Minimal Requirements for Standalone IPK3?

[Athel]

So, im making a project (a new iDTech 1\GZDoom Engine game if you will) and I eventually plan to have it be a standalone IPK3. In the past, new IWADS\a new IPK3 has been made (Action Doom 2, The Adventures of Square) and I am wondering this: What is the minimal requirements for a (lack of a better term) Doom based IPK3? I know that Player sprites, a map lump (MAP01, E1M1, custom slot, etc.), a few "placeholder" menu sprites, graphics and patches\flats is needed. Would that be all to have it running on its own?

Inb4 -file doom2.wad

[Blzut3]

Strictly speaking, ZDoom will run with nothing more than a PLAYPAL.

[mallo]

If you want to make your mod GL-only, I think you can borrow palette from Doom.

[Enjay]

If all your content is paletted, then you can do some other stuff with the PLAYPAL. When I was making Gene-Tech, I tried to make it so all of the in-game content was paletted and independent of the game palette. However, I found that some elements (such as text that gets colour-translatated, including menu elements, tally screens and enter/exit text) can still be influenced by what's in your palette. Messing with the palette got me some interesting effects although, eventually I decided not to change the palette after all.

As I recall, the Wolfenstein TC has a pretty minimal fake IWAD that is merely used to start the game. All the actual content is in other files.

[Athel]

Im using true color pngs for gzdoom. Is the PLAYPAL and COLORMAP needed? If so, then Ill need help in those departments.

[Blzut3]

You don't need a COLORMAP even in ZDoom since one will be generated for you. The PLAYPAL is required for both since the engine won't start up otherwise and some features assume the existence of a palette.

[Enjay]

Is the PLAYPAL and COLORMAP needed?

Slade (and other tools) can generate PLAYPALs, or you could take one from a source such as FreeDoom.

[Athel]

You don't need a COLORMAP even in ZDoom since one will be generated for you. The PLAYPAL is required for both since the engine won't start up otherwise and some features assume the existence of a palette.

So, the PLAYPAL is needed to start the whole thing to work? Ok. Would FreeDoom work for one?

[Kappes Buur]

Not that the rest of A crash course in GZDoom modding isn't worth reading,
it is, but the section Going standalone answers the OP's question:

http://www.lofibucket.com/articles/modding_doom.html

[Enjay]

Ok. Would FreeDoom work for one?

or you could take one from a source such as FreeDoom.

I wouldn't have suggested it if it wasn't suitable.

[Athel]

Oh. Well, thanks!

[MaxED]

Is there a way to launch a folder as IWAD (I've tried adding PLAYPAL and COLORMAP to it, which didn't help)?

[Blzut3]

and COLORMAP

You don't need a COLORMAP unless the one generated is not good enough!

No, I don't believe ZDoom supports directories as IWADs at this time. Probably would be difficult to add, but I'm not sure I see a point in doing so since you can just as easily make a bootstrap wad a 0 length PLAYPAL and an empty MAP01 lump. (Global namespace is fine and doesn't need to be an actual map, it's just there so when ZDoom checks the contents it sees MAP01 and determines the file is Doom 2. Alternatively you can modify IWADINFO, but I don't think I really recommend that.) Once you have that, you can -file the directory. On top of that there's zero reason to distribute a directory IWAD.

Fun fact: The bootstrap IWAD will actually start. The palette will be uninitialized so it will try to work with a kind of sort of randomly generated palette. So I guess in a totally undefined way, ZDoom can run with literally no data.

[Athel]

Huh. Kinda figured a doppler effect would happen on launch.if I were to make a 0-5byte wad with MAP01 in it, itd load? What happrns when its loaded? Does it just blackscreen you?

[Blzut3]

There's no correct answer to that question. What happens depends on the contents of the 768 bytes of uninitialized stack space contain and that is entirely platform dependent. It won't do anything bad, just nothing useful.

Don't know what you mean by 0-5 byte wad. The smallest wad to bootstrap ZDoom as Doom 2 is 44 bytes.

Edit: And before this implies that you don't actually need a PLAYPAL. You need a multiple of 768 bytes PLAYPAL, otherwise you're initiating undefined behavior and there's no guarantee your IWAD will be supported in future versions of (G)ZDoom.

Edit 2: By bootstrap I mean "engine will run to menu," if you just need to launch a directory of files. An empty MAP01.txt will serve just fine as your temporary IWAD.