ambient sounds

can you put ambient sounds in the original engine?
if so how?

Laz Rojaz had to write mile-long DeHackEd patches for that. If you don't want to have to write huge and complex DeHackEd patches, don't try it.

Laz Rojaz had to write mile-long DeHackEd patches for that.

Actually, you can create ambient sounds with Dehacked for vanilla Doom quite easily. But, you'll need to sacrifice a Thing and a sound entry for that one.

For a 'random' sound, create an invisible Thing that does not walk (speed = 0, invisible graphics, no-clipping and can't be hit) with a far attack frame. Attach a sound to the far attack frame (upper right corner in Thing mode) and voila, instant ambient sound. You might want to insert a pause between 'attacks' so you don't hear the sound too often, by setting the duration of the post-attack frame to something like 500.

For a looping ambient sound do the same thing, except here you can use the 'walking' sound of the arachnotron, cyberdemon or spiderdemon. You can also guide the Thing towards its death frame upon awakening, and loop the death frame over and over again. Of course, you'd use the death sound in this case.

I've been seeing a lot of (basic) editing questions by Stitches here lately, and judging from that I'd say you've only recently started to edit for Doom..? In that case most of what I just wrote will not make a lot of sense... just read a few tutorials here at Doomworld, or download levels that feature a gimmick you'd like to create as well, and see how they have done this. It's how everyone here started...

good luck,