99 level iwads

[invictius]

How can I make one without forking out $40 for Deepsea? Slige can make 99 level wads, but they don't work in jdoom, does anyone know why?

[Draconio]

Does it have to be an IWAD rather than a PWAD? You could make maps with DoomBuilder and a MAPINFO lump with XWE into a PWAD and it should work in ZDoom with as many levels as you want.

For the JDoom issue, do SLIGE wads with less levels work? If they don't, then it's probably an issue with the custom graphics SLIGE generates. If they do, it's probably because JDoom isn't expecting more than 32 levels in the wad.

[invictius]

Draconio said:

Does it have to be an IWAD rather than a PWAD? You could make maps with DoomBuilder and a MAPINFO lump with XWE into a PWAD and it should work in ZDoom with as many levels as you want.

For the JDoom issue, do SLIGE wads with less levels work? If they don't, then it's probably an issue with the custom graphics SLIGE generates. If they do, it's probably because JDoom isn't expecting more than 32 levels in the wad.

Nope, doesn't have to be an iwad, I just thought it had to be, because deepsea boasted about it. My problem with doombuilder is, how do you make a multi-level wad? It allows you to file>new but not specify how many levels the wad will have, and doesn't ask what map number you want to use. Just another thing - how would I use XWE to put a MAPINFO lump into the pwad, and what value would it have to be? Just tried a single map slige wad in jdoom - 7 minor warnings, and crashed back to the desktop before loading the map.

[Draconio]

I'll do my best to explain and hopefully it will be clear to you. If it isn't, ask.

invictius said:

Nope, doesn't have to be an iwad, I just thought it had to be, because deepsea boasted about it. My problem with doombuilder is, how do you make a multi-level wad? It allows you to file>new but not specify how many levels the wad will have, and doesn't ask what map number you want to use.

It doesn't have to be an IWAD. To make a multi-level wad with DoomBuilder, this is what you have to do:
- Go to "File > New Map"
- Fill in where it says "Level Name". If you want it to be level 1, put "MAP01". For level 2, it's "MAP02", for level 16 it's "MAP16" and so on.
- Create the map.
- Go to "File > Save Map" and save it into a .wad, for instance "99maps.wad" or whatever you want to name it.
- Go to "File > New Map" again and make sure you enter a different level number than the one you did before.
- Create the map.
- Go to "File > Save Map Into..." and select the same .wad that you saved the first map into. Now both maps are saved in that wad.

This is assuming you're creating the maps yourself. If you're making a compilation of pre-existing maps there are other ways to do that.

invictius said:

Just another thing - how would I use XWE to put a MAPINFO lump into the pwad, and what value would it have to be?

- Open the .wad in XWE.
- Go to "Entry > New" and enter "MAPINFO" as the entry name.
- Select the new MAPINFO entry and a text entry area appears in the main XWE screen.
- Type in the MAPINFO data for your maps in the text entry area.
- Go to "Script > Save" to save the MAPINFO into the .wad.

There are a lot of things you can do with MAPINFO that are covered here. You're probably only concerned with a few things, though, so here's an example:

MAP MAP01 "LEVEL ONE"
NEXT MAP02

MAP MAP02 "LEVEL TWO"
NEXT MAP03

Just define each map like that, giving it whatever name you like, and defining which map it exits to. I haven't checked, but I don't think you need to specify music or skies or any of that stuff for it to work, though you might want to if you understand how.

invictius said:

Just tried a single map slige wad in jdoom - 7 minor warnings, and crashed back to the desktop before loading the map.

Probably an issue with the way SLIGE makes its custom graphics, then. There's a setting to turn off that feature for compatibility with source ports, but I don't have SLIGE on hand to check what it is.

[invictius]

[QUOTE]Draconio said:This is assuming you're creating the maps yourself. If you're making a compilation of pre-existing maps there are other ways to do that.

Those instructions were clear, clear enough for even the most noobies :D Ideally, I'd like to be able to copy and paste an entire map using an editor, but that seems to involve pasting the sectors etc, then lining up the things to "fit". Are there easier ways to make compilations? I'd like something that's pretty much drag and drop, easier than NWT :P

[Epyo]

[QUOTE]invictius said:

Draconio said:but that seems to involve pasting the sectors etc, then lining up the things to "fit". Are there easier ways to make compilations?

How about you open up XWE with the small wad, highlight what you want to merge into the big wad, copy that, open up the big wad, and paste it in.

In fact, if you want to start a new level in your wad and are scared to do it Drac's way, in xwe you can just copy/paste your map01 and then rename the second one map02, and open that in doom builder, and clear everything out, and now you've got an empty map02.

[Draconio]

Easiest I can think of is using XWE. Here's what you want to do:

- In XWE, go to "File > New" and give a name to your compilation .wad, for instance "99maps.wad".
- Open the .wad that contains the map you want to add to the compilation.
- Find the map number of the level that you want to copy. You'll see something like this:

MAP01
THINGS
LINEDEFS
SIDEDEFS
VERTEXES
SEGS
SSECTORS
NODES
SECTORS
REJECT
BLOCKMAP
MAP02
THINGS
LINEDEFS
...

And so on. Depending on what game/port the map is for, there might be others like SCRIPTS and BEHAVIOR.

- What you have to do, is select the entry for the map you want, and all the entries between it and the next map number entry (if there's only one map in the .wad, select all the entries).
- Go to "Edit > Copy" once you have the entries selected.
- Now open your compilation .wad again and go to "Edit > Paste" to put the map data into your compilation.
- Go to the map header (that's the "MAP01" bit) and change it to the map number you want it to be.
- Repeat this for every level you want to add to your wad. It's very important to keep all the entries for one map together in the proper order, because if they get mixed up it can cause the .wad to not work.

If there are custom textures and such involved, then you might have to do extra work to account for them, such as copying the textures into your wad and possibly correcting for clashing texture sets, but if the .wads you're merging have only maps and nothing else, you shouldn't have problems.

Hope this makes sense, it might sound a little complicated, but it's not hard once you understand what parts need to be copied.

Edit: This is basically what Epyo said, in more detail.

[DaniJ]

Just tried a single map slige wad in jdoom - 7 minor warnings, and crashed back to the desktop before loading the map.

Sounds like you arn't building the nodes before trying to run them in Doomsday.

In all currently released versions of Doomsday it is necessary to build the nodes prior to loading the WAD in Doomsday (using whatever nodebuilder you wish but I recommend glBSP).

In the Doomsday 1.9.x series it is no longer necessary to prebuild nodes AT ALL as long as the dpMapLoader plugin is available and runtime (GL)node building is enabled (bsp-build 1 in the console, enabled by default).

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>32 level WADs are indeed supported by Doomsday (in fact the WolfTC for Doomsday has close to 99 levels).