DOS Front-end launcher with DeHackEd support?

[OpenRift]

So, in my quest to streamline my DOS Dooming experience as much as possible, I've decided to take another crack at finding a good WAD launcher for vanilla. Preferably one with a UI, as that feels more like a real frontend. Doom-It 5.9, A Superior Front End, and D!Zone 2.0 beta all cut it super close, but they all have their own problems that make them a no-go for me. Doom-It 5.9 can't specify hacked exes, Superior Front End just gives errors when trying to load patches, and D!Zone 2.0 also has issues loading patches, not to mention it's unstable as hell.

 

So, I guess I should just put down the things I'm looking for in a frontend. 

• graphical interface
• dehacked support
• show WADs in a list for selection
• can specify vanilla/hacked exes
• ...actually works

 

If any of you know of a launcher that fits this description, be sure to share

[Doomkid]

It sounds like VULD will kinda-sorta-mostly be what you want. Personally, other than some testing when it was still brand new, the main thing I use it for is the included DEHPICK which makes applying DeHackEd patches about 99 times faster:

 

1) Pop these files: https://doomshack.org/uploads/DeHackEd_2020.zip in your clean Doom2 directory alongside whatever wads and dehs you want to play

 

2) Run DEHMAKE.BAT, pick the .deh you want to be applied to DOOM2.EXE. For example if you wanted to apply HELLO.DEH, this would convert it to HELLO.EXE

 

3) You then just type "hello.exe -file example.wad" to run it

 

It's so, so much faster than manually loading up DEHACKED.EXE and applying patches by hand. For this reason having wads and dehs in a subdirectory is my recommendation. Just copy whatever wad and deh you want to to play in that moment to your main dir, use dehmake to patch it in a flash, and load as normal.

 

If you have loads of wads and dehs, using the DIR command "dir > listmyfolder.txt" will output a textfile with the full contents which can be easily referenced. A GUI for DOS that automates this process even further would be swell, but I think the majority of people looking for something that easy are probably going to flock to GZDoom, or Chocolate if they still care about compatibility stuff.

dehpick.zip

[OpenRift]

12 hours ago, Doomkid said:

It sounds like VULD will kinda-sorta-mostly be what you want. Personally, other than some testing when it was still brand new, the main thing I use it for is the included DEHPICK which makes applying DeHackEd patches about 99 times faster:

 

1) Pop these files: dehpick.zip in your clean Doom2 directory alongside whatever wads and dehs you want to play

2) Run DEHMAKE.BAT, pick the .deh you want to be applied to DOOM2.EXE. For example if you wanted to apply HELLO.DEH, this would convert it to HELLO.EXE

3) You then just type "hello.exe -file example.wad" to run it

 

It's so, so much faster than manually loading up DEHACKED.EXE and applying patches by hand. For this reason having wads and dehs in a subdirectory is my recommendation. Just copy whatever wad and deh you want to to play in that moment to your main dir, use dehmake to patch it in a flash, and load as normal.

 

If you have loads of wads and dehs, using the DIR command "dir > listmyfolder.txt" will output a textfile with the full contents which can be easily referenced. A GUI for DOS that automates this process even further would be swell, but I think the majority of people looking for something that easy are probably going to flock to GZDoom, or Chocolate if they still care about compatibility stuff.

I appreciate the suggestion, but I feel like at that point I'd be better off making my own bat files. That has worked out rather well for me tho, as you can load the patch and the WAD from a single file like so:

cd ..
dehacked.exe -reload -load .\wads\patch.deh
doomhack.exe -file .\wads\pwad.wad

This has worked very well for me so far, but I wanted to see if there was a more fluid and intuitive way to do this through some sort of UI because I eventually wanted to make a user-friendly DOS Doom pack for GOG installs, like I've done for Quake. 

[OpenRift]

On a semi-unrelated note, does anyone know where I can find a registered copy of DOOM-IT? I know the version included with the Master Levels (5.9c) technically is, but I can't seem to use any of the upgrade patches on /idgames to update it. Apparently the later versions do have dehacked support but I'm not completely sure how advanced it is.