*** The "ask a miscellaneous editing question" thread ***

[trashban]

Dumb question, but which game configuration of Doom Builder 2 should I use?

I want to work on vanilla-based WADS which will work on source-ports such as Chocolate or PrBoom+ on default compatibility settings.

I'm currently using Zdoom (in UDMF Format) because it's the easiest to work for me, but I still want to run my maps through vanilla-based/limit-removing ports.

Thanks.

[SilverMiner]

@trashban

You should choose Doom or Doom 2 format

[Gez]

The big change going from ZDoom-UDMF to vanilla, besides the drastically reduced number of flags, effects, values, special effect things, and such stuff, is that line effects work differently. In UDMF you can set the effect, amplitude (how high/low/fast/etc. the effect works), and trigger method (crossing, using, etc.) separately while in vanilla it's all tied together. You don't have a locked door special where you choose what key unlocks it, you have one locked door special per key color. You don't have an exit level special that you can set to be activated by using or by crossing, you have an exit special for using and a different exit special for crossing. And so on. Sometimes the combination of effect and trigger that you'd want to use simply does not exist, for example there's no line type for exiting a level activated by shooting.

 

So typically in editors you'll see a two-character indicator for how the line is activated, made of a letter (W for walk, S for switch, G for gun, and D for door) and either 1 (if the effect can be used only once) or R (if it can be used repeatedly). D1 or DR applies to the sector behind the line only; you can find door types with S1 or SR but they are for remotely-activated doors -- don't forget to set a sector tag for them, because if you use an S1 or SR door special while leaving its sector tag to 0, you'll get all the sectors without a tag to act like a door and that generally looks like the entire level collapsing when the "door" closes.

[trashban]

This is the reason why I picked up UDMF in the first place. It’s probably the easiest way for me to create simple triggers and basic objects with line-refs so naturally, I shifted to this format instead of Doom 2 format. I should go back to the Doom 2 format now looking at the types of maps I want to create. 

Edited October 18, 2020 by trashban

[Castelia]

In SLADE 3, is it possible to change the names of enemies for Doom 2's credits sequence, and is it possible to change the text that displays in the top-left corner when you pick up an item? Similarly, because I think displaying messages when you get killed by different monsters is a source port addition, can you change those?

 

And one more thing, is adding custom sound effects as easy as adding sound effects with filenames that match the ones I'm replacing? I noticed while looking at Doom 2 in SLADE 3 that every sound effect has a copy that uses the PC Speakers or something. Are those important?

[dmslr]

Can armor be changed with dehacked? If yes, can you provide an example in which wad it was used?

[Gez]

On lundi 19 octobre 2020 at 1:20 AM, Castelia said:

In SLADE 3, is it possible to change the names of enemies for Doom 2's credits sequence, and is it possible to change the text that displays in the top-left corner when you pick up an item? Similarly, because I think displaying messages when you get killed by different monsters is a source port addition, can you change those?

Yes, you can change in-game strings relatively easily. The simplest way is probably to use a DEHACKED lump with a BEX string block.

http://www.aspectsweb.co.uk/dehacked/bex01.html

 

In "pure" DEHACKED you'd have to include the original string and immediately follow it by the replaced string (and by immediately I mean without even a space or other separator) and it'd be much simpler and less tedious to use something like WHACKED to do it.

 

For obituary messages, see this for the ZDoom mnemonics and that for Eternity mnemonics.

 

On lundi 19 octobre 2020 at 1:20 AM, Castelia said:

And one more thing, is adding custom sound effects as easy as adding sound effects with filenames that match the ones I'm replacing?

That depends. With vanilla/limit-removing/Boom/MBF compatibility modes, you can't add new sounds. There's a hardcoded list and that's what you have to deal with. At most you could rename a sound lump but that won't give you more sounds.

 

With advanced ports that have content definition languages, it's just a question of defining the new sounds where relevant and plugging it to new actors or sound scripts or whatever. See SNDINFO for ZDoom and EDF sound reference for Eternity.

 

On lundi 19 octobre 2020 at 1:20 AM, Castelia said:

I noticed while looking at Doom 2 in SLADE 3 that every sound effect has a copy that uses the PC Speakers or something. Are those important?

Not really, no. In vanilla they're just a fall-back for if you have no soundcard, a scenario that hasn't been likely since motherboards started getting integrated audio capabilities like 20 years ago. Since the audio code was gutted out of the Doom source code release, ports had to reimplement sound support on their own and exceedingly few bothered with PC speaker sound support. Especially since nowadays it would mean actually playing these sounds on the normal audio output instead of the beeper. It's a funny novelty that you may use for a level or two before turning it back off forever. Just play the video on that Doom Wiki page to get what I mean...

[Castelia]

8 minutes ago, Gez said:

Yes, you can change in-game strings relatively easily. The simplest way is probably to use a DEHACKED lump with a BEX string block.

http://www.aspectsweb.co.uk/dehacked/bex01.html

 

In "pure" DEHACKED you'd have to include the original string and immediately follow it by the replaced string (and by immediately I mean without even a space or other separator) and it'd be much simpler and less tedious to use something like WHACKED to do it.

 

For obituary messages, see this for the ZDoom mnemonics and that for Eternity mnemonics.

 

That depends. With vanilla/limit-removing/Boom/MBF compatibility modes, you can't add new sounds. There's a hardcoded list and that's what you have to deal with. At most you could rename a sound lump but that won't give you more sounds.

 

With advanced ports that have content definition languages, it's just a question of defining the new sounds where relevant and plugging it to new actors or sound scripts or whatever. See SNDINFO for ZDoom and EDF sound reference for Eternity.

 

Not really, no. In vanilla they're just a fall-back for if you have no soundcard, a scenario that hasn't been likely since motherboards started getting integrated audio capabilities like 20 years ago. Since the audio code was gutted out of the Doom source code release, ports had to reimplement sound support on their own and exceedingly few bothered with PC speaker sound support. Especially since nowadays it would mean actually playing these sounds on the normal audio output instead of the beeper. It's a funny novelty that you may use for a level or two before turning it back off forever. Just play the video on that Doom Wiki page to get what I mean...

 

Sorry for the mega quote, but thanks so much! I worded my question about adding sounds poorly, I tested it myself and I was able to replace sound effects pretty easily by changing filenames.

[Stabbey]

I'm not terribly familiar with how to use Slade and MAPINFO stuff. I want to disable jumping and crouching in a map.

 

 

On 10/26/2020 at 7:55 PM, BluePineapple72 said:

@Clippy
You do use MAPINFO. Here is how Steve88 did Pandemonium:

defaultmap
{
nojump
nocrouch

resetinventory

resethealth

resetitems
}

 

But when I tried putting that into a WAD which already had a MAPINFO lump I put in with Slade, and that didn't work. Where would I put the "nojump" and "nocrouch" commands into a lump which looks like this? (If the format looks wrong, as I said, I'm not very familiar with the proper way to do it.)

 

;STC_Tower MAPINFO.lmp
map MAP11 "Control Tower"
{
          music = "D_AMPIE"
          next = "MAP12"
          secretnext = "MAP31"
          sky1 = "SKY1", 0.0
          cluster = 1
          par = 2400
}

clusterdef 1
{
 flat = RROCK14
entertext="Text Goes Here."
}

[Edward850]

defaultmap only applies to maps defined after it, you cannot apply changes to mapinfo definitions retroactively.

[BluePineapple72]

@Stabbey Put nojump no crouch within the brackets under ;STC_Tower MAPINFO.lmp map MAP11 "Control Tower"

Defaultmap is used to define multiple entries within mapinfo and goes at the top. Single maps will have the individual commands within their own brackets.

So for example, if I made a WAD with two maps, I'd use default map to define them, but a WAD with one map only needs the lines under the map's onw definitions

Edited October 28, 2020 by BluePineapple72

[Stabbey]

11 hours ago, BluePineapple72 said:

@Stabbey Put nojump no crouch within the brackets under ;STC_Tower MAPINFO.lmp map MAP11 "Control Tower"

Defaultmap is used to define multiple entries within mapinfo and goes at the top. Single maps will have the individual commands within their own brackets.

So for example, if I made a WAD with two maps, I'd use default map to define them, but a WAD with one map only needs the lines under the map's onw definitions

 

Okay, so it would look something like this. I hope I understand better now, thanks.
 

map MAP11 "Control Tower"
{
          music = "D_AMPIE"
          next = "MAP12"
          secretnext = "MAP31"
          sky1 = "SKY1", 0.0
          cluster = 1
          par = 2400

          nojump
          nocrouch
}

 

[BluePineapple72]

@Stabbey Yes indeed! The best advice I can ever give for learning MAPINFO stuff like this is to crack open a WAD by a well-renown mapper to see how they did all the coding do-dad as reference. If anything in there makes no sense, then you can go to the ZDoomwiki and read up or then come back here to ask questions to make sense of what you saw.

[ViolentBeetle]

How much space should leave for monster on a turret to ensure it would attack correctly. Not all of them seem consistent, like Arachnotrons can shoot even when stuch off a ledge, while the gentry can't quite fight on a 64x64.

[Clippy]

So I'm using the map info to tell it to go from map02 or map 03 etc

 

But I want my map set to end at map 15 and tell it to go to the end screen what would I type in instead of a map number?

 

Thanks friends

[plums]

1 hour ago, Clippy said:

So I'm using the map info to tell it to go from map02 or map 03 etc

 

But I want my map set to end at map 15 and tell it to go to the end screen what would I type in instead of a map number?

 

Thanks friends

"EndGameC" for the Doom 2 ending credits, or EndPic, "THE_END" to display a picture in your wad called THE_END.

 

If you go for the end credits you can customize the background picture by having a picture in your wad called BOSSBACK

[Clippy]

18 minutes ago, plums said:

"EndGameC" for the Doom 2 ending credits, or EndPic, "THE_END" to display a picture in your wad called THE_END.

 

If you go for the end credits you can customize the background picture by having a picture in your wad called BOSSBACK

 

Now that was an answer!

 

Thank you my friend

[ViolentBeetle]

Is there a fixed limit related to number of scrolling sectors in boom? Something I can do to avoid it?

[Gez]

17 minutes ago, ViolentBeetle said:

Is there a fixed limit related to number of scrolling sectors in boom? Something I can do to avoid it?

Pretty sure there isn't.

[ViolentBeetle]

2 hours ago, Gez said:

Pretty sure there isn't.

Yeah, probably. I once again tried to scroll dolls on zero height sector.

[forgettable pyromaniac]

here's a very simple question i can't for the life of me find

what is the default name for the credit image lump for doom II?

not the TITLEPIC lump, the image that appears after that.

[Gez]

It's CREDIT.

[forgettable pyromaniac]

6 minutes ago, Gez said:

It's CREDIT.

ty

[ViolentBeetle]

Does Doom, and particularly PrBoom+ limits what kind of colours can it use for non-game graphics (Like TITLEPIC)? Is it specific palette in PLAYPAL?

Edited November 9, 2020 by ViolentBeetle

[Kappes Buur]

15 hours ago, ViolentBeetle said:

Does Doom, and particularly PrBoom+ limits what kind of colours can it use for non-game graphics (Like TITLEPIC)? Is it specific palette in PLAYPAL?

 

The graphics in original DOOM or PrBOOM+ are all tied to the PLAYPAL used.

 

Edited November 10, 2020 by Kappes Buur

[Nevander]

On 10/29/2020 at 1:12 PM, ViolentBeetle said:

How much space should leave for monster on a turret to ensure it would attack correctly. Not all of them seem consistent, like Arachnotrons can shoot even when stuch off a ledge, while the gentry can't quite fight on a 64x64.

It varies, in my experience. I suggest experimenting until it works how you like. Maybe expand the area it sits by 8 or 16 units until it attacks how you like.

[Omniarch]

What source ports allow the SSG to be used normally (i.e selectable, uses 2 shells per shot etc) in Doom 1/Ultimate Doom? Obviously you could do it in Decorate/EDF for Zternity, and I believe I saw something in Crispy Doom's changelog about this capability, but what about ports like PrBoom+, Doom Retro and so on?

[ViolentBeetle]

There's a lot of sectors I would like to change brightness in Boom format on trigger, but putting control sectors for each would be hard (There's a lot of them). Any trick I can use? Basically it's Hitler's portrait in an arch made of countless sectors, that should darken when shot.

[Alper002]

Don't think you'll need to overcomplicate such a thing with lots of control sectors, unless there's a missing detail in your question. You can just give all of the sectors in the arch the same tag and then affect the sector brightness on sectors with that tag using a light action.

 

Edit:There's also the possibility of having a single affected sector be behind the arch, but so tiny so as to be impossible to notice.

Edited November 19, 2020 by Alper002

[ViolentBeetle]

1 hour ago, Alper002 said:

Don't think you'll need to overcomplicate such a thing with lots of control sectors, unless there's a missing detail in your question. You can just give all of the sectors in the arch the same tag and then affect the sector brightness on sectors with that tag using a light action.

 

Edit:There's also the possibility of having a single affected sector be behind the arch, but so tiny so as to be impossible to notice.

What I was trying to communicate is that there's no reference sector naturally adjacent thus I would need to link all of them to control sector of target brightness. I guess Drawing a think sector across the arc or drawing a control sector behind mid texture are my better bets.