Is there a good way to organize your Doom folder?

[azerty]

Don't do it like I do and you should be fine :)

[DoomTheRobot]

I'm surprised nobody here uses "hidden folders" like I do.

Figured I'd share.

 

Here's my "DOOM" folder:

 

Nothing out of the ordinary. But where are the folders for all the sourceports? Well now I gotta turn on "Hidden Items" in explorer and...

 

 

Everything is neatly tucked away and easily accessible directly from the root folder.

The only folders that aren't here are the ones for SLADE and UDB, but they're in another folder called "Tools" where other stuff is stored.

If I wanted to mess with one of the sourceports in some way that can only be done by going inside their folders (like if I wanted to update them or mess with the config files), I can always just "right click -> open file location"

 

For any other sourceport that does not have a shortcut I can launch them with Doom Explorer.

Basically, if I want to play a single wad (a mapset maybe) I can easily just drag and drop the wad onto the shortcut and it'll work.

Any other advanced configuration where I want to load a bunch of wads is done using Doom Explorer.

 

My "WADS" folder is organized like this:

 

 

Any wad(s) that typically has a text file describing what it is generally just goes in there.

I think the folders "My WADS", "No TXTs", "Resources" and "Wadseeker WADS" are obvious as to what they contain.

 

But yeah, overall I try to keep sub folders minimal.

Doom Explorer is also really useful for saving configurations, if so needed.

[gwain]

desktop

   |

doom

   |

pwads ports midi my-wad iwads specific

 

I use multiple ports and have midis you can just do whatever

[Fluuschoen]

On 3/24/2022 at 1:45 AM, Spineapple tea said:

Graphic design is my passion.

That's obvious from your profile picture, dood.

[Zirtonic]

Getting a bit nervous that I seem to be the only person throwing everything into their Steam directories. I just put WADs into the appropriate game directory and edit the DSDA .cfg file as needed. Sort by file type and all WADs are automatically alphabetized and grouped together.

 

It probably helps that I do zero mapping or modding so less things to deal with overall.

[Fluuschoen]

5 minutes ago, Zirtonic said:

Getting a bit nervous that I seem to be the only person throwing everything into their Steam directories. I just put WADs into the appropriate game directory and edit the DSDA .cfg file as needed. Sort by file type and all WADs are automatically alphabetized and grouped together.

 

It probably helps that I do zero mapping or modding so less things to deal with overall.

I'm actually surprised that someone uses Steam-related anything (for classic Doom) on this website.

[FEZ_GG]

My directory could use a bit of organizing, such as putting Slade, ZDL, Doom Launcher and Doom Builder into a Utilities folder as others have done.  I don't like having a single folder for all WAD files, as they have all sorts of purposes.  I like to separate them by their use, such as having one folder for mappack WADs and another for music WADs.  I also distinguished between total conversion mods(Russian Overkill) and slight alterations(DamNums, Target Spy), and have separate files for them.  I'm also considering making another folder for HUDs, as I use a fair amount, and having a folder for them would be nice.

I also have a separate Config folder for GZDoom, as I like to use different config files for different mappacks for the sake of convenience.  As others mentioned, I use Doom Launcher for starting up my games, and constantly re-adding the same mods for each instance of a WAD can be tedious.  Instead I create a Config file for a certain mod or compatibility, add the mods I want to use in the file's Autoload section, and paste the filepath into Doom Launcher's parameters section.  I can't add all mods into Autoload due to compatibility issues between them(Plutonia-NP being autoloaded can overwrite text in mods loaded afterwards) but it's still very convenient.

[Zilch]

On 3/23/2022 at 5:31 AM, Doomkid said:

 

Doomkid, still using Windows 7?  Nice!

[Loud Silence]

E:\games\Eternity Engine\WADS\txt

"E:\" is external HDD, "WADS" contains WADs obviously and is set in environment variables, "txt" contains text files that came with WADs.

[Zirtonic]

22 hours ago, Fluuschoen said:

I'm actually surprised that someone uses Steam-related anything (for classic Doom) on this website.

 

I launch every other game I own through Steam so it made sense to route DooM through it as well. Plus I get to keep track of my hours which I like.

 

It "prevents" (makes it a giant hassle) me from juggling sourceports like many people do but I really only like how PrBoom feels anyway so it's a non-factor.

[Fluuschoen]

Hmmm...I think I'm gonna hit you with some OCD fuckery. : D

There's a big "DOOM" folder in the secondary SSD's "Games" folder. It has to be on a different physical drive than the OS is, so I won't have to struggle, if OS (or the main drive itself) just dies for some reason or I'd like to set up a clean installment after formatting C:\. It's better to have it elsewhere, and it has to be on an SSD for quicker loads/file manipulation etc.



Here, I organize the files in a pretty straightforward manner. In the root there are Wadazines and text files containing important technical stuff related to source ports and the list of the finished/ongoing wads. Demos contains the demos of my YouTube stuff and some WR demos I study for my little projects. Screenshots is self-explanatory, the only thing worth mentioning is that I started to categorize the screenshots from different wads into subfolders (usually taking hundreds per wad). Editors have the different editors, texture packs, my fuckarounds in said editors and the unused assets from Doom by John Romero.



Mods is self-explanatory, so as Music Packs.



Source ports has all the ports I tried or use. There are clear distinction between different versions, because that makes life (backtracking/comparing) much easier, and I tend to not delete anything, because they are very small in size.



Tc has the partial and total conversions. I like to seperate them from pure wads and mods.



Tools has the useful utilities like launchers, Crispy split times and the inevitable MarkC accelfix for Windows.



Videos has the the video files I uploaded to YouTube, and finally, there's WADS. The iwads are in its root, the multiplayer wads and wads that are under beta testing (or have been beta tested) are in seperate folders than 'plain' pwads. For trasparency, I put every pwad in its own folder.

This whole stuff has an 1:1 safety backup on one of my HDDs. You never know...



The final touch is a "DOOM" folder on my desktop which only contains shortcuts to different source ports and wads/maps/settings/demo playback, and seperate shortcuts for my source ports and WADS folder on the secondary SSD for quick access.

Edited March 31, 2022 by Fluuschoen

[BedrockCastle]

I have two main folders: Source ports and mods. The mods folder has all my WADs and PK3s. The source ports folder has... low-quality JPEGs of cheddar cheese. In the source ports folder, I have more folders for each port I use. I have a couple extra folders, the first containing my Doom WAD-making software, and the second containing all that awesome beta content that John Romero released.

[talond66]

Dear @Shikamaze,

 

first, I would like to welcome you as a new fellow and hope your first few months in our community have been a successful and positive time. Thank you for your contribution and the numerous replies from the community, which I enjoyed reading and would like to describe my "solution" today.

 

In the beginning I had a simple folder and file structure that satisfied my needs, but over the years the number of files and the structure became more and more confusing:

 

"Welcome to your own created hell of documentation, may you find what you seek or wander aimlessly for all eternity..."

 

That was the voice in my head as I opened my directory of 1,749 files -- typically unsorted -- including duplicates, multiple versions of releases, and a few other files better left untouched.

 

I swore to the voice in my head, "I'll clean up this mess" -- and started right away.

 

I didn't want to reinvent the wheel and use already existing and firmly established rules and structures -- thanks to my job, dealing with a lot of data and files, and preparing and organizing them in such a way that they correspond to a uniform structure and are easy to find, simplified my work tremendously.

 

1. The directory structure of my archive

 

I just wanted to organize all my PWADs and modifications since my IWADs are in the Steam Library so I don't have to organize them here.

 

My directory structure looks familiar to some of you:

 

talond@desktop:~/doom-classic_archive$ tree --charset=ASCII -d -n --sort=name

~/doom-classic_archive
|-- combos
|-- deathmatch
|   |-- deathtag
|   |-- doombot
|   `-- skulltag
|-- docs
|   |-- faqs
|   |-- misc
|   `-- multiplayer
|-- graphics
|-- idstuff
|   |-- doom
|   |   `-- win95
|   |-- doom2
|   |-- heretic
|   |-- hexen
|   `-- wolf3d
|-- levels
|   |-- doom
|   |   |-- deathmatch
|   |   |-- megawads
|   |   `-- ports
|   |       `-- megawads
|   |-- doom2
|   |   |-- deathmatch
|   |   |   |-- megawads
|   |   |   `-- ports
|   |   |       `-- megawads
|   |   |-- megawads
|   |   `-- ports
|   |       `-- megawads
|   |-- doom64
|   |   `-- megawads
|   |-- hacx
|   |-- heretic
|   |   |-- deathmatch
|   |   |-- megawads
|   |   `-- ports
|   |-- hexen
|   |   |-- deathmatch
|   |   |-- megawads
|   |   `-- ports
|   `-- strife
|-- music
|-- skins
|-- sounds
|-- themes
|   |-- chex
|   |-- consoles
|   |   |-- doom-ce
|   |   |-- doomgba-dlta
|   |   `-- resurrec-32x
|   |-- hacx
|   |-- harm
|   |-- hedon
|   |-- mm8bdm
|   |-- square
|   |-- teamtnt
|   |   |-- daedalus
|   |   |-- eternal
|   |   `-- icarus
|   `-- wool
`-- utils
    |-- exe_edit
    |   `-- patches
    |-- frontends
    `-- wad_tools

 

As a base, I use the directory structure and the file naming scheme of the /idgames archive, founded in 1994, which is a host for all kinds of Doom engine PWADs and modifications.

 

Currently, I'm not using a database frontend like DoomLauncher by @hobomaster22, but I appreciate it a lot since I have used it in the past to validate all my files.

 

Each PWAD from the /idgames Archive contains a text file as its description, so I use a simple command to find specific PWADs and mods. As an example, I'm searching for everything I have with the "way id did":

 

talond@desktop:~/doom-classic_archive$ for file in $(find . -iname "*.zip"); do zipgrep -i "way id did" $file && echo $file; done

talond@desktop:~/doom-classic_archive$ 

DTWID.txt:Title                   : Doom the Way id Did
DTWID.txt:                          recreate Doom the Way id Did."
./levels/doom/megawads/dtwid.zip

DTWID-LE.txt:Title                   : Doom the Way id Did - The Lost Episodes
DTWID-LE.txt:                          idea of Doom the Way Id Did, three sets of
./levels/doom/ports/megawads/dtwid-le.zip

UDTWiD.txt:Title                   : Ultimate Doom The Way id Did
./levels/doom/udtwid.zip

D2TWID.txt:Title                   : Doom 2 the Way id Did
D2TWID.txt:Description             : Doom II The Way id Did is the long awaited sequel
D2TWID.txt:                          to 2011's Doom The Way id Did. It comprises 32
./levels/doom2/megawads/d2twid.zip

zone300.txt:                        way id did that I decided to complete and
./levels/doom2/megawads/zone300.zip

 

2. The directory structure of my game

 

All my source-ports (Chocolate Doom, LZDoom) are installed by default, so I don't need to include them here. As a launcher, I use the ZDoom WAD Launcher (ZDL) by @Lcferrum .

 

talond@desktop:~/doom-classic$ tree --charset=ASCII -d -n --sort=name

~/doom-classic
|-- iwad (includes IWAD shortcuts to every IWAD file within the Steam Library)
|-- launcher
|   `-- zdl
|-- mod
|   |-- d4v
|   |-- nf-fullsc-sb
|   |-- nashg
|   |-- nashg-cblood
|   |-- rk-voxels
|   `-- vn-essence
`-- pwad
    |-- doom
    |-- doom2
    `-- heretic

 

Would be cool to learn "the way id organized it" from the experts and I am happy about your feedback and more stories.

 

Best regards