[HELP] How to make an iwad for my total conversion

[PaganRaven]

I'm almost finished with a project, and where pretty much all lumps from the original doom2 iwad have been replaced, this time around I want to eliminate the necessity of the doom2 wad completely. I lurked around and know it's somehow possible, and I know graf and/or enjay are working on some new special lump for iwad/pwad definitions, but unfortunately that still doesn't exist at the moment. From Harmony (the original before the official iwad was made) I learned the creator used filler wads to replace the necessary lumps and changed the .exe file so it doesn't look for a doom2 wad. I've also heard you can use a hex editor to change whether a wad is defined as IWAD or PWAD, but to be flat out honest I'm an idiot who has no experience working with the raw data of files (it can't be as simple as changing that 'P' at the top to an 'I', can it???).

Of course, you can't just delete everything in the doom2 WAD or stuff it with filler, because IWADs can't be modified. If it's too much of a pain in the arse I'll probably have to release what I'm brewing as it is, and it wouldn't make any difference, but I really wish I could make it a standalone for those people who *gasp!* don't have a doom wad, even though that's the antithesis of my target audience.

[Enjay]

I'm just using new features as I find them. I have done nothing to deserve credit for their development.

If you look in recent SVN zdoom.pk3s you can find a file called iwadinfo.txt. The format is pretty self explanatory. You can use that to tell Zdoom a new iwad file name to look for and how to correctly identify the file from its contents and modify other "nice to have" things such as the title (and its colour) of the name bar that appears at the top of the loading window. However, you'll notice that it is in zdoom.pk3 and it needs to be in a file that gets loaded before the iwad. So your project would need to be distributed in such a manner that allowed it to be distributed with a modified zdooom pk3 without messing up other installs on peoples machines if you thought people using it would be at risk of that. And it would, of course, tie you to the version of Zdoom that you made it for etc etc - just like modifying the exe would. So it may be suitable for you or it may not.

[Graf Zahl]

The IWADINFO is not meant for user modification. The specifics to detect user-made IWADs and add them to the selection box are not yet in place.

Making an IWAD is not that hard. As long as it contains a MAP01 lump it will be identified as Doom2. Just make sure that it is self contained.

Even though it isn't used yet, add a GAMEINFO lump with a line 'startuptitle = "Name you want to be displayed on the startup screen". That is planned to become the method by which IWADs will be preconfigured. Other stuff will certainly be added later but that's not relevant for now.

[PaganRaven]

Wow. I just made a wad with a "MAP01" for it's contents, named it "doom2.wad", and the ruse worked
I almost feel stupid for posting this. I just didn't know about the MAP01 thing.

[Gez]

There are a lot of other names you can use. In fact, the names are there just to have a finite list of files for ZDoom to inspect. The nature of the IWAD is determined by looking at its content. So if you take Heretic.wad and rename it "freedoom.wad", it will still work correctly.

(Exceptions: if you want Hexen: Death Kings of the Dark Citadel to work correctly, you should make sure Hexen.wad is truly Hexen. Also, Strife will likewise want Voices.wad to be named Voices.wad, not anything else; but it'll still work if the file is missing, you just won't have voice acting.)