zip mods

[Sigvatr]

I'm hearing a lot of talk about these mods in zip files or something.

I want to use a few high resolution images (skies) in my wad, so I'm wondering if people could help me understand how the zip wads work.

Cheers :)

[YMB]

Are you talking about a .pk3, like KDiZD used?
If so, download it and take a look around the "guts" of the .pk3, maybe you'll figure it out. I am absolutely clueless on the matter so I can't help you much.

[Sigvatr]

How do you open a pk3?

[Vegeta]

Rename it as a zip file and voila. Then change it back to PK3 when you're ready.

To create a PK3 file you must create a folder tree with a specific structure, add your stuff to the sub-folders, then zip the whole tree, and then rename it to .pk3

[Sigvatr]

Vegeta said:

Rename it as a zip file and voila. Then change it back to PK3 when you're ready.

To create a PK3 file you must create a folder tree with a specific structure, add your stuff to the sub-folders, then zip the whole tree, and then rename it to .pk3

Are there any tutorials written anywhere about it?

[exl]

http://208.78.96.242/wiki/Using_ZIPs_as_WAD_replacement

[YMB]

exl said:

http://208.78.96.242/wiki/Using_ZIPs_as_WAD_replacement

That was helpful. I didn't know it was that easy!

[leileilol]

yeah, good luck aligning sprites in pk3s I MEAN zips

pk3s should be left to the quake crowd.

[Sigvatr]

leileilol said:

yeah, good luck aligning sprites in pk3s I MEAN zips

pk3s should be left to the quake crowd.

I don't have any new sprites in my wad.

[Vegeta]

Um, do you mean that the KDiZD team aligned all these sprites manually?

Back to the mod, I think some crashed cars sprites, and misc city decoration could fit well (unless they're done with textures). If it's a problem to include sprites on the pk3 they could be added on a wad apart.

[Graf Zahl]

Vegeta said:

Um, do you mean that the KDiZD team aligned all these sprites manually?

It depends what you mean by 'manually'. Of course most offsets had to be set in XWE/SlumpEd's editor which could also be considered 'Manually'. A fully automatic sprite alignment tool doesn't exist yet... ;)

During development most of the resources were stored in a WAD. Let's not forget that Zip support wasn't available in ZDoom when development on KDiZD started.

In any case, where's the problem? SlumpEd can natively edit PK3 files - it's just XWE that can't.

[leileilol]

Graf Zahl said:

SlumpEd can natively edit PK3 files - it's just XWE that can't.

XWE is a WAD editor not a zip editor. About any zipping tool can fulfill this purposes.

[Graf Zahl]

leileilol said:

XWE is a WAD editor not a zip editor. About any zipping tool can fulfill this purposes.

Yeah, and SLumpEd is a Doom resource file editor and not limited to one format alone. And last time I checked you can't convert graphic or set offsets with a generic zip tool.

[kristus]

Vegeta said:

Rename it as a zip file and voila. Then change it back to PK3 when you're ready.

That's not necessary, just direct pk3 files to your preffered zipping program and it'll open it just fine.

XWE isn't limited to just one file format, it can open a whole mess of different data files. But when it was still most actively in production there were no use for zip support.

[Enjay]

kristus said:

That's not necessary, just direct pk3 files to your preffered zipping program and it'll open it just fine.

Alternatively, don't bother calling it a pk3 and just leave it as a zip seeing as how they are the same thing anyway.

[John Smith]

alternatively just use a wad file

[Enjay]

John Smith said:

alternatively just use a wad file

At present I see no great advantage to using zips instead of WADs and with most editing tools not supporting zips, I actually find them more of an inconvenience than a benefit. Opening up a level in an editor when all the resources it needs are in a zip is a pain - and usually involves having to extract all the resources and put them in a WAD to allow me to edit the level.

However, I think it may be the case that some types of resources cannot be in WADs (perhaps models and their skins?). At present though, I'm sticking with WADs because they do everything I want and are, for my way of working, more convenient. Pretty much the only thing I use zip support for is to sometimes play WADs from within the zip I got them off the archive in.

[DaniJ]

It depends entirely on the level of support offered in the source port your using. Doomsday for example supports models, hires textures etc in WADs but because the WAD format is a bit of pain to work with; most use ZIPs for this purpose.

[Graf Zahl]

Enjay said:

At present I see no great advantage to using zips instead of WADs and with most editing tools not supporting zips, I actually find them more of an inconvenience than a benefit. Opening up a level in an editor when all the resources it needs are in a zip is a pain - and usually involves having to extract all the resources and put them in a WAD to allow me to edit the level.

It's indeed too bad that several editing tools aren't updated anymore to reflect these kinds of changes. Guess why I don't use them anymore... ;)

[leileilol]

Graf Zahl said:

It's indeed too bad that several editing tools aren't updated anymore to reflect these kinds of changes.

They don't have to because it's not Doom

[Graf Zahl]

1. You are in no position to define what is Doom and what is not.
2. Your (narrowminded) opinion is not the universal truth.

[myk]

It's true that this ZIP functionality is optional, though.

Isn't the whole point of a zip that you can just grab the separate and package them together at any moment?

XWE edits separate lumps (LMP files), by the way. If anything, people editing to make ZIPs might want the additional capability to open multiple lumps as a unit, giving them all the same listing as if they were a wad and associating things like TEXTUREx, PNAMES and the raw resources. Id's find that useful myself, even, though I don't work with ZIPs.

In any case XWE already opens ZIPs, so if it's missing any capabilities (such as associating some lumps or identifying certain types of lumps), I bet they shouldn't be hard to add.

[Enjay]

myk said:

Isn't the whole point of a zip that you can just grab the separate and package them together at any moment?

I don't find doing that with a WAD much slower or any less convenient than with a zip though. I'm not arguing against zip support - it is quite useful and I'm sure people like it. However, so far, it hasn't given me any great benefits.

[Quasar]

The state of Doom editing utilities has been holding back source ports' progress ever since the release of the source code. BOOM had to consider changing features just to try to accommodate some of the crappy old DOS editors that nobody could update due to the fact that their source code was never released (DCK was extremely popular, for example, and placed a ridiculous arbitrary limit of 255 on linedef special numbers).

EE faces the same problem with ExtraData support. It could be easily integrated into editors, but nobody is willing to entertain the idea so far.

BTW EE will support zips soon, in a similar (hopefully fully compatible) way to zdoom.

[myk]

Enjay, that seems reasonable, and moreso, to me adding ZIP support without providing Doom specific ZIP supporting tools as well means that the feature is being added for what it offers per se. If not, it's broken.

Quasar said:
The state of Doom editing utilities has been holding back source ports' progress ever since the release of the source code.

Going back to what leileilol implied, though, no one's obligated to support any of this in any special way. If the engine coders or people who like and want to use their new features don't come up with editing tools or editing tool variants supporting them, it's their problem if no one else bothers to.

Personally, though, being more of a purist, I'm kind of thankful that the editing tool coders spent a good deal of time making the tools more workable and bug free with existing editing features, rather than not doing so to such a degree, spending effort adding other features instead. Although arguably only XWE has been developed to any extent lately, since SlumpEd, being newer, managed to get only barebones functionality to this point.

[Graf Zahl]

Quasar said:

EE faces the same problem with ExtraData support. It could be easily integrated into editors, but nobody is willing to entertain the idea so far.

It's really annoying, isn't it? :( Defining a new, better map format would solve so many problems but without the editing tools supporting it it's rather pointless.

As for editing Zips, there's one thing I don't understand. Everyone seems to be solely focussed on XWE for this kind of job. Why not SLumpEd? It fully supports Zips and can do any of the really useful stuff (most notably defining offsets in graphics lumps) and save them back into the Zip.
But for me the main attraction of using Zips is that it's much easier to access the data in them without the use of dedicated editing tools. The things I use for file management can treat Zips like subdirectories and access their contents freely so this alone is such a big advantage that WADs are just clumsy in comparison.

[Quasar]

myk said:

Enjay, that seems reasonable, and moreso, to me adding ZIP support without providing Doom specific ZIP supporting tools as well means that the feature is being added for what it offers per se. If not, it's broken.

Going back to what leileilol implied, though, no one's obligated to support any of this in any special way. If the engine coders or people who like and want to use their new features don't come up with editing tools or editing tool variants supporting them, it's their problem if no one else bothers to.

Personally, though, being more of a purist, I'm kind of thankful that the editing tool coders spent a good deal of time making the tools more workable and bug free with existing editing features, rather than not doing so to such a degree, spending effort adding other features instead. Although arguably only XWE has been developed to any extent lately, since SlumpEd, being newer, managed to get only barebones functionality to this point.

Well we agree, in principle. Nobody's obligated at all to support advanced port features. However, I believe the community works better when port authors and editor authors are in tune with each other and can respect each others' needs. It's not required to have zip support, but having it would not be a bad thing for any utility. It's more functionality, and with a properly coded virtual file system, it would be easy to support.

Basic support of Doom's formats is the most important and should be done first. But the unwillingness to go further is a bad thing for the community in my eyes.

[myk]

Quasar said:
But the unwillingness to go further is a bad thing for the community in my eyes.

I've never seen editor coders with any such attitude, although naturally people will be reluctant to spend effort and time developing for features that aren't being used by people, that don't seem to clearly fit in their tools, or that seem obscure in some way. Not to mention that said utility coders may have little time for DOOM nowadays, if they haven't lost interest.

"The state of Doom editing utilities has been holding back source ports' progress ever since the release of the source code" sounds like a pretty conceited complaint to me. You are coding an engine and may think its features are the best thing since sliced bread, and while others might eventually agree to some degree or in some way, it definitely won't be immediately, and probably after they receive demands from the wad makers, not the coders (who don't use the tools directly as much).

[Graf Zahl]

myk said:

I've never seen editor coders with any such attitude, although naturally people will be reluctant to spend effort and time developing for features that aren't being used by people, that don't seem to clearly fit in their tools, or that seem obscure in some way. Not to mention that said utility coders may have little time for DOOM nowadays, if they haven't lost interest.

Also, let's not forget other problems with some of the popular editing tools:

1. Doom Builder is written in Visual Basic which makes external contributions more or less impossible because almost nobody uses it.
2. XWE and DeepSea are closed source so external contributions are not possible.
3. The only tools that are in a state that external contribution is possible (Slade and Slumped) are not really worked on that much and seem a little rough and unfinished. As a result they lack popularity and even though I personally prefer them to the others expanding them to support the new features won't help much because their user base doesn't seem large enough.

So, to summarize: Quasar's statement
("The state of Doom editing utilities has been holding back source ports' progress ever since the release of the source code") holds a lot more truth than you might think.

[kristus]

Enjay said:

Alternatively, don't bother calling it a pk3 and just leave it as a zip seeing as how they are the same thing anyway.

Indeed, but the first and only reason they are called Pk3 still remains. so people won't unzip them by mistake. So even still, rename them for release.