Noob at modding Doom, need help.

[Shake]

First off if this is in the wrong forum feel free to delete.

 

I am super new at modding Doom and Doom 2 and I was wondering if there is any tutorial that goes in-depth with installing mods. I can't seem to find a beginner friendly tutorials. Any help is appreciated thanks! 

[Skeletonpatch]

No worries about this thread being in the wrong forum, if this is the wrong forum then one of the moderators will move it to the correct one.

 

I'd recommend ZDL 3, it's a pretty nifty little tool. Most of the YouTube tutorials I could find when it came to loading mods always said that you need to use WINRAR for some reason, I have never understood why. WINRAR isn't even designed for Doom modding specifically, so I wouldn't recommend it.

 

ZDL lets you select what Source Port you want to use and what IWAD you wish to load and lets you select however many PWADs/PK3s you want to use for them. I kind of had to teach myself how to use it though, I was never able to find a good tutorial on it when I first started modding Doom. So I'm going to quickly slap together my own tutorial for you here:

 

~~~ Skeletonpatch's unofficial noob's guide for ZDL 3.2.2.2 ~~~

~~~ Your OCD won't be triggered by the constant dragging-dropping of multiple files over an EXE! ~~~

 

Once you've installed ZDL and opened it, you should have a window that looks similar to this:

^{*The Source Port and IWAD fields will initially be blank for you because you haven't selected them in ZDL yet, mine is already set up so naturally those fields are already filled.}

Click on the "Settings" tab.

 

Once you are in the Settings tab you should have something that looks like this:

While in Settings you can select the different IWADs and Source Ports you have at your disposal. This is a rather easy task, all you need to do is click "Add" under each respective field and the standard Windows folder browsing interface will appear and allow you to locate and add each item to its respective list. These will be added to the "Source Port" and "IWAD" fields in the "Main" tab.

^{*There are some more advanced options here as well but I have never messed with them myself and I assume that you are not currently interested in them given that you claim to be new at this.}

 

Once you've finished adding the desired IWADs and Source Ports under the "Settings" tab you should now have inhabited fields for those two things in the "Main" tab, just like in the first screenshot that I'm putting here a second time for convenience:

 

Now that you have the essential bits and bobs that lay the foundation for modding the game, it's time for the mods themselves! Click "Add" under the "External Files" field, you will be given the same Windows folder browser that greeted you when selecting the IWADs and Source Ports under Settings:

 

Lets say you want to load Brutal Doom with Doom II, you would open whichever Brutal Doom PK3 file you have in "External Files" and then highlight Doom II in the IWAD field:

This is basically all you need to do to play with mods, simply press "Launch" and ZDL will initiate the chosen Source Port with the IWADs and mods for you! You even have the options to start in a specific map on a specific difficulty level if you don't ever want to endure Mount Pain again!

 

This next part is optional, and is for in case you plan to use multiple mods together (which kind of is one of the main functions of ZDL). You simply need to load multiple mods into the "External Files" field at once:

The order that each mod is listed in the field is important, because that is the order that ZDL will attempt to load them! Pay attention to the types of mods you are attempting to load simultaneously and order them with most important on top to least important on the bottom.

 

Find a load order that you like and don't want to constantly need to reenter it every time you open ZDL lest your save files be broken? Click "ZDL" at the bottom of the "Main" tab where it will give you multiple options, two or which are "Save ZDL" and "Load ZDL", these will allow you to save and load your favourite mod load orders so that you never need to worry about finding and reselecting every mod every single f@#*ing time you want to load up something!

 

This tutorial is very basic and meant to get you started, ZDL is what I use but there are more options out there when it comes to loading mods. There are other mod loaders and I'm sure that other people will have different suggestions. I hope you found this quick tutorial (well, it was meant to be quick...) helpful. If you are getting errors when attempting to launch then you just need to fiddle with something and try again. Be patient, I tried to be clear in this tutorial but it is possible that I may not have worded my instructions properly if you think you are following them perfectly and are still getting errors.

 

I hope this is the response you were looking for!

Edited February 27, 2018 by Skeletonpatch : For some reason the spoiler text was all grey inside a white box, so I removed the spoiler

[bioshockfan90]

or y'know.... getting a source port like PRboom or GZdoom, assigning .wad files to open by default on those .exe files and double-clicking them.... multiple files loaded through either the command line or selecting all the files you need and drag-dropping them onto the source-port exe but.... ZDL is cool too yknow

[Bryan T]

I don't personally use ZDL, I just use the autoload function in gzdoom's .ini.  

[doom.Autoload]
path=hbar.pk7
path=sbmaps.pk3
path=lights.pk3
path=liquids.pk3
path=hdsounds.pk3
path=stayopen.pk3
path=tiltplus.pk3
path=monsters.pk3
path=caulkpc.pk3
path=machoman.pk3
path=arnold.pk3
path=tb.pk
path=ro.pk
path=gc.pk3
path=hxrtc.pk
path=nashblud.pk3

 

I just remove the "3" at the end if I don't want that mod to load.

[Tango]

6 hours ago, bioshockfan90 said:

or y'know.... getting a source port like PRboom or GZdoom, assigning .wad files to open by default on those .exe files and double-clicking them.... multiple files loaded through either the command line or selecting all the files you need and drag-dropping them onto the source-port exe but.... ZDL is cool too yknow

 

I tried to get by with this for a while but eventually just installed ZDL, because drag and drop becomes really annoying when you are playing with multiple wads in different folders