Ad Monsters to Doom2 That Are in PK3 format

[DukeNukem]

Can anyone do a tutorial on how to add new monsters to Doom 2 e.g. download one from say Realm667 and add it to your map in ultimate doom builder. Chubzdoomer (I think) did a good video for this many years ago but now all the files are PK3 files and I can find nothing to walk me through using them.

If I try and copy the files/directories from the PK3 into my GZDoom UDMF base map using Slade, it looses all the directories i.e all files end up in root. There are hints I need a mapinfo and by viewing a few examples I can get the added monster to appear in things list but selecting it errors (unable to find sprite lump 'BKAMA' used by actor "KamikaziGuy": 15000. Forgot to include required resources?").

So, to get me started, could someone run through the process from "you've downloaded a monsters pk3 from Realm667" and goes all the way to actually seeing it work in a map ?

TTFN,
Jon

[Enjay]

You are probably making it harder than it is.
PK3 files are just zip files. So, you can extract the contents and as they are and then add them you your own PK3/zip.
The main thing that you will have to watch out for is files with the same name in the two PK3s.

This wiki page, while not directly addressing your question, may be of some help.
https://zdoom.org/wiki/Using_ZIPs_as_WAD_replacement

[camper]

It seems that you can't add monsters from the Realm667 repository right away. These monsters don't have editor numbers. To put a monster on the map, you have to assign it a number that isn't used in the regular game.

[Enjay]

Yep, good point. For the enemy to be map-placeable, it needs an ednum.
To check if the enemy is working even without an ednum, you can just load your file into GZDoom and then summon it from the console.

e.g. type summon KamikaziGuy at the console and hit enter

[DukeNukem]

Thanks all. I managed to work it out partly from screen-shotting a couple of frames from ChubzDoomer video - which was where an asset was in its original WAD from and visible in Slade, and comparing against the exact same asset that had been converted to a PK3 version on Realm667. That led me to:

1) In Slade, copy the contents of the PK3 into your WAD. This looses the directory structure but turns out not to be an issue.
2) Make sure everything you copied is at the top of the list (i.e. prior to the actual map)
3) Comparing against the video, I needed to contain enemy images between S_START and S_END markers

Then there is the ZSCRIPT block which handily had a comment to not forget "mapinfo" so found that was something else I needed for defining the enemy and by looking at GZDoom.pk3 I figured out I needed to add a block :

DoomEdNums
{
15000 = (name of enemy class)
}

(15000 being nicely above the standard numbers as mentioned by Camper).

Opening the resulting file in Ultimate Doom Editor gave warnings about duplicates, so returned to Slade, order by name so I could find duplicates and delete 'em. Initially I assumed I'd done something wrong for them to be duplicated, but this happened again with other enemies I tried ? Whatever, easily sorted.

This was enough to get it working, yay ! For an encore I added a second enemy to the same wad (merging some of the files like ZSCRIPT) - clearly if there were a lot more added enemies this would quickly become a bit unmanageable, I guess this is where the PK3 format plays a part, but that's for another day.

TTFN,
Jon

PS: Thanks for the tip re "type summon KamikaziGuy at the console and hit enter" that will come in handy.

[Enjay]

Glad you got it sorted.

1) In Slade, copy the contents of the PK3 into your WAD. This looses the directory structure but turns out not to be an issue.

Oh, your project is in a WAD! I didn't pick that up. I assumed you just wanted to transfer it to your own PK3 (which is what my answer was trying to address).

Yes, you are correct, WAD files do not have any internal sub directories/folders. However, it is worth pointing out that that they still have a method of separating resources into different namespaces using 0-length markers in the WAD. If you look inside any properly organised WAD (including doom2.wad) you can see entries like S_START, S_END, F_START, F_END and so on.

So, for example, a PK3 would have a Sprites folder, but a WAD file would have S_START and S_END markers and any graphic that is to be used as a sprite should be between those markers.

[DukeNukem]

Oh, your project is in a WAD! I didn't pick that up. I assumed you just wanted to transfer it to your own PK3 (which is what my answer was trying to address).

Correct. My starting point is WAD but when a bit more comfortable with how things work I'll look at pk3; ultimate doom builder doesn't edit pk3 files so no idea how this works yet, though I haven't spent much time looking in to this yet. If you can recommend a good video or web page explaining how to edit maps in a pk3 file / pk3 file structure using ultimate doom builder then that'd really help.

TTFN,
Jon

[Enjay]

Maps can only be in WAD format. If you want them in a PK3 you put them into a folder cunningly called Maps inside your PK3. A map file treated this way must only contain the lumps needed for the map, no extra graphics/sounds/whatever. They go elsewhere in the PK3.
As I recall, the logic for leaving maps needing the WAD format is that a map is actually made of several lumps that need to be present and the WAD format was well established as a container for those lumps. Plus, all the map editing tools already supported it.

UDB can load PK3 files as resources though.

Personally, I find PK3s far easier to use because they don't need any specialised tools to work with. You can just lay everything out in folders using Windows Explorer and zip them up. In fact, GZDoom doesn't even need them to be zipped up. Both GZDoom and UDB can load folders as resources and will load anything in them, provided they are a suitable format and properly arranged.

Remember, the PK3 name is just a naming convention borrowed from Quake III. In reality, they are just zip files that have been renamed (and GZDoom would happily load them with any extension - PK3 is not actually required).

There isn't anything particularly complicated about the internal structure of PK3 files. Maps go in the Maps folder, sprites in the sprites folder, sounds in the sounds folder graphics in the graphics folder and so on. A few lumps go in the root folder and that's it. It's all detailed on the wiki page that I linked to in my first post. ( https://zdoom.org/wiki/Using_ZIPs_as_WAD_replacement )

[DukeNukem]

Personally, I find PK3s far easier to use because they don't need any specialised tools to work with. You can just lay everything out in folders using Windows Explorer and zip them up. In fact, GZDoom doesn't even need them to be zipped up. Both GZDoom and UDB can load folders as resources and will load anything in them, provided they are a suitable format and properly arranged.

I think the key thing I hadnt realised was UDB (and GZDoom) could work with an actual file directory. So - I add directory as resource, open the map file (WAD) that is in the appropriate folder, and it will all work. Previously, I was puzzling how after creating a pk3 (zip) to edit the map(s) in UDB.

Thanks for the help Enjay,

TTFN,
Jon

[camper]

Sorry, maybe it shouldn't have been done for copyright reasons. But I hope that I can be given an indulgence for the sake of knowledge and education. I took the shareware doom1.wad file and using the WadExt program converted it to a set of folders that is needed for pk3 and simply packed it all into a zip archive. This zip archive still runs as a shareware game by the engine and does not allow playing modifications, but at least it works and you can look at its structure and understand how everything should be packed.
I also wanted to warn you that my file is not a very good example specifically for the gzdoom port, since I also converted maps to udmf directly using UDB, but did not fix the action in the zdoom namespace, but left namespace=doom, so it does not work correctly in gzdoom, but works well in zandronum.

Download:
www.mediafire.com/file/dcph21eqizk9s52/ ... 1.zip/file

Command line launch option:
zandronum -iwad udmfdoom1.zip
gzdoom -iwad udmfdoom1.zip (the game will start but it won't work properly)