
DOOM Editing - Getting Started Guide

John Bishop
Version 1.04
January 1 200

Note: This is a simple text file conversion from the HTML document at 
      http://www.users.waitrose.com/~sharx/dmstrtd.htm. All of the links
      throughout the text have been removed, but are gathered together in 
      the last two sections of this document. If you are looking for download
      links, that's the place to go.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------


Preamble
Document History
Late Breaking News
Introduction
What do I Need?
A Note of Encouragement
Some Terminology
What is a WAD (Non-Technical)
What is a WAD (A Bit Technical)
Editors
The Opening Screen
How much Ammo and Health?
Using WinTex/DeuTex to Manipulate WAD
  Introduction
  Inserting your own Title Screen Method 1
  Inserting your own Title Screen Method 2
  Changing the music for your Level Method 1
  Changing the music for your Level Method 2
  Inserting new Sound Effects
Using DeuSF to add your own Sprites and Flats
All the Musical Stuff
Sounds Effective
Reject Map Builders
The Closing Graphical Screen
The Closing Text Screen
Recording and Inserting your own Demos
Analysing and Updating your Demos
Consistency Checking (WAD Validation)
Cleaning up your WAD
So Your Game Won't Save
The Importance of Lighting
Common Design Flaws
My Good Design Tips
Going Public
Essential Documents
Full List of Links used	
  Important DOOMII Web Sites
  Level Editors
  WAD Composition Tools
  WAD Utilities
  Sound Effect Utilities
  MUSIC Utilities
  LMP Tools and Utilities
  Other Useful Tools


Preamble

	This document will give you an overall idea of what's involved in DOOM editing and 
the creation of new WADs. Trouble is that you can't do this with a single tool, in fact I must 
have used or reviewed some thirty different utilities during the creation of my WADs, and it 
has taken me a lot of time and effort reading stuff and asking other people for help just to 
find out what is often something really simple. And it takes a while to sift through all the 
utilities to find the ones you really need. 

So, this won't be a guide to WAD editing per se because there are some great documents 
out there already (see especially the WAD Designers Handbook and its associated 
Addendum which I used myself when I first started WAD editing) but it will give you a 
conceptual overview, an idea of the many things you can do when WAD editing and 
importantly, links to the utilities and documents you will need. Hopefully, this will save you 
a LOT of time if you are just starting out. 

                   First release 1.03 published June 27 1998

This document is copyright (c) John Bishop 1998,2001 and is not endorsed or supported by 
id Software. Readers are welcome to print and distribute it freely provided they keep it 
intact and give me credit as the author. All documents and software referred to in this 
document are copyrighted by their respective authors and I make no claim of any kind to 
these materials and intend no copyright infringement. 

Note: the terms DOOM, DOOM2 and DOOMII are used interchangeably throughout this 
document. 

If you read this and find any errors, omissions, or have suggestions as to how it might be 
enhanced please EMail me at jb_sharx@hotmail.com. 


Document History 
----------------

The first edition of this document was published as version 1.03 on the web and to the 
cdrom.com archives (now the 3d gamers archive) as a text and Microsoft Word document 
on June 27 1998. It was essentially complete from the outset. 

Version 1.04 was published in December 2001. The cdrom.com archives closed in 2001 so 
none of the links to utilities and documents worked any longer. Jens Hykkelbjerg's (author 
of RMB, the reject map builder and a rather good Sepcial Effects document - now lost I fear) 
DOOM pages closed which required changes in this document. The excellent WAD Designers 
Handbook moved home at least twice which broke yet more links! Finally, I have added a 
section on lighting which is so important in adding realism to a WAD. 


Late Breaking News 
------------------

Much has happened since this document was originally written. The release of the DOOM 
source code to the community (for which ID Software are to be congratulated for their 
magnanimity and foresightedness) has caused a number of new Engines to be spawned, all 
of which add features (such as true 'room-over-room') and fix bugs. This document refers 
just to BOOM but there are several others such as Legacy, MBF (Man's Best Friend), EDGE 
(which grew out of DOS DOOM). Use Doomworld and the web to find the home sites for 
these new Engines; Google is a very quick and effective web search engine. 

Doomworld has grown significantly and I would particularly recommend that after mastering 
the basics of WAD design you read the Doomworld Editing Pages where a number of 
'special' effects such as 3d-bridges, windows above windows, swinging doors and rooms 
over rooms are explained with diagrams to make it easier to understand. 

Finally, I am now using DeeP, or more recently DeePSea, to do my editing - it is available 
here. This is a fully supported editor that has special features for many of the new Engines 
such as BOOM and ZDOOM - and it is the ONLY one that provides such facilities. It also 
makes a number of the utilities mentioned in this document (WinTEX, DEUTex, NWT and 
DMAUD for example) redundant. However, it costs money - not much, but this may be 
enough to put some of you off. Nonetheless, I recommend that you try it - a limited version 
is available for download 


Introduction 
------------

When I first got interested in the construction of DOOMII WAD files, I had no idea of how 
addictive it was to become. I'm not a very good player myself, but was watching my son 
play a level one day and was just fascinated by the architecture. Wondering how the game 
was constructed set me off on a journey that was to last a several years off and on, with six 
WADs of my own, and four maps contributed to other projects. 

Trouble is, there's almost too much information out there and you need to know at least a 
little about many things before you can construct a good looking WAD. The fact is that 
virtually everything in a DOOMII WAD can be replaced, from the opening screen to the 
closing credits, but there is no one tool that will do all this for you. 
The remainder of this document will introduce you to the tools that I have found invaluable 
during my WAD construction. But don't stop here, there will be more utilities coming out as 
time passes. 

And it still doesn't end. As I write this, those great good guys at TeamTNT have just 
released the BOOM engine. This is an enhanced version of the original DOOMII engine, with 
all the bad bugs ironed out and a pile of new features for us fanatical WAD designers. To go 
with the new engine there are updated editors and utilities, and I know that at the time of 
writing TeamTNT already have in mind some of the functions of Phase 2 of the BOOM 
engine. 


What do I Need? 
---------------

Ha! So you can be bothered to read all this stuff eh? Ok then, there are only two things you 
absolutely must have to create your own DOOM levels: 

  * A registered version of the game (DOOM or DOOMII) 
  * An editor which can build you a runnable level 

I would also recommend that you download the WAD Designers Handbook and its 
associated Addendum, although you may be able to do without. 

This small manual is about all the utilities and documents which I used along the way and in 
fact still use. So you might ask yourself why it is the case that really all you need is these 
two things. Well, it is true that provided you have an editor that can build a level (or map) 
which the DOOM Engine can run you're on your way. However, after you have completed 
your first WAD (or maybe even before that) you will begin to wonder how some WADs you 
play have different opening and closing screens, different exit text displays, different 
sounds, music and textures, even different sprites. That is why this document is here. 

This document won't give you all the details you need to run each of the utilities that it 
refers to... each has its own documentation. What it will do is tell you what utility you can 
use to do each function you might need on a WAD and will provide some description and 
links so you can get the utility and try it for yourself. Having said that, there's nothing 
wrong with starting off just with an editor and learning how to use it before messing with all 
the other stuff. That's exactly what I did and I suspect many others did too. 


A Note of Encouragement 
-----------------------

If you're really serious about learning how to do WAD design you're probably in for a bit of a 
long haul with a great deal of learning to do, lots of late nights and many frustrations. You 
know the type of thing... you see an effect in a WAD and wonder how it's done so you load 
it into your editor and you still can't understand how it's done! Well, if you're going to 
become competent at this then it is going to take an effort. But I can tell you that it is well 
worth it. 

I can still remember the feeling I had when I created my first room - that's all it was, one 
room - and I ran the game and there I was, inside my own world! There is no describing 
how it feels to wander about in a world that is completely of your own making - the way it 
appears and everything in it and that takes place in it is yours. How about that for power! 
So believe me it's worth all the late nights, the frustrations, the pain when stuff doesn't 
work right, the mistakes, the criticism. Don't give up after a week. It isn't going to take a 
week, more like months. 

And remember that if you get really stuck help is never far away. There are DOOM sites 
with EMail addresses all over the web, there are newsgroups (particularly 
rec.games.computer.doom.editing) and endless documents. You need help, just ask, 
someone out there will have the answer. 


Some Terminology 
----------------

As you read through this and the many other documents you will doubtless read, you will 
encounter a bunch of new terminology which will only become meaningful with time. This 
document is no different to any other because when people are talking about DOOM editing 
they use the same 'new' words to convey their ideas. So, this section contains some of the 
terms you will come across and gives a (usually simple) definition. They appear in 
alphabetic sequence. The WAD Designers Handbook that I have already mentioned contains 
a fuller and more technical explanation of some of these and other terms and should be 
used when you need more details. 

Animated texture
You may have noticed when playing DOOM that some of the textures 
you see move. Examples are the fiery and blood walls. There are also 
some animated flats (floor and ceiling textures) like the acid and the 
lava. DOOM creates this effect by having several texture definitions 
which it displays one after the other - much as a cartoon is created.
 

Flat
This is the name given to the textures used for the floors and ceilings. 
They are a standard 64 by 64 pixels in size.
 

Linedef
This is the name given to a line on the editing map that joins two 
points. (The points themselves are called vertices; one of them is a 
vertex). Every structure that you draw using your editor is done using 
linedefs. Linedefs can have one or two sides, where a one-sided 
linedef can only be seen by the player from one side. An example is a 
room's outer wall which the player cannot see the 'other' (outer) side 
of. Two-sided lindefs can be seen by the player from both sides, like a 
window. This is a short definition, see the WAD Designers Handbook 
for a much fuller explanation.
 

LOS
The abbreviation for 'line of sight'. This term is used in relation to 
building the Reject Map (see Reject Map Builders later) and is 
concerned with the calculation involved in determining whether at 
each point in the game a monster is able to see and therefore attack 
you, the player.
 

Lump
Some of the resources in a PWAD are referred to as 'lumps'. When 
extracted from a WAD they are written to disk with the extension 
.LMP, and the most common form of lump you are likely to see is a 
DOOMII demo file. Other lumps are PLAYPAL which are the 14 DOOM 
colour palettes, COLORMAP for colour mapping, ENDOOM which is the 
text screen displayed when you've quit DOOM, the three demos 
DEMO1, DEMO2 and DEMO3, GENMIDI which is for general MIDI 
instrument mapping and DMXGUS and DMXGUSC for text file 
remapping of MIDI instruments for the Gravis Ultrasound card. 

In BOOM there are two new lumps, ANIMATED and SWITCHES. The 
SWITCHES lump defines the names of textures that are used as 
switches and have an 'on' and an 'off' state. The ANIMATED lump 
defines the names of the flats and wall textures which are animated. 
For the switches, the first and second texture name is given whereas 
for the animated textures, the name of the first and the name of the 
last in the series is given. A new utility is provided with BOOM to build 
these new lumps.
 

Map
A set of resources which comprises at least one sector bounded by 
linedefs and a player 1 start point. Usually of course the Map is far 
more complex than this with many sectors or areas that the player 
can move in, and many things such as monsters, weapons, roadkill, 
torches, ammo and so on. A Map is often also referred to as a level. 
It is a DOOM Map that you will be defining with your DOOM editor.
 

Nodes/Node Tree
Nodes are entries in what is known as a 'node tree' or a 'BSP Tree' 
and as you might expect, the node tree is just another resource in 
the WAD. How they are created is not normally our worry since some 
very bright people out there have taken all the pain out of creating 
the node tree by writing software to do it for us! Most editors have a 
node builder incorporated which creates the tree and places it in the 
WAD at the appropriate point. 

Having said that, it is good to be aware that the node tree exists 
since it is used by the Engine to determine what is in the players line 
of sight, and therefore what he is able to see at any point in the level. 
The Engine will not work if the node tree is not present in the PWAD. 
The editor I use, DCK, has the node builder ZenNode built in; other 
editors build their own node tree or use an alternative like BSP.
 

PWAD or WAD
A collection of 'resources' that defines the appearance of a DOOMII 
game. It will normally contain at least the full definition of the game 
architecture (rooms, doors, stairs, lighting and so on), and the 
positioning of all 'things' such as monsters, pillars, torches, key cards 
and so on. It may optionally contain other resources such as textures 
and music. For a fuller explanation see What is a WAD below. 
 

Reject Map
A table within a DOOMII WAD which saves the Engine having to 
always calculate, at any point in the game, whether you are visible to 
monsters in other sectors.
 

Resource
I have used this word throughout this document to refer to the 
various parts that go to make up the WAD file. It is perfectly OK to 
have a WAD that contains nothing but music, or a WAD that contains 
nothing but new sound effects. You can 'add on' multiple WADs using 
the -FILE parameter when you invoke DOOM or BOOM. Resources of 
all types can be extracted from a PWAD using a PWAD resource 
manipulating utility such as DeuTex or WinTex, both of which are 
available from the 3d archives here.
 

Sector
An enclosed area in a map (or level) which has a defined floor and 
ceiling height and lighting level. Since it is enclosed, it must have at 
least three lines (or linedefs) to define it, but there is no restriction on 
its shape, and the maximum number of lines that can be used to 
define it is so large as to be of no real concern. Every part of a map 
that a player moves in must be defined as a sector. It follows from 
this definition that doors, windows, lifts, crates and so on are all 
separate sectors.
 

Sidedef
The sidedef tells the Engine what to display when the player faces a 
linedef in the game, i.e. the textures that it should paint. Sidedefs 
have three different areas on which textures may or may not be 
painted, referred to as the upper, normal and lower. For example, if 
you have a tunnel entrance in a wall where there is a step up to get 
into it and the roof of the tunnel is below the ceiling of the room you 
are in, then the upper texture is that painted above the tunnel 
entrance (on the wall that faces you), the lower texture is that 
painted below the tunnel entrance, and the normal is the texture on 
the tunnel entrance itself - which in this case would be no texture at 
all. This is explained in much more detail in the WAD Designers 
Handbook.
 

Texture
This is the general name given to the patterns you see on the walls, 
floors and ceilings as you move through the DOOM game. You know, 
the bricks, stones, rocks, dripping acid and so on. In fact, when it 
comes to editing you will soon find that there is a difference between 
wall textures and those used for the floors and ceilings. These last 
two are usually called 'flats' rather than textures, so the word 
textures can usually be taken to mean just those displayed on the 
walls. 

Textures are normally 128 pixels high and either 64 or 128 pixels 
wide. However, a number of textures differ from these dimensions so 
you do have to use care when you are choosing your wall and 
especially door textures when you have not used a standard size. 
Also, some special textures such as the exit door are quite unusual so 
look out for these when you are editing! Some textures (the switches 
for example) can be animated. You will read all about this in the 
section on WinTex/DeuTex. 

The sky texture is special in many ways (as you will read in other 
documents) but when you are just starting out treat it like another 
ceiling flat, watching carefully how it appears.
 

Thing
A Thing is an item in a DOOMII game such as a weapon, medikit, key 
card, tree, and of course enemies. Some things are not immediately 
apparent as things to players but become apparent when you start 
editing. I would classify the teleport exit flash and the player starting 
point in this group. There are nine categories of things: Player 
starts/Teleport exits, Weapons, Enemies, Bonus items, Keys, Lights, 
Bodies (or 'Roadkill'), Hanging Bodies, Decorations. 

When you are editing a new map and inserting your things, you will 
choose a number of attributes, such as which difficulty level they 
appear on, whether they appear in co-op or deathmatch mode, 
whether an enemy will not attack you until it actually sees you and so 
on. It is the careful selection of the attributes which can lend further 
realism to your game according to the skill of the player. This is 
discussed in some detail in the WAD Designers Handbook.


What is a WAD (Non-Technical) 
-----------------------------

When you play a game of DOOM, there are two main parts to what you see and do during 
the game. The part that controls how things happen (i.e. the action), like the gun firing 
when you press a key, the monsters dying when they get hit and so on, are all controlled by 
the DOOMII Engine. The part that controls how things appear to you, the rooms you are in, 
the textures on the walls, even the music and the ending text screen you see, are all part of 
the WAD. The Engine controls the action and the WAD controls the appearance. In DOOMII 
for example, we are talking about the distinction between DOOM2.EXE (the Engine) and 
DOOM2.WAD (the WAD). 

There are two types of WAD, IWADs and PWADs. An IWAD (short for Internal WAD) is the 
huge file that you will see in your DOOM or DOOMII directory and that was supplied with the 
registered game (e.g. DOOM2.WAD). It includes everything there is needed to run the game 
including all the maps, sprites, wall textures, floor and ceiling textures, music, sound 
effects, text messages and so on. A PWAD (or Patch WAD) is what you will be concerned 
with designing. 

The PWAD is generally (though not necessarily always) smaller than an IWAD and perhaps 
only contains a single new map definition. All of the other things that are needed for the 
game are loaded from the IWAD. So what happens when you use the DOOM2 -FILE pwad-
name.WAD command is that the map or maps (and any other resources you have defined) 
in 'pwad-name.WAD' replaces those in the original IWAD leaving all the other resources in 
the IWAD available during gameplay. Thus, if you have designed a MAP01, the original 
DOOMII MAP01 is replaced by yours - but only temporarily - it does not affect the DOOM2 
IWAD on your hard drive! All the music, sound effects, monster designs and so on are taken 
from the original DOOM or DOOM2 IWAD. Most of the time when people talk of WADs and 
WAD design they are referring to PWADs. 

It is this separation of the Engine and the WAD which is at the root of your ability to design 
your own DOOMII maps, because all you need to do is create a single room with valid wall, 
floor and ceiling textures in it, a single player start and that's it, your own first WAD! The 
Engine will take care of the display of the textures on the walls and floor, the shooting of 
the gun and your movement through your room. But how can you do this? Well, first you 
are going to need an editor to build yourself the DOOMII map and thus the WAD. Later, you 
might well find that there are other utilities you need, but the editor is the starting point 
and is the very least that you will need. 


What is a WAD (A Bit Technical) 
-------------------------------

If you read the previous section, you now know that the WAD contains definitions of things 
like the map, possibly sprite and texture definitions and so on. But how is this all arranged 
internally? 

Well, a WAD file has three basic parts, a 'header', one or more 'resources' (like the map 
resources, textures and so on), and a 'directory'. The directory is the key to all this because 
it contains all the resource names (and for the programmers out there, all the sizes and 
offsets to each of the WAD resources). The header indicates whether it is an IWAD or a 
PWAD, and also tells the Engine (and of course any other software that processes WAD files 
such as an editor or other utility) how many resources there are in the WAD and where the 
directory starts. There are well over 2000 entries in the directory and if you are interested 
in knowing what they all are you should see the DOOM 1.666 Specification by Matt Fell. 

Generally speaking you would only be interested in this document if you were intending to 
write a utility that processes WAD files. 
Usually, the resources are referred to in 'groups', so we talk about sprites, flats, sounds and 
so on. But of course within each group we will have many individual resources which can 
always be referenced by name. It really is important to grasp this concept because it is at 
the heart of your ability to define your own resources, of almost all of the types, and replace 
them in your own PWAD. 

What you will find throughout this (and other) documents, is that whenever a utility talks 
about replacing a WAD resource, it refers to its name, indeed the utilities need you to 
provide the name so that they know what to replace! This is why when, for example, you 
read about the utility ENDOOMER which replaces the ending text screen when you exit 
doom, we talk about ENDOOM - simply because ENDOOM is the name of the resource in the 
WAD that contains the text. Another example is if you want to replace the music for DOOMII 
MAP01 you must create a music file with the name D_RUNNIN because this name and only 
this name is what DOOM recognizes as being the music for MAP01. 

If you can understand this you're well on your way! If you can't it doesn't really matter 
because provided you can use one of the editors you can always just stick to designing 
simple maps without doing all the other stuff like replacing textures, music, sound effects or 
so on. Like I've said before, don't give up... start slowly and come back to this section after 
you've tried a couple of editors because it may well be clearer then. 


Editors 
-------

Getting yourself a WAD editor is the starting point because it is by using an editor that you 
will be able to lay out the design of your level. You will need to make a fundamental 
decision or two before finally settling on your editor of choice. This is because there are a 
number of editors out there and there must be at least a half dozen I have seen that I 
would rate as good software, one or two of which are first class both in terms of operability 
and suitability to the task, and also in terms of support by their authors. Some of the 
available editors are free, one or two are shareware. 

You will also need to decide whether you want to edit in a Windows environment or in 
straight MS-DOS. (I know that editors are also available for the Apple Mac system and other 
platforms, but this document will only refer to PC based operating environments). These 
days some editors support a DOS window from Windows 95 or Windows NT. I am not going 
to recommend which one you select... each one has good points and not so good points, but 
there is one more fundamental thing to bear in mind. If you want to stick to basic DOOMII 
(or DOOM) editing, any editor will do this for you. However, if you want to create WADs 
using features that are available in the new TeamTNT BOOM Engine, then you must choose 
an editor that supports the new features available with BOOM. Of course what you might do 
is learn the basics with a simple editor and move on to the more feature-packed BOOM 
editing later. 

So what editors are there? Well, the most common ones are shown below and I would 
advise taking a look at all of these and designing a small WAD in each one, say just a couple 
of connected rooms with a door in between, before making a decision. And don't give up... 
when you're first starting it can be very frustrating because there is so much new stuff to 
absorb that it can seem overwhelming. But just start out with really simple stuff, don't try 
to build a complex map such as those you will have seen and played. Some of the 
architectural features you see in WADs by TeamTNT for example take a LOT of work and 
knowledge to do. So, keep it simple and learn to walk before you can run. 
Note that there are other editors of which I am aware but which do not appear here 
(WADED and DOOMCAD spring to mind). Just use the 3d archive to check out the others if 
you want to, or if you don't get on with any of those listed below. 

DCK
DCK is the DOOM Construction Kit by Ben Morris (which he no longer 
supports). This is the editor I first started with and I found it easy to use, 
intuitive and reasonably reliable. I still use it occasionally because TeamTNT 
have added support for the BOOM engine although this support is not 
complete because of limitations in the editor. The link above will download 
the last shareware version that was released (3.62). Prior to this, the last 
freeware version which some people still prefer was 2.2 which can be 
downloaded from here.
 

DETH
DETH is the DOOM Editor for Total Headcases. It was originally written by 
Antony J Burden and Simon Oke and seems to be maintained now by 
TeamTNT. It runs in DOS mode but is happy to run in a DOS window under 
Win95 so I guess it will also be OK under WinNT. It's a bit strange because it 
has a command line interface, but once you've loaded a WAD it has a 
Windows-type interface. Anyway, since it is maintained by TeamTNT it has 
full BOOM support. The link above goes to the bit of TeamTNT's site where 
you can download the latest version of DETH and incidentally also download 
BOOM and the files required to give BOOM support to both the versions of 
DCK mentioned above.
 

DeeP
DeeP (DOOM Enhanced Editor Program) is written by Jack Vermeulen and 
there are several versions available the latest of which are full 32-bit 
Win95/WinNT products but a fully functional DOS version is still available. 
This editor looks very impressive and it has full support for all the new BOOM 
features. It also can do a pile of things that I have not seen in other editors 
such as in-built sprite and texture editing. There is a full website for Deep 
accessible through the link above. Note that this editor is also shareware and 
the downloadable version has limits imposed which are only removed in the 
registered version. However, it will allow you to load and examine a PWAD of 
any size although you won't be able to change and re-save large PWADs.
 

DEU
DEU (DOOM Editing Utility) originally written by Ralph Quintet and Brendon J 
Wyber (aka the 'DEU Team' not surprisingly!) and seems to be at the root of 
a number of other editors that are now available. I'm not too clear on the 
history of all this but maybe they released some early C source code for their 
editor and (like Id's release of the DOOM source code) a number of other 
editors were spawned from it. Anyway, there is a whole directory of DEU 
stuff in the 3d archive and the link above will take you to it. Have a browse 
and pick the one that suits your system or preference best. At the time of 
writing (April 1998) there is no BOOM support in DEU but I have little doubt 
that it will be on the way.
 

WadAuthor
WadAuthor is a Windows based editor with support for all flavours of 
Windows. It is written by John B Williston and is shareware based on a 
limited 'life' of 30 days. Again I do not personally use this editor but I did 
take a look at it (once I was already heavily into DCK) and one thing it has 
that I really liked was a superb map printing facility. The overall design of 
the editing screen looks very good also and again I think you should check 
this one out. WadAuthor also now has support for all the new BOOM 
features, although some of the more obscure features require raw hex data 
to be entered (unlike say DETH and DeeP). The link above will download the 
latest version. There is also a website which you can visit.


The Opening Screen 
------------------

The Opening Graphical screen that you see when a DOOM game starts is just another 
resource in the WAD and as such you can replace it just as you would replace a map (or 
level). This is the screen with the big DOOM or DOOMII image at the top where you select 
whether you want a new game, to change options or Quit and so on. If you want to replace 
this you will need to use a WAD resource manipulator such as DeuTex/WinTex. 

The name of the resource that you will need to replace is 'TITLEPIC' and it is a bitmap 
image 320 pixels wide and 200 pixels high (i.e. you will need to have a file called 
TITLEPIC.BMP on your hard disk for loading into your WAD). It can be an effective idea to 
take a screen capture of your game in play at a suitably frantic point and use this as the 
backdrop to your title screen. You can do this using DOOMII's normal screen capture facility 
(see Taking Screenshots below). Once you have this, you can use any one of a number of 
graphic manipulation software packages to add, say, the name of the WAD and your name 
as the author to the picture. A favourite of many WAD authors is Paintshop Pro by JASC Inc. 
To actually do the replacement so that your TITLEPIC appears instead of the standard 
DOOMII picture you should read the section on DeuTex/WinTex. 


Taking Screenshots 
------------------

The ability to capture screenshots while DOOM is running is a built-in feature of the game, 
and has been carried forward with enhancements into BOOM. The BOOM enhancements 
allow more than 99 captures to be taken in a single session, and also no longer display the 
rather irritating 'Screenshot' word at the top of the image! 

To enable the Screenshot feature, you simply use the -DEVPARM parameter when loading 
the game. Then, pressing F1 at any point will write a file DOOMnnn.PCX into the directory 
from which the game is running. These are 320 x 200 pixel 256 colour images and can of 
course be later manipulated by any paint/photo type software product. Images like this are 
often used for title or intermission picture replacements in DOOM games and can be 
uploaded to the web and displayed in HTML pages as samples of your own WADs. You can 
find some examples on my own web pages at

 http://www.users.waitrose.com/~sharx/dmmywads.htm
 
One further thing to be aware of is that the images as loaded into the WAD should come 
from .BMP files, while if you are going to use them in web pages they should be .GIF 
images. Paintshop Pro is a superb tool for converting one type of graphical image to 
another. 

See the section on WinTex/DeuTex if you want to include your own WAD screenshots as 
part of your game. 


How much Ammo and Health? 
-------------------------

I don't know about other WAD authors, but I usually do virtually all of the architectural 
design before inserting any of the monsters and health. Some 'things' I will put in along the 
way... mostly the decorative stuff like trees, bushes, lamps, torches and so on, but 
changing it from a world design into a playable level tends to happen after all the level is 
there. There may be small adjustments to make afterwards, like creating alcoves where 
monsters can be hidden, and maybe a secret room or two that can spring a nasty 
monsterish surprise on the player, but other than that it's usually all done bar the shouting. 

So, if you take this approach, there comes a point where you are going through the level 
changing it into a game by inserting the enemies, health, armour and weapons. Obviously 
there is a balance to be struck here at each player skill level, and if you don't get it right the 
level could end up being too easy for an 'Ultra Violence' skill player or too difficult for a 'Not 
too rough' or 'I'm too young to die' player. At worst the level could be simply unplayable 
with the player getting wasted before making any progress at all. I really despise levels like 
this and dump them without further analysis! A player of any level has to be able to at least 
get started without feeling that there's no point in continuing because the WAD is impossible 
to play through bad design. 

There are quite a few things to consider therefore and as you move through your level you 
must have these in mind all the time. My approach here is to do a bit of the level at a time, 
inserting the monsters, playing it until I can get through (but not too easily) on Hurt me 
Plenty, then making it easier or harder for the other skill levels by either adding health or 
removing ammo, and by adding or removing monsters. Quite often players will try a WAD at 
one level until they can get through it and then play it at the higher difficulty levels to hone 
their dooming skills, so it really is worth doing this. I usually also dump levels that do not 
have the skill levels properly implemented. If I can enlist the help of a better player than 
me to test the level on Ultra Violence then I will do this too. In this way after a few hours 
your level will be populated with health, ammo, armour and monsters and you should test it 
all again on each difficulty level all the way through. Then get as many other people to 
playtest it as you can and get them to report whether it is 'well balanced'. 

There is a utility I came across which can help you to get the balance right. It was written 
by Scott Jordan and is called TCOUNT. By analysing your WAD looking at the monsters you 
have placed in it, it calculates for each difficulty level the number of 'damage points' and 
from this whether you have enough ammo placed to destroy them. If you use this utility, 
you don't need to put any health, armour or ammo in to begin with, just the monsters, and 
TCOUNT will work out how much you need in the level at each difficulty level to destroy 
them all. There is full documentation provided with the utility which will be downloaded if 
you use the link above. What it can't do of course is to tell you precisely where to place the 
items needed, only common sense, judgement, knowledge of your own design and 
playtesting can help you with that. 


Using WinTex/DeuTex to Manipulate WADs 
--------------------------------------

Introduction 

This section is a basic introduction to DeuTex, Wintex and DeuSF. DeuTex is the base utility 
while WinTex is a graphical front-end for Windows and DeuSF is a stripped down version 
that enables sprites and flats to be dynamically appended to those in the DOOM IWAD on 
the players machine. These three tools taken together comprise perhaps the most effective 
and popular (though not the only) WAD composition tools. DeuTex means DEU's Texture 
Companion and it originally grew out of the code for DEU, the Doom Editing Utility written 
by Brendon Wyber and Raphael Quintet. 

This section of my Getting Started Guide is not a full description of all the things these three 
interlinked utilities can do, there is a full DeuTex/DeuSF Manual written by Kevin McGrail, 
and WinTex has a pile of Help and Tutorials which are invaluable to get you started. Another 
WAD composition tool which I came across much later is the New WAD Tool by Denis Moller 
which I believe does pretty much the same things but I think it is a DOS based tool only. As 
with the other utilities listed here you should try them and choose the one that suits your 
way of working best. Here, I will mostly be referring to WinTex since that is the one I know 
a little bit about, and later on there will be a couple of worked examples of putting new 
sounds and music and your own opening screen into a WAD just to get you started. 

So what can you do with a WAD composition tool? Well, the answer to that is just about 
anything! By now you will know that a WAD comprises a bunch of resources - level 
definition(s), sound effects, music, demos, textures and so on. When you design your own 
PWAD you will have at the very least all the resources required to define a valid map or 
level... and that's all you need. But suppose you want to have your own sound effects, or 
alter the music for your level, or compose and include your own textures? It is Wintex that 
enables you to do this sort of thing very easily. In fact, the list of things that you can do is 
pretty extensive so read the DeuTex/DeuSF manual for the full description. 

DeuSF (DEU Sprites and Flats) is a separate utility written to compensate for the fact that 
you can't use WinTex to add a new set of sprites, or replacement flats (i.e. ceiling and floor 
textures) directly to your PWAD which will then replace the equivalent names resources in 
the IWAD when you run the game. I have read that this is not due to any shortcoming in 
WinTex but is actually due to a bug in DOOM! So, what you can do is use DeuSF, usually via 
a batch file install procedure, to recreate a complete sprite and/or flat PWAD by appending 
your own, partial sprite/flat PWAD to the complete set from the original DOOM IWAD. In 
this way you are not breaking any copyright by using id Software's sprites and textures in 
your own PWAD. A good example of such an install procedure is in one of my favourite Total 
Conversion WADs Osiris (2.1Mb). 


Inserting your own Title Screen Method 1

Ok, so now lets go through the steps to create your own Title Screen in your WAD. 
Obviously before this point you will have used your editor (and possibly a separate nodes 
builder) to create a level which will run OK on its own. The first thing you need to do now is 
capture an image that you can use as your Title screen. So, start your level running using 
DOOM2 -FILE MYWAD.WAD -DEVPARM and when you want to capture the display just hit 
the F1 key. (More details can be found earlier in the section Taking Screenshots). You can 
use a product like Paintshop Pro from JASC Inc to browse and alter your screen shots. Once 
you have chosen the one you want to use as your opening screen, rename it to TITLEPIC, 
and remember that it should be a .BMP file. Now load up WinTex. 

You'll notice that WinTex (and therefore DeuTex also) supports other games like Hexen and 
Heretic. Ignore these for now and just click on DOOM2. You can see that there are two file 
selection boxes, the top one for PWAD to join and the lower one for PWAD to modify. Use 
the lower file selection box to find the original DOOM2 IWAD (don't worry, we're not going 
to change this at all) and when you've found it double click it to load all its resources into 
WinTex. A second window now opens. 

You'll see on the left all the resource entries from the main DOOM2 WAD and at the bottom 
of the display a button for each resource type. Click on the button that says 'GFX' (select 
graphics). The list of entries changes and shows you all the DOOM2 graphics and if you click 
on the second one down, 'TITLEPIC', you will see that this is the opening screen. With the 
TITLEPIC still selected (it will be highlighted in blue), drop down the Edit menu and select 
'Copy Entries'. This will copy the current DOOM2 TITLEPIC to the clipboard. Now select the 
File menu and choose Cancel and Quit. This will leave the DOOM2 WAD untouched but the 
TITLEPIC resource will be held on the clipboard. You will be automatically returned to 
WinTex's initial display. 

Now use the lower file selection box again, but this time locate your own PWAD and double 
click it to load it in. You will immediately notice that far fewer resources are shown! This is 
not really surprising since all you have are the resources required for your level and nothing 
more. Drop down the Edit menu and select Paste Entries. You have now added (although 
not yet permanently) the TITLEPIC resource to your own WAD. However, this is the original 
DOOM2 Opening screen and now that you have the entry in your PWAD you can replace it 
with your own screen captured image. 

Make sure that TITLEPIC is still selected, and click it once if it isn't (when selected it will be 
highlit in blue as before). Then from the Edit menu choose 'Load entry from file'. A file 
selection box is displayed and you can use this to position to the directory where your 
screen copy TITLEPIC.BMP is held. When you have located it, double click it to load it into 
the PWAD, overlaying the existing DOOM2 TITLEPIC. If you now just select some other 
resource (say SIDEDEFS) and then re-select TITLEPIC, you will see that instead of the 
DOOM2 Opening screen, yours is there instead. Magic! 

Now you need to commit the change you have made. Drop down the File menu and select 
Quit. This will cause WinTex to rewrite the PWAD to disk incorporating your TITLEPIC. If you 
reload your PWAD you will see that as well as the map you previously defined, the new 
TITLEPIC resource is still there just waiting to be displayed when you play your WAD. 
One other thing. If you drop down the File menu you will see 'List wasted space'. If you 
select this, you might find that there is a considerable number of wasted bytes in your WAD 
as a result of the editing operation you've just carried out. Fortunately, WinTex has a 'Clean' 
facility also available from the file menu. If you select this it will remove as much of the 
wasted space from the WAD as it can and rewrite it to disk, saving the WAD before it does 
this as 'wadname.OLD'. Sometimes WinTex can't get all the wasted space out and you may 
need to use a specialized tool like CLEANWAD to do this instead. 


Inserting your own Title Screen Method 2

There is a slightly quicker way to achieve the same result as that described above, but it 
does require you knowing in advance the name of the resource you want to replace. It is 
easy once you have loaded WinTex to browse through the DOOM2 WAD resources and 
eventually you will get to know the names of the various sounds, textures, pictures and so 
on, but before that you can flounder round a bit not quite knowing what's going on. In this 
case we do know that the name of the entry is TITLEPIC and we know it is a graphic 
resource. We can therefore omit the copy/paste of TITLEPIC and just load it directly from 
disk into the PWAD. Here's how you do this. 

Use WinTex's opening screen's lower file selection box to locate and load your own PWAD. 
Click on the 'GFX' button at the bottom of the screen to select graphics resources. Then 
from the Edit menu choose 'Load entry from file'. On this occasion, since we have no 
resource name highlighted (before we had already pasted the original DOOM2 TITLEPIC into 
the PWAD and had the TITLEPIC name highlighted) WinTex opens a 'Select a Name' 
window. You can drop down the name selection list and choose TITLEPIC, or simply key 
TITLEPIC into the name field provided. Now that WinTex knows you want to load the 
TITLEPIC from a file, the file selection box you saw before is displayed and you can position 
to the directory where your screen TITLEPIC.BMP is held. When you have located it, double 
click it to load it. If you now click TITLEPIC to select it, you will see that your Opening 
screenshot is there in your PWAD. Cool! 


Changing the music for your Level Method 1

Let's assume that your PWAD is a single level and the map you have used is MAP01. This is 
quite usual since most add-on PWADs only comprise a single map. As with other resources, 
the names used for the music for each of the levels, and for the title and intermission 
screens are the key to altering the music for your own level. Using WinTex as described 
before, use the lower file selection box to locate the original DOOM2 IWAD and when you've 
found it double click it to load all its resources into WinTex. A second window now opens 
and at the bottom of it you see buttons for each resource type. Click the sixth button from 
the left which has a couple of musical notes on it. The list of entries now shows all the music 
tracks for DOOMII. 

Clicking on any of the entries causes WinTex to play the music for that particular level. This 
makes it easy to go through listening to each of the different level's music until you find the 
one you want to have in your own PWAD. Using music appropriate to the level type can 
greatly enhance the atmosphere created when the level is being played. Let's assume that 
you choose to use the music for map18 which is called D_ROMERO. Something to bear in 
mind here is that the link between the map number and the name of the music is fixed by 
the DOOM Engine, so unless we mess about a bit we're not going to be able to do what we 
want to do. In this particular case, D_ROMERO is linked to map18 but we have a PWAD 
using map01 for which the music is called D_RUNNIN. So, what we need to do is to get the 
map18 music out of the original DOOM2 WAD onto disk, rename it to D_RUNNIN and then 
load it into our PWAD. Here we go. 

We are already looking at the WinTex screen that shows all the music tracks and you 
probably already have D_ROMERO highlighted, if not highlight it now. From the Edit menu, 
select 'Save entries to file'. WinTex will open up a file save dialog with the name 
D_ROMERO.MID already filled in. Adjust the dialog box until you have your required 
directory selected and click OK. We now have the map18 music saved away safely on disk. 
Now using Explorer, File Manager or MS-DOS, rename the file D_ROMERO.MID to 
D_RUNNIN.MID. 

Back to WinTex now and use the lower of the two file load boxes (PWAD to examine or 
modify) to load your own PWAD in. Click the sixth button from the left which has a couple of 
musical notes on it to select the music tracks for your PWAD... of course the list will be 
empty. From the Edit menu select 'Load entry from file' and either key D_RUNNIN or drop 
down the selection list and choose D_RUNNIN. At this point a file open dialog box will be 
displayed with the name filled in as D_RUNNIN.MUS. I'm not quite sure why WinTex saves 
the music resources as MIDI (.MID) files but loads them as .MUS files (perhaps someone 
out there can enlighten me) but you can just change the extension to .MID as WinTex will 
convert it to .MUS format for you provided you have the midi2mus utility in the WinTex 
directory. If you don't have this yet, get it here. The conversion takes place in a DOS 
window but don't let this bother you, it only takes a couple of seconds and you can 
terminate the DOS box when it's done. That's it! If you now click on the 'ALL' button which 
is the leftmost button at the bottom of the display, you will see your PWAD now has a new 
entry D_RUNNIN but this will actually be the music from map18. Too cool! 

Now select Quit from the File menu and your PWAD will be saved away and when you play it 
you will hear the music from map18 rather than that from map01. (Actually it can get a bit 
boring hearing the map01 music time and time again so it's not a bad idea to change it to 
the music from some other level). Of course you can use WinTex in just the same way as 
described above to save the music to disk out of DOOMI. Yes, you can use music from a 
completely different game in your PWAD if you want! Also, if you have MIDI equipment 
(especially easy with general MIDI units) you can record your own music, save it as a 
standard MIDI file and use midi2mus via WinTex to load your own music into your PWAD. 
Ultimate Cool!! 


Changing the music for your Level Method 2

There is an alternative way to change the music for your level which involves using another 
feature of WinTex whereby one entry in the resource list can be made identical to another 
entry. Let's assume again that your level is map01 and that the music would therefore by 
default be D_RUNNIN and again that we want to replace it with D_ROMERO from map18. 

Without going into all the details as I did above, what you need to do is load both the music 
files into your PWAD, ensuring that D_RUNNIN is loaded first. Now, select both the entries 
by highlighting the first (D_ROMERO) holding down the shift key and highlighting the 
second. Now, from the Guru Only menu select 'Make entries identical'. This will overwrite 
the D_RUNNIN music with that of D_ROMERO. Now select D_ROMERO by clicking on it and 
from the Edit menu select 'Cut entries'. This will remove the original D_ROMERO map18 
music that you no longer need. 


Inserting new Sound Effects

Placing new sound effects in your WAD is much the same as inserting any of the other 
resources. Load up WinTex and in the 'PWAD to Examine or Modify' find the DOOM2 IWAD 
and load it in. At the bottom of the screen that is then displayed the fifth icon along is the 
symbol of a speaker and if you click this the sound effect resources will be displayed in a list 
down the left hand side of the window. You can see that the names all begin with DS (I 
guess for Doom Sound) and if you select one, say DSPISTOL the first in the list, WinTex will 
play the sound and at the same time at the top of the screen it tells you what the sound is 
'Pistol firing' in this case. So, just as before, if you provide a suitable WAV file of the right 
name (Sun Audio .AU and .VOC formats are also supported) you can load it into your PWAD 
and it will replace the original DOOM sound when you play your PWAD. Sounds to be loaded 
into a PWAD need to be 8 bit mono, non-compressed samples. 

Suppose for example you have created new sounds for the door opening and closing, 
DSDOROPN and DSDORCLS. You have these in WAV format on your hard drive somewhere. 
Load your PWAD into WinTex by double clicking it from the 'PWAD to examine or modify' 
dialog. Click on the sounds icon and then from the Edit menu select 'Load entry from file'. 
This will then display the name select box and you can either key DSDOROPN or select it 
from the drop down list. Click OK to open up the file load dialog and locate your save 
DSDOROPN WAV file. Double click on the filename and you will see that DSDOROPN has 
been loaded into the PWAD. Repeat the same procedure for DSDORCLS to load in the new 
closing door sound. Now select Quit from the File menu and the PWAD including your new 
door opening and closing sounds will be written back to disk. 

That's about it for sounds. For some interesting use of sounds, you could check out the 
Osiris or the Aliens Total Conversions. 


Using DeuSF to add your own Sprites and Flats 
---------------------------------------------

This is going to be a short section because if you have the skills to design your own flats 
and especially sprites (many of which have multiple views), I am pretty certain that this 
section will be of no use to you since you will already know all this stuff! 
In the original DOOM games there seems to have been a bug which meant that flats and 
sprites could not be handled in quite the same way as normal textures. With normal 
textures, you can add these into your PWAD (using WinTex/DeuTex for example), or add 
them into a separate PWAD which would be loaded at run time simply by specifying the 
filename after the -FILE parameter on the DOOM2 command. However, with flats (i.e. floors 
and ceilings) and sprites (monsters, hanging dudes, lights etc.), this was not the case. 

The problem with the flats and sprites is that DOOM requires a complete set of each in order 
to function properly. So, this means that if you have just replaced one flat (or sprite), your 
PWAD will still require the full set in order to work. However, you are not permitted to ship 
all the original DOOM flats and sprites with your PWAD since this would be in breach of id's 
copyright. 

So, the idea behind DeuSF is that you just ship your PWAD with its single map (say) and its 
single new flat, and then use DeuSF (usually via a batch file), to append all the DOOM flats 
from the original registered game to your PWAD. Then, when the player loads your PWAD, it 
will run without error. The only exceptions (I believe) to this is if (a) you have defined 
completely new sprites which are not referred to by the normal DOOM game at all or (b) if 
you are using the editor DeeP which I believe allows you to ship a PWAD with an incomplete 
set of flats or sprites which will still work. 

So, when you ship your WAD Package up to the FTP site of your choice (see Going Public 
later), if you have defined new sprites and/or flats, you would also include the DeuSF 
program, which has no distribution restrictions, and a batch file to perform an 'install' which 
will build a fully executable PWAD. Both DeuTex v3.6 and WinTex v4.3 (these are both 
download links) include the latest version of DeuSF if you need it. 

The batch program will need, at its simplest, to issue the command to add the DOOM 
sprites and/or flats to your PWAD after the user has downloaded and unzipped your WAD 
Package. This command looks something like this:

   DeuSF -app yourwad.wad 

This command will add all the DOOM sprites and flats to 'yourwad.wad' so it follows that the 
user must have installed all your files, including your INSTALL.BAT into the directory into 
which DOOM was originally installed. (In fact, there is a DeuSF directive to handle DOOM 
being installed elsewhere, but you should read the DeuTex/WinTex manual for all that 
stuff!). 

If you want to use this facility, my suggestion would be to look at one or two of the install 
programs available with some of the WAD zips you can download from the FTP sites. One 
particularly good one which includes sprite addition through DeuSF, DEHACKED execution 
(this is specialized stuff for altering the DOOM game engine) much error recovery code and 
extensive comments is that supplied with the OSIRIS.WAD which is available from my 
favourite WADs page here (and if you don't have this in your collection you should so go get 
it anyway!) 

A final note on Sprites and Flats is that none of the above restrictions exist when using the 
BOOM engine from TeamTNT. They have fixed the bug that prevented a partial sprite or flat 
list being provided in a PWAD. Not everyone will have the BOOM Engine (yet anyway) so if 
you have used BOOM in such a way that your PWAD will not function fully with standard 
DOOM you should say so in your text file that you provide with your WAD Package. 


All the Musical Stuff 
---------------------

As you might expect, the music in DOOM is a series of named resources. In both games the 
names are D_xxxxxx where the xxxxxx is the name of the music. In DOOM, the music is 
named after the level, e.g. D_E1M2 and in DOOMII we see names like D_RUNNIN for 
MAP01, D_STALKS for MAP02 and so on. The music resources themselves are in GUS format 
but don't worry too much about the format because if you're a musician you can record in 
standard MIDI format and use the utility MIDI2MUS to convert it to the format required for 
DOOM. (Note: can anyone tell me who wrote this utility - I want to put a credit in for him). 
If you use the BOOM Engine from TeamTNT you can include MIDI format files directly. This 
is because a different sound Engine called ALLEGRO is used in BOOM. All this is covered in 
the documentation provided with the BOOM Engine. As with all resources, you can use 
WinTex or DeuTex to manipulate the music resources of your PWAD and a worked example 
is given in the section on WinTex/DeuTex. 

I often wondered when I first started looking at add-on PWADs why it was that the designer 
sometimes chose to use a map other than MAP01 for the design. It's always a bit of a pain 
because you have to either set up a batch file to run it or keep a mental note that the level 
requires you to warp to a specific level rather than letting it default to MAP01 and even now 
I'm not really sure of the answer to this. However, one possible reason is that if you don't 
know how to mess with the music resources, but you wanted to use the music from level 24 
for example, you would have to use that map number for your level design. In fact, 
WinTex/DeuTex make it very easy to use the music from different levels in your PWAD, and 
to include music you have written yourself in a PWAD... provided you have a standard MIDI 
format file of course. 

If you're a musician, something you might be interested in doing is deconstructing the 
music from the DOOM levels so you can see how it's all been put together. You can do this 
by using a utility called MUS2MIDI by Joakim Erdfelt. You'll find that the pieces are in 
standard MIDI format and use the general MIDI specification for patch selection. Remember 
though that the music, like all the resources in the IWAD are copyrighted. It can be fun to 
play DOOM music on real studio equipment with its enhanced quality! 
While I was looking into using my own music as background to my own WADs (which was a 
bit tricky because I don't actually possess any General MIDI instruments!) I worked out how 
the Roland R5 drum machine MIDI note numbers corresponded to the general MIDI 
specification note numbers for percussion. If this information would be of any help to you 
see my R5 MIDI Specification. 

There are a couple of other utilities that you may find useful for music manipulation. One is 
MUSTOOL which is a small utility that does things like lists all the music entries in a WAD, 
extracts or inserts music entries into WAD files and so on. The other is a utility called 
PATCHER by Jim Flynn. This is a pretty sophisticated package (as most of Jim's work is) and 
provides a number of utilities for extracting, merging and combining WADs and WAD 
resources. In particular, the 'BRK' utility decomposes any DOOMII (at the time of writing - 
May 1998 - Ultimate DOOM, Hexen and Heretic are also supported) WAD into its constituent 
parts, writing each set of like resources into a unique directory. So, you end up with a 
LUMPS directory, LEVELS directory, SOUNDS, MUSICS and so on. This is a good way 
therefore of extracting all the music resources so that you can then use Wintex or PATCHER 
itself to place a different level's music in your own WAD. Full documentation is provided with 
the PATCHER ZIP file. (Note that decomposing the DOOMII IWAD into separate directories 
like this is also a feature of WinTex/DeuTex). 

Finally, there is a utility called MUSPUT supplied in the EDITUTIL Zip file that comes with the 
BOOM distribution package from TeamTNT. This is another utility written by Jim Flynn and is 
specifically aimed at inserting music files into a PWAD. It is extremely easy to use and may 
be preferred to the complexities of Wintex. This utility can place .MID (i.e. MIDI) format 
files directly into a WAD as well as the standard .MUS format. Even better, it can take the 
music for a specified level in one PWAD and insert it as the music for a different level in 
another PWAD! It does work with the DOOM Engine but works even better with the BOOM 
Engine. 


Sounds Effective 
----------------

There are more than a hundred sound effects in DOOMII so you won't find a list here! A tool 
like 'BRK' from Jim Flynn's PATCHER or Olivier Montanuy's WinTex will list them and play 
them for you. WinTex or Patcher will allow you to save existing sound effects to disk where 
you can manipulate them, rename them, replace them with other sound effect files of your 
own and load them back into your PWAD. Some really interesting effects can be achieved by 
altering sound effects so that they add realism to the theme of your WAD. A good example 
is in the 'Fistful of DOOM' WAD (link available from my Favourite WADs page in the Total 
Conversions section) which uses western type sound effects to accentuate the western 
theme of the WAD - including the bar-room honky-tonk piano! 

There are a couple of other tools that you might like to download and take a look at which 
are specifically aimed at manipulating sound effects. One is an MS-DOS tool and the other 
runs in Windows but I think they are derived from the same base code. The DOS tool is 
DOOM Audio Editor by Bill Nesius and the Windows tool is Windows DMAud also by Bill 
Nesius with Richard Ratayczak. Both of these tools allow you to extract sound effects from 
WADs and load new sound effects into WADs, and both have documentation available. One 
feature these tools have that I haven't seen elsewhere (although there may be other 
utilities that do this) is to enable you to 'stretch' sound effects so that they last longer than 
they would normally do. The DOS DMAUD uses numbers to represent the sounds but you 
can find a cross-reference listing of sound numbers to names in the DeuTex/DeuSF Manual. 
In the section of this document on WinTex/DeuTex there is a worked example of 
cutting/pasting sound effects. 


Reject Map Builders 
-------------------

The reject map is something that all editors will normally build since it is a required part of 
each level (map) definition in the WAD, however, it doesn't normally do anything as built. 
So what is it for? Well, when you are playing a DOOM WAD, the Engine is making all kinds 
of decisions as you play, and one key type of decision is determining what monsters can see 
you from where you are standing at any point in the game. This is obviously especially 
important when you consider the way monsters attack - they can't do this unless they can 
see you. 

Calculations of this type take time and on an older PC, say a 486 type with not too much 
memory and where the area you are in is complex (in terms of floor and ceiling height 
differences, and other architectural attributes, and especially where there are many 
monsters to animate at the same time) they can take so long that the game overall slows 
down. These calculations are called 'line of sight' or LOS calculations, and this is where the 
reject map fits in. 

The reject map is a two-dimensional matrix of bits, which cross-references all the sectors in 
a WAD map. By placing a '1' bit where one sector of the map cannot be seen by another 
sector, the DOOMII Engine knows that there is no line of sight between those two sectors, 
and thus it does not need to do any calculations at all to know whether when you are in 
sector 'A' you can be seen from sector 'B'. Therefore, any WAD which has a 'proper' reject 
map built (rather than one which simply contains all zeros) will run more quickly than one 
that doesn't, just because the Engine has less work to do. 

Of course, on the bigger systems now available this speed enhancement that is gained 
through having a full reject map built may not be that noticeable, but my inclination would 
be always to create it if you can (and we all can!) since not everyone has access to the 
latest PC equipment! 

Something else needs to be said about the reject map. Since it is controlling which sectors 
can be seen from other sectors (and remember that when a reject map contains all zeros as 
most editors output, all sectors can be seen from all other sectors) it is possible to force 
some bits to be set to '1' (at least it is with a good reject map builder) which can be used to 
provide what are sometimes referred to as 'special effects' since this can be used to define 
areas of a map where you can effectively be hidden from any marauding monsters in the 
area even though that area is totally visible from the area containing the monsters! Let's 
look at a practical example which might make this clearer. 

Suppose you have an outside courtyard area which is mostly open to sky (sector 2 below)... 
it can be a simple shape like a square or rectangle. The design is such that there is a partial 
roof around the edge of the courtyard which shields it from the light, i.e. it is in shadow (see 
sector 1 below). In this situation, by using the reject map, you could make the darker edge 
part of the courtyard 'invisible' to monsters, and therefore when you, the player, are in that 
dark area (sector 1) the monsters would not be able to see you and therefore would not 
attack. 


  +----------------------------+           In the drawing, sector 1 and sector 2
  |          Sector 1          |           make up the courtyard. Both have the same
  |    +------------------+    |           floor height and the player can walk unobstructed
  |    |                  |    |           between sector 1 and sector 2. Sector 2 has the
  |    |                  |    |           sky as its ceiling and sector 1 has a roof texture.
  |    |     Sector 2     |    |           You must have seen this effect in many designs.
  |    |                  |    |
  |    +------------------+    |
  |                            |
  +----------------------------+

  
So there are your two reasons for building a full reject map (a) so that the game runs faster 
and (b) so that you can make the game more 'realistic' - or perhaps it would be better to 
say that you can make the monsters behave in a more realistic way. 

I use the reject map builder RMB which was written by Jens Hykkelbjerg. His pages have 
sadly disappeared from the web now, but you can obtain the original ZIP via a link in 
http://www.doomworld.com. 


The Closing Graphical Screen 
----------------------------

This is the display that provides the backdrop to the score counts for enemies killed, items 
collected and secrets discovered that you see when you complete a level, and, similar to the 
opening screen, is another resource in the WAD that you can replace with one of your own 
screens. If you want to do this you will need to use a WAD resource manipulator such as 
DeuTex/WinTex. 

The name of the resource that you need to replace is 'INTERPIC' and again it is a 320 by 
200 pixel image. Similarly to the TITLEPIC which opens the game, it can be effective to take 
a screen capture of your game and use this as the backdrop to the closing screen. (You can 
do this using DOOMII's normal screen capture facility see Taking Screenshots earlier). 
To actually do the replacement so that your INTERPIC appears instead of the standard 
DOOMII picture you should read the section on DeuTex/WinTex. 


The Closing Text Screen 
-----------------------

When you finally quit the game, you will see a standard text screen displayed which 
contains the credits for the creation of the DOOMII game. This screen is a resource called 
ENDOOM and there are a couple of utilities out there to create this screen. Note that if you 
are going to do this, you must leave the credits for id Software intact... you can add your 
own credits underneath. 

The utility I use is called 'ENDOOMER' by a character I only know as 'Zink the Dink'! It can 
be downloaded as usual from the 3d archives here. One thing to be aware of is that the 
resource name in your WAD must be ENDOOM, so if you have several WADs you must keep 
the source for your ENDOOM screens in separate directories. This is because ENDOOMER 
always creates the file using the name ENDOOM and you don't want to overwrite previously 
created ending screens. The file extension is always .SCR for the ENDOOM screen. 

Another utility which is available to edit the ending screen is TED. I heard about this one 
after someone pointed me at ENDOOMER but I guess it does the same job. Why not try 
them both and choose the one you prefer. 

The kind of credits I usually put in the ending screen are to the guys who created all the 
software used to build the WAD, especially those who do it for the sheer love of it - for them 
the main buzz is the credit they get for their work, and I for one am always more than 
happy to encourage them to continue to support the software they create. If you don't have 
enough room to credit everyone, you can always use the text file that accompanies your 
WAD when you go public with it to provide a full list. 

Again, since the ENDOOM screen is another WAD resource, you use a WAD manipulator to 
insert it into your PWAD. See the section on DeuTex/WinTex to read how this can be done. 


Recording and Inserting your own Demos 
--------------------------------------

You may have noticed that if you don't start playing DOOM as soon as the game loads, it 
will launch into a game on its own! This is done by playing back one of three 'demo' 
resources that are stored in the IWAD. These are called DEMO1, DEMO2 and DEMO3. It 
follows that if you record three demos of you playing your own WAD, call them DEMO1, 
DEMO2 and DEMO3 and store these in your WAD along with your map, if you don't start 
playing your WAD immediately, the demos that are run will be yours! 

It is easier to record demos than you might think. All you need to do is use the -RECORD 
command line parameter when you invoke the game, giving it the name of the demo you 
are about to record. For example: 

DOOM2 -FILE MYWAD.WAD -RECORD DEMO1.LMP 

There is another parameter which you may need to use if your WAD is particularly big, or if 
you want to record a particularly long demo - say more than 15 minutes or so. This is 
because the DOOM demo buffer is limited to 128K and the demo will just end once this limit 
has been reached. By using the -MAXDEMO nnn command line parameter as well as the 
demo name, you can increase the space available for the recording of your demo, for 
example: 

DOOM2 -FILE MYWAD.WAD -MAXDEMO 256 -RECORD DEMO1.LMP 

which will double the size of the record buffer and therefore give you about half an hour of 
recording. Note that if you intend your WAD to be played using the BOOM Engine from 
TeamTNT then this restriction does not apply, BOOM simply extends the demo save buffer 
as required during recording. There is a utility called LMPCOUNT by Jeannot Langlois which 
you can use to pre-calculate the buffer size required for a demo and it works for all modes, 
single, co-op, deathmatch and network. It will also allow you to give it a buffer size and it 
will tell you how long a demo it will allow you to record. 

To include the demos in your WAD, you will need to use a resource manipulator - see the 
section on WinTex/DeuTex that will tell you how to do this. 

There is another method favoured by WAD designers. This is to leave the built-in demos as 
they are (i.e. those supplied with the IWAD, e.g. DOOM2) and to record the demo of their 
own WAD as a complete run-though of the level, giving a full 100% tally for kills, items and 
secrets, naming it the same as the WAD. So, if you have created your WAD called 
HADES.WAD for example, record the demo as HADES.LMP and provide both. It is quite 
usual to also provide a standard MS-DOS BAT file to run the game, and a second one to 
play the demo. You will see this done in my own WADs - take a look at BrikBlat! for 
example. 

Analysing and Updating your Demos 
---------------------------------

You may have noticed that sometimes if you try to run a demo it fails with a message about 
the demo being from the wrong game level. This problem is because the demo file 
(demoname.LMP) contains a field which tells DOOM the version of the Engine under which it 
was recorded and complains if the version is different. These days there isn't really any 
reason why everyone shouldn't have the latest and greatest release 1.9 since patches are 
available to bring you up to this level (see my links pages). Some WAD designers maintain 
two versions of DOOMII, normally 1.666 and 1.9 just so that they can (a) test their WAD 
and (b) record two demos to ship with their WADs! 

In fact, there is no need to record two demos because a demo recorded at 1.666 will run at 
1.9 if it is appropriately altered, and yes there is a utility (in fact there are lots) to mess 
with the recorded demo file. The one I came across first is called The LMP Fiddler by Ryan 
Robinson and the text file supplied with the utility fully describes what it does. So, you can 
record the demo at 1.9 of DOOMII, copy the .LMP to a new name and then use the LMP 
Fiddler to alter the copy so that it runs under 1.666. Easy! 

More recently I have discovered that there's a whole bunch of utilities to mess around with 
demos, for adding player names, including commentary, removing pauses and all sorts of 
other stuff. Most of these utilities can also output a whole bunch of statistics about the 
demo ranging from average and maximum speeds to favourite weapon. You could download 
and take a look at LMP Master, LMP Control Centre, and the LMP Utility System. My advice 
would be to try them all and choose the one you find provides what you need most 
effectively and does it most easily. 


Consistency Checking (WAD Validation) 
-------------------------------------

All of the editors I have ever looked at contain what is known as a 'consistency checker'. 
This is a facility in the editor to validate your WAD and tell you about any obvious, and for 
some consistency checkers less obvious, flaws. The degree to which this is done varies from 
editor to editor with some doing on the very basic checks, while others are quite rigorous in 
their validation. Not only that, but some editors will actually put errors right for you 
(although it is often a good idea to check the action that the editor is going to take before 
you let it go on - for example, an editor might decide to delete ALL lines that make up an 
unclosed sector whereas you may prefer just to close it up properly!). 
The basic checks that I would expect an editor to do would be for example: 

  * Verify you have player/deathmatch starts (player 1 start is mandatory) 
  * Verify that you have defined an exit point 
  * Verify that all sectors are closed 
  * Check that there are no missing textures 
  * Report on any invalid texture names 

Other checks which some (though not all) editors do might be: 

  * Verify you haven't 'stuck' things to walls, or placed them outside sectors 
  * Check that X and Y texture offsets are correctly set 
  * Verify all special linedef types are correct 
  * Verify sector/linedef tag references are sensible 
  * Check for long line errors 
  * Check sector floor/ceiling heights are sensible 
  * Check for unrequired textures 

And a number of editors will do things like fix your missing textures, correct X/Y texture 
offsets and remove unrequired textures. 

I have recently discovered through my web wanderings that there is an excellent stand-
alone (i.e. not associated with any editor) consistency checker called DCC. Its author is 
Rand Phares who is a member of TeamTNT and contributes to all their major projects 
including the BOOM Engine source conversion. Now DCC does a lot more checks than ANY of 
the editor consistency checkers I have ever seen! It reported piles of errors on one of my 
WADs which I thought was completely error free. DCC will do all of the checks mentioned 
above plus a load of much more sophisticated verification such as: 

  * Checking for bullet-absorbing lower textures 
  * Invalid flat names 
  * Texture height problems 
  * Intersecting lines 
  * Identical vertices 
  * Pegging errors 
  * Key/colour-coded locked door errors 
  * Secret errors 

... to name but a few! In fact, Rand has classified errors into one of 10 'classes' and each 
class contains many separate validation checks. I highly recommend this program. 


Cleaning up your WAD 
--------------------

When you have completed your WAD, especially if you have been using WinTex/DeuTex to 
mess around with graphics, sounds, music and so on, there may well end up being wasted 
space and null or repeated entries in the WAD. In fact, WinTex reports on wasted space for 
you and can clean it up too, but I found a utility called CLEANWAD by Serge Smirnov which 
I have always used to clear out and tidy up my WADs as I think that it does a more 
complete job. (That's for two reasons (a) because after using WinTex's cleanup there is 
sometimes still wasted space left in the WAD, and (b) because Olivier Montanuy who wrote 
WinTex provided Serge with suggestions and help when he created CLEANWAD!) 

So, once you've completed your level using your editor, built your reject map with RMB, 
used WinTex to add starting and ending screens and change a few graphics and sounds, 
used ENDOOMER to create your ending text screen, used STAT to make sure it saves, and 
TCOUNT to make sure that the ratio of health and ammo to enemies is about right for each 
difficulty level, and had all your friends play-test it (phew!) it does no harm to run your 
WAD through CLEANWAD to tidy up any of the junk that's left hanging around. This will 
probably be the last thing you do to the WAD before Going Public!


So Your Game Won't Save 
-----------------------

When I completed my Honeycomb WAD there was a really nasty problem with it that I just 
couldn't fathom. Every time I tried to save the game in UV when not too far into it, the 
screen hatched and the PC locked up making a horrible noise! For ages I had no idea what 
to do about it and eventually asked for help through the internet. Answer... the savegame 
buffer had blown because there were too many 'things' defined at the UV level. At the lower 
difficulty levels, or after I had killed a few monsters and collected a bunch of weapons and 
ammo, it saved fine on UV also. 

The solution was to replace a bunch of health potions with stimpacks, remove a bunch of 
blood splats and so on until the game saved properly. Even now although it saves correctly 
most of the time, if you save immediately the PC may lock up when you complete the level. 
Many months later I found that the savegame buffer limit is around 150K, and that Jim 
Flynn (a member of TeamTNT, active in the newsgroups and Compuserve forums and a 
name you will encounter often) had written a program called 'STAT' which analyses a WAD 
and tells you the size required for the savegame buffer. You will find STAT as part of Jim's 
PATCHER DOOM Utility Package and the latest release is always available from his 
webpages here. Remember to give Jim Flynn a credit in your WAD's text file if you use it. 

Note that if you are designing your WADs for the BOOM engine, there is no limit on the 
savegame buffer size, and also TeamTNT have added two more savegame slots which can 
be really handy! 


The Importance of Lighting 
--------------------------

The importance of lighting in a WAD cannot be over-emphasized. Of all things it is lighting 
that can make an average map look brilliant, or a well-designed map look unrealistic. Using 
appropriate lighting can add enormously to the atmosphere of a map, and you can 'hide' 
enemies in the shadows to make the player jump when they appear from the gloom! Always 
think about the light levels you are using, for example, it would not be dark in an outside 
area if you have used a daytime sky - and vice-versa. If a room has different ceiling 
heights, it would look good to lower the lighting where the ceiling is lower. If you send the 
player up a narrow passageway or tunnel, it adds atmosphere to make it darker - and then 
perhaps have windows in the corridor where there are areas of greater brightness. Always 
make your lighting levels 'make sense' - use the light sources available such as torches, 
candles, lamps, candelabra; use textures and flats as light sources too, for example, 
textures LITE3, LITE5, METAL6, METAL7 and flats CEIL1_2, CEIL1_3, FLAT17, FLAT2, 
FLOOR1_7 and the TLITE6 series. Make windows in your rooms and corridors so that light 
spills in from outside, or from other connected rooms that have a higher light level and 
make use of the sector effects like flickering and pulsating light. 

Lighting in DOOM is a number between 0 and 255 allocated to a sector, where 0 is fully dark 
(although once you get below 96 because of the DOOM colour palette and 256 colours they 
are all effectively the same) and 255 is fully bright. Using full brightness means that the 
colour of textures and flats in a sector will remain the same no matter how far you, the 
player, are from it. The lighting in DOOM changes every 16 units, so from 96 (dark) you 
should use 112, 128, 144 and so on, up to 224, 240 and finally 255 (full brightness). You 
can create lovely lighting effects where, for example, a door joins a dark and light area, or 
where there is a bright texture light source, by using sectors shaped like segments, each 
having a lower light level as they move further from the source. 

As with so many other aspects of DOOM WAD editing, examine many levels - especially the 
more recent ones - and see how the experts handle lighting and lighting effects. Learn from 
what you see - and experiment with your own ideas too! 


Common Design Flaws 
-------------------

It is essential that all the obvious flaws are eradicated from your WAD before you publish it. 
Once you've got rid of the obvious flaws you can then start work on the less obvious ones 
and providing the polish that makes an average WAD into a good one. I find that you can 
easily spend as much time again putting on the polish as you can constructing the WAD in 
the first place. Here's a list of the obvious mistakes, some of which you can read more 
about in other documents. (Most, though not necessarily all, of these can be detected 
through the use of a good consistency checker such as DCC). 


Engine related errors
This group of errors includes 'Hall of Mirrors' (HOM), the 
Medusa effect, Tutti-Frutti, Moire and Longwall. All of these 
are caused by architectural or texture errors and their causes 
and ways of preventing them are discussed at length in other 
documents which can be downloaded from here. Note that the 
BOOM Engine is much more effective at detecting such errors, 
and will handle HOM errors where, for example, they are 
caused not by design faults but by more light level changes in 
large outside areas than the normal DOOM Engine can handle. 
 

Pegging errors
This type of error causes the 'sliding texture' problem which 
although it does not crash the game greatly detracts from its 
realism. The manifestation of this common mistake is where 
the texture on the wall behind a lift, or on the walls at each 
side of a door as it raises, appears to 'slide', matching the 
movement of the door or lift. Download Scott Amspoker's 
Managing Textures and the Unpegged Attribute which explains 
all about this situation and how to avoid it.
 

Monster Glut
When too many monsters are placed in an area it will at least 
slow the game down and at worst will produce a peculiar 
effect where monsters appear to flash in and out of existence. 
This is because there is a limit on the number of monsters 
that the Engine can animate at one time. Also it is basically 
bad design practice - a single, well placed monster of the right 
type in the right light can be a far more effective way of 
making the player jump! I have actually given up playing and 
deleted WADs I have downloaded because of this particular 
error because it demonstrates a lack of understanding of what 
makes a good DOOM level.
 

Misaligned Textures
This again is a common error, especially in the 'newbie' WAD, 
and can really spoil the appearance of what might otherwise 
be a very good WAD. The error appears where the textures on 
walls are not correctly aligned and this can either be in the 
vertical or horizontal plane. It produces an ugly appearance 
which is instantly recognizable, but is easy to resolve once 
you understand texture alignment. Scott Amspoker's 
document on Managing Textures tells you how to avoid this.
 

Not enough Starts
A PWAD requires at least a player 1 start point and all good 
editors will not allow you to create a WAD without at least 
warning you if there is no Player 1 Start point. However, if you 
want your WAD to support Co-operative play you must insert 
the other player starts, and if you want to support 
Deathmatch you will need to insert Deathmatch starts. Not all 
WADs are designed (or are suitable) for Deathmatch play, but 
it is normal to provide the starts even if this is the case.
 

Sticking Points (1)
A properly designed PWAD does not allow the player to 
become inadvertently 'stuck' in a position from which he 
cannot move. This error is less common but even made an 
appearance or two in the original DOOMII levels and can be 
caused, for example, by allowing the player to fall into a 
narrow gap between two structures (like crates, walls, stairs 
and a wall and so on). If there are places where you want a 
player to become stuck you would normally make it obvious 
that it's a BAD place by using, say, the blood, acid or lava 
floor textures which most players usually try to avoid. My own 
personal inclination is to always provide a player with a 'way 
out' even from a lava pit but perhaps make it a bit tricky to 
find.
 

Sticking Points (2)
It is possible to place a player start point or a monster so 
close to a wall or other structural object (a pillar or crate for 
example) that movement is not possible. Imagine how 
frustrating it would be to load up a WAD and find that you are 
stuck to a wall and can't move! (Use IDSPISPOPD in DOOM 
and IDCLIP in DOOMII to get out of this situation). The same 
applies to monsters which can become unable to move or 
attack if placed too close to a wall and sit there like gun 
fodder waiting to be picked off. Give monsters a fighting 
chance I say!
 

Logic errors
This is the type of error that prevents you from completing a 
WAD and I guess the most obvious one is the lack of an exit 
point. All single player and co-operative WADs should have an 
exit point defined, and although not strictly necessary in a 
deathmatch WAD it is still usual and good practice to provide 
an exit, especially if the deathmatch WAD has multiple levels. 
Perhaps a less obvious logic error is the 'missing key'. The 
simplest missing key error is to make a door depend on the 
player having a particular key card, and then not to put the 
key in the level, or to put it in the level but in an inaccessible 
place. Generally speaking even a small amount of playtesting 
will detect this type of error. 

Another logic error to avoid is the door that opens from one 
side only, but then to design the WAD such that the player 
can only get to the side of the door that you can't open! It is 
always annoying to find parts of a WAD that you just can't get 
to - especially when you need to get to them in order to 
complete the game. It is equally frustrating to the player to 
have secret areas that have nothing at all to indicate they are 
there.


That's most of the obvious design flaws that should always be corrected before publicly 
releasing a WAD, or even before you should be prepared to accept it as complete yourself. 
The next section has a few paragraphs on what for me makes a WAD well designed and 
therefore worth playing. 


My Good Design Tips 
-------------------

A well designed WAD holds the interest of the player from start to finish. It provides a 
consistent 'world' in which the play takes place, it poses puzzles to solve and secrets to find 
before finally arriving at the exit point... and all this while having to defend against the evil 
hordes that will relentlessly attack you whenever they see you. But at the same time the 
level must be visually interesting otherwise the player's attention will soon be lost and they 
will move on to the next WAD. 

So, make your design interesting! Use different but consistent textures, use doors and 
corridors, use changes in height with stairs and lifts (or elevators if you use the BOOM 
engine), use different lighting levels appropriate to the area you are in, use indoor and 
outdoor areas, windows and columns, water and lava, lamps and torches. Use small 
claustrophobic areas like tunnels and large open areas, and use different shapes not just 
squares and oblongs. Remember also that the DOOM world is quite static so anything in the 
architecture that moves adds interest... think about using the animated textures, floor lower 
and raises and ceiling crushers, lifts and stairs that are triggered automatically, and window 
shutters that open and close all the time. 

Think about the flow of the game, lead the player from one area to the next, protect areas 
using key controlled doors and make the player solve puzzles to find the keys. Use 'hidden' 
areas that the player can only teleport into and out of. Place your monsters carefully so that 
the player can always destroy them but not necessarily easily. Hide monsters around 
corners so that they ambush the player when he is sighted. Use line 'triggers' to make 
secret doors open behind which there are monsters hidden, and use the 'teleport monster' 
feature to warp monsters into an area that has an initial 'innocent' appearance. Use the 
different monster types to start the player off gently and gradually introduce the more 
difficult monsters as the player progresses through the WAD. Make sure that the player has 
enough health and ammo... but not too much that there is no challenge in the game. 

What you must do when you're first starting to do WAD design is to load lots of WADs into 
your editor and play through them with no monsters on... look at the architecture closely 
and see what features are interesting. See the ways in which various authors use particular 
themes in their WADs. Take note of these and use them as a basis for your own themes and 
designs (but don't lift ideas wholesale because that's really uncool). Play the WADs with 
monsters on and notice how the author places them for best effect, then check out how this 
is done using your editor. Use a small WAD to practice design technique and monster 
placement on and see what looks interesting and plays well. 

Finally, as your skills improve, go back and enhance your early efforts using the new 
techniques you have learned. Remember no one person knows it all and no one person is 
the 'best' WAD designer. We all have ideas of our own. Follow your instincts and you will 
eventually come up with something new and original which other authors will be pleased to 
emulate. 


Going Public 
------------

In the end every WAD designer will want to make his work available to others and there are 
a number of ways to do this. When I first published my WADs I had already completed my 
fourth one so was not a complete 'newbie', but it has to be said that I am still learning and 
there are some parts of my early WADs that I'm not particularly proud of. So beware of the 
urge to publish your very first attempt... unless you spend a very long time on it and use all 
the information you have read here and in all the documents referred to from here, and 
have played many many other PWADs and noted what makes a good design, your first 
attempt is liable to be a bit naff. We've all been there so don't let this get to you, use your 
first WAD as a learning ground then dump it and move on. 

The two places I use for publishing are the Compuserve Action Games forum and the 3d 
archives site. Full instructions on uploading to both of these is available at the site. At the 
3d archive site there is a document on uploading WADs which you should read before you 
attempt it, and of course you will need an FTP program such as CuteFTP. 
In general there are a couple of cardinal rules that you must follow or you are liable to have 
your precious creation flamed before it gets published! The first is that your PWAD 
absolutely must not contain any of the original DOOMII textures, flats or sprites. If you have 
read the section on Using DeuSF to add your own Sprites and Flats, you will know that 
these resources have to be merged with your own newly defined textures, flats and sprites 
using an install batch file on the target PC. There are plenty of examples of how to do this - 
one good example is the OSIRIS WAD that is available for download from my favourite 
WADs page here (and if you don't have this in your collection you should so go get it 
anyway). 

The second is that your WAD and an accompanying text file must be zipped for speed of 
downloading. Either PKZip or WinZip can do this for you. There are again many examples of 
the format of an accompanying WAD text file and you should use one of these as a template 
for creating your own. Of course, the ZIP file may contain other things such as demos, a 
text file containing the story behind your WAD, batch files to run the WAD and so on. My 
advice is just to take notice of the contents of the files that you have downloaded and 
simply copy what has been done before. There is a kind of consistency in all this and it 
makes life easier when everyone is doing the same thing. All my downloadable WADs have 
passed the 3d archive site rules, so you could take a peek at them - especially The 
Honeycomb and BrikBlat! which have demos, text files and batch files as well as the WAD 
itself. 


Essential Documents 
-------------------

I owe a great deal to the people who took the trouble to create the documents listed in this 
section. Without them, DOOM editing would be the domain of the few. As it is, anyone with 
enough persistence can become proficient in WAD design thanks to their efforts. My 
recommendation is to download these documents and read them... and then read them 
again! By so doing your knowledge will not be complete, but will be easily adequate to the 
task, and you will avoid falling into many of the holes I did when I first got interested in 
WAD design. 

The links below are directly to the 3d archives FTP site so these documents will be 
downloaded to your PC when you select them from your browser session. Otherwise I have 
provided the web address to the correct site required. 

DOOM 1.666 FAQ (ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/docs/faqs/dmfaq66.zip)

  The 'official' DOOM FAQ by Hank Leukart. Huge amount of 
  DOOM information. Not too technical.
 

DOOM 1.666 Specification (ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/docs/editing/dmspec16.zip)
  
  This is the 'unofficial' DOOM specification by Matt Fell. All 
  editors now available were created using the information in this 
  document. Mostly very technical.
 

WAD Reference (ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/docs/editing/wadrefr.zip)

  A reference I wish I had found earlier than I did. Written by Jim 
  Flynn and intended to be a companion document to Matt Fell's 
  DOOM specs, this is a set of reference documents in a more 
  accessible (i.e. a bit less technical) form. It also contains a number 
  of essential design notes.
 

Managing Textures (ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/docs/editing/textures.zip)

  This is Scott Amspoker's 'Managing Textures and the Unpegged 
  Attribute' document. This explains how DOOM paints wall textures. 
  Technical but very well written and essential if you want to make 
  your textures line up correctly !
 

DOOM Metrics (ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/docs/editing/metrics.zip)
  
  This is Scott Amspoker's study of size and dimension in the 
  DOOM world and discusses the limits of DOOM levels. Not too 
  technical.
 

DOOM Design (ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/docs/editing/design12.faq)

  This is a FAQ document which examines questions of DOOM 
  design and was written by Tom Neff. It answers many of the 
  questions that trouble new WAD designers.
 

WAD Designers Handbook (http://handbook.newdoom.com/)

  The 'Unofficial WAD Designers Handbook', written by Ron Allen 
  and Bill McClendon is an essential guide when you are first starting 
  to do WAD design. It takes you though the basic elements of good 
  WAD design and will help you avoid all the obvious pitfalls. This is 
  the online HTML version - see below for download links from 
  ftp.cdrom.com.
 

WAD Designers Handbook Download (3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/docs/editing/handbk21.zip)

  Download the Unofficial WAD Designers Handbook to your PC.
 

WAD Designers Handbook Addendum Download
        (3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/docs/editing/hndbkad1.zip)

  Download the Addendum to the Unofficial WAD Designers 
  Handbook to your PC. If you are new to WAD editing this is an 
  invaluable companion to the Handbook as it takes you step by step 
  in detail through the fundamentals of WAD design. Topics covered 
  are rooms and hallways, doors, stairs, windows, lifts and 
  teleporters.
  

Textures by Theme (ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/docs/editing/texture.zip)

  This document is very useful for finding complementary textures 
  when designing PWADs. Neil R Bonner has categorized each 
  DOOMII texture into one of eleven themes, examples are Metal, 
  Rock, Cement and Wood. This makes it really easy to find different 
  but complementary textures when you are designing your PWADs.
 

The DeuTex/DeuSF Manual 
    (ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/graphics_edit/deutex/dtexman1.zip)

  Written by Kevin McGrail this is a complete manual to accompany 
  the DeuTex/WinTex and DeuSF WAD compiler. Apart from being a 
  necessary companion to those programs, it also contains lots of 
  other information that is useful to level editors. The link will 
  download the manual to your disk.


Full List of Links used 
-----------------------

This section gathers together all the various links to websites and to ftp.cdrom.com 
that have appeared elsewhere in this document, except for the documents listed in 
the previous section. So, if you came directly here just looking for a download link 
or a specific web page link you're in the right place ! 

Important DOOMII Web Sites
--------------------------
 
TeamTNT          Home of the BOOM Engine.
                   http://www.teamtnt.com


Level Editors
-------------
 
DCK              Download the DOOM Construction Kit.
                   ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/level_edit/dck362.zip

DETH             Download page for the DETH Editor.
                   http://www.teamtnt.com/boompubl/getit.htm

DeeP             Download page for the DeeP Editor.
                   http://www.sbsoftware.com

DEU              FTP site for downloading the DEU Editor.
                   ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/level_edit/deu

WadAuthor        Download the WadAuthor Editor.
                   ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/level_edit/wauthor.zip



WAD Composition Tools
---------------------
 
DeuTex v3.6      Download Olivier Montanuy's WAD composition Tool 
                 DeuTex version 3.6.
                   ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/graphics_edit/deutex/deutex36.zip

WinTex v4.3      Download Olivier Montanuy's Windows front-end for DeuTex.
                   ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/graphics_edit/deutex/wintex43.zip

PATCHER          Home of the PATCHER software package by Jim Flynn.
                   http://home.pacbell.net/jflynn/software.html

New WAD Tool     Download Denis Moller's NWT program.
                   ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/graphics_edit/nwt103.zip


WAD Utilities
-------------
 
DCC             Download DCC (DOOM Consistency Checker) v3.00 by Rand Phares. 
                  ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/misc/dcc300.zip

ENDOOMER        Download the end screen utility ENDOOMER by Zink The Dink.
                  ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/misc/endm101.zip

TED             Download the end screen utility TED by Peter Monks.
                  ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/misc/ted12.zip

TCOUNT          Download Scott Jordan's monsters to health/ammo/weapons analyser.
                  ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/wad_tools/tcount31.zip

STAT            Download page of STAT (part of PATCHER) the WAD 
                analysis utility by Jim Flynn.
                  http://home.pacbell.net/jflynn/software.html

CLEANWAD        Download CLEANWAD the WAD cleanup utility by Serge Smirnov.
                  ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/wad_tools/cleanwad.zip


Sound Effect Utilities
----------------------
 
Doom Audio Editor  Download the DOS Doom Audio Editor by Bill Nesius.
                     ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/sound_edit/dmaud11c.zip

Windows DMAud      Download the Windows Doom Audio Editor by Bill 
                   Nesius and Richard Ratayczak.
                     ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/sound_edit/dmaudwin.zip


MUSIC Utilities
---------------
 
MIDI2MUS           Download the MIDI to MUS converter.
                     ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/sound_edit/midi2mus.zip

MUS2MIDI           Download the MUS to MIDI converter.
                     ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/sound_edit/mus2midi.zip

MUSTOOL            Download MUSTOOL music utility by Igor Obraztsov.
                     ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/sound_edit/mustool.zip


LMP Tools and Utilities
-----------------------
 

LMP Fiddler        Download the LMP Fiddler by Ryan Robinson.
                     ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/misc/lmpfid19.zip

LMP Master         Download the LMP Master by Fabrice Denis.
                     ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/misc/lmpmast.zip

LMP Control Centre Download the LMP Control Centre by Uwe Girlich.
                     ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/misc/lmpc280.zip

LMP Utility System Download the LMP utility System by Raymond Chi.
                     ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/misc/lmput230.zip

LMPCOUNT           Download the LMP buffer size/time pre-calculator by 
                   Jeannot Langlois.
                     ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/utils/save_edit/lmpcount.zip


Other Useful Tools
------------------

PKZip              Home of PKZip for MS-DOS file compression.
                     http://www.pkware.com

WinZip             Home of WinZip for file compression under Windows.
                     http://www.winzip.com

CuteFTP            Home of CuteFTP for easy file transfer to ftp.cdrom.com.
                     http://www.cuteftp.com

JASC Inc           Home of Paintshop Pro for graphics manipulation.
                     http://www.jasc.com
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

Jb
January 1 2002
Happy New Year