SIGIL I/II and his Romero's Twitch streams inspired me to create a Doom episode, and as of the other day, I've finished all 9 maps. I started and completed half of the DM maps, but felt the SP maps were more important to test currently. I've tested them myself with pistol starts on UV, and I'm ready to package them to send them to others to test for me. I've encountered a problem that even my AI assistants can't help me with. GPT has let me down.
I originally created all the maps in UDB under E1M%, not realizing what I had done, later want to switch them to Episode 7 to reflect the story I have created for them taking place between SIGIL II and DOOM II. I failed to make them vanilla compatible, but they are all BOOM compatible at least, so no UDMF formats, ACS scripts, etc. I'm not having any luck getting a complete package together. I have multiple clusters so I can have some short intermission text between a few levels, I have custom music, and the custom Episode name. (I have other custom items, but these 3 should suffice for what I'm asking.) So far, everything had worked when I was using KDitD as the launch point, but now that I want E7, I have all sorts of problems.
First issue, was changing Map Options in UDMF to be E7M% and it prompted me with a message that stated a lump already existed with that name. I know that wasn't true. But I trust it was the way it was configured. Upon doing that, no map would load. I would select my episode from the list, and E7M1 was not found.
Second, I just opened up the file in SLADE and and renamed the map lumps thinking maybe that would be better. But I had the same issue.
Third, I saved all the maps into another WAD file. This worked okay, all maps loaded from console, but no textures. I copied all WAD objects from the final to the test, and textures load, maps load on the correct level, but now I have no music, and no Episode name to select. All maps have to be loaded from the console.
In troubleshooting what was causing the issue, I stripped all the objects down to just the map lumps, and maps ran fine. Then introduced all the other objects 1 by 1. It turned out the issue was replicated when I started introducing my MAPINFO, UMAPINFO, etc into the WAD file. But everything on those seem to be syntactically correct. The rest doesn't seem to work anymore. So I'm getting no music, except for D_INTRO (or in my case I named it INTRO) and the music that plays on the text screens. (INTERTEX). I did noticed now that there is an order to where things need to be placed in the WAD. So I moved my maps to the top, when I place them after the MAPINFO, it can't be found, when I place them before, everything is fine. I'm still not loading music (WAV format) and its still not displaying a "4th" episode in the list as it did previously. I can use IDCLEV 7% to successfully switch the corresponding maps, but none have music. I can do so in the console as well with map E7M% and get the same results.
So as it turns out, I'm not just really confused as to what is going on, and what changes affected the audio files, and M_EPI7 graphic. I also don't know how many text lumps I need, as investigating SIGIL and SIGIL II wads, I see ZMAPINFO, EMAPINFO, UMAPINFO, MAPINFO, GAMEINFO, etc.... I'm not sure what all I need to make this compatible with most. I'm currently testing in GZDoom, but the first few maps I was okay with PrBOOM+, and then I stopped testing with PrBOOM+. I feel confident that will continue to work if I can get them to work in GZDdoom.
For the ones who have a bit more experience creating custom DOOM episodes, if you could share some insight. I chose DOOM because I had thought I was going to push this out by 12/10/23, but that didn't work. So that is why it isn't DOOM II, and that is also why I wanted it to be playable on as many ports as possible. If there is anything anyone needs to see for this to be more understandable, I'll be happy to share. Just let me know. I can share my MAPINFO lump if needed, or anything else.
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JamesBone
SIGIL I/II and his Romero's Twitch streams inspired me to create a Doom episode, and as of the other day, I've finished all 9 maps. I started and completed half of the DM maps, but felt the SP maps were more important to test currently. I've tested them myself with pistol starts on UV, and I'm ready to package them to send them to others to test for me. I've encountered a problem that even my AI assistants can't help me with. GPT has let me down.
I originally created all the maps in UDB under E1M%, not realizing what I had done, later want to switch them to Episode 7 to reflect the story I have created for them taking place between SIGIL II and DOOM II. I failed to make them vanilla compatible, but they are all BOOM compatible at least, so no UDMF formats, ACS scripts, etc. I'm not having any luck getting a complete package together. I have multiple clusters so I can have some short intermission text between a few levels, I have custom music, and the custom Episode name. (I have other custom items, but these 3 should suffice for what I'm asking.) So far, everything had worked when I was using KDitD as the launch point, but now that I want E7, I have all sorts of problems.
First issue, was changing Map Options in UDMF to be E7M% and it prompted me with a message that stated a lump already existed with that name. I know that wasn't true. But I trust it was the way it was configured. Upon doing that, no map would load. I would select my episode from the list, and E7M1 was not found.
Second, I just opened up the file in SLADE and and renamed the map lumps thinking maybe that would be better. But I had the same issue.
Third, I saved all the maps into another WAD file. This worked okay, all maps loaded from console, but no textures. I copied all WAD objects from the final to the test, and textures load, maps load on the correct level, but now I have no music, and no Episode name to select. All maps have to be loaded from the console.
In troubleshooting what was causing the issue, I stripped all the objects down to just the map lumps, and maps ran fine. Then introduced all the other objects 1 by 1. It turned out the issue was replicated when I started introducing my MAPINFO, UMAPINFO, etc into the WAD file. But everything on those seem to be syntactically correct. The rest doesn't seem to work anymore. So I'm getting no music, except for D_INTRO (or in my case I named it INTRO) and the music that plays on the text screens. (INTERTEX). I did noticed now that there is an order to where things need to be placed in the WAD. So I moved my maps to the top, when I place them after the MAPINFO, it can't be found, when I place them before, everything is fine. I'm still not loading music (WAV format) and its still not displaying a "4th" episode in the list as it did previously. I can use IDCLEV 7% to successfully switch the corresponding maps, but none have music. I can do so in the console as well with map E7M% and get the same results.
So as it turns out, I'm not just really confused as to what is going on, and what changes affected the audio files, and M_EPI7 graphic. I also don't know how many text lumps I need, as investigating SIGIL and SIGIL II wads, I see ZMAPINFO, EMAPINFO, UMAPINFO, MAPINFO, GAMEINFO, etc.... I'm not sure what all I need to make this compatible with most. I'm currently testing in GZDoom, but the first few maps I was okay with PrBOOM+, and then I stopped testing with PrBOOM+. I feel confident that will continue to work if I can get them to work in GZDdoom.
For the ones who have a bit more experience creating custom DOOM episodes, if you could share some insight. I chose DOOM because I had thought I was going to push this out by 12/10/23, but that didn't work. So that is why it isn't DOOM II, and that is also why I wanted it to be playable on as many ports as possible. If there is anything anyone needs to see for this to be more understandable, I'll be happy to share. Just let me know. I can share my MAPINFO lump if needed, or anything else.
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