PNAMES wad for FreeDoom

[wesleyjohnson]

Should there be a companion PWAD that goes with FreeDoom that supplies the missing PNAMES needed to make some of these old PWADs work (like caesar.wad and camelot.wad.
It would map the old patches ordering to the FreeDoom patches so it would have to be based upon info from the original doom2 to some degree.
Something like recreate the PNAMES from Doom2 without actually looking at it.
Could do this by playing caesar.wad on Doom and identifying the correct patches, then make the PNAMES mapping to find those same patches in FreeDoom ???
Sounds like alot of work ??? Any better, faster, ideas
that do not involve outright copying of the Doom2 PNAMES ??

>> doomlegacy -file caesar.wad freedoom-pnames.wad

I still have not found an old copy of Doom2, so I cannot do this myself.
And, at this moment, all I really know about PNAMES is what was mentioned in the recent posts. But it sounds like something that could be put into a companion PWAD for everyone with this problem when using FreeDoom.

[Catoptromancy]

Deutex automatically alphabetizes the pnames. So arranging them in the buildcfg.txt wont work. I am trying to figure out a way to build the wads that uses a script after deutex is done that will copy over a pnames.txt for each wad.

This fix will be part of freedoom and will just make things more compatible. No need for an extra wad.

[wesleyjohnson]

There are WADS for Doom2, Plutonia, and TNT, that FreeDoom could have PNAMES conflict with. Unless the order was the same in all three you are going to have problems.
It is more flexible with separate fixer wads.
Any number of things can be fixed independently.

It might be difficult to get compatibility with any of the three if there are patches supporting all of them in the wad.

Worth trying to make FreeDoom patch compatible with at least Doom2, but
should keep this other option in mind.

[Catoptromancy]

I am not worried about final doom. Final doom's pwads are very few compared to doom2. Nearly all pwads with a texture1 also have a pnames, so these wads do not matter.

Working for 100% Doom2 compatible. The PNAMES in Freedoom will have doom2 on top, then final doom. The patches will be in order for doom2, so Doom2 will work flawlessly. Final doom pwads will likely have a pnames lmp so they wont matter.

Rearranging the current pnames will make 99.999999% of all wads compatible. At least with the textures stuff, or until some other problem is found.

[andrewj]

Catoptromancy said:

I am trying to figure out a way to build the wads that uses a script after deutex is done that will copy over a pnames.txt for each wad.

The easiest way is to modify deutex itself, e.g. add a -pnamecompat option.

[Catoptromancy]

Rjy, our most epic scripter has made an epic script that parses the entire /idgames archive for wads that have a tex1 lmp but without a pnames lmp. About a dozen wads are affected, and some of them are DM only wads.

Rearranging pnames to fix these dozen wads is no longer an issue as I dont care. A dozen broken wads out of a thousand falls within the limit of 99.999999% compatible.

You can find a pwad that does have a pnames lmp and load them before your wad. I chose cct.wad since it was rather small file and had no sounds.
http://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames/levels/doom2/a-c/cct.zip

$ prboom-plus -iwad doom2f.wad -file cct.wad CAESAR.WAD

And its fixed.

[Catoptromancy]

wesleyjohnson said:

and camelot.wad.

Filename : camelot.wad (also need gothictx.wad for textures - see below)

Other files required : http://ftp.gamers.org/pub/games/idgames/graphics/gothictx.zip

To run type: doom2 -file camelot.wad gothictx.wad -skill ? -maxdemo ??? -record camelot
OR --------: legacy -file camelot.wad gothictx.wad -skill ? -maxdemo ??? -record camelot

[wesleyjohnson]

Any chance the PNAMES from cct.wad could be lifted, put in a separate PWAD, and hosted with FreeDoom (with an explanation of when it is needed and how to use it).
In that statement I am more concerned about whether FreeDoom is willing to host the file.

Having found a fix will be of little practical use if it just rolls off the end of this forum listing into the old postings.

I think the time I got camelot to work I loaded two randomly chosen PWADS before it. I don't remember anymore if I went and downloaded that gothictx.wad, but I did make a note to get it, .. sometime ago. Thank you for the reminder.

[Catoptromancy]

I actually would like to support fixed pnames. But need someone to rescript the build system.

[wesleyjohnson]

Thank you for the link. Other attempts to get this led me to some enormous file that was not practical for dialup modem.

Got gothictx.wad and tried it. It fixes problems for camelot.wad and caesar.wad (textures are somewhat appropriate).

That is fine for me and this moment, but not for other users and the overall problem. I will probably forget this in a couple of months too, so I have to leave notes around.