Fraggin/Fraggin.iso/wintex/ted.txt

Text File | 1994-06-01 | 7KB | 226 lines

DOOM ENDOOM Data Editor - version 1.2  May 1994



SUMMARY:

TED [/?] [data_file]

/?        :   Very brief help
data_file :   Name of a file to load at startup



DESCRIPTION:

    TED is a full screen editor that allows editing of the ENDOOM data.
    At the moment, TED does not allow direct editing of the IWAD or a
    PWAD, although this may be added in the future (if I can figure out
    from the DEU source how the WAD is organised :).



THE EDITOR'S COMMANDS:

    Once TED is run from the command line, an about box should appear.
    Pressing any key will dismiss it and place you in the main editing
    screen.  This is where all the editing of the ENDOOM data takes
    place.

    Unless you loaded a file from the command line, the screen will
    appear totally blank, except for the mouse cursor in the top left
    corner of the screen.

    Most of the commands available in TED are provided by hot keys.
    These keys are:

    ALT+H, F1  -   Help
    ALT+S, F2  -   Save the screen to disk
    ALT+L, F3  -   Load a screen from disk
    ALT+X      -   Exit TED (no save is performed, so be sure to save
               the file you are working on)
    ALT+C      -   Clear the screen
    CTRL+C     -   Change the current drawing colour
    CTRL+K     -   Change characters to blinking
    CTRL+B     -   Switch to box drawing mode
    CTRL+L     -   Switch to line drawing mode (not yet implemented)
    CTRL+T     -   Switch to text drawing mode
    ESC        -   Cancel drawing (only while drawing)



EDITING AN IMAGE:

    TED has three basic editing modes - box drawing mode, text drawing
    mode, and line drawing mode (not yet implemented).

    In box drawing mode, clicking and dragging the mouse will create a
    box of the current colour.  Pressing ESC while the mouse button is
    depressed will cancel the box.

    In text drawing mode, clicking will move the text cursor to the
    position where the mouse button was clicked.  Typing in characters
    will display those characters on the screen (surprise, surprise),
    using the current colour.

    Note that it is possible to switch to line drawing mode, but it is
    not implemented, so you can't do anything with it (except switch back
    to the other modes).



SAVING AND LOADING IMAGES:

    Once you have finished your masterpiece, you can save it to disk
    using the save file command (ALT+S, F2).  A dialog box will appear,
    allowing you to enter the name of the file you wish to save into.
    Hitting the ENTER key will save into the file listed in the textbox,
    while hitting ESC will dismiss the dialog box without saving the
    file at all.

    NOTE: If the file you save into already exists, its previous contents
          will be lost - you have been warned!!  :)


    Similarly, to load a previously saved file from disk, the load file
    command (ALT+L, F3) can be used.  The dialog box works in exactly
    the same way as the save file dialog box.

    Note that at this stage there is very minimal error checking for
    the file routines.  If a file can't be saved or loaded, an error
    dialog box will appear, but it doesn't attempt to identify the
    problem.



INSERTING THE DATA INTO A WAD:

    To insert your masterpiece into a WAD, you must already have saved
    it using the save command described above.  In addition, you will
    need a WAD tool that allows you to insert raw data into the ENDOOM
    directory entry in a WAD file.  I use DEU 5.2 for all my editing,
    and it also handles insertion, so I use that.


    The following example illustrates how the insertion is done
    using DEU 5.1+:
    (Other WAD tools are probably pretty similar.)

    Suppose your ENDOOM data file is called FRAGFEST.TED, and your PWAD
    is called FRAGFEST.WAD:


    STEP 1: Run DEU as follows:

         C:\GAMES\DOOM>deu
         <DEU credits omitted>
         [Press ? for Help]>



    STEP 2: Insert the raw data file into the ENDOOM directory entry:

         [Press ? for Help]>I FRAGFEST.TED ENDOOM

    This will create a PWAD called ENDOOM.WAD in your DEU directory.



    STEP 3: Read FRAGFEST.WAD and ENDOOM.WAD into DEU:

         [Press ? for Help]>R FRAGFEST.WAD
             [Updating ExMx]
         [Press ? for Help]>R ENDOOM.WAD
             [Updating ENDOOM]



    STEP 4: Group the two together into a new PWAD called FF.WAD and
        then exit DEU:

         [Press ? for Help]>G FF.WAD
         [Press ? for Help]>Q

    This will create a PWAD called FF.WAD in your DEU directory that
    contains not only your FRAGFEST.WAD level, but your customised
    ENDOOM data as well.  Note that it is important that you name the
    grouped WAD something other than your original name, as DEU might
    screw it up (see PROBLEMS WHEN INSERTING USING DEU below).



    STEP 5: Run DOOM to test that it worked:

         C:\GAMES\DOOM>DOOM -FILE FF.WAD




PROBLEMS WHEN INSERTING USING DEU:

    Quite a few people have had problems inserting ENDOOM data using DEU.
    I have found that listing the currently open WADs (w command) in DEU
    seems to close the ENDOOM.WAD file.  If you group after listing, you
    won't have actually grouped in ENDOOM.WAD.

    Another problem I have had is that DEU occassionally scrambles either
    the ENDOOM data or the level data.  If the level data is scrambled,
    DOOM exits with an error as soon as you try to play the level.  If
    the ENDOOM data is scrambled, the screen after exiting doom is full
    of crap.  I'm not sure what causes this, but regrouping the
    ENDOOM.WAD and the PWAD often fixes the problem.

    A third problem with DEU (and this applies to other data insertion as
    well) is that if you load a PWAD with data other than just levels,
    saving it loses that data.  To get around this, extract this extra
    data before doing any editing of the PWAD, and recombine it when
    you have finished editing (a pain in the rear end, but it's the best
    solution I can think of).



UNEXPECTED FEATURES (BUGS!):

    TED will currently only work with a Microsoft compatible mouse
    driver installed.  I could have written a keyboard emulator, but
    with the widespread Windows invasion, I kind of assumed everyone
    had a little rodent running around somewhere.

    It should run fine under Windows, although this has not been tested
    at all.

    TED will only work on machines with colour video cards running in
    a colour text mode, as it writes directly to screen memory (easy to
    fix, but I'm just too busy).  If you are running DOOM in colour,
    you should have no problems running TED.

    If a file save or load error occurs and the filename is long, the
    error dialog box screws up (again, easy to fix).

    Other than these, I can't seem to find any other bugs, however if you
    do find some, please send me descriptions of them and I'll dive back
    into the code and try to work out what the hell I actually did!  :)



CODING HISTORY:

    TED is written entirely in Borland C++ v3.1 and comes to about 1500
    lines of code (including the mouse routines and all my comments).

    TED 1.0 was written from scratch (minus the mouse routines) in just
    under four hours, so it was pretty "quick and dirty".

    Another hours work fixed up a few little problems (like annoying key
    combinations) to produce version 1.1.

    A couple more hours writing this document and restructuring the code
    and voilà, version 1.2 was born.



COMMENTS/SUGGESTIONS:

    Peter Monks
    [e-mail]