Gold Medal Software 3/Gold Medal Software - Volume 3 (Gold Medal) (1994).iso/games/doom/doome046.arj/DOOMINFO

Text File | 1994-02-19 | 12.6 KB | 436 lines

Doom Picture Viewer
(and eventually extractor/replacer/editor)
Revision History


*******
1/12/94
*******


v.001

Loads first wall and displays it with default system palette.
Waits for keypress and exits.


v.002

Loads walls one at a time every time you press a key.
Still had default system palette.
ESC exits.  (Doesn't check to see if you are through with
pictures!  Oops!)


v.003
Loads first PLAYPAL palette first.
P and O can change between the 14 PLAYPAL palettes.
Obviously, this isn't going to work.  Either the palettes aren't
loaded in a standard way or they are entirely somewhere else.
(Still doesn't check for last picture)


*******
1/14/94
*******

v.004
T for toggle now works.  This will copy the piece across the
entire screen.  5x3.


v.005
Q and A move forward and back one picture.  It >STILL< doesn't
check to see if there's really a picture or not, so go and look
at random data.  See if I care!  Also reduced some clock cycles
on my keyboard input.  :)


v.006
Now that we can see (haphazardly) the floors and ceilings - lets
move on to ALL the rest of the graphics.  A first attempt.  You
can clearly see bottom square panels like the 'Ammo' box but the
rest are jumbled.  This uses only about 1/2 of the same code as
v.005 and doesn't view the floor and ceilings anymore.  When I
finish this part, I will re-incorporate that back into the code.


*******
1/18/94
*******

Since The Pilferer has told the world that my BBS is "Doom
Utility HQ" and I got 4 new users yesterday looking for Doom
stuff, I better work a little faster on this!  :)

v.007
The graphics are sideways!  Those goofy iD people!  The program
is at the point where you can tell what some of the pictures are
supposed to be, but most are still screwy.  The first graphics
says "THE END" (END0).  How ironic.  :-0


v.008
Sweet jesus!  It works!  Most of the graphics are now completely
viewable.  Unfortunately, the palette is still screwed so most
things look like crap, but everything seems to be there: all the
monsters, all your guns.  Between 95-99% of the graphics view
properly, the rest are screwed up for some reason.
Also.....THIS PROGRAM WILL CRASH!!!  v.005 was nice and stable
but this one isn't.  I have no idea why, but I wouldn't suggest
running important things in the background (You are running
OS/2, aren't you?  You are an intelligent computer user, aren't
you?) cause the first time I ran this, after looking at a few
hundred graphics, it hung REAL GOOD.  But since I probably won't
have time to fix it tonight, I'll just release it and you can
use it at your own risk.


v.009
Never mind!  Fixed the major crashing bug.  Also, I finally
added checking so it won't go past the first and last pictures.

Oops.  Those tricky file pointers!  One of the reason why the
palettes were screwed was because...I wasn't loading them
correctly!  They are still wrong, but the first one makes a lot
of pictures look a lot better than before...and still others are
junk!  But that gives me encouragement that I can fix it!


*******
1/20/94
*******

v.010 (or should it be v.00a HEX!  nahhhh)
Another two lines of code and all the screwed up pictures are
fixed.  Now only the 10 or so huge pictures don't display
properly.  And that's low on my priority list for this program.


v.011
Cleaned up some code.  (Well, barely, but that's a good Revision
History kinda thing to say!) Started messing with the palette
again.


v.012
YOWZA!  This is it!  It's not cause I'm so good, I should have
had it to begin with.  The palette was there all along.  I
wasn't loading it right.  SMACK!  Ooo, I deserved that.  All the
pictures use just one palette.  No need for the goofy "switch
palette" keys.  I think the COLORMAP part is for the "light
effect" of Doom, where things get darker as you move away.
Maybe.  Maybe not.  That's not my concern.  Let's spruce things
up a bit and put the floors/ceilings back in.


v.90
Got rid of all that palette changing code.


v.91
Put the floors/ceilings back into the main code.  Same as before
- T toggles the 3x5 tiling on.  This only works when you are in
the floors section.


v.92
Changed keys - people (The Pilferer) complained that they were
too confusing.  Hey, I thought Q and A were naturals for up and
down.  Didn't you ever play Apple II games on the keyboard?  So
now it's up and down arrow, with HOME and END for first and last
picture.

v.93
Hack, hack, debug, debug.  Trying to get those big pictures to
load.


*******
1/21/94
*******

v.94
Groovy.  Got the big pictures to load.  And it shows everything.
I thought the pictures were larger than 320x200 but they're not.
So that's everything.  I just have to put a opening text screen
on this and then it's 1.0


*******
1/28/94
*******

v.95
Wait a minute!  Wasn't 1.0 supposed to be a week ago?  Oh well.
What do numbers mean anyway.  Thanks to Jeff Miller (WAD Tools)
and the guys at "The Unofficial DOOM specs" for showing me the
errors in my program.  Now all the pictures display properly
(but that's what I thought before so....).  You couldn't tell if
you weren't looking for errors in the medium and big pictures.
The small numbers were obviously screwed.  And a thumbs down to
the arrogance of the "Unofficial WAD specs" guys, laying down
all the rules and regulations and ways you can use THEIR
specs?!?!  Hey guys, iD made the game, not you.  Get off your
high horse.


v.96
Ok, just one more.  I forgot I had to make those changes in two
spots.



********
********
DOOMEdit
********
********



*******
1/31/94
*******

v.10
Attempt at export to BMP.  It exported something, but it aint' a
BMP!  :(


v.11
Finally got an exported BMP.  The picture is crooked and the
palette is goofy.


v.12
Nope


v.13
Argh!


v.14
Sheist!!!

I give up.  I don't know the BMP header format and I can't
figure it out myself.  I've just looked over the PCX format and
it's a lot easier than I thought it would be.  I'll start over
with that tomorrow.


*******
2/01/94
*******

v.15
Trying it with PCX export now.  I don't think I've quite got
it...but I'll give it a run anyway!
Hmmmm, not bad.  CShow recognizes it as a PCX, so the header is
fine.  It seems the palette is there, except everything else is
the number 12.  Maybe I'm sending a message back through a time
vortex to myself!  Either that or I *&^$ed up.

v.16
Better.  (?!?) CShow views it, but it's black and white garbage.
Right size though!  It says its a PCX type 5 instead of 5i.
Maybe that header info I left out was more important than I
thought.  (I do so love my slop programming.  Be glad I haven't
released any of these DoomEdit betas! ;)  )


v.17
Added all the header info.  Now CShow won't view it.  But I
thought of something I forgot....


v.18
Hack hack slash slash.

v.19
argh

v.20
I guess it would help if I actually read ALL of the PCX specs.


*******
2/02/94
*******

v.21
Redid PCX storing code.
After some debugging, CShow views the picture nicely, except it
gets a little skewed at the end.  Also, it's in black and white.
This book I have is worthless!


v.22
Most pictures export fairly well, there is obviously still a bug
somewhere cause some pictures are fine, others are just a teeny
bit messed up, and some just a little more messed up.
The palette isn't exporting properly.


*******
2/03/94
*******

v.30
Went back to BMP again.


*******
2/08/94
*******

v.31
What I thought affected (affected?  effected?  Where's my
dictionary?!?!) all pictures just affected certain ones.  The
others are fine.  This is finally a releasable beta.


v.32
Added floor/ceiling export.


*******
2/09/94
*******

v.33
Fixed floor/ceiling export.


*******
2/10/93
*******

v.34
As the program gets larger, my spaghetti code was getting
unruly.  I cleaned a few things up.


v.35
Added the EXTREMELY DANGEROUS function of "Export ALL pictures!"
This sadistic little feature (on its first test run) exported
1596 files for a total of just under 9 megs.  "But SKI, the
graphics in the DOOM.WAD only take up about 6-7 megs." Right,
but they are compressed in the WAD.  The exported files are not
compressed and contain the palette in every single file -
that's 1.6 megs right there.  I still won't release this yet.  I
have to finally include the instructions in a startup screen and
add a "Are you sure??!?!" to the "export all" function.  Oh
yeah, and it doesn't seem to work right either.  It started
beeping at one point, but then it stopped and continued.


*******
2/14/94
*******

v.36
I now have the greatest amount of respect for the programmers of
programs like CShow, Graphics Workshop, HiJaak, etc.  The specs
for something as simple as a BMP seem to be different for every
single program that reads them.  At this point, my exported BMPs
are read fine by Graphics Workshop and Windows Paintbrush, but
CShow doesn't recognize them (an older version of CShow - maybe
CShow 2000 will give me less grief).


v.37
Added .BMP extension to end of file instead of just being blank.
Endless hacking to get all pictures to export properly.


v.38
Why do I get the feeling that I could have been saved a week or
two of trouble if I had a book that gave some GOOD info.  Well,
to finally fix my export problem, the length and width of the
exported BMPs are evenly divisible by 4.  Is this the way BMPs
are supposed to work?  Is this common knowledge?  Hell if I
know, I just know it fixed my problems.  I wanted to keep the
exported BMPs the exact size that they are in the game, but
since the actual size is still in the WAD, it shouldn't be a
problem when I get to the "Import" part of DoomEdit.  The only
real drawback to this fix is that it increases the size of a lot
of BMPs which makes the "Export All" function that much more
sadistic.


v.40
Finally added some user-friendliness to this program.  Why do
programs always have such poor documentation?  Cause when we
program, we already know everything.  We don't have to document
it!  :)
Also added 'Are you sure?' feature for Export All and the
ability to stop it in the middle of its mayhem.
Despite having a 'releaseable' version for 6 days, this is the
first released one since DoomView .96


v.41
Checks to see if DOOM.WAD is actually there.  (This should have
been included in DoomView .001.  Oh well, I assume people read
instructions.)


*******
2/15/94
*******
Payday!  Oh, you were expecting more revision stuff....ok.


Ok, exporting is cool.  You can throw a Cacodemon up as
wallpaper or print it out as a late valentine, but how about
some IMPORTING graphics!!  To make this as easy as possible, I
first need to reconstruct the entire DOOM.WAD file.  It will
become a lot bigger, but it should still work.
----------------------------------------------
I hadn't even come to the point where I can see if changing the
DOOM.WAD would even work when I thought of something (actually
something rather obivous).  If I change the WAD, then every
single Doom utility program (including the current version of
DoomEdit) would no longer work.  I'd call that a serious
drawback.  Since the chances of a picture not fitting into the
space already provided by the WAD file are not that great, I'll
put this part on the back burner.


*******
2/16/94
*******

v.42
Added menu with the names of the pictures.
Program can no longer fit in one 64K segment.  I hate DOS!!  If
I install OS/2 on my machine at work tomorrow, I'll continue
work on DoomEdit in 32-bit OS/2 assembler since I've been
meaning to mess with OS/2's flat memory model for a while.  If
not, I can mess with it in DOS and make it fit.

*******
2/18/94
*******

v.46
Well, the OS/2 installation at work was a failure.  OS/2 itself
runs fine.  It's the Novell Requester that seems to be messing
everything up.  But that's mainly because I don't know how to
use it and I have no instructions for it.  Oh well.

Doom 1.2 is out.  Nightmare mode.  What a crock.  All you people
making Doom Jumblers and stuff...make something that will
multiply the number of monsters in a level.  Sure, some would
end up in walls, but it shouldn't be that difficult.  It would
be cool to run around in easy level with 20 cacodemons chasing
you!  I'd do it...but I'm busy.  ;)

So...back to the menus.  The names menu is in.  Now you can
peruse all those descriptive 8 character names for everything.
And the 1.2 updates have been added.  So this is now only
compatible with 1.2, no 1.1 support anymore.  Why bother?
(This version released.)