ZDoom

It has to. But it's still Windows-exclusive and I am not going to bother with this unless the other platforms also get startup screens and this can be made system independent.

I just had a quick look in the hexen code...
Doesn't it convert that weird format to just a normal bitmap file at the end?

@ravick
The format is on the wikis. I'm pretty sure SLADE can convert to that format. As far as I know, it's all possible, it's just so few people have gone through the trouble of it. I'll try it with ZHexen and let you know...

@RockstarRaccoon:

The file is win32/st_start.cpp.

But beware, it's not pretty.

Well, for now maybe it is not needed to change the source port at all. I mean, does anyone know the steps for creating the image lumps properly? Modders would be very happy just with his in hand (this one included!).

Hmm... Graf, what's the file and what exactly needs to be changed?

Fair enough. I fully understand. If it ever happens, I'll treat it as a pleasant bonus. Thanks for replying.

Please don't ask me why this was so badly coded.

Randi went all the way adding support for these screens but provided no flexibility at all.
The problem here is, in order to improve it, I'd have to throw out all the old code and reimplement it in a sane, flexible and forward-looking fashion. As things stand it is all hardwired to the original resources and not salvageable.

Please don't also forget that this entire screen is totally outside the game, it uses native Windows code to draw its stuff, it's utterly nonportable.

Overall a combination that would prompt me to just throw it all away and rewrite from scratch instead of fixing it. As you can imagine it's rather low on my list of priorities.

In fact, if I recall correctly, Strife startups are easier to work with but could also be made more accessible with PNG support.

https://mantis.zdoom.org/view.php?id=551