Planning on creating a Doom MOD for DC, have some questions

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Imerion
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Planning on creating a Doom MOD for DC, have some questions

Post by Imerion »

Yo all! After playing the excellent HacX and Half-Life Doom Mods on my GP32 I got the idea of making my own Doom-mod for Dreamcast. So I started looking around for information. I found this nice page : http://files.frashii.com/~sp00nz/Doom which answered some of my questions, but not all. Here are the rest of the questions, any help with answering them would be appreciated!

First, which level editor is to prefer? I am using Linux but if the best editor is for windows, I can probably run it in Wine or use my brothers computer.

What program should I use to create and edit Pwads? Adding new textures, sprites and so on?

How to implement those DeHacked-patches?

Can NxDoom run in high-res mode?

Can NxDoom run from a single Pwad (without using any of the Iwads)? So the game can be released free and standalone?

What is the maximum wad-size when running on DC?

Perhaps there is a tutorial somewhere telling all this. If so, please link me to it :)
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Post by BlackAura »

A lot of this is just general Doom editing stuff. Honestly, it's been way too long for me to remember most of this (I last did Doom modding when I was twelve).

DeHacked patches are generally made using DeHacked (surprisingly enough). It's a DOS program that runs on the original DOS binary, and modifies it's internal data. It is possible to create them manually, if you know what you're doing. However, I don't believe that anyone ever actually made a newer DeHacked editor.

nxDoom runs in 320x200 only. It's a port of plain, unmodified Doom, so it doesn't really have any special features. Aside from a better PWAD loader, and a DeHacked loader, of course.

Doom in general can not be run from a PWAD. However, it can be run from an IWAD, and you can create your own IWAD files (the file format is identical, except for a single byte at the beginning of the file). However, you have to replace everything.

The maximum WAD size is theoretically 2GB. Obviously, you'd never get anywhere near that in reality, and you'd run out of memory long before that. From memory, the DC port of nxDoom has about 8MB (maybe 10MB) of RAM spare for loading stuff from the WAD file.
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Post by Sir Savant »

I was just thinking of doing the same thing.

Deapsea is the best IMO for stages, although I think there are linux tools, ive never used them. I also think it has support for inserting new graphics directy into the mod, if I am correct.
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Post by BlazeHedgehog »

Sorry to bump an old topic like this, but there's actually a new DeHackEd editor out there called WhackEd2. Unfortunatly, after googling it, it's site seems to have died.

If it helps, the filename for the installer is whacked2_setup.exe. I don't have it on my HDD anymore, but maybe you guys can find it?
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Post by XDelusion »

I've got the latest WhackED is someone needs it. It's rather nice except I don't think it lets you exchange code pointers if I recall correctly.
I just personally stick with DeHackED.

If you need a good and easy editor, I would suggest DOOM Builder above all for its ease of use, and 3D mode which REALLY REALLY makes level editing a LOT easier and faster (so long as you are not working with slopes and 3d floors).
My other favorite level editor is DeepSea. It's what I started out with about 5.5 years ago and still use from time to time. The only problem with it is that it is really touchy and will leave your map with a lot of errors that DOOM Builder does not seem to do.

For better guides than are on the DOOMDC page...

head over to DOOMWorld's tutorial section:

http://www.doomworld.com/tutorials/index.shtml

Just stay away from the BOOM or other source port related stuff as this (as is with all console DOOM ports) is based off the original source and still retains all the old limitations, give or take a few new tricks with DeHackED.

Oh yes, and some books you would find very worth having are:

Trick of the DOOM Programming Gurus

and

3D game Alchecmy: For DOOM, DOOM II, Heretic, and Hexen.

You can prolly find them on Ebay eventually for next to nothing. I personally own 2 of each. :)
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Post by Imerion »

Indeed Doomworld is great. I used it to create a few maps. Ill check those tutorials. Perhaps it could become something more than a standard "Some new levels with Doom gfx"-mod.
Cool thing there's books about it as well...
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Post by XDelusion »

The books a VERY clear, amazing material!
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