The official "ZDoom on Wolfenstein 3D" thread. (aka ECWolf)

[Blzut3]

Someone has been telling me to post an official thread about it here (you know who you are ), so here it is! (I wasn't planning on doing this until the binaries were ready, but I guess I can do it now.)

For the few of you that haven't heard of ECWolf yet it is port based on Wolf4SDL that implements modding features similar to ZDoom. In fact some of the code even comes right from ZDoom hence the title of the thread. The port is dual licensed under the Wolf Source License and the GPL.

Some things to expect:

• Everything referenced by lump names instead of chunk numbers. This means you can load wad, pk3, pk7, grp, pak, etc files.
• DECORATE support as well as most of the other fancy ZDoom lumps (TEXTURES, SNDINFO, MAPINFO, etc).
• One executable plays everything.
• Support for high resolutions with aspect ratio correction (so widescreen/tallscreen support).
• Better control setup.
• High resolution texture support.
• A patching utitlity so that I only need to support 1 version of Wolf3D. But don't worry, the "Read This" has been reconstructed.
• UWMF: Text based map format similar in a way to UDMF.

Currently, I hope to have the first release out by the end of June. Woolie Wool is already doing testing as well as preparing a tech demo for the release.

I should probably also address "how does this differ from AFADoomer's TC?" Well fundamentally the Wolf3D engine and ZDoom are quite different. For example the enemies in Wolf3D have a radius of 42 which requires them to basically walk through walls whenever going through a narrow hall way. There are many other quirks like this that will probably never be accurately emulated in ZDoom. I don't know all of his plans now that he's attempting source modifications to do the reverse, but I believe that the approach of starting with the Wolf3D code base will result in more accurate play.

Project website: http://maniacsvault.net/ecwolf/
Mercurial Repository: https://bitbucket.org/Blzut3/ecwolf

[Xaser]

Whoop! ZWolf Lives.

[Gez]

One thing that annoys me in the TC is that corpses don't block doors. It's a tiny thing, but it's important.

[Gez]

Just noticed a typo in the UWMF docs:

Code: Select all

activatenoth = <bool>;    // Default: true

    activatesouth = <bool>;    // Default: true

    activatewest = <bool>;    // Default: true

    activateeast = <bool>;    // Default: true

"activatenorth" would be better!

Also, there's this in the introduction:

Sector - A Sector is a combination of a floor/ceiling texture along with a sound zone.

But then sector and zone are defined separately, and the planemap notably refer to them separately as well:

Code: Select all

planemap

{

    {<integer>,<integer>,<integer>},// {tile,sector,zone}

    // ...

}

[Nash]

lol night of the homeless

Good to see this developing so well! Wolf3D was the first FPS I've ever played in my entire life and being able to mod it in a modern way like ZDoom is indeed a great hobby.

So how many years do we have to wait for WolfScript? ;P

[Blzut3]

Just noticed a typo in the UWMF docs:

Fixed. The sector/zone problem was because they were originally connected, but Adam convinced me to separate them.

So how many years do we have to wait for WolfScript? ;P

I guess I better announcce it now so that the songs can come in sooner? A "WolfScript" won't even be planned until ZScript is done since I would of course want to base it off that langauge.

[printz]

Won't this blur the line between Wolf3d and Doom?

[Gez]

How would that be a problem? Doom (and especially ZDoom) is easier to mod and extend. That makes it a Good Thing.


The game is still going to be based on square tiles with walls.

[Average]

I have no idea if this is remotely possible but will there be a conversion tool for WolfSDL mods to run on ECWolf?

[wildweasel]

Considering that most Wolf4SDL mods contain changes to the source code, conversion may not be as easy as you might imagine...

[Gez]

I've been surprised by how rare it is that Wolf mods include source code.

[Blzut3]

I have no idea if this is remotely possible but will there be a conversion tool for WolfSDL mods to run on ECWolf?

As it has been stated this would be practically impossible since source modifications can do just about anything. Someone would have to convert them by hand.

I personally see this as an advantage as I don't need to worry too much about compatibility at this time. Of course straight up vanilla mods should work, but those are quite limited.

I've been surprised by how rare it is that Wolf mods include source code.

They're not aware that MAME requires the source to be released. Oh well, it's probably not worth really going after them since most of them probably just hack with copy and paste.

[Gez]

On a side note I wonder why A_CustomMissile seems to be the only monster attack function in ZDoom that doesn't automatically call A_FaceTarget.

Well, it's not relevant to ECWolf, but there's also [wiki]A_BruisAttack[/wiki] and [wiki]A_MonsterRail[/wiki].

[Blzut3]

On a side note I wonder why A_CustomMissile seems to be the only monster attack function in ZDoom that doesn't automatically call A_FaceTarget.

Well, it's not relevant to ECWolf, but there's also [wiki]A_BruisAttack[/wiki] and [wiki]A_MonsterRail[/wiki].

In A_MonsterRail/A_CustomRailgun:

Code: Select all

	self->angle = R_PointToAngle2 (self->x,
									self->y,
									self->target->x,
									self->target->y);

Basically the same thing.

[Woolie Wool]

Considering that most Wolf4SDL mods contain changes to the source code, conversion may not be as easy as you might imagine...

For many mods, "not as easy" would be "completely impossible" because many mods do completely out of left field hacks that make no sense for anything but the mod itself. For instance, the tracers in Castle Totenkopf SDL hack the shit out of the directional sprites feature of Wolf4SDL to draw a 3D line pointing towards the impact point (not to mention hacking the Wolfenstein gun attack function in numerous other ways). It's a cool effect but do you really want to add multiple new features (new use of directional sprites, new variant of A_GunAttack, etc.) just for one TC that already runs fine on its own engine?

Another example, End of Destiny's Tournament mode. No other mod does this, and it would be horrifically complex to implement, with the savegame rationing and special items and unique status bar counter.

That said, porting older TCs or TCs with relatively few fancy features should be easy. I plan to start working on compatibility patches for Project Totengraeber and The Six Depths of Terrorism after 1.0 is released.