Copyright: Unregistered evaluation copy of HELLLP!


yesyesyesyesDoom Editordoomedyes


Table of Contents
DOOM Ed

Version 2.50

FIRST WORKING VERSION

Written by Geoff Allan

BACKUP YOUR WAD FILE!

REGISTER THIS PROGRAM!

NODES NOW REBUILD AFTER MAP EDITS!

WEAR A CONDOM!

(Well, not always)

Welcome to DoomEd, still the worlds FIRST Doom editor that actually allowed you to edit! Beginning with version 2.5, you can now add walls and sectors, move everything around how you like it, and all nodes, segs, and ssectors are automatically updated. Finally, you can do everything you want!

This is a prominent location, so here are the acknowledgements I am obligated to make:

1) Most doom data structures decoded by me, Geoff Allan, contact via pringler@cuug.ab.ca

2) Specific actions of line triggers and sector flash parameters by Matt Fell, along with a few of the things (mostly dead bodies, and one mistake in an earlier release), contact via matt.burnet@acebbs.com

3) Nodes, Ssectors, and Segs rebuilding from Deu, by Raphael Quinet and Brendon Wyber, contact via quinet@montefiore.ulg.ac.be

4) Beta testers (and registered users...) Dave Nixon, Dan Mitenko.

5) Id Software, for designing and releasing Doom in the first place.

For more information on a topic, just click on it.

Building and Editing a Map

Editing Things

Moving Walls

Editing Wall Textures

Editing Sectors

Editing Sounds

Viewing Graphics

Problems

Plea for Assistance

Reference Information

Registration


Help file produced by  HELLLP!, a product of Guy Software, on 3/26/94 for Unregistered User.

The above table of contents will be automatically completed and will also provide an excellent cross-reference for context strings and topic titles.  You may leave it as your main table of contents for your help file, or you may create your own and cause it to be displayed instead by using the I button on the toolbar.  This page will not be displayed as a topic.  It is given a context string of _._ and a HelpContextID property of 32517, but these are not presented for jump selection.

HINT:  If you do not wish some of your topics to appear in the table of contents as displayed to your users (you may want them ONLY as PopUps), move the lines with their titles and contexts to below this point.  If you do this remember to move the whole line, not part.  As an alternative, you may wish to set up your own table of contents, see Help under The Structure of a Help File.


Why Windows?
Building and Editing a Map

This is easy, but you must first understand some concepts.

Everything here is SECTOR oriented. When you specify New Map, you start with a single sector and a Start point. Note that on lines, there is another line which shows which side the texture mapping faces. That is, this box requires that you are INSIDE of it to see the walls.

Click on the S button to select SECTORS. Click on the RIGHT mouse button to ADD a sector. You will get a dialog box with some nifty choices:

Make your choices. If you had right clicked inside of an existing sector, then there would be other selections active. DoomEd automatically adds linedefs, sidedefs, textures, etc. So you dont have all the extra work to do. In fact, if you click on Style... you will be able to set the default textures for this and future sectors.

Once you click on OK, the new sector will be placed. It is always 64x64, centered at your mouse position.

Now, you break the walls on the right side of that first sector, so that there are two new vertexes to connect your new sector to. Do this by clicking the RIGHT mouse button to split the linedef. You will likely need to use the V tool to jostle them around exactly where you want them.

We now have the first sector ready to accept the new sector as an attached object. Move the vertexes so that they join. When two vertexes are moved to the exact location, they join into one.

Whenever you join two lines together by attaching their endpoints, the lines automatically become joined. A single line exists, and the two sectors are melded. If there is a height difference between them, the required mapping is performed for above and below textures.

These sectors are joined, and will work properly. You can set light levels, or whatever, either before or after you join, but I strongly recommend that you set floor and ceiling heights BEFORE joining. That way, much of your work is automated.

In case of error, select the V tool and RIGHT CLICK to separate all vertexes at a location. Then, you move the vertexes around, and drag one onto another to rejoin them. It is extremely important that you preserve the integrity of sectors when you do this: ie. dont reconnect the wrong lines.

As easy as this looks, it is ALL YOU NEED to create maps of great complexity! Any sector can be stretched out and extra vertexes added to create complexity.

TEMPORARY INFORMATION - YOU ARE USING A BETA COPY!!!!!!

The nodes builder is under construction. There are some limitations and the occasional crash at this point. For this reason, note the following rules: (this version only)

1) SAVE OFTEN. If the node builder crashes,

    you wont lose so much.

2) EXIT TO SAVE. I have a memory allocation error

    which isnt my fault - Microsoft C 8 is messing up.

    Im trying to find a workaround. Exit the program,

    and restart it to continue working. (sorry!)

3) NEW FILE EACH SAVE. Dont save onto an old

    filename in case it crashes and glitches it.

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Editing Things

To edit things, for example, to turn that stupid blue bottle into a pink demon, do this:

Get a map displayed. Double check that the far right word on the control bar is Things. If not, click on the T button. Click on any of the little black squares, they are the things. The currently selected thing will change color to indicate that it is selected. Modify the information in the dialog box. If you select any of the other buttons on the control bar, you will need to click T to return to editing things. (Some day, these control bar buttons will contain icons rather than letters...)

You can drag the location of any thing to a new location. Note that it will snap to position on a grid. This grid can be changed with the Set Grid... selection under Maps.

To add things, click the right mouse button. The new thing will be a copy of whatever the last thing was that you viewed or edited. If you havent yet viewed or edited anything, then it will be a barrel, visible on all levels.

There is currently no method for deleting, that will be next version.

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Moving Walls

To move walls, click the V button on the control bar. Vertexes will be shown at all line intersections. Using the mouse, move a vertex around to its new position.

To split a wall in two, which allows stretching it out, click the right mouse button on the line. It will be magically split in two. See Building and Editing a Map

Contents


Editing Wall Textures

To change walls, for example, to change the startup room into a nice green marble:

Choose a map to work with. Click on the L button. This puts you in LineDef editing mode. Select any line on the map by clicking with the mouse. The Line Definitions dialog box will appear.

Changing the textures involves expanding the dialog by clicking on the SideDefs >> button. When the dialog is expanded, you can shrink it again by clicking the SideDefs << button. A Linedef that borders two sectors needs two SideDefs. Click on the TWO SIDED option to create the second one.

If you want to preview the wall types that you will be using, select RESOURCES, VIEWER, click on TEXTURES, and click on a texture name. These take a second or two to come up. (Dont blame me, Doom always does this at startup and you know how long THAT takes...) Soon these will be selectable from a menu, rather than by name.

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Editing Sectors

To change sectors, which includes height of floor and ceiling, along with the floor and ceiling textures:

Choose a map to display, Click the Se button. Now click inside any sector to have its information appear. You may edit this information at will. In version 3, you will be able to actually see the choices for floor and ceiling tiles, for now you are stuck with the titles (but you can view them in the viewer...)

See also Building and Editing a Map

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Viewing Graphics

To View Graphics, select Viewer from the Resource menu.

Bitmaps (also called Sprites, Panels, Tiles, and Textures) usually have a set of X,Y co-ordinates that specify the lock point. You can toggle the bitmap's use of this lock point with the Lock button. Some graphics, such as the weapons, are way off of the display if lock is on.

The four types of bitmaps are:

Sprites: objects, things, people, plants, etc.

Panels: wall panels, doors, stuff like that.

Tiles: floor and ceiling tiles.

Textures are panels connected together and attached to walls.

As an example of textures, the POISON sign is a panel, and the wall is two panels. The texture is the connection of these pieces into a single wall mapping bitmap. The computer displays are actually 6 different panels, pasted onto a background. This texture appears in the second major room in E1M1 (look up).

Play with the Viewer to see all of the graphics available.

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Editing Sounds

To work with Sounds, select Sounds from the Resource menu. This will allow you to play sounds, extract the sounds to a .WAV file, or put your own sounds into Doom. There is no limit to the replacement, DoomEd will rebuild the Wad file to allow larger .WAV files to be inserted. Any sounds that you REPLACE with must be 11025Hz, 8bit, mono. Anything else will just give you silence. I have also extracted all of the Wolfenstein sounds into WAV files. Look around, its called WolfWav.Zip (For sure theyre on Excess BBS, Fidonet 1:134/17, (403) 285-7338). Stuff these into DOOM (it's quite humorous, really, picture a spiked brown Imp yelling "HALT, DOG!"). Also, look for those libraries of Doom sounds - like DmPython (Monty Python sounds), DoomAsh, DmSilly, etc. Or, create your own (ultimately this may be the best).

You can also extract WAV files from DOOM and use them as your Windows sounds. From control panel, select Sounds. The rest should be obvious.

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Problems

EXPERIMENT! This program does a LOT, and has all kinds of little extras in odd places while its under construction. Also, it may crash, and I apologize. The final version will have all those debugging quirks removed. There are a lot of little details which will be cleaned up after the major functions are all in place and working.

(Sprites)

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Plea for Assistance

A PLEA! DOOM uses the MUS file format. I want to convert this to MIDI to allow editing, but am unable to find any programming references to this format. I know there is such a thing, since the Shareware program CDJukeBox uses it. HELP! Send to Geoff Allan, c/o Excess BBS, Calgary, Fidonet 1:134/17 or via Internet send to: pringler@cuug.ab.ca

Incredibly, I have had no response on this plea yet - March 28, 1994!

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Reference Information

Old versions had the file formats in this help file, but I am discontinuing that. From now on, if you want full details of ALL of the data structures in DOOM, register with the source code option. This way, all programmer types can get right into it, and see how everything ties together. Alternately, you might want to get DmSpec13 by Matt Fell. Look around, likely it is more up to date by the time you read this.

After decoding most of the Doom database, I encountered DmSpec10 by Matt Fell. I discovered that I was pretty much equal to his progress - I knew some things that he didnt, and he had figured out a few that I hadnt. DmSpec11 was the kick to figure out the last pieces in the puzzle: Nodes and Reject. Thanks Matt!

This is still a preliminary beta version, and has a few minor rough edges. Starting with version 1.2, no editing changes for the Shareware version of Doom will be saved or allowed unless you register this software. Ie, registered Doom can always be edited by this, shareware Doom can only be edited by using the registered version of this.

Register this version AND subsequent versions with a ONE TIME fee of $10, or $15 for source code. Mail a check or international money order to:

Geoff Allan

7232 Kananaskis Drive SW

Calgary, Alberta, CANADA

T2V 2N2

Be sure you include your full name and a mailing address, and any comments would be welcome.

Regarding those comments: (Soapbox ON:) We dont live in igloos up here, and we dont speak French. Most Canadians live within 100 miles of the USA, we have 32 US cable channels and 6 Canadian ones, our houses, cars, radio, TV, music, and culture are identical to the USA. We vacation in California and Florida, and some Canadians winter in Phoenix. We have universal health care. There are no other differences (of course, we have no military...) Come on, don't treat me like Im a foreigner from India, or something! (Soapbox OFF)

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Registration

Register this version AND subsequent versions with a ONE TIME fee of $10, or $15 for source code. Mail a check or international money order to:

Geoff Allan

7232 Kananaskis Drive SW

Calgary, Alberta, CANADA

T2V 2N2

Be sure you include your full name and a mailing address, and any comments would be welcome.

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Unregistered Message

This Help file was produced by an unregistered demonstration copy of the HELLLP! file authoring system.

HELLLP! is a user-friendly system to aid in the production of Windows help files. It requires Microsoft Word for Windows version 2.0 or higher.

HELLLP! is available as shareware from the Microsoft Word for Windows forum on Compuserve as the file HELLLP.EXE.  The author and copyright owner may be contacted at Compuserve ID 71750,1036.