Origwad-style Mapping?

[Obsidian]

This is a thought I had a while back: is there a way to make a Doom wad in the same way as Origwad? I read something about a hex editor being used and it'd be a cool technical exercise to make a map using the same method.

[GreyGhost]

Why not? Grab a copy of The Unofficial Doom Specs, read it thoroughly and start Hex editing in whatever editor takes your fancy. Won't be easy.

[scifista42]

Retro thinking, interest in retro things and emulating them using available today's techniques is great. However I wouldn't want to limit myself to retro methods and deliberately make my mapping work that vastly harder. Even as an experiment, no, thanks.

[Memfis]

Obsidian said:

is there a way to make a Doom wad in the same way as Origwad?

probably yes? someone made a wad in that way so there must be some way?

[Obsidian]

Memfis said:

probably yes? someone made a wad in that way so there must be some way?

Smartass. :P

[Blastfrog]

While certainly possible, it will be a long and torturous process. Unless you want to spend a year of your life, I'd avoid attempting anything more complex than vanilla Doom 1 level of detail (and even that's pushing it).

[plums]

It might be more productive to use a hex editor to edit a map in a way that a normal map editor can't, e.g. fast vanilla scrollers, special REJECT effects, etc.

[GreyGhost]

I've used hex editors on a couple of occasions to recover maps from damaged wads, but that's about as far as I'm prepared to go.

[printz]

plums said:

It might be more productive to use a hex editor to edit a map in a way that a normal map editorDoom Builder can't, e.g. fast vanilla scrollers, special REJECT effects, etc.

Correction. Normal map editors should allow you to edit linedef's cross-references to its sidedefs. I don't know why Doom Builder denies you that.

[plums]

Fine, modern map editors then. I don't think Eureka or SLADE3 will let you do those things either.

[fraggle]

It would be an interesting challenge to make a whole WAD from scratch in a hex editor. Probably not too hard if it's just a single room.

[printz]

fraggle said:

It would be an interesting challenge to make a whole WAD from scratch in a hex editor. Probably not too hard if it's just a single room.

How interesting? As interesting as writing a complex exe in assembly?

[GreyGhost]

Don't know about complex executables, but I've hand-coded utilities on a Commodore 64 using nothing but a hex editor. It's tedious but rewarding.

fraggle said:

It would be an interesting challenge to make a whole WAD from scratch in a hex editor. Probably not too hard if it's just a single room.

I might be crazy enough to give it a shot if I'm allowed to use a node builder.

[fraggle]

printz said:

How interesting? As interesting as writing a complex exe in assembly?

No, not that complicated at all. It's probably easy enough if you have a copy of the UDS and enough understanding of the level formats and how WADs are put together.

GreyGhost said:

I might be crazy enough to give it a shot if I'm allowed to use a node builder.

Pssh. Where's the fun in that?

[Linkrulezall]

When I saw the title of this thread, I thought "What, make extremely simple rooms? Even I can do that". Then I actually saw what this was about and said "Fuck that shit".

However, there is another idea that I had been kicking around in my head for a while. Remake ORIGWAD in UDMF... using only Notepad. How painful would that end up being?