How to make Zdoom load a wad after the game is open.

[Jacob_jub]

Hello im wondering if its possible to have Zdoom open a wad when you select it from an episodic selection screen after you press new game. I want to know so i can make a gigawad to play on my tv with that contains a bunch of wads that have custom textures.

[Edward850]

You already asked this, and it was answered, and you responded to that answer. No, you cannot loads wads post initialisation in ZDoom, and if you could you most certainly wouldn't be allowed to do it at a mod level.

[Jacob_jub]

Okay I thought maybe someone here might know (different forum , different people) I asked again because i saw that NERVE.WAD was loaded with the Doom II bfg wad. I thought it was loaded post-opening because they both MAP01s and so on and i couldnt think of any other explanation.

[Edward850]

No. It's loaded well and truly beforehand, and it's foolish to make assumptions.

[Jacob_jub]

What is that 2nd thing you posted? I dont have any idea what that stuff means.

[Edward850]

It's internally renaming the nerve maps from MAP## to LEVEL##.

[Jacob_jub]

Oh that makes sense! Then how did id do it for bfg? The same i assume?

[Edward850]

No, it marks the state as dirty (BFG is just a C++ library) and restarts the engine, loading nerve.wad as a PWAD. The maps are effectively replaced.

[Jacob_jub]

Oh that makes sense. Thats kinda what i was thinking to do but i take it Zdoom isnt capable of that?

[Edward850]

You're getting yourself confused, here. BFG literally just kills Doom and begins anew, ZDoom can't kill itself like that. However, ZDoom can restart itself, no, that doesn't make it suddenly make it a good idea to run from a menu. Vanilla Doom doesn't have all that much state to preserve, and ZDoom startups aren't exactly instant.
It also isn't all that good to run from a mod, either. You're supposed to be making a mod, not a filesystem manager.

[Jacob_jub]

Yeah i guess. Thanks for your help anyways.

[Doomkid]

Jacob_jub said:

Hello im wondering if its possible to have Zdoom open a wad when you select it from an episodic selection screen after you press new game. I want to know so i can make a gigawad to play on my tv with that contains a bunch of wads that have custom textures.

It won't work for anything heavy on ZDoom effects, but it sorta sounds like you're talking about a WAD rotation.

There's isn't a visually pleasing "episode select", but both Odamex and Doom Legacy support loading a different PWAD, even after the game has started.

In Doom Legacy, say you're just running Doom2.wad, you can type "map doomcity.wad" and bam, suddently I'm playing DoomCity. It's fantastic, really. (make sure your PWADs are in you Legacy directory, though!) The last stable build of Legacy for Windows is 1.42, as far as I'm aware, so if you're using a Win OS that aughta work fine.

Odmex can also do this but I don't remember how in single player - Maybe someone can come along and help out :)

EDIT: Found it - http://odamex.net/wiki/Wad_%28console_command%29