Doom map editing on Linux with Yadex.

GNU/Linux Doom editing information.

Using Xwadtools.

New Doom Wiki.

The Doom Wiki has moved on from the restrictive Wikia website and started their own Wiki site at http://www.doomwiki.org.

Eureka Doom editor.

A screenshot of Eureka v0.72 in action.
A screenshot of Eureka v0.72 in action.

This is a port of the Yadex source code to improve on the work done with the Yadex DEU styled editor and make it more relevant for the modern Doomer. I wish that someone would fix up the old Zeth source code, but that editor seems to be lost in the mists of time. Anyway, the Eureka Doom editor is a very nice and fast editor for Doom and Doom2. There is a forums posting here: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-editing/58750-eureka-doom-editor-version-0-72-available-for-testing/, with a download link for the Eureka Doom editor. This is supplied with a binary for Linux systems, which works perfectly on Fedora 16 and Ubuntu 12.04. The latest release of Eureka is 0.74, this is available at this direct download link. http://awwports.sourceforge.net/files/eureka-0.74.tar.gz. Just unpack and set the paths in eureka.cfg to your Doom or Doom2 IWAD and it should be ready to go. Using the Eureka Doom editor is much faster than using the Doom Builder 1 editor with Wine, Yadex used to be very fast when you were using it with the -P parameter, now it is a bit slower, but Eureka is very fast indeed.

I can not wait for the next version. Finally we will get a native Linux Doom map editor.

Yadex-1.70.

Deep running in xdosemu.A screenshot of the DEEP editor running in Xdosemu. An image I thought I would include to kick off this new and improved page about Linux doom editing. This is a good editor that runs well in xdosemu. And has been used by quite a few Doom level authors. Although it is quite dated now.

Yadex is an editor for GNU/Linux that uses a method of editing much like the DETH editor for DOS. The screenshot on this page shows the editor editing MAP13 of Doom2. Much of the methods of sector creation and editing in this editor are inherited from DEU, but it has many new features that make it unique. Yadex Screenshot.  It has a texture and flat browser that allows you to browse the available textures and flats in the IWAD and/or PWADS that you have loaded. The command line interface for this program is similar to the DETH program. For those people who are using Debian as their Operating System of choice, there is a Debian deb package available from Debian Stable[1] to make installation very easy. I prefer to install from the source tarball. This is just a simple process of ./configure && make && make install.

Then you just need to edit /etc/yadex/1.7.0/yadex.cfg to setup the paths to your wadfiles. Doomworld  has a good selection of nodesbuilders and other files for building the nodes before running the map. I recommend the Xwadtools archive. warm and BSP are two of the best nodesbuilders. warm is blindingly fast running on Linux. I can build a small map in Yadex and build the nodes in warm in less than one second. XWE is a good lump manager for Windows that allows editing and viewing the resources in the Doom Alpha wads, sadly this cannot be run on GNU/Linux natively, although it runs fine using Wine, but maybe someone will port it. But I must again say how much I love this program. It has everything you would want in one editor. A great achievement. Visit the Doomworld site and follow the links to get this program. it works very well with Windows 2000 and I assume Windows XP, although I have not tested it myself on that platform. It works very well as a replacement for Wintex and I heartily recommend it. Another good program for editing Doom on Windows is the Zeth editor, which has full Zdoom support. It even supports the latest features of Zdoom such as the scripted marines and decorate monsters. This can also be had from the Doomworld site. Just follow the links to the utilities page.

Yadex is outdated now. Use Eureka instead.

Download Eureka: Eureka Homepage. This page has the latest versions and latest news. There are also some very useful patches to extend this programs usability. This screenshot shows a map I have made with Yadex. I am using only 10 sectors just like the Doomworld 10 Sectors megawad.This means that there can only be 10 unique sectors used in the making of the map, even though it can be as big as you want, you have to be very creative with the making of the map.

My 10 sectors map for Doom2.

Once you load Yadex, you will see the Yadex prompt[2] you will be able to type a
command to proceed further. Type ? to see the list of options. Once you are within the program, pressing <F1> will bring up a help screen listing all of the keys used within the program. <F10> will bring up the consistency checker that will allow you to check your wad-file for any errors. Some people who shall remain nameless forget to do this, so I will state this now.

Use the consistency checker! Your maps will love you for it. I know that very well. Especially when you delete a sector and the linedefs and do not take care to clean up after yourself with <F10>. If you forget this vital step you will regret it later. Common problems like left over vertices and /or left over sectors with no lines can be dealt with this way. Much easier than having to fix it manually. Although, BSP[3] will remove zero length lines for you, but if you take care of these problems before then you might have less to deal with later on. Another shot of my 10 sectors map. As you can see in the screenshot to the right, I have made quite an attractive little map. The FreeDoom textures are very good looking and the whole game is looking very good indeed. They are using Boom features which is no bad thing at all. MAP31 is an awesome looking castle/fort map which looks to be quite good for a Deathmatch or two.

Making a simple map in Yadex is very easy. To create your first room in Yadex, just press <F9> and set a size of 512 x 256, this will be our first room, then press the t key and then move to one corner of the room and press INSERT to place an item which will be a zombieman, after this highlight the Zombieman and hit ENTER to open the properties dialog for the item and change it to a player 1 start item. Now you have a simple room and now just press <F2> and type a filename for the map then hit ENTER. BSP is available in the Xwadtools distribution, See the Utilities section on Doomworld.com for details and a download link. The warm nodesbuilder is also very good and extremely fast too. It builds a good reject map that should help when running very large maps.

To build your map with BSP type: bsp my.wad -o mynew.wad.

Using the Xwadtools to build a wad.

I have started on a new project for Zdoom, that uses various resources and I
am not using Wintex or any graphical tools to manage the wad. I have the
directory layout as shown below and I just have to run ./run.sh to create a
wad-file in about a couple of minutes. Using the Xwadtools distribution, I can
create a cool map with almost no fuss and rebuild the wad-file whenever I need,
and it is much more efficient.

[Fri 19:27pm 06]
[Linux 2.6.14-Bejiitas_Wrath i686]
[saruman@Hellknight.Sauron.net]:~/Dosdoom/build> lu
total 1.5M
drwxr-xr-x  3 saruman users  400 2006-02-17 19:26 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 saruman users 1.7K 2006-02-17 19:26 ..
-rwxr-xr-x  1 saruman users   20 2006-02-17 18:27 animdefs.raw
-rwxr-xr-x  1 saruman users 7.1K 2006-02-17 18:27 decaldef.lmp
-rwxr-xr-x  1 saruman users 2.4K 2006-02-07 16:07 decorate.lmp
-rw-r--r--  1 saruman users 860K 2006-02-17 18:27 evil.wad
-rwxr-xr-x  1 saruman users  125 2006-02-17 18:27 files.lst
-rwxr-xr-x  1 saruman users  120 2006-02-17 18:27 mapinfo.lmp
-rwxr-xr-x  1 saruman users 172K 2006-02-17 18:27 music.raw
-rwxr-xr-x  1 saruman users 244K 2006-02-17 18:27 mus.wad
-rwxr-xr-x  1 saruman users 105K 2006-02-17 18:27 sky.wad
-rwxr-xr-x  1 saruman users  840 2006-02-17 18:27 switches.lmp
drwxr-xr-x  2 saruman users  232 2006-02-17 17:02 Textures
-rwxr-xr-x  1 saruman users  64K 2006-02-17 18:27 tranmap.dat

This is the script that I use to build the wad-file. Much faster than using
XWE! Then I run Zdoom to play my map and see how it turned out. This works exceptionally well. I have no
problems with this.

#!/bin/csh -fe
#---------------------------------------------------------
#Description: Hell Gate build script.
#Author: Homer J Simpson &lt;[email protected]&gt;
#Created at: Thu Feb  2 21:13:37 EST 2006
#Computer: Hellknight
#System: Linux 2.6.14-Bejiitas_Wrath on i686
#Copyright (c) 2006 Homer J Simpson  All rights reserved.
#---------------------------------------------------------
printf "Running your project.\n"
setenv DOOMEXE "zdoom" # Our doom exe.
warmBSP master.wad gate2.wad
cd build
printf "Building wad! Please wait! \n"
mkwad mus.wad @files.lst
# This clobbers existing file.
# No Problem though. We want to do that.
if (-f "evil.wad" ) then
    printf "I have found an existing file. Deleting...\n"
    rm -f evil.wad
    printf "Now I am re-generating it!\n"
    printf "Getting ready to run your map. %s." $DOOMEXE
    wadcat -o evil.wad sky.wad mus.wad ../gate.wad ../belial.wad ../gate2.wad
    else
	printf "Now I am generating your project!\n"
	wadcat -o evil.wad sky.wad mus.wad ../gate.wad ../belial.wad ../gate2.wad
endif
cd ..
$DOOMEXE -iwad doom2.wad -file build/evil.wad tex.wad \
	-warp 01 -skill 4 $1 $2 2&gt; /dev/null
# Redirecting Zdoom's verbose console output to bit bucket.
printf "Done running %s %s %s!\n" $DOOMEXE $1 $2

The PSX Doom mansion teleporter puzzle.

Doomworld. Doom World Website.

Prboom sourceforge site. http://prboom.sourceforge.net/.

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