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GzStarWars

Bare Bones iWAD

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What are the very basic steps that are required for me to build an iWAD that will boot in ALL versions of DOOM be it vanilla or GzDOOM from the ground up, or if that requires knowledge of programming, then what would be required to make a FreeDOOM iWAD cut down to the VERY basics?

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I guess, you could remove all maps, sounds and graphics, except for those which are loaded even before you enter the main menu as the title pic and music, as well as the fonts. The statusbar pieces appear to be with them, since v1.1 wouldn't even boot a v1.9 wad due to changes. I think, some engines determine the game by the wad filename, and some do this by checking some lumps in it.
Of course, such a minimal wad would boot, but nothing more. It would complain as soon as you try entering the menu due to missing sounds or graphics, or it would complain when trying to play the first demo.

What do you want to acomplish with such an IWAD anyways?

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What I am doing is working on a project for the Nintendo DS port of PrBOOM. Unfortunatly the DS has limited memory, and the port of DOOM does not have a pWAD loader so if you want to play anything, you have to merge it into the iWAD file.

Now since I've began my project, it seems nearly every time I merge my patches into the main iWAD, that eventually it starts to say that it can't find any of it's patches, which is odd because I did not delete any. Or sometimes when I open a wad editor, it shows duplicates, so I assume it does not like me to load up patches and what not, into a wad that already has them, so I figured if I stripped a WAD bare, then loaded my version of all the normal resources, that I would have less conflicts and save on WAD size too so that the DS does not run out of resources and crash.

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Did you rebuild the textures lumps? This is very important when joining several wad's with custom textures.
What editors did you use? For example, Deutex can do this.

Did you try loading it in Windows Prboom?

And when this is for a Prboom port, why has it to boot in Vanilla and in GZdoom as well?

And duplicates, there are in fact some in the original IWAD's. You can rebuild them with Deutex to get rid of them.

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I have been testing this on the version of PrBOOM that it is based upon. The reason I would like to maintain backwards compatability is because of possible future projects for some hand held version of DOOM without a WAD loader, or DOOM Legacy for the XBOX since it never got it's WAD loader.

The tools I have been using are:

Patcher (not fully familiar with it)

Wintex

XWE



It seems I can create my patch and sprites resource wads with XWE, but if I try to touch my iWAD with it, it will kill it, even if I open a Hex editor and fix the heading.


I have Deutex downloaded (is WinDEU the same thing?), but am unsure how to use it as I've never really loaded it up. Can you give me an example of how you would rebuild texture lumps with this tool?

Or does DeepSea have any use for things like this because I do have an old version I registered a couple years ago as well.

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With DeePsea (at least the latest versions - I don't know if that will include yours, but there has been no update for over a year now) if you merge 2 WADs with pnames and texture lumps, DeePsea should merge the two lumps so that the texture and pnames definitions from the second WAD get added to those of the first. I'm pretty sure XWE does something similar.

As for a "bare bones" IWAD, I think AFADoomer is using something like that in his Wolfenstein TC for Zdoom (which is worth checking out BTW). So, maybe it's worth looking and seeing what he has in his IWAD.

http://www.afadoomer.com/wolf3d/default.php

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Thankx Enjay, I'll have a look at this project (but of course!), and I'll fire up DeepSea and see what I come up with. When I bought DeepSea I bought it for mapping, but I always ended up with Map errors so I got off it, but now I hope that I'll find a new use for it, I've heard a lot of praise about it, just have not looked through all the options yet.

--Edit--

Just checked out that wad...

...feels like Wolfenstein 3D to me, but with free look! Fun stuff for sure!!! :)

I guess the purpose of his project is to add Wolfenstein to the ZDOOM/GzDOOM iWAD support list? ;)

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