This part of the Doomworld Editing Pages deals with special effects, intended for an audience already well versed in level editing. This is the wrong place to start learning how to edit... check our Editing Tutorials section for sites that contain basic help, such as as the Unofficial Wad Designers Handbook. Inspiration for this section came from Hykkelbjerg's Doom Editing Pages (ASCII files plus example WADs, 258 Kb), which are now unfortunately defunct. But, you can still view them in ASCII form. It is highly recommended to take a look at it since it will familiarise you with several concepts that are widely used in special effects such as tricks with the SKY texture, deep water effects and invisible platforms.

To duplicate any effect described here any level editor tool will do, provided it lets you manipulate individual sidedefs. However, I strongly recommend using Lee Killough's BSP 2.3x nodesbuilder (or higher, available at our Utilities section) to compile your level. Most of the effects mentioned here can be reproduced perfectly with BSP, but not with other nodesbuilders... please take note of remarks concerning this while reading the descriptions!

While not a special effect, I have included a description on how to introduce new sprites and flats in your wad without the need to extract all the other original sprites / flats as well when using the original Doom(2) engine. Very handy to know.

Use the menu below to navigate this tutorial. Questions, remarks... just mail me.