HOWTO: Making and ENDOOM screen with PabloDraw

I wasn't content with ENDOOMER or anything like that, so I've decided to figure out a way to use PabloDraw instead. And so I did, even though probably not many people will see my endoom screen.

You'll need Pablo Draw, a hex editor (I recommend XVI32 on Windows) and some tool to upload your ENDOOM to the wad (I recommend Slade). Last step won't be covered as if you're going to replace ENDOOM, you probably know your way around Slade, XWE or similar tools.

First step is to download and install PabloDraw. I won't cover that as it is easy and the link to PabloDraw can be found on the wiki (can't remember whether it was zdoom wiki or regular doom wikia).

Next step is to obviously launch PabloDraw and create new file. In the screen that follows, select Text Document (default option) and hit OK. You should be seeing something like this:



Now, let's go into some technicalities regarding the artwork: ENDOOM is a single screen, meaning it's 80 columns wide and 25 lines long. So try to confine the actual artwork to those limits. What do I mean by "actual artwork"? More on that in a moment, for now don't worry. Draw something nice! Also please remember to not use bright colors (right side of the palette) as the background colors otherwise text will be blinking when put into actual wad, unless that's what you want. My guess is that using bright colors as bg triggers blink bit or something. Because I don't want to make anything good right now, I've drew this:



Isn't that a beauty? Anyway, now I'll get to what I've meant by "actual artwork". Well, if you try to save it as is and upload to Slade, it will be borked as file will be too short and there will be weird sauce thingy at the end of it put there by PabloDraw. We don't want that to happen. So scroll few lines past line 25 and put something in, even a single character. In lower-right corner you get current position of your text cursor so it's easy to see your coords. What you should have now is something like this:



Now click save. Remember to use .bin extension, otherwise it won't work. Now open XVI32 or your favorite hex editor and open that file in it:


What you need to do is to go to the address 0xF9F and delete every byte past that (but leave byte 0xF9F in, meaning delete everything from and including FA0!). Save it in the hex editor. Now load it into SLADE and have your ENDOOM fun!