How to turn IWAD into PWAD?

[Frognar101]

I was trying to use Slade for the first time last night, but I couldn’t figure out how to turn my doom 2 iwad into a pwad. Any help?

[Doomkid]

What exactly do you mean? If you want to edit your doom2.wad, make a backup, then edit a fresh copy and rename it.. Once it's modified it will no longer be recognized as an iwad. I'm not sure why you would want to make your doom2 wad a pwad though?

[pcorf]

Copy your doom2.wad, rename it as doom2b.wad for example. Open up Doom Builder and modify one of the maps (change a light level for example so you can save changes), when you save it it should revert to PWAD.

[Frognar101]

3 hours ago, Doomkid said:

What exactly do you mean? If you want to edit your doom2.wad, make a backup, then edit a fresh copy and rename it.. Once it's modified it will no longer be recognized as an iwad. I'm not sure why you would want to make your doom2 wad a pwad though?

Well I was looking it up last night and it said in order to make mods you have to have it as a pwad. But again, I’m new to all of this so I’m still learning 

[Archvile Hunter]

The mod itself should be a pwad. You load the pwad on top of doom2.wad, which is an iwad, there is no need to modify doom2.wad itself.

[Alper002]

To add on to this, the point of a PWAD is to replace content in the IWAD when loaded. Therefore, you only need your PWAD to contain the bare minimum, not everything the IWAD has with the difference of a few resources.

[Misty]

I wonder where you read that you need replace doom2.wad content? Just curious, drop the link. 

[3saster]

First off, as the others have mentioned, the iwads themselves should (almost) never be edited. If you want to make edits to the iwad, it is better to make a PWAD and load it on top of the iwad.

 

That being said, as a curiousity, there is a way to change a PWAD to an IWAD, and vice-versa. Open up the wad in a hex editor like HxD. The first byte in a PWAD is 0x50; in an IWAD it is 0x49. Simply change that byte to change if it's viewed as a PWAD/IWAD. Note that the only place where this actually makes a difference is in SLADE itself (it won't let you edit an IWAD, for good reason); any PWAD can be loaded as an IWAD, and vice-versa.

 

Edited September 10, 2019 by 3saster

[MadGuy]

Simple, open the wad with a hex editor (notepad++ is good too) and change the 'I' in the beginning to 'P'

[Pegleg]

@Frognar101

 

I think you misunderstood what you read. Like Alper002 said, your pwad ("patch wad") should be just the new map or maps that you made. If you look at the command line (in PrBoom+, for example), the command to load the file is

 

prboom-plus -iwad doom2.wad -file yourpwad.wad
 

Meaning that the port loads the iwad first, followed by loading your pwad. The pwad replaces whatever data was in that spot in the iwad, hence the "patch" terminology. So if you made a replacement for Map 01, then your Map 01 would replace Entryway when you started to play. Similarly, if you made Maps 5 - 14, your pwad would replace the original Maps 5 - 14, with the rest of the maps being the original Doom 2 maps.

 

It's a simple mistake, but you absolutely don't need to have the unedited iwad levels in your mapset. Besides, you really shouldn't have them in there anyway.

[Frognar101]

43 minutes ago, Pegleg said:

@Frognar101

 

I think you misunderstood what you read. Like Alper002 said, your pwad ("patch wad") should be just the new map or maps that you made. If you look at the command line (in PrBoom+, for example), the command to load the file is

 

prboom-plus -iwad doom2.wad -file yourpwad.wad
 

Meaning that the port loads the iwad first, followed by loading your pwad. The pwad replaces whatever data was in that spot in the iwad, hence the "patch" terminology. So if you made a replacement for Map 01, then your Map 01 would replace Entryway when you started to play. Similarly, if you made Maps 5 - 14, your pwad would replace the original Maps 5 - 14, with the rest of the maps being the original Doom 2 maps.

 

It's a simple mistake, but you absolutely don't need to have the unedited iwad levels in your mapset. Besides, you really shouldn't have them in there anyway.

Oh okay that makes more sense. Do you know of any video tutorials that can take me through the steps of doing this?

[Gokuma]

Start a new wad file in Slade.   With that open, go and open the iwad.  Select ALL the resources.   Copy.   Paste in new wad.   Save new wad.

[Doomkid]

If you are trying to make a new level, the Doom Builder programs will simply generate a new wad or you (usually called map01.wad) in which you can start building a level.

 

If you want to make a weapon mod or monster mod, you'll make a new wad file in SLADE, then you'll add new sprites and sounds into that wad, and create either a DeHackEd lump or Decorate lump to make your modifications.

 

Hopefully these video tutorials will be some help: