PWADs and such

So if you play Open Beta 1, you'll see that I edited the zdoom.pk3 file so zdoom will play the wad natively. For Open Beta 2, I didn't want to do that; especially since I have since discovered a plethora of other source ports that I want it to run on. After all, every programmer wants his game out there, even if it's somewhat messy and with iffy maps (though I did get another map from a guy named SoulRunner and it's pretty cool, bringing my total to two "fan-made" maps, and the game isn't even released yet!).

Anyway...

Tests and such (shudder) have eaten up my time recently, and I haven't gotten too much done, except for one part in a secret level that I was giggling about the entire time I worked on it; until I realized that probably not many players would find it, so... yeah. Still fun, though.

But anyway... this entry is called PWADs because in a test, I deleted the chex3 textures from rarity.wad and then loaded rarity.wad as a simple pwad for chex3.wad. Long story short, it worked and cut over two thirds of rarity.wad's size. That was pretty cool.

Then I thought, hey, now that rarity.wad has no textures, can I replace them with freedoom textures? Of course, I had to try it. So that took like half an hour, but DoomBuilder II has a "Find and replace" feature, so that wasn't so bad. I replaced all the textures (apparently, they changed the door sizes a lot... every door in Chex Quest is at least 128 by 128; not so in DooM), made sure everything lined up, and hit test map.

It looked pretty sweet. Everything looked darker, much more realistic, and it was all around pretty cool. It looked... well... kindof like this.

Which looked great, until I realized that it didn't load my DECORATE file right (I've coded it to replace the native Chex Quest monsters, but Freedoom keeps the DooM monsters names, so nothing got replaced except the sprites) and the weapons and keys didn't work, as rarity.wad loaded the chex keys definitions, but doom2.wad was looking for doom keys; and then the last switch didn't appear and then it gave me an old ending picture that I'd forgotten was there when I ended the level.

The other thing I wasn't sure I liked was it changed the feel of the game. The textures from Chex Quest have a bit of a more cartoony feel, a bit more in line with the show (in my opinion), but freedoom has a realistic, gritty look; with blood and such (on other textures). I'm not sure I liked it. I'm also not sure if I'd have the drive to replace every single texture in every single level I've made... I'll probably just use it for the next projects I'll do.

One thing I am probably going to do, though, is add a buzzing sound for the flying changelings--you'll be able to hear them before you see them, but you won't know where or which it is. A regular drone? A flying spitter? A bumblebee? A flying Trixieling? Probably not; the last thing I need is to give Trixie a bigger ego... You just won't know.

And maybe sprites for arachnotrons. That might drop small pods of fire mana when you kill them. Yeah. I think I like that idea.