[Done] Master Levels Menu Interface

[Tormentor667]

Countless useful edits

Any chance of you sending me your file via pm? Not that I am lazy or do not have the MLs but there is no need to invent the wheel twice

[Crashbanito]

Exactly which skies are incorrect? I've never played the master levels outside of zdoom, so what should I worry about changing?

[Gez]

Any chance of you sending me your file via pm? Not that I am lazy or do not have the MLs but there is no need to invent the wheel twice

Well, it's too big to be attached to a PM.

Exactly which skies are incorrect? I've never played the master levels outside of zdoom, so what should I worry about changing?

The maps that use a starry sky are COMBINE, GERYON, MANOR, MINOS, NESSUS, TTRAP, VESPERAS and VIRGIL. (They don't actually use all the same sky texture, but close enough that only one is needed.)

[Crashbanito]

So exactly how would I go about fixing them? Sorry I'm still in the learning process of editing wads.

[Zippy]

Rather than renaming each lump in each file, it's possible to put all levels in a "maps" folder in the zip. Then the only thing to do is to duplicate TEETH.wad (to have TEETH.wad and TEETH2.wad) and then delete MAP32 from TEETH and MAP31 from TEETH2.

Personally, I also made some other changes as well, because several of those levels (MANOR and all those from "Dr Sleep's Cantos series") are meant to use a star sky texture while the others are not. So I copied the STARS patch into a patches folder, added a "starsky" entry in the textures lump (I nearly named it "hutch" ), and altered the mapinfo lump accordingly. And finally, I took the liberty of correcting Sverre Kvernmo's spelling and changed "Maosoleum" to "Mausoleum".

Right. It's whatever works really. But I guess I should include that in the instructions file.

The skys I was aware of but didn't do anything out of one part laziness and two parts non-concern for perfect accuracy. I think there were three or four different star textures actually, but they were roughly all the same anyhow. I guess I could include this kind of fix in the version that goes off to idgames.

The misspelling I could really care less about though.

[Crashbanito]

Rather than renaming each lump in each file, it's possible to put all levels in a "maps" folder in the zip. Then the only thing to do is to duplicate TEETH.wad (to have TEETH.wad and TEETH2.wad) and then delete MAP32 from TEETH and MAP31 from TEETH2.

Personally, I also made some other changes as well, because several of those levels (MANOR and all those from "Dr Sleep's Cantos series") are meant to use a star sky texture while the others are not. So I copied the STARS patch into a patches folder, added a "starsky" entry in the textures lump (I nearly named it "hutch" ), and altered the mapinfo lump accordingly. And finally, I took the liberty of correcting Sverre Kvernmo's spelling and changed "Maosoleum" to "Mausoleum".

How do I make a patches folder, what do I do to add a starsky entry to the textures lump and how exactly should I alter the mapinfo? The main problem I have is that I can't get the starsky into those levels.

[Gez]

Keep in mind that those are things that you don't need to do anyway. That said, don't be intimidated by the mass of text below, because I've written it like a tutorial, so if it seems to be a lot of things to do it's only because everything is explained completely. I assumed you weren't familiar with lump management tools...

1. Download Slumped if you don't have it already.
2. Open MLevelsMenu.zip with Slumped.
3. You have a toolbar just below the menu, they are from left to right: New Wad, New Zip, Open, Save All, Close All, Save, Save As, Close, New Lump, New Folder, New Lump from File, Delete Lump, Rename Lump, Move Lump Up, Move Lump Down, Import, Export, Cut, Copy and Paste. Click on "New Folder". Name it "patches".
4. Click again on "New Folder" to create a "maps" folder this time.
5. Double-click on the "maps" folder you just created. This puts you inside the folder.
6. Click on "New Lump from File". You get a message box where you can select several files (using shift for selecting a range, or control+click for selecting files individually). Select all of the Master Levels files (ATTACK.WAD, BLACKTWR.WAD, BLOODSEA.WAD, CANYON.WAD, CATWALK.WAD, COMBINE.WAD, FISTULA.WAD, GARRISON.WAD, GERYON.WAD, MANOR.WAD, MEPHISTO.WAD, MINOS.WAD, NESSUS.WAD, PARADOX.WAD, SUBSPACE.WAD, SUBTERRA.WAD, TEETH.WAD, TTRAP.WAD, VESPERAS.WAD and VIRGIL.WAD) then click OK. All files are imported as new lumps with the appropriate name.
7. Right-click on TEETH.WAD and select copy. Then right-click again and select paste. You have now two files named TEETH.WAD. Right-click on the second and select rename. Change its name to TEETH2.WAD.
8. Double-click on TEETH.WAD. It asks you if you want to open it in a new tab, say "yes". In this new tab, select MAP32 and using shift and the down arrow, select all lumps from MAP32 to the lowest BLOCKMAP. Once they're all selected, click on "Delete Lump".
9. Click on Save and close this tab. Now open in the same way TEETH2.WAD and likewise delete all lumps from MAP31 to the first BLOCKMAP, then save and close the tab.
10. Double-click on MANOR.WAD to open it in a new tab. Right-click on STARS and select "Copy". Close that tab.
11. Double-click on ".." in the list of lumps to go to the root directory. Double-click on "patches". You arrive in an empty directory.
12. Click on "New Lump" to create a new lump. Its name is not important. Right-click on it after creation and select "Paste". You now have a "STARS" lump. Delete the lump you had created just before, its only purpose was to allow right-clicking and pasting and it should not remain there.
13. Double-click on ".." to go back to the root directory. Click on TEXTURES.txt. You see it has one texture defined, M_DOOM. Well, leave M_DOOM alone and a line after its closing curly brace, copy or type this code:

Code: Select all

texture starsky, 1024, 128
{
	XScale 1.0
	YScale 1.0
	Patch STARS, 0, 0
	Patch STARS, 256, 0
	Patch STARS, 512, 0
	Patch STARS, 768, 0
}

14. Click on the Save Changes button. Now click on MAPINFO.txt.
15. Change the lines saying sky1 = "RSKY1", 0.0 into lines saying sky1 = "STARSKY", 0.0 for COMBINE, GERYON, MANOR, MINOS, NESSUS, TTRAP, VESPERAS and VIRGIL. (You can do it very quickly by double-clicking on a word to select it entirely. Select STARSKY once to copy it (Ctrl-C), then select the appropriate RSKY1 with double-clicks and just hit Ctrl-V to replace them by STARSKY.) Click on Save Changes when you're finished.
16. Click on Save As and name it "MasterLevels.pk3" (or just click on "Save" if you don't mind overwriting the original). You're done!

Optionally (if you are, like me, a grammar and spelling nazi):
17. In MAPINFO.txt, change the line map MEPHISTO "Mephisto's Maosoleum" into map MEPHISTO "Mephisto's Mausoleum" then click save.
18. Open the File Menu, select option, and make sure to give the correct path to a recent version of ACC. (If you don't have ACC, you can download it from here.)
19. Double-click on Menu.wad to open it in a new tab. There, select the first SCRIPTS lump, the one for MENULEVL (it is just above TITLEMAP).
20. Scroll a little bit down to find the line that reads { "MEPHISTO", "Mephisto's Maosoleum", "Sverre Andre Kvernmo AKA Cranium", "MEPHSCRN" }, and fix the spelling there as well, without changing anything else. Click on Save Changes.
21. Right-click on this SCRIPTS lump and select "Compile ACS". If your version of ACC is recent enough, and the path is correct, you get a message telling you it compiled successfully.
22. Click on save and close the tab. Then click on save again, and you can quit.

It's nothing difficult and can be done quite quickly.

[Crashbanito]

WOW Thanks that did the trick. I can finally play the master levels knowing it works completely.

[Kinsie]

This is quite classy, but it doesn't play nice with weapon mods - It forces the player to spawn with the default Doom weapons rather than the ones used by the mod, regardless of whether something's replacing those.

[Zippy]

This is quite classy, but it doesn't play nice with weapon mods - It forces the player to spawn with the default Doom weapons rather than the ones used by the mod, regardless of whether something's replacing those.

Never tested that. I'll look into it, but if I'm not mistaken replaces should go ahead and replace things even given through ACS.

[Tormentor667]

Well, it's too big to be attached to a PM.

tormentor667@arcor.de

[Gez]

This is quite classy, but it doesn't play nice with weapon mods - It forces the player to spawn with the default Doom weapons rather than the ones used by the mod, regardless of whether something's replacing those.

Never tested that. I'll look into it, but if I'm not mistaken replaces should go ahead and replace things even given through ACS.

I think that only affects things spawned on the map. I know that with DECORATE code you can give to an actor a replaced item without it being replaced. Try making a dummy item that replaces MegasphereHealth and picking up a [wiki=Classes:Megasphere]megasphere[/wiki].

Oh yeah, it definitely work that way. Just tested this code:

Code: Select all

actor DummyThingamajig : Inventory replaces MegasphereHealth {}

And the megaspheres still give 200% health.

Well, it's too big to be attached to a PM.

email

Alright, since you insist.
Email sent.

[Zippy]

I think that only affects things spawned on the map. I know that with DECORATE code you can give to an actor a replaced item without it being replaced.

Hmm. Alright. I guess I'll have to look into an alternate solution. Doesn't seem like it'll be too hard to fix actually.

[DooMGater]

(Just a small remark with some self-advertisment: )
Another comfy way to use the Masterlevels is MALESE, the MAster LEvels SElector....

[Herculine]

Zippy, this is a great mod and I'm sorry I didn't find it until just now. I love it! Thanks for making it and sharing it with us!