Vanilla mapping; Custom sprites?

[Contmotore]

Back in the 90's I started mapping in DEU, but never really got to finish something. I was getting a lot of glitches(not sure what they're called, but was able to look trough walls). I couldn't figure out how to fix them, my English wasn't great either and we had no internet, so I gave up... But it turned out I had to use a NodeBuilder.

 

Anyway, out of great nostalgia, I'm trying to make something I never finished which will be compatible with Vanilla Doom. It will also be my first personal map. I'm also trying to implement all the ideas I had back then, but never figured out how to do them, like different colors and custom sprites.

 

I've been playtesting my map in DosBox and everything works fine, but I'm getting errors with custom sprites:

R_DrawSpriteRange: bad texturecolumn

I heard that you can't really replace the original sprites from the IWAD, and that I have to change the names and use DeHackEd for this. I read something about using the -merge command, but that doesn't work for Vanilla Dos Doom. Does this mean my only option is to use DeHackEd for this? I remember back in the day the .DEH files changed the executable and created a new one. Is this still the case for Vanilla Doom, or is there a way to load a .DEH file, or use a DeHackeEd lump in a PWAD?

[Contmotore]

I watched Doomkid's DeHackEd tutorial video and came to the conclusion that I have to use custom sprite names or things will mess up. And to ensure that these custom sprite names are read in, I actually have to use DeHackEd.

 

So I guess it's DeHackEd time... There's no other way around it. But I can still add the DeHackEd lump to my PWAD without messing things up for Vanilla Doom. So only people who really want to play it in Vanilla/Chocolate Doom should use the DeHackEd file, but I suspect most people will use modern Source ports anyway. ;-)

[magicsofa]

Chocolate doom adds the -merge parameter which can be used instead of -file. This emulates the old method of modifying the iwad in order to avoid the sprite bug, meaning sprites can be directly replaced with the same names.

 

Vanilla doom users just have to use DeuSF or whatever, and if they complain about it then that means they are stupid and not qualified to use DOS.

 

Dehacked patches are also not directly usable by doom.exe, you had to similarly modify the exe which is why it's called a Hack. Again, anyone actually using DOS is supposed to know this.

Edited October 7, 2023 by magicsofa

[Contmotore]

True, if you wanna play Vanilla you should also know how to run things. For me it's more of a challenge to make something in a way it could've been played back then with the original game. Like, how would you've created it if you had gone back to the 90s.

 

And nice to have this -merge option for Chocolate Doom, but I'll look into DeuSF as well.

 

For now, I managed to create custom sprites using WhackEd and DeHackEd as explained in Doomkid's video. I think I'll play around with it some more, change some default things and stick with the .DEH file and the DEHACKED lump inside my WAD.

Edited October 7, 2023 by Contmotore

[magicsofa]

9 hours ago, Contmotore said:

True, if you wanna play Vanilla you should also know how to run things. For me it's more of a challenge to make something in a way it could've been played back then with the original game. Like, how would you've created it if you had gone back to the 90s.

 

And nice to have this -merge option for Chocolate Doom, but I'll look into DeuSF as well.

 

In the 90s, the user had to run these programs which would modify doom.exe and doom.wad. To this day it is still illegal to distribute a modified IWAD so you as the modder cannot use DeuSF to add your sprites. The best solution at the time was to provide a package with the necessary tools and a .bat or small application which would build the needed files for you.

 

Even with the STRINGS trick, which I'm pretty sure was unknown back then, you would still have to run dehacked at the very least. So in the end there is no simple way for DOS users to load a mod with custom sprites. Not that there's anything wrong with using this method... But really it's just extra work for you, for almost no benefit. DOS enthusiasts will already be prepared to load mods that replace sprites the Old Way, and the other 99.9% are using a port that can handle it for them.

[donke]

On 10/7/2023 at 7:26 PM, Contmotore said:

I watched Doomkid's DeHackEd tutorial video and came to the conclusion that I have to use custom sprite names or things will mess up. And to ensure that these custom sprite names are read in, I actually have to use DeHackEd.

 

So I guess it's DeHackEd time... There's no other way around it. But I can still add the DeHackEd lump to my PWAD without messing things up for Vanilla Doom. So only people who really want to play it in Vanilla/Chocolate Doom should use the DeHackEd file, but I suspect most people will use modern Source ports anyway. ;-)

Same

His video is extremely useful for vanilla dehacked

 

Unfortunately, the strings table is different on bex files, like dehacked extra, because of this for example, i can't change the sprites of the zombieman, because it doesn't show the POSS string anywhere 

[magicsofa]

13 minutes ago, donke said:

Same

His video is extremely useful for vanilla dehacked

 

Unfortunately, the strings table is different on bex files, like dehacked extra, because of this for example, i can't change the sprites of the zombieman, because it doesn't show the POSS string anywhere 

 

.bex is only supported by Boom and other ports that came after it, all of which fix the sprite loading crash. So there is no reason to bother with this workaround if you are using .bex

[donke]

5 minutes ago, magicsofa said:

 

.bex is only supported by Boom and other ports that came after it, all of which fix the sprite loading crash. So there is no reason to bother with this workaround if you are using .bex

Oh

So i can just use the vanilla sprite names?

Cool

[donke]

No idea about the extra things added in dehacked extra tho

[magicsofa]

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/DEHEXTRA

[donke]

Already saw it

I don't understand much

Then again, my English is kinda rusty

[donke]

I meant by spriting them

[donke]

Ok

Just learned

Tnxs