Need help with converting maps to UDMF

[troystewart]

Hello,
I want to create modified versions of the original Doom maps to have some fun with my friends, using the more modern features of GZDoom and UZDoom. However, I'm unsure how to convert them to UDMF, which I believe is necessary to access those new features. I have GZDoom Builder and SLADE3, so could someone please assist me with converting the maps?

[Kappes Buur]

Since the original maps are copyrighted you must make sure that the maps are sufficiently different from the originals. This is to eliminate warez.
If this is just for your own enjoyment, then go ahead.

However, you will need to convert the IWAD to a PWAD with a hex editor first.
See the header.

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/1 ... nt-2644446

[Enjay]

Edit: Heh, I've just noticed the link that Kappes Buur provided goes to a post with basically the same instructions.

Converting the IWAD to have a PWAD header is not actually needed if you just want to edit the maps and load them as PWADs. You can extract the maps from the IWAD using Slade or other tools.

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In fact, as an aside, it's generally only tools that even care about the IWAD/PWAD header. The game engines tend to mostly ignore it. Even vanilla Doom will load and IWAD with a PWAD header (although it will give you a message about loading PWADs/altered game content) and it will also load a PWAD with an IWAD header. It's tools such as Slade that use it as a safety "do not alter this file" bit of information, which is a much later convention. FWiW, DeePsea's WAD management tools give you the option of saving a file with an IWAD or PWAD header/

As for the actual conversion, I would do it in two steps:

Step 1, run the maps through ZWadConv (available in the Misc Editing Utils here ).

That will convert the maps to ZDoomHexen format.
Why go through that step? Because most of the line types in UDMF are basically the same as ZDoomHexen format. So, the onward conversion to UDMF is easier.

If you don't do step 1, you can convert to UDMF directly using step 2, but the line defs will be wrong. e.g. the first door in Doom2 map01 will convert as a stairs build down type.

Step 2, Use GZDoom Builder (or even better, upgrade to Ultimate Doombuilder (GZDB is quite old now)) to do the conversion from ZDoomHexen format to UDMF.
Doing this is pretty straight forward. You just load up the map in the ZDoomHexen project, hit F2 and change to UDMF and save.


There are a few line types that don't convert well from vanilla to ZDoomHexen and from ZDoomHexen to UDMF. However, the original vanilla Doom/Doom2 maps are so basic that very few (if any) lines should be problematic.

[SPZ1]

You can use SPZ Archive Tool to convert Doom maps to UDMF. The only catch is that the Doom specials don't convert to Hexen like ZDoom does internally with Doom maps. You'll have to manually set the line specials and you can find them as comments in the TEXTMAP. You can get SPZ archive tool on my website here.