Combine master levels into a single wad?

[Brewtal_Legend]

I was thinking about combining all the master levels for doom 2 into a single wad file for easy play. I know they are not really meant to be played consecutively though.

I wanted to know what would be the best/easiest program to do this?

Also wanted to know if there was any way to make it so the player starts with only the fist and pistol at the beginning of each level.

I know this may be a bit of a stretch, but is there any way to make the game load each level randomly?

Just to be clear, I'm not a wad author and never done any real sort of doom editing before besides changing a couple graphics here and there.

Thanks for any help.

[EarthQuake]

Do a forum search and you'll find threads explaining why this is a bad idea.

[Gez]

Some people have made patches that do that. Though my favorite is this approach (requires ZDoom-compatible port).

[Brewtal_Legend]

I don't see why this would be a bad idea. If you're talking about legal reasons, I don't plan on releasing it. It's simply for my own personal use.

I understand they would somehow have to have their map numbers changed and adjust the music that would play.

But I'd still like to give it a try.

[Gez]

The "bad idea" comment might have been because they're all intended to be played with pistol start, so playing them in sequence breaks their balance and makes the subsequent maps too easy. It's not a problem with the menu mod I linked to, since the inventory is reset.

[Brewtal_Legend]

I understand about all levels meant for pistol start. That's why I asked if there was a way to do that at the beginning of each level in my first post.

The menu mod seems coll, but not quite what I want. I really don't like the look of the interface either. Maybe if it used the standard doom menu and fonts kind of look to it. I also wanted do do a few other things like custom titlepic, intermission, and ending text.

[Grazza]

There's also skies (some level numbers were chosen by the authors with this in mind), and at least one of them features a secret exit. A few are also map07, and at least one of those uses the map07 specials, I believe.

There could be more issues, but that's all I recall right now. And yeah, they are all designed to be played from a pistol start... So any time saved by having them in one wad (or some other such "solution") will probably be less than the time taken to merge them (and making sure that any map-specific stuff isn't impacted).

If you're really really bothered by having to load each wad separately and warp to its map number (like you would with any number of wads in the community archive), then I think Eternity has a feature where it will automatically load the first map in whatever pwad has been loaded. IIRC, Doom95 has this feature too.

Brewtal_Legend said:

I understand about all levels meant for pistol start. That's why I asked if there was a way to do that at the beginning of each level in my first post.

Two simple ways (I use these all the time when playing multi-level wads):

• Die. Just let the first monster you see kill you, for instance.
  
• Warp (using IDCLEVxx) the level you are on.

Edit: Quote from Tom Mustaine in the Master Levels FAQ:

Mustaine: Heya! I just took a look at your Master levels page, Awesome! I've looked for pages with anything about that product for a long time and this is the first one I've found! If you still feel like updating this mofo, I can shoot some insight into my side of the design process, how paradox.wad came into existence, how many levels I submitted before I had to create something awesome, etc. Also, you mention that nobody you know of had combined the wad, well, It's one of the first things I did when I got my copy. I was a little disappointed that it wasn't put together in the first place, so I slapped all the levels into a single wad, put Sverre's levels in the right places for the special linedefs on map07 and the secret exit on map15. I was planning on releasing a deutex batch file that would slap the wad together for people, just never got around to doing so.

[Brewtal_Legend]

I understand that dying or warping can cause a pistol start, but I was looking for some way to automate it every time one level ends and the new one starts. I doubt the answer is "yes" but, is there anyway to randomize the levels?

I understand that there are bound to be difficulties with getting everything to work correctly and making sure the balance is correct. But this is still something that I would simply like to do for myself.

No offense to anyone, but I really don't need reason why not to do it, why the balance would be affected, or why the time it takes to do this would be more than the time to load them separately. Like I said, it's not so much that loading the maps really bother me, it's just something I'd like to do for myself is all.

I'm just looking for some pointers and advice for someone like me who is new to editing. Thanks to everyone who is providing advice and info. I really appreciate it.

[Blzut3]

I wrote utility that combines the Master Levels based on the ordering of the console versions (mostly alphabetical). The utility can be found on my website here. It adds the master levels as a second episode for ZDoom.

[Brewtal_Legend]

Your utility seems like a cool way to start. Does it use all the maps that need particular levels like map 07 and map 30 with their correct maps?

Would it be easy enough to remove the menu adding it to doom 2? I want to make it it's own wad with custom title pic etc.

Where did you place Mephisto? I would assume it would be the last level in the set.

In general, is it possible to add text intermissions between any levels you want? I wanted to add the wad author and back stories to the maps that apply.

[Blzut3]

Brewtal_Legend said:

Your utility seems like a cool way to start. Does it use all the maps that need particular levels like map 07 and map 30 with their correct maps?

It uses MAPINFO so I didn't need to ensure certain maps were replaced. The music, skys, specials, etc are properly preserved.

Brewtal_Legend said:

Would it be easy enough to remove the menu adding it to doom 2? I want to make it it's own wad with custom title pic etc.

Sure just add clearepisodes to the mapinfo.

Brewtal_Legend said:

Where did you place Mephisto? I would assume it would be the last level in the set.

Both the Xbox and Playstation versions used mostly alphabetical ordering so mephisto.wad was placed accordingly (I think the playstation version screwed up on the alphabetical ordering in two spots, most notably virgil.wad being the 2nd map). The only other change I made was the secret map in teeth.wad is kept as a secret level (the xbox version played the secret map even if you used the normal exit).

Brewtal_Legend said:

In general, is it possible to add text intermissions between any levels you want? I wanted to add the wad author and back stories to the maps that apply.

Sure, the author thing would require that you create custom graphics, but you could add stories through cluster definitions.

[Brewtal_Legend]

would it be terribly difficult to change the level order? I had planned on doing them in order of progressive difficulty with the exception of having all the inferno levels in order and mephisto as the last.

I was also curious if it was possible to use a single background gxf as the backing for endgame text instead of having tiled flats?

Also wondering if anyone knows where I can find the background art used for the box art of the master levels without all the text in front of it?

[Blzut3]

In regards to all the ordering/graphics questions: look here.

[Brewtal_Legend]

Blzut3 said:

In regards to all the ordering/graphics questions: look here.

Thanks for the link

[Vegeta]

I think the last map in the Cabal series is Black Tower (where you face the new cyberdemon that rules hell).

The order for me is: Blood Sea Keep, Mephisto's Mausoleum, The Express Elevator to Hell (map were you travel to the lower pits), Black Tower.

Veavitdpoh and Mephisto are just other members of the Cabal.

[Brewtal_Legend]

so moving mephisto to the last level of the set shouldn't create any problems?

I also found this (Haven't tried it yet though):

http://vb6.martin2k.co.uk/exes/unleashed.php

It lets you load maps randomly. So you can combine all levels in one wad, then either play it as an episode or play the maps randomly. It would be nice if this feature could be coded into the wad itself so you could use any launcher you wanted and have a choice between random levels or a linear, pre-ordered level progression. Although, it would also be nice, if using randomly loaded levels, to somehow make sure the levels never repeat and when the last level in the set is played, whichever it may be, disply the ending text from the psx version. ( < too many commas)

Also found this thread with some info for always pistol start.

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=22518

[Brewtal_Legend]

I saw this thread:

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=25248

I was wondering if this could be tailored to randomly load each map in the wad?

Seems like it would be exactly what's needed to randomly play the levels and make sure that no two levels are replayed until all 20 are completed, then make it go to the end screen.

Anyone think this could work?

[Brewtal_Legend]

Blzut3 said:

I wrote utility that combines the Master Levels based on the ordering of the console versions (mostly alphabetical). The utility can be found on my website here. It adds the master levels as a second episode for ZDoom.

I just tried your utility, but it doesn't seem to pop up the option to load the levels as another episode. How would I just make it run like a regular pwad?

***EDIT***
Nevermind, I figured it out. It was a problem with how I named the wad.
Sorry.

[22_deathgrip]

On 6/6/2010 at 9:28 PM, Blzut3 said:

I wrote utility that combines the Master Levels based on the ordering of the console versions (mostly alphabetical). The utility can be found on my website here. It adds the master levels as a second episode for ZDoom.

 

thanks

[Eduapy]

On 6/6/2010 at 9:28 PM, Blzut3 said:

I wrote utility that combines the Master Levels based on the ordering of the console versions (mostly alphabetical). The utility can be found on my website here. It adds the master levels as a second episode for ZDoom.

This is a excellent option  

[Nilex]

On 6/7/2010 at 3:28 AM, Blzut3 said:

I wrote utility that combines the Master Levels based on the ordering of the console versions (mostly alphabetical). The utility can be found on my website here. It adds the master levels as a second episode for ZDoom.

I used this fantastic tool to create Xaser's ordered WAD (with text & D1/2 music picks), the only way I wish to play it, but realized such single WAD isn't vanilla compatible (DOSBox/Crispy). Has anyone ever bothered to convert it to vanilla and is it even possible? Would someone kindly do it for me if it's not too much trouble? I'm shit4brains in this field but I suspect often mentioned "MapInfo" thingy as a source of incompatibility (individual maps themselves load fine). Looking "master.wad" in Slade I have no clue where to begin.

My sole reason is to have as future-proof savegames as possible. Source ports come and go, design philosophies change, and so on... but vanilla stays vanilla. I hoard all kinds of old saves and wish to be able to load them in 40 years, that's all.