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[Zhs2]

And this is one of a few things that happen when you pass a PWAD as an IWAD:

Code: Select all

Execution could not continue.
W_GetNumForName: PLAYPAL not found!"

This is one of the required lumps for an IWAD, as it is the game palette. Anyone who creates an IWAD will supply one, among other necessary lumps that escape me at the moment - likely a TITLEPIC, font lumps, menu graphics, and that's about it I think. ZDoom gracefully handles the rest if they are missing. (Feel free to correct me on this.)

Also,

As there isn't a single "IWAD archive" yet, that does not actually matter.

Bullshit. Double bullshit. Granted, the creator kindly supplies batch files and thus launcher intervention is minimal, but...

[VGA]

Doee this support creating shortcuts or special files with associations to the launcher? Like ZDL?

And loading them for modification? Like ZDL again?

P.S. I like turtles. And ZDL.

[Bloodbat]

Zhs2: then they would mark it as IWAD too , it's, really, rather easy. Hell, I could write an "easy IWAD marker" and integrate it into ZDE ; as for the packed WADs for bullshit and double bullshit. You do realize both batch files are calling doom2.wad as an IWAD?
Video Graphics Array: ZDoom Executor can associate its profiles with the program, yes; once you load a file you can modify it to your hearts content, over and over if you so please.

[Zhs2]

The batch files do, yes, but the individual archives reference their own IWADs and the projects can be run individually without any Doom 2 resources. You can check the GameInfo.txt lumps to see what I mean. (Interestingly enough, launching Wolf3DTC by specifying any of the project files (not Resources) is currently broken in recent GZDoom builds because the author double defined a user variable in a child class.)

On that note, just to clarify, marking "IWAD" is setting the first four bytes of the archive file to spell out "IWAD", correct?

[Bloodbat]

Yes, that's all it takes, but for it to work as such requires a number of lumps. The individual archives reference their own IWADs...yet require doom2.wad for zdoom to start. I did find a case of packed IWAD (the adventures of square)...though it requires a development build for it to work.
Requirements of an IWAD: http://doomwiki.org/wiki/IWAD

[Zhs2]

No. These projects do not require any Doom 2 resources, nor the IWAD itself. Why I can't seem to launch them with the IWAD command from a command window is new to me, but I am assured, via the console log, that directly launching either project's main file requires only the project's resource file as the IWAD.

[Bloodbat]

Check the .bat files.
I checked the files for blake stone...nothing's marked as IWAD.

[Zhs2]

Nothing should have to be specifically marked IWAD, if my understanding of how ZDoom works is correct. ZDoom does not automatically scan a directory for IWAD-type files unless the IWAD's actual listing is added to ZDoom's internal list of IWADs to scan for; after that, ZDoom compares against actual lumps in the IWAD to determine the validity. That being said, the -iwad command-line parameter should be for specifying IWADs that aren't a part of ZDoom's internal list, and should technically work as IWADs if they contain all of the necessary lumps. (I think -iwad may not support pk3-style archives unless listed, though, from my attempts to pass Square as an IWAD in ZDoom 2.7.1. For wad files, this should work fine!)

Also, on a completely different note, forgive me for not having but the basest understandings of compression, but wouldn't marking a pk3/pk7 archive with the arbitrary "IWAD" sort of break everything unless those four bytes were prepended? Even then...

[Bloodbat]

Well, the archives themselves can't be marked, a WAD contained in them should be marked, of course it would break everything, it would make them unable to uncompress. In my experience gzdoom simply refuses to work if you don't pass an -iwad parameter or if you pass, for example, doom2.wad as a -file, considering that, ZDE's logic works with such constrains and must pass at least an -iwad parameter, of course I could just trust the user to pass what he believes is an IWAD to zdoom and let it tell that user to sod off when it turns out it isn't but, for some odd reason, in my experience, users tend to blame your program for whatever doesn't work "Your launcher broke my ZDoom", "so and so used to work until I used it from ZDE", etc. (I see that all the time in the DosBox forum: users blame their faulty downloads or general inability to use and understand how DOS worked on the program...I mantain my own build and as far as I recall, any game I've thrown at it has worked, even if some require workarounds (Microprose installer games) or, in the case of my build that's usually synced with their latest code, a bug report about an SVN change breaking something), honestly, I do have a job, a band (which is, in the end, another job...sometimes harder than the other one ), a girlfriend and, at times, a lot of stuff to do, so I'd rather use the time I have for it to add cool features to the launcher, discuss or implement suggestions (thanks for all the suggestions you've made that have turned it into a better program, BTW), instead of just coming here and say over and over again "it didn't break it" or "it doesn't work because that particular WAD is not an IWAD". I will check the code for ZDoom's identifying method and, if it's not a massive undertaking (funnily enough the holidays are a rather busy time for me), port that particular part to ZDE (ZDoom is written in C and ZDE in Object Pascal) and use it to identify WADs like ZDoom does.

[Zhs2]

It's cool. Thanks for the information, and of course take your time. This is a hobby and I, for one, am always ready to bash heads with the creators of programs and mods I like until I am well informed and the program is perfect. (Perfect may be subjective, but I figure it's a whole lot better as a compromise between a number of people instead of just my opinion.)

Speaking of my opinion, though, the whole mentality of trying to cater to the unknowledgeable end-user is a politically correct approach, but not always a flexible or useful approach in some situations. Anyone already familiar with ZDL knows ZDL assumes absolutely nothing and has likely subsequently learned for themselves what is valid to pass as an IWAD and what not, heh. As already evidenced in this thread, the decision to restrict the allowed kinds of IWADs has alienated some users, but those concerns have likely been mostly alleviated with the external files IWAD check; even still, this solution doesn't quite encompass all things, though I'm beginning to understand that ZDoom likely doesn't accept archive files as IWADs anyway (unless specified in another GAMEINFO lump) and the point is moot, but, well, wads not marked IWAD because their creators didn't mark them would kind of be left behind...

[Bloodbat]

After doing some research, it seems ZDoom is limited to the iwads it recognizes too...
Check here
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=27531
and here
https://github.com/rheit/zdoom/blob/mas ... adinfo.txt

[Bloodbat]

Version 1.0.14 of ZDoom Executor has been released!

Add: new ZDE website http://zdexe.sourceforge.net/
Add: wiki https://sourceforge.net/p/zdexe/wiki/Home/
Change: Freedoom names now correctly include "Phase".
Fix: Hacx wasn't being found.
Fix: correctly identify Harmony 1.1 and properly list different versions.
Add: useful sites to Help menu.
Add: missing icons to some menu entries.
Add: Hacx difficulty names.
Add: recent list to file menu.
Change: WAD identifier tool has been reworked: layout is different and more info is shown
(including lumpnames).
Add: ZDoom method for identifying WADs: if checksum is not found it will try to identify it in a
manner similar to the one ZDoom uses; also applies when passing IWADs from external files and
those IWADs don't have an IWAD header.
Change: program icons.
Add: option to turn off IWAD header checking when loading from external files: the first file in
the list will be passed as an IWAD.
Add: Help menu entry to read program license. (If COPYING.txt is present in the same folder).
Add: command line options to control basic functions (check the wiki for instructions).
Add: ability to create Windows shortcut for the currently loaded profile from the tools menu.
Misc. Small bug fixes, optimizations and code clarifications.

[Bloodbat]

Version 1.0.16 has been released, it fixes a couple of severe bugs and adds a couple of features.

-Change: move WAD identifier by hash data to XML file (some other definitions will probably be
moved to XML files as well in the future.
-Fix: certain profiles wouldn't load under certain conditions.
-Add: ability to make the application "portable" (check the Wiki for instructions).
-Fix: creating shortcuts for newly saved profiles entailed saving and then loading the profile
again, it should work now right after saving.

[Hellser]

Good work so far, Bloodbat (just updated to the latest version). Any plans in the future for allowing the user to move external files around with the mouse? Or having an option so that when we're using the "Move external file up/down" buttons will follow the file instead of remaining stationary? Just something from ZDL that I miss. Outside of that, I've been using this as my main launcher.

[Devianteist]

Any plans in the future for allowing the user to move external files around with the mouse? Or having an option so that when we're using the "Move external file up/down" buttons will follow the file instead of remaining stationary? Just something from ZDL that I miss. Outside of that, I've been using this as my main launcher.

I'm going to second this. This has been my main frontend since I discovered it, and not being able to do what Hellser said is really my only complaint about the program. Actually, it is my only complaint.

Scratch that, I just remembered something that invokes my ire is the inability to remove IWADs from the Paths. I had Blasphemer, but due to its extremely early stage, I deleted it, but now I'm stuck with the program saying that it cannot detect the Blasphemer IWAD every-so-often and that's really quite annoying.