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Alex S.

Next Vanilla Doom Utility?

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I write various vanilla Doom-related utilities from time to time. Think DATER or WAD-Run as examples. Previously, whatever I made was the product of me having my own idea and going "That would be useful, I'm going to try to make that." Now, I'm looking for input as to what the community may like to see next. Here are my basic ground-rules:

 

  • Must be 100% pure DOS-compatible
  • Must be written in an equally dated language (Visual Basic, QuickBASIC, Assembly, C, etc)
  • Must be "period-accurate" to many of the older command-line utilities released in the 90s.
  • Must actually do something useful, that folks would find a need for in their vanilla Doom-playing time
  • Serious ideas only, I'm looking for actual thought and collaboration here. (Do not ask for yet another fireworks screen saver)

 

Curious if there are any interesting suggestions that may come from this, so hit me up and let me know what you'd think is cool to make.

 

Side-note; Historically, my releases have not been open-source. I'm willing to change that for this project, so whatever product comes from this exercise would be released with the original source code and my express permission to do with it as anyone would like. (aka foss hippie social compatibility layer)

 

Looking forward to your responses!

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I don't know how feasible it would be, but maybe a dehacked tool equivalent for Heretic/ Hexen? They severely lack any potent tools.

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26 minutes ago, rzh said:

I don't know how feasible it would be, but maybe a dehacked tool equivalent for Heretic/ Hexen? They severely lack any potent tools.

It would be definitely feasible, and I honestly love Heretic / HeXen so dearly! That would be a pretty large undertaking. Do you know of any good reference material that would list the hex offsets of each parameter in the EXE? Also, for Heretic, I'd want to standardize the tool so that it requires and only works with engine version 1.3, or 1.1 for the case of HeXen - I only suggest standardizing on a particular version since the offsets may be dissimilar from one release to another. My thought process would be to use the last-known patch version and simply require that your game be 100% up-to-date in order for such a tool to work. Thoughts?

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Doom network 'drivers' that support a mix of ARCNet, IPX, Netbeui, TCP/IP, Token Ring, parallel port, serial port all combined. You should be able to play a game with one computer hooked up via parallell, another linked via IPX, which sends packets to a fourth computer via ARCNet. You should be able to have say 6 machines hooked up and be able to play a game from any up to 4 of these, or 8 in the case of Hexen.

Such a utility already exists, but only for serial. It would have been great with a more generic design that allowed you to mix and match more freely.

A modular design with 'drivers' inside the sytem for the various protocols. You could start by adding serial and parallel, then a driver for ipx, etc.

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On 6/27/2022 at 5:17 PM, Alex S. said:

Do you know of any good reference material that would list the hex offsets of each parameter in the EXE? Also, for Heretic, I'd want to standardize the tool so that it requires and only works with engine version 1.3, or 1.1 for the case of HeXen - I only suggest standardizing on a particular version since the offsets may be dissimilar from one release to another. My thought process would be to use the last-known patch version and simply require that your game be 100% up-to-date in order for such a tool to work. Thoughts?

Unfortunately, I have no reference material but I agree that the tools should be for the latest versions only.

IIRC barely any source ports even bother with unpatched Heretic/ Hexen and it's almost impossible to find an unpatched version nowadays through legal means.

There was a reverse engineering effort for Hexen (posted on this very site) but it's more of a curiosity/ novelty than anything else.

Since this is for a dehacked equivalent I doubt anyone will release WADs using these tools while also asking players to purposefully go out of their way to find an unpatched IWAD just to play their stuff, considering how much smaller the content available for Raven's games is.

I don't even know if there are any WADs for Doom that ask for / do not work with v 1.9, but feel free to correct me.

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23 minutes ago, rzh said:

do not work with v 1.9, but feel free to correct me.

The Sky May Be has a dehacked patch that only works with 1.2. There's a few other wads that have oddities that only 100% work in earlier engine versions. 

 

On topic, love the thread friend! I don't know of much I'd want to add to vanilla Doom, but if I have any ideas they be here. 

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Oh! An easy way to edit Reject tables perhaps. Instead of having to mess with them in Slade or whatever, it'd be a recreation of your level on screen, you click one, and see which ones monsters from that sector can see into using green and red.

Left clicking would select a sector and right clicking would swap the sector currently hovered over from "yea i can see" to "nah im blind" and vice versa. It would be much easier to make fun Reject table shenanigans that way.

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Hah, this is my right kind of topic!

  • A build of DeHacked 3.1 with DEHEXTRA support built in.
  • A Colormap editor. Yes, we have Inkworks and Mixmaps, but i am talking an editor that allows a preview of your colormap as how it would appear on a level. In fact: An easier way to achieve Vanilla colored lighting. This is likely improbable, but passing it on!
  • A standalone bot. Many attempts have been made using DeHacked and a node table, but a standalone DOS equivalent does not exist.
  • Not DOS, but a GUI to treat Doom for DOSBox more as a port, similar to how VanillaDM does things for multiplayer dooming.
  • ACS gui editor and compiler. Yes, we have ACC, but an editor dedicated to ACS with compiler built-in..
  • A standalone executable maker. We already have VULD to apply DeHacked patches to a DoomHack executable, but with Gamesrc-recreation, it would be ought to make it more easier to create a standalone executable.
    • On that note: IWAD creator. It should be easeir to make games standalone, so a minimal IWAD (like Miniwad) but with an editor on top to make standalone games for DOS better possible)

 

 

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2 hours ago, forgettable pyromaniac said:

Oh! An easy way to edit Reject tables perhaps. Instead of having to mess with them in Slade or whatever, it'd be a recreation of your level on screen, you click one, and see which ones monsters from that sector can see into using green and red.

Left clicking would select a sector and right clicking would swap the sector currently hovered over from "yea i can see" to "nah im blind" and vice versa. It would be much easier to make fun Reject table shenanigans that way.

You can do stuff like that with .rej files with RMB, ZokumBSP and Zennode. You don't have to use Slade.

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35 minutes ago, zokum said:

You can do stuff like that with .rej files with RMB, ZokumBSP and Zennode. You don't have to use Slade.

no clue what literally any of those are, heck.

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Just now, forgettable pyromaniac said:

no clue what literally any of those are, heck.

Reject tables and node builders.

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20 minutes ago, forgettable pyromaniac said:

no clue what literally any of those are, heck.

You're basically asking him to create a graphic version frontend to a utility that already exists. RMB and Zennode are classic doom utilities from 1994-1995. I think RMB was used in a map in The Ultimate Doom, John Anderson's e4m7. It would be better to have the map editor generate .rej files instead of a separate util.

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1 hour ago, zokum said:

You're basically asking him to create a graphic version frontend to a utility that already exists. RMB and Zennode are classic doom utilities from 1994-1995. I think RMB was used in a map in The Ultimate Doom, John Anderson's e4m7. It would be better to have the map editor generate .rej files instead of a separate util.

i mean... yeah. A graphical frontend would help it out a lot. I don't mean make the reject table from scratch, just edit already existing ones to help with making some more gimmicky encounters.

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Because some mod closed the thread, I'd like to post this here so it isn't completely lost forever. 

 

This is idManager!: the end-all beat-all frontend for idtech1 games.

 

Due to this being based on the original DeathManager! code which isn't open source due to Bethesda preventing Romero from releasing any more development content, we can't release the source code publicly. But if you have feedback on what could be improved (within reason of course), feel free to share!

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On 6/28/2022 at 1:48 AM, rzh said:

I don't know how feasible it would be, but maybe a dehacked tool equivalent for Heretic/ Hexen? They severely lack any potent tools.

O my god YES!. That will be like a godsend. TBH HHE is kinda optimal tool, but there is too much hustle to get into it.

The dream is: Making Boom equivalent Source port for heretic with extended list of actions\functions + HHE Support where you can finally change ie Add\Delete actions to frames. Im pretty sure this will revive heretic to the extend.

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