SlumpEd erased my Wad

[Clonehunter]

Alright well, I had just picked up on old wad I started a while ago: I finsished a map, added some graphics, some music, but then... Since I thought it would be easier, or something to copy an existing MAPINFO from a different wad for use in my own. So I did, changed the cutscene text... Then I ran it in ZDoom. ZDoom crashed, so I tryed agian, but it still crashed. Beliving it to the MAPINFO, I went back to SlumpEd to delte it, but when I got there, the entire wad was DESTROYED. By that I mean fucked. By that I mean... Empty... Everything was gone, my maps, graphics, everything. I have no fucking idea what the fucking hell just happened.

As you can see, I blame this on Slump. Does anyone know if this reversible? Repairable? Has anyone experienced something like this before? Or am I totally fucked?

[Sonikku7]

There is a reason why you should make backups.

[Clonehunter]

Well, thankfully, DoomBuilder makes backups automatically. All I need to do is find what one has my most recent map in it, and add the music, and forget the MAPINFO. I'm just asking why the hell this happened, technical ansewers so I can feel smarterer.

[Herculine]

I'm not much smarterer, but I've been experimenting with SLumpED and MAPINFO and I've observed that SLumpED automatically produces a backup file as well. So there should be such a file in whatever location your WAD was in... I think.

[esselfortium]

Hmm. I use SLumpEd for very nearly all of my wad management, and it's never once done anything like this to me. Are you sure you didn't have it open in another program while saving it, or something like that?

[Clonehunter]

Herculine said:

I'm not much smarterer, but I've been experimenting with SLumpED and MAPINFO and I've observed that SLumpED automatically produces a backup file as well. So there should be such a file in whatever location your WAD was in... I think.

Yayh I know, I found that too. Good thing :)

And too esselfortium: No, Slump is the onyl thing open.

However, now that I look at it though, it may not be the MAPINFO at all! Its probally the Ogg format. I'm having to do some music conversions, but i'm not sure what type of Ogg. I'm just experimenting now to see what would be right format.

[The_MártonJános]

Well, SlumpEd makes some evil things I really hate:

1. I used to create another Wad, but this bitchface error disappointed me as hell and I gave up making it. After the (about) 200th saving of my WAD (especially when I created new textures using both old and new patches), the PNames file "goes mad", and adds every patch names, which does have less than 7 characters, a *space* and a stupid another character. It ruins the whole patching, because in this case, I need to remake all textures. XWE could fix this problem, IF I COULD SAVE FUCKING PNAMES AFTER EDITED ALL PATCH NAMES BACK TO NORMAL!!! But no, it just doesn't allow me to save it. So, suffering continues up after every rotten bug...
2. This one appears almost every time. The first texture in my texture file just doesn't show up. SLED and DB2 both mark it correct, but in game, there is a fuckin HOM. I have to create the texture again, which is quite a horror, if it's like NUKEDGE1 (consisting of 6 different patches, but each is used several times), and so on...

[GreyGhost]

Cell said:

1 . . . the PNames file "goes mad", and adds every patch names, which does have less than 7 characters, a *space* and a stupid another character. It ruins the whole patching, because in this case, I need to remake all textures.

One way to fix that problem is by using DeuTex to de-compile and rebuild the wad, it'll sanitize the PNAMES and TEXTURE1 lumps while doing so. I hear that bug's been ruthlessly exterminated in the Slade3 beta.

[The_MártonJános]

Oh, thanks for the advice. Might download DeuTex in da minute.

[D_GARG]

is all lump editors this unstable? is there really any propelry bug reduced editor exept doombuilder1 and 2?

from what i ahve experinced XWE is only useful for adding graphics but shouldnt be used at all. Slade is kind of hard to get working and slumped have also some issues, as mentioned.

[esselfortium]

Technically, SLumpEd's unconventional PNAMES/TEXTURE1 behavior is acceptable within the format specs. The resultant lumps are perfectly readable and appear as normal in Doom.exe, all other source ports, and every other lump tool to my knowledge, with the exception of XWE.

XWE's behavior of reading past the null character and retroactively making the garbage data that can follow it a part of the actual, visible name is what causes things to bug out. It's very much incorrect behavior that's going against the format specs.

While both SLumpEd's and XWE's behavior in regard to this is nonstandard, SLumpEd's is technically not the "wrong" one.

[myk]

D_GARG said:
is all lump editors this unstable? is there really any propelry bug reduced editor exept doombuilder1 and 2?

From what I've tried, the most capable and solid resource editor is Deepsea. Its interface is kind of dumb, but it doesn't mess things up or crash. I use XWE a lot for "non-serious" stuff like checking the contents of WADs on the fly or extracting and adding independent lumps but I avoid using it for the TEXTURE lump, which it can tamper with, as well as going nuts when SLumpEd has messed with it beforehand. On my system SLumpEd crashes often, in addition, so it's not of much use to me.

[4mer]

Cell said:

The first texture in my texture file just doesn't show up.

Maybe this is the problem: http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/AASHITTY

[Gez]

Slade 3 is already a lot more stable than Slumped. When complete, it should be able to replace Slumped for everything (not that many features remain to implement) and XWE for most things.

[sirjuddington]

I'd say even now it should be used over SLumpEd for most things. Also if more people would test it and report bugs there will hopefully be none of these "bitchface errors" :P

Also, how is slade 'hard to get working', exactly?

[4mer]

esselfortium said:

XWE's behavior...
It's very much incorrect behavior that's going against the format specs.

In defence of XWE:
It says in the unofficial doom spec:
Pnames less than 8 bytes long are padded with zeros.
Also AFAIK the Pnames in the IWADs are all zero padded.

[40oz]

Slumped has never given me any problems either. I think XWE is far more likely to mess up your stuff because it does too many actions automatically.

[myk]

40oz said:
I think XWE is far more likely to mess up your stuff because it does too many actions automatically.

Format conversions, you mean? It has save or load as "raw data" options to avoid any meddling.

[Gez]

Doesn't it also write to disk continually, rather than keeping data in memory and writing it only when asked to save?

[myk]

Ah, that... although I haven't noted any screw-ups on lumps I hadn't touched. The TEXTUREx corruption seems to happen only when it's edited.

[The_MártonJános]

4mer said:

Maybe this is the problem: http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/AASHITTY

Me dumbass, I've deleted ALL textures to make a brand new file... >.<

[printz]

myk said:

The TEXTUREx corruption seems to happen only when it's edited.

Ocasionally, randomly and unpredictably, XWE renames one of the textures with another already existing in the list. This can't be undone or reverted, so all that remains to me is to remember the original texture name to recover it. It's stressful.

And I like XWE more because it has some facilities Slumped seems to lack, or I haven't figured them out: mass exporting, mass renaming, color remapping. Does Slade 3 have them all?

Arguably the TEXTURE1 stupid issue is the only one that bothers me to want to get rid.

[Gez]

printz said:

And I like XWE more because it has some facilities Slumped seems to lack, or I haven't figured them out: mass exporting, mass renaming, color remapping. Does Slade 3 have them all?

Yes, yes, not yet.