How you manage your wad collection

[Kronecker–Capelli]

How you manage your wad collection in a way like "I beat this wad and its good" "I beat it, but its meh" "it looks good, but it only works in zdoom 2.15", etc?
Or, how you group/mark your wads to know what you want to do with them, beat, delete, replay, dose not want to see again?

[BoxY]

I don't really organise them in any detail, I just throw them all randomly in the folder of whatever source port I'm using for them and hope to god I remember what all the file names mean. The original zips I keep in an archives subfolder to keep the clutter from getting out of hand and so I can read the txts if needed. If I dislike a wad or feel like there's no replay value in it then I just delete it immediately since there's almost no chance I'm going to wake up one day and suddenly feel like playing it.

[DynamiteKaitorn]

If I like it, it stays. If I hate it, it goes into the recycling bin. If it's average, bin as well since I don't wanna clutter up my PC with good but not brilliant wads/pk3's.

[SirJuicyLemon]

Desktop

Create New Folder

"WADs"

Throw any WADs I download in there

[Kore]

No need for me to do that. I delete them after I'm done with them.

[Arbys550]

I just keep them all in a separate folder. Inside that folder I have 2 subfolders: "created" and "downloaded." I use a batch file to load them with the source port.

[famicommander]

I mostly play the official wads so it's not that hard.

 

Ultimate Doom, Sigil, Master Levels, No Rest for the Living, TNT, Plutonia, the individual Romero maps, and then all the console exclusive maps (the Jag/PS1 family in one wad, Sewers and Betray separately). I just keep them all in a folder and I click the one I want, at which point a GZDoom prompt asks me which main wad to load it with.

[D4NUK1]

Mostly in 2 type of folders

PWADS for levels that i download.
In the folder i make folder with the type of map(Megawad, small mapset, slaugher,etc)


Gameplay Mods for well, gameplay mods

 

[BigBoy91]

I do it like this. Using BGComp.wad as an example.

 

Doom Stuff -> WADs -> Base Ganymede - Complete -> BGComp.wad

[phoo]

In my case, I don't know if I would use the term 'manage'. I just sort of dump all the wads and other associated files I download into a folder called "wadsAndMods". It's an unholy mess; kind of like the digital equivalent of hoarding. As for doom projects I work on, I tend to keep them much more organized.

Edited March 18, 2020 by phoo

[Gez]

Got a "wads" folder, then inside there are one folder per IWAD (so Wads\Doom, Wads\Doom2, Wads\TNT, Wads\Heretic, Wads\Strife, etc.), then there's also Wads\IWAD that serves as dumping ground for, you guessed it, the various IWADs, Wads\Resources for resources (with subdirectories for music, textures, sprites), Wads\Test for test stuff, and Wads\Custom for TCs and everything that I can't fit anywhere else.

[cambreaKer]

i just dump every wad i download into my doom directory, it's a mess.

[phoo]

2 minutes ago, cambreaKer said:

i just dump every wad i download into my doom directory, it's a mess.

Ah, another like-minded individual.

[Matias]

i have a folder called "doom mods" and it's where everything goes in zip, wad, pk3 or as folders. Rar files i delete since those need to be unpacked to work. 

Original iwads stay in their "gog games" folder. Sourceports also go into the "doom mods" folder for now
Then i just use ZDL to launch everything so i don't have to look at the wad folder any more than i have to and can easily switch between sourceports.

[The_SloVinator]

I don't really keep wads on my PC after I'm done with them but what I actually do is keep a track record of wads beaten, my comments about them & when I beat them.

[Kronecker–Capelli]

Just now, The_SloVinator said:

I don't really keep wads on my PC after I'm done with them but what I actually do is keep a track record of wads beaten, my comments about them & when I beat them.

In excel table???

[The_SloVinator]

1 hour ago, Kronecker–Capelli said:

In excel table???

That's right. :)

[CasualScrub]

I have a folder on my desktop for Doom and all the different mods and mapsets. There's a lot of subfolders, and in the mapsets folder there are folders for both Doom 1 and Doom 2, and in those folders for level wads, megawads, conversions, etc., and in each of those folders for each wad.

 

It's less complicated than it sounds, just very intricately organized.

[CyberDreams]

I have a Doom folder on my C: drive. Than i have a folder for "IWADS" (also includes Heretic/Hexen), than another one for "PWADS". Than i have one for "Mods". In the PWADS one i have them organized by years, not by Doom or Doom II although i should do that tbh.

 

I also have a folder for "Cacowards winners/runners up" and than another folder for the old "DW Top 100 WADS of All Time". Finally i have another folder for random stuff like Doombuilder, Slade, ZDL, Sourceports ect. So i suppose it's pretty organized (OCD is a bitch lol).

[MFG38]

This is what my PWAD folder currently looks like:

 

 

PWADs that consist of multiple files go into their own subfolders. The "Gameplay Mods" and "Misc Mini-Mods" folders should be self-explanatory. Everything else is in the root folder.

[Tony_Danza_the_boss]

Usually delete a wad after playing it, even if it's amazing. I've played through Pirate Doom at least 3 times now but have always just re downloaded something if i ever felt the urge to replay it.

[Martin Howe]

A strict directory hierarchy, a well-structured filesystem, self-compiled engines from their SVN/GIT repos and a game file and play management console I wrote in bash - probably the biggest set of shell scripts I've ever written :)

[Dingir]

I just dump all wads in a directory (seems there are like 580 currently), the other stuff I try to keep in a somewhat tidy condition.  From time to time I'll archive my doom directory in order to have something to do for my retirement.  ;)

[Doomkid]

You people who just... callously murder innocent pwads once you’ve used them for all they’re worth make me sick! Some cold-blooded MFers in this world, I tell ya..

 

I run a shelter for abused pwads and pk3’s out of an old 80 gig hard drive in the backwoods of California. You might know it as doomshack.org. Some may call it “disorganised”, or even “a big fucking pile of random wads with no rhyme or reason”, but we here at the doomshack prefer to think of the wads and mods as simply being desegregated. Modern pk3s roam free alongside 1994 pwads in pure harmony. Safe from the clutches of the wad-deleters of the world..

 

 

(lol)

[Senor500]

Agreed, people that murder their wads shouldn't be let roaming free.

[-TDRR-]

Drop everything in the same sourceport folder without any of the associated .txt files, never ever delete any of the wads, like REAL (cave)men do!

[HorrorMovieRei]

Nothing too fancy.

• Cosmetic - For stuff that changes the look of the game but doesn't include dehacked, decorate, Zscript, ACS or any form of scripting that might break previous compatibility with saved games
• Doomseeker - Dumping ground for anything Doomseeker catches on the rare occasions I play Zandronum
• Gameplay - Anything that changes gameplay but doesn't have any maps attached to it. Or even stuff that doesn't change Gemeplay but has complex scripts attached to it (Nashgore for example)
• HUDs - Custom HUDs
• Maps - Single maps, Megawads, Mappacks, anything that is only maps and whatever relevant dehacked patch needed for them
• Oblige - Stuff I generate with Oblige
• TC - Total Conversions. Basically a fusion of Gameplay and Map wads, it's anything for me that comes with it's own set of maps and also adds new Gameplay elements. Doesn't matter if the graphics are still vanilla or not. The point is that it can't be loaded with Gameplay mods or regular maps.

[seed]

Download if it attracts me, play it, then add it to the list of completed wads and move on.

 

If I end up using a HUD mod or something, I add it to a .zip with "essential wads", and continue using it with compatible mods.

[Doom_Dude]

If I don't care for a wad it gets nuked afterwards.

 

The stuff I download and haven't played is stuck in a 'to play' kinda folder.

 

Sometimes I'll downgrab something using Doom Launcher and play it and... that can get messy, because I'll have stuff half played, forgotten and I can't remember what the hell I was or wasn't playing. Then it doesn't get into where I want to keep it.

 

My main folder where I keep my wads, is all sorted by authors names. I mostly play SP maps so this is a cross section of my SP folder. There's a lot of authors I have yet to add to this folder and anything that's heading here is stuck in a 'sort me' kinda folder. I don't spend much time sorting this stuff since when I'm in a doom mood, I'm usually mucking about in Doom Builder. Anyhow, that's how I like it. I have a separate folder for Megawads...

 

[snapshot]

It's still sitting on my hard drive: 1 main folder for all Doom content, 1 sub-folder inside for each of the ports I use the most (GZDoom, Zandronum, ZDaemon) and 1 sub-folder for all the wads simply called WADs, and 1 sub-folder for Doom Explorer which I use to easily switch between them and have separate configs for all ports and games, mods, and to make it easy to browse servers for both Zandronum and ZDaemon from 1 window.

 

I've set Doom Explorer up to auto download wads directly to the WADs folder aswell.