kmetal 2018

[kdoom]

Ok, I started making a map. No screenies yet, sorry. I'll use this thread soon to show some screenies of what comes out of an old mans mind. So far I'm humbled by the effort it takes to get back into this. I used to be so fast, now I'm searching threads trying to remember all this stuff!

 

Anyway, I need a good texture pack, hopefully tech-ish. Any good suggestions? I cannot seem to get very inspired with the old doom2 textures.

[Linguica]

6 minutes ago, kdoom said:

Anyway, I need a good texture pack, hopefully tech-ish. Any good suggestions?

 

There's cc4-tex of course, but here's some more: https://www.doomworld.com/afterglow/textures/

[kdoom]

Thanks Ling! Is afterglow still active?

[ukiro]

Derek's around! As am I. I have a texture pack brewing, perhaps not as much tech as one would want quite yet, but getting there. PM me if you want in.

[Chris Hansen]

Looking forward to see what you can come up with in 2018, Kurt! Welcome back :)

 

Besides Afterglow's excellent page, there's also some available here: https://realm667.com/index.php/en/texture-stock-mainmenu-152-97360/doom-style-mainmenu-153-87237

[kdoom]

Hey ukiro ( Ola?? ) and Chris glad to see so many names I remember. This is kind of fun coming back to this, and seeing the community thriving!

 

I settled for nb5texd2 texture wad, not a ton of stuff in it, but enough to make it interesting for me. I'll see if I can get the start area finished up and post a couple screenies this weekend....my god I am so slow at this. Took me about 20 minutes just figuring out how to get the custom flats in the wad LOL.

 

I'm using gzdoom for testing, and I might add in some of it's custom goodies down the road a bit...for now just building stuff, getting the hang of basic map structure and things again.

 

Before I get too far into this, is it cool to merge the texture wad into my map wad, as long as I provide credits for, and the texture wad text file in the end result?

[kdoom]

does anyone happen to have Wad Author WCF files for the source ports? I did some searches and came up empty. Sort of thinking this isn't a very popular editor, but I still want to use it.

[Chris Hansen]

Well, back when we were a lot younger, filesizes mattered and it wasn't popular to bloat them with extra stuff. Today, that isn't that big an issue. Not as long as you give credit where it's due.

 

I have zero experience with WadAuthor so I did a quick search on Google. Came across this page, maybe it can be of some help. But I'm guessing you've also seen it. I hope someone else can help you!

[kdoom]

Right thats what I thought too, a couple mb wad is nothing these days. And of course I'll give credits to the author.

 

I did find that page, and a wcf for zdoom, but I dont think it is anywhere close to up to date. Once upon a time, I would have just added the features I wanted to my wcf, but I'll have to dig around and see if I still have the notes on how to go about it. The current wcf for zdoom that I found is from 15 years ago...I really doubt it covers all the bases for using gzdoom. I really need to find my old backup cd's. I did convert the wad and iwad to hexen format, but some features aren't working when I test-run the map. If I remember correctly, I dont think the built-in compiler in wad author works with zdoom stuff. I'll get it all working eventually. I wish I had more time for this stuff, it's a lot of fun. 

[ukiro]

There’s a learning curve of course, but I’d strongly recommend taking a few hours to get up to speed on gzdoombuilder. (I used to be a wadauthor guy too.)

[Chris Hansen]

Agree with Ola. Your time is probably better spent getting to know gzdoombuilder. It's powerful, easy to use and a very stable. It'll also be a lot easier to get help for it as those old programs are hardly used by anyone these days. Personally, I'd never go back to buggy old DoomCAD 6.1! 😄

[kdoom]

I did get everything working now. Switching editors is a hard pill to swallow. Wad Author and I go back over 20 years. I'll at least take a look at it. I didn't like doom builder several years back, but maybe it's better now. 

[esselfortium]

If you’re looking to use modern ZDoom features, you’ll need to map in UDMF rather than Hexen format, and WadAuthor isn’t going to be able to handle UDMF because it’s an entirely new format. GZDoom Builder or SLADE are your best bets.

[Chris Hansen]

8 hours ago, kdoom said:

I did get everything working now. Switching editors is a hard pill to swallow. Wad Author and I go back over 20 years. I'll at least take a look at it. I didn't like doom builder several years back, but maybe it's better now. 

 

Good to hear that you got it to work! At least then we'll have someone on the boards with updated knowledge on this ancient relic 😉

 

I like your nostalgic approach to things as I'm sure we'll get a Kmap that reeks of the past! And that's a good thing btw in case you were wondering. But gzdoombuilder is still a massive upgrade which you really ought to give a serious try.

[boris]

I used to use WA, too. But even Doombuilder 1 was a massive upgrade to that, and the Doombuilder 2 family makes even it's predecessor look primitive.

[Catpho]

4 minutes ago, boris said:

I used to use WA, too. But even Doombuilder 1 was a massive upgrade to that, and the Doombuilder 2 family makes even it's predecessor look primitive.

And there's Doombuilder X

[pcorf]

12 hours ago, Chris Hansen said:

Agree with Ola. Your time is probably better spent getting to know gzdoombuilder. It's powerful, easy to use and a very stable. It'll also be a lot easier to get help for it as those old programs are hardly used by anyone these days. Personally, I'd never go back to buggy old DoomCAD 6.1! 😄

 

I also used Doomcad (5.1 and later 6.1) before DB was released. Once I switched to DB I have never looked back.

 

I still remember I edited the linedef and sector actions .cfg file of Doomcad to add Boom features / actions, etc.

[kdoom]

Ok, trying GZDoom Builder Bugfix R3018, but I get this at the startup...If these are not supposed to be where the person that created the compressed archive put them in the dir tree, can anyone tell me where to move them?

 

Could not load plugin "BuilderModes.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "AutomapMode.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "BuilderEffects.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "ColorPicker.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "CommentsPanel.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "NodesViewer.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "SoundPropagationMode.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "StairSectorBuilder.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "TagExplorer.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "TagRange.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "VisplaneExplorer.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

 

Also, knowing this is an old community, and everyone evolved with this editor....are there any tutorials? I'm sure I'll find my way, but a reference guide would be handy for the more complicated stuff.

[Vorpal]

Dunno about those dll errors, but for a doombuilder tutorial that will get you able to do 99% of all editing:

 

"S" for sector editing, "L" for linedef editing, "V" for vertex editing, "T" for thing editing

 

leftclick to select something, rightclick after selecting to edit its properties, or hold rightclick and drag to move it

rightclick a blank area to begin drawing linedefs as if you were in a paint program - if you overlap lines it should automatically split linedefs correctly.

rarely you may need to manually fix sector indexes, it will be obvious because a sector will show as having a black floor

[Chris Hansen]

All those .dll's it says shouldn't be in the plugins directory are present in my install of gzoombuilder... weird. Maybe you're missing some other files or the folder is read-only or something weird. Or maybe you didn't download all the necessary files... or...? I don't know, it shouldn't be that difficult to get running. On a related note, there's a guy on Youtube with a playlist where he covers all the basics and more on gzdoombuilder. In the first video he also shows how to download and install it. Maybe you can find some help there. Here's the link to his playlist.

[Szymanski]

Familiarise yourself with the 3D viewer ('Q') and the texture alignment hotkeys and you'll never go back, saves so much time.

[boris]

3 hours ago, kdoom said:

Ok, trying GZDoom Builder Bugfix R3018, but I get this at the startup...If these are not supposed to be where the person that created the compressed archive put them in the dir tree, can anyone tell me where to move them?

 

Could not load plugin "BuilderModes.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "AutomapMode.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "BuilderEffects.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "ColorPicker.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "CommentsPanel.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "NodesViewer.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "SoundPropagationMode.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "StairSectorBuilder.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "TagExplorer.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "TagRange.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Could not load plugin "VisplaneExplorer.dll", the DLL file could not be read. This file is not supposed to be in the Plugins subdirectory.

Those are plugins and supposed to be in the plugins directory. Did you copy R3018 over an existing installation? If so, double check that it actually overwrote all the files. GZDB-BF recently switched to 64bit, and that can't load the old 32bit DLLs and prints that error. Alternatively you can unzip the archive in a clean directory.

[kdoom]

Its a clean installation, no previous files. Currently, I cannot do a thing with it, it doesn't even want to display the grid, add sectors/lines, etc. Are there needed files from a different installation that I should have downloaded? I'm running 64 bit win10, and I'm certain my system is up to date.

 

I'm at a loss...is there a different installation I should have started with, and add this one to it?

[DMPhobos]

That's odd, any clean instalation should be ready to go. Recently i switched to win 64 bit win 10, and downloading GZDB Updater did the trick for myself. Despite the misleading name that it's just an updater it actually downloads the latest version of the editor

[boris]

9 minutes ago, kdoom said:

Its a clean installation, no previous files. Currently, I cannot do a thing with it, it doesn't even want to display the grid, add sectors/lines, etc. Are there needed files from a different installation that I should have downloaded? I'm running 64 bit win10, and I'm certain my system is up to date.

 

I'm at a loss...is there a different installation I should have started with, and add this one to it?

You can't do anything with it because it fails to load BuilderModes.dll, and that contains all the basic editing modes, like sectors mode, things mode etc. Try to not install it to C:\Program Files (if you did so), maybe something on your system is blocking the loading of DLLs. If that doesn't work I don't really know what the problem could be.

[kdoom]

I tried the updater, no go.

 

I extracted it to c:\Doom\builder, and I'm running as admin of course.

 

This is the version I grabbed...wrong? 

https://devbuilds.drdteam.org/gzdbbf/GZDoom_Builder_Bugfix-r3018-x64.7z

 

 

[boris]

That's the correct one. You could try the 32 bit version, maybe that works for you.

[kdoom]

Ok, for future reference, if anyone else has the same issue as I did. I deleted the whole directory, and ran the updater...BINGO!

 

Something MUST be wrong with that compressed version?

[kdoom]

wow...ok, no more wad author.

[kdoom]

Not finding info on this LITTLE issue. I have a 3d floor, can I not place a 2 sided texture on it as a hand rail? I'm thinking it'll have to be a second 3d floor for the rail?

 

https://imgur.com/a/tCQkYl8