New to DOOM and Hexen WAD stuff, lookin for some help!

[PhaDeDoUT]

i just recently bought Doom, Heretic, Hexen and some other 3-d shooters from a friend of mine. Looking on the net i discovered new levels and WADS and such. I have no idea how to use them or get them to run. If anyone could leave brief instructions, or a web page to look for a faq/tutorial it would be appreciated. Maybe some programs i should have too. Thanks for any help.

[magikal]

Not a bad place to start,go to Doomworld FAQ and download 'Ledmeister' it gives you a list and description of all Doom/Doom2 command line parameters.Basically if you want to add external wads you do it from the MSDOS prompt if you're running Windows95/98/ME.e.g. you would type in:
CD\DOOM2 [press enter]
DOOM2 -FILE wadname.wad [press enter]
This is presuming your DOOM2 is in a directory called DOOM2 and not a sub-directory.Anyway read more in 'Ledmeister'it explains more clearly.

[Crendowing]

Or you could just DL Doom95 *cough* fucking piece of shit *cough*, ZDoom (maybe ZDoom launcher 26a), or perhaps the easiest and most organized frontend of all, the MyDoom Frontend (compliments of King Elvis).

[KING ELVIS]

...or perhaps the easiest and most organized frontend of all, the MyDoom Frontend (compliments of King Elvis).

Cool, it seems that people finally recognize what it was meant to be :)

[Ralphis`]

Frontends are for losers. Dos Prompt is for winners!

[KING ELVIS]

Frontends are for losers. Dos Prompt is for winners!

Huahhhhhhhh :)

Golden rule: Do nothing what others could do for you.

[Ralphis`]

Isn't that called being lazy? :P

[Gherkin]

Its called Efficiency

[deadnail]

BUT TO ANSWER THE POOR DUDE'S QUESTION...


Doom levels are transferred in the .wad format. Not only can a single wad store levels, but also music, textures, sounds, all the fun stuff, which is pretty efficient to keep it in a single file (unlike Duke3D's helltacular loose formats).

So you have a Doom wad in a zip. Unzip the wad to your Doom directory. Open up a command prompt and go to that directory. Now type:

doom -file whatever.wad

Obviously a Doom 2 wad won't play with Doom, and a Hexen wad won't play with Heretic. Make sure you don't mix them up.

Demos kick ass too, you might want to watch a few of them. They come in the .lmp format and using them is almost identical.

doom -playdemo whatever

NOTE that you don't use the .lmp extension when you tell Doom to play a demo.

It would be easier to use a front end, although I would strongly recommend you stay the hell away from Doom95 (it's übergay).

If you want to try out a Source Port I would suggest wither ZDoom or Legacy, they're pretty easy for beginners to pick up and play. If you're into GL you might be interested in JDoom, although it can be a bit tricky to get to behave.

Good luck, have fun. =)