference from other stuff.

myk said:

A key personal requirement for a good WAD tool is the possibility to define the index and the color used for transparency in the palette, when importing and exporting. I don't use cyan and I don't use index 247 (I use 255 and its corresponding reddish-brown DOOM palette color).

I agree. This has already been implemented and was an early requirement of mine.

myk said:

Another important feature is the ability to open and edit supported lumps as single files

Do you mean to be able to edit images within the editor? I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean.

It's another small feature that can be used a lot. Most tools give the option to extract the TITLEPIC lump, for example, as raw data (a graphic in the DOOM format with its X/Y alignment and all) instead of BMP, GIF or PNG, to titlepic.lmp or the like. This feature would, in addition, let you open such an already-extracted lump without it needing to be part of a WAD. What you can do to such a lump would depend on the same features and functions that already let you edit the lumps in a WAD, if any. You can see the feature in XWE. I'm not sure if any other tools have implemented it.

hobomaster22 said:

Had no clue! Like I said, I originally was developing it personally and I figured since I've made into a usable app I might as well go all the way and get some input from the community.

Well, not to hijack your topic, but if you want to check it out, it has a site here. Still beta, many things unfinished, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend using the latest SVN builds for actual use at the moment.

Updated main post.

Nice clean interface.

Impressive progress.

Very impressive. I lack your talent.

DO WANT!

Cool - keep going.