WAD Editors

[Mivalekan]

Does anyone know of any good WAD Editors that you dont have to pay for/register?

I used DeePsea for a while, though it always crashes/freezes my comp. :/

Suggestions?

[Ichor]

Doom Builder is the newest one, and many say the best one. Others use WadAuthor, but I like DCK (even though it only runs on DOS).

[netnomad312]

I'd say WadAuthor, and though you have to pay $20 at some point, it's well worth it IMO. Of course, if you've been using DeePsea for a while I suppose you wouldn't like WadAuthor's approach to map building. *Cough* Yeah... try Doom Builder, it may be more familiar.

[DoomDiz]

DoomBuilder is by far the best, but its hard to get EVERYTHING to work right on it. WinDUE 5.24 is pretty stable and user freindly, but you have to use your own nodebuilder 'cause its builder sucks. DoomCAD 6.1 is good for details, but it wont run on most newer systems (Like XP) and its node builder also blows.

What kind of maps are you doing? Simple? Detailed? Lots of source port tricks? New textures?

[Shaviro]

Yes. Go for DoomBuilder. Don't get hooked on WadAuthor like so many of us! :P DoomBuilder should be better.

[sargebaldy]

Yeah, WadAuthor is addictive so it's probably not the first thing to try. Not to mention it's not actually free. Only try it after you look at your other options. Doom Builder's your best bet, both easy on newbs and powerful for people who know what they're doing.

DoomDiz said:

DoomCAD 6.1 is good for details, but it wont run on most newer systems (Like XP) and its node builder also blows.

heh, that nodebuilder was only good in that it got me to realize all internal nodebuilders blow and it's best to look for something else. doomcad is good for details except not very precise ones since the grid is limited to 8x8, whereas doombuilder can handle 1x1 just fine. considering everyone who used doomcad has moved on to doom builder anyway, you probably oughtn't bother with it :)

[netnomad312]

I see not why you can't do pretty much everything (save for lump management) in WadAuthor. I reccomend it to everyone, especially because I know a good many people who got pissed at DeePsea because it's not n00b-friendly. As for Doom Builder, well, I only use it for its 3D mode. It has the same building style (roughly line and/or vertex based) as DeePsea, correct?

[sargebaldy]

It has roughly the same editing style as every editor that isn't WadAuthor :P

[Volte]

All the DEU based editors use the WadAuthor editing style (or should I say, WadAuthor uses DEU editing style). Personally I can't stand an editor without a line-drawing mode. I used WADED for years because it was the only half-decent editor I could find with line-drawing capabilities.

[DoomDiz]

DeepSea sucks!! Its "nobody friendly". I'm an expert on doom editing, and I can't even understand that program!!

[Volte]

Then you're a moron. It's basically a very simple program, and it's not like there's not much to figure out. Just remember a few keyboard shortcuts and it works the same way as every other editor. It's maybe not newbie-friendly, but it's certainly easy to use for people who know what they're doing.

I never did get the lump editing stuff worked out, but I use XWE or Wintex for that anyway.

[boris]

Heh, I managed to move from WA to DB in less than a day.

[EarthQuake]

Then you're a moron.

I'd agree, heh.

I started off using Deep97, so don't give me that "noobs can't use it" bullshit, because if anyone was a newb at editing Doom levels, it was me :P
Deepsea, if registered, offers so much. It has support for all Dooms (even Zdoom), hexen, heretic, and strife, and is fully functional in every depeartment. Some of the more advanced features take some time to learn, but once it all clicks, you'll love it.

I paid $35 for it and I must say, that was the best $35 I ever spent in my entire life.

Doombuilder is the closest thing to Deepsea, if you are looking for power and features. WadAuthor IMO is full of flaws and isn't really a good editor for people who don't know what they are doing. It's easy to make mistakes without even knowing it!

[netnomad312]

EarthQuake said:

WadAuthor IMO is full of flaws and isn't really a good editor for people who don't know what they are doing. It's easy to make mistakes without even knowing it!

Pah. I could have sworn you were describing DeePsea, there. Except in DeePsea, a lot of people I know would be lucky to make a single sector act correctly, myself included (well I could probably figure it out NOW, but... that's not the point). Whereas even the biggest of n00bs can make decent levels now with WadAuthor.

But... I figure this argument has been had a million times already. To each his own, of course.

[Ichor]

WadAuthor desperately needs a line draw function like most of the other editors. I'd use it if it had one. Instead, I use DCK 3.62 (yes I know Doom Builder and Deepsea has that function as well, but I'm used to DCK, heheh).

[toxicfluff]

Yeah, wadauthor is a real good editor in that it's very easy to use, but it has very few time saving features or shortcuts. Doom Builder has a more flexible range, you can just go jump straight in and map with it and if you map a lot you learn all the shortcuts which speeds up editing a fair bit. Plus it has a 3d view you can do your texturing in.


Ichor: DCK rules. I haven't been able to get it working for years now, but considering I managed to make a proper map with it on my second go when I was a retarded 11 or 12 year old the interface must have gotten something right.

[EarthQuake]

Except in DeePsea, a lot of people I know would be lucky to make a single sector act correctly

Cough.
"Object" >> "Rectangle (Room)"
Set your Width and Length, then click again.
Now you got a working sector. It's not that hard.

[sargebaldy]

boris said:

Heh, I managed to move from WA to DB in less than a day.

heh, same here. i'd been waiting on a new editor and had suggested some features for db before it even came out. when 0.2 came out i was ready to switch right over to it immediately.

[netnomad312]

Ichor said:

WadAuthor desperately needs a line draw function like most of the other editors.

Meh, that would just make it like the others. You were probably used to line-draw method. For me, WadAuthor's method is second nature. And if you really need a single line, it's not that hard to make one.

EarthQuake said:

"Object" >> "Rectangle (Room)"
Set your Width and Length, then click again.
Now you got a working sector. It's not that hard.

Heh. You have a sector, but there's nothing in it. There's no detail or anything. If you want complex, multi-line sectors and such, the ones that don't have prefabs, you have to line-draw.

[EarthQuake]

Meh, that would just make it like the others. You were probably used to line-draw method. For me, WadAuthor's method is second nature. And if you really need a single line, it's not that hard to make one.

You know what I do? I add vertices to the lines already there, stretch them and form the lines with those vertices, and if I need to split that sector in half, i select two vertices, go to Misc >> Add Linedef and Split Sector, and you have two working sectors!

You can also drag two sectors into each other as long as you don't excessively overlap them. Then you got two adjacent sectors! Change width and heights, assign lower and upper textures (or simple have Deepsea do it for you), put things in it, assign linedefs types and tags, etc.

It's all about spliting and merging sectors, however, mnost of my work is done in the vertex mode.

Really. It's not that hard.
It even tells you if you are doing something wrong (before you even do it!), so you can always Ctrl-Z to undo the mistake you did.
At least you never go to the point where you are assigning sector references to linedefs :P

And Deepsea has linedraw too!

[Graf Zahl]

Any editor that doesn't even feature the most basic utilities fails it for me. WadAuthor is one of them. I'm still amazed that there are some mappers that even get good stuff out of it but my experience tells me that the average quality of a WA map is significantly lower than one made with other editors.

[FireBastard]

netnomad312 said:

Heh. You have a sector, but there's nothing in it. There's no detail or anything. If you want complex, multi-line sectors and such, the ones that don't have prefabs, you have to line-draw.

No you don't. If you use the deepsea prefabs, which are a lot richer than WA's - to get more complex areas you can do the same thing as for WA, split, drag, make more prefabs and all that. It's much easier to use linedrawing though as you appear to be discovering. I find db similar to ds but a bit more tedious and not as complete. The texture aligning thingy is cool, but that's not where I spend most of my time.

[Volte]

If you want complex rooms and details in WadAuthor, you make a polygon with desired amount of sides, and rearrange the verticies. It's not hard. Alternatively, start with a square and split the lines as required.

You can do extremely detailed things with both editors, and it's just a matter of style preference.

[Szymanski]

Doombuilder is the best option If you want a free editor, the 3D mode takes away the pain from texture alignment. I've tried wadauthor in the past but took an immediate dislike to it.

I still use Deepsea for most of the work, I use pretty much the same process as Earthquake (I like the toolbars for quick adjustment of light level etc). Deepsea's a piece of piss to use, but I use about 5% of it's features.

Whatever you choose it's not the editor that determines how well the map turns out.

[netnomad312]

FireBastard said:

It's much easier to use linedrawing though as you appear to be discovering.

I'm sorry, but I still can't comprehend using "easy" and "linedrawing" in the same sentence. Perhaps you can, because you probably started with such editors. I've been mapping for only about 13 months now. I started with WadAuthor... well, not really, I started with DeePsea and failed miserably several times over the course of about two years (whenever I got bored enough to try again), before finding WadAuthor. Once I got that, I actually made decent maps with it in half an hour or less (by that I mean, levels that work without HOMs or open sectors, and at least having enough stuff in it (doors, switches, items, etc) to pass as a n00bish level)... whereas in DeePsea I spent twice as long just trying to solve problems dealing with sectors that I THOUGHT were connected, but just happened to be a unit or two off after I finished line-drawing them. Heh.

EarthQuake said:

It's all about spliting and merging sectors, however, mnost of my work is done in the vertex mode.

Heh, that's another thing I like about WadAuthor: the no-filter mode. I spend all my time in it unless I need to select a small or multi-piece sector, when I go into sector mode briefly. As for splitting and joining, that's what you do in WadAuthor, too: you split lines, you join vertexes. Piece of cake. *shrug*

[FireBastard]

netnomad312 said:

Heh, that's another thing I like about WadAuthor: the no-filter mode. I spend all my time in it unless I need to select a small or multi-piece sector, when I go into sector mode briefly. As for splitting and joining, that's what you do in WadAuthor, too: you split lines, you join vertexes. Piece of cake. *shrug*

Guess I should *shrug*. Prefabs are awesome for some tasks, like basic sloped objects in ds (that, polygons and arcs are probably the ones I use most). As in wa the prefabs make a basic object and then you do exactly the *same* thing - that's what we all meant - you just split and join and tinker with the prefab. Piece of the exactly the *same* cake.

But prefabs only go so far. Line drawing naturally draws the shape you want, meaning no zillion clicks and drags to get what you want. Sounds like you were not paying attention to the cursor when drawing. If you watch it changes as you cross a line or are on top of a vertex making it impossible to miss, unless you never realized this simple feedback method. But each to their own, I'm just explaining something you apparently never discovered in ds although the prefab toolbars are *right* there.

Line drawing is merely on option you see. Use prefabs all you want. However you should experiment a bit more and discover that line drawing is also quicker and faster to just split prefab lines *exactly* where you want and then just drag. db does the same thing here in terms of splitting stuff. It's all about balance. Each method has a purpose. Having only 1 method is just not as flexible.

FYI, you don't actually have to draw anything when splitting. All *linedrawing* does to prefabs is split a line exactly where you click, then quit the line and click for another vertex that will split another line. Plus both ds and db have *unlimited* prefabs, not just the simple ones in wa.

No-filter mode is pretty tedious and awkward when trying to get the *right* object. Works ok for simple levels and soon becomes a PIA for complex levels. There is no time saved at all since you have to be oh so careful. Much quicker to just type a mode key without confusing mode switches as the mouse moves and having to watch what is being selected. Unless of course there's a monkey at the keyboard :) But to each their own, I'm just explaining some things that you appear to have missed. Carry on

[netnomad312]

FireBastard said:

*same* *right* *exactly* (etc.)

Not funny. ¬_¬

[ob3kenob]

I've been using Wad Author for some time now, and have found it very quick and reliable. I especially like the way the most popular functions are available at the click of the right mouse button. Setting the propertiies of a sector is straightforward, and if you bring the props up for a sector you get the ones for linedefs too (a second tab in the same dialog box). Very convenient if you want to give all the walls of your room the same texture. It does lack a few things, of course, such as a visual WYSIWYG texture alignment tool (you have to enter adjustments numerically) and a universal search and replace function. What the hell, no editor has everything. But for ease of use and a short learning curve - and reliable DSP building even with huge, complicated maps - I don't think you can beat it.