IWAD Question with WiiDoom (alternate subject: Hello again!)

Yes, I'm still alive and keeping an eye on the homebrew scene, more recently lately...

I got this question in my email and wanted to answer it publicly, since it's a very good question, and one I asked myself midway through WiiDoom:

"...i was under the impression that the same engine was used for the Hexen/Heretic games but when i try and add those wad files they dont even read. i was wondering if this would be a pain to ask for or if not, would you know someone who would be able to work in a compaitibility or new wii homebrew that would allow us to play these old games as well..."

Here's the thing about the Doom engine, as it relates to Doom,Hexen, and Heretic. This is going on memory, but it's still somewhat fresh in my brain LOL.

The Doom engine was somewhat tailored to the game it was packaged with (i.e. Doom, Heretic, Hexen) and the engine will look for the specific IWADs, as well as checking the IWAD once it opens them to look at the header. It *really* gets the version of Doom (I, II, Final, Ultimate) from the header, and turns on various features based on that. It seems that with each new game id software made, they enhanced the engine, adding better special FX.

It's very easy to add the checks for the other games (Hexen, Heretic), but then the various features that need to be enabled have to be added as well. I think it was Hexen that had some special things like the fog. The fog effect would have to be added, which would touch quite a number of files (probably the r_* files). ZDoom and a few other 3rd party engines had done this, so I know it's possible, it's just not a very easy thing to do. It is much easier (and cleaner) to port the individual engines over. I looked into porting hexen over, and was messing around with that before I basically ran out of time to work on homebrew. I'd REALLY love to do that again.

If anyone else has a question, let me know. I'm not saying that I'm resuming development (yet), but I am really considering it once another side project of mine is finished.

Moving On

Because of the imminent death of the Twilight Hack, and not having enough time when I'm home, I'm stepping away from WiiDoom. If anyone would like to take over this project, let me know and I'll hand over the GoogleCode site. It's been so much fun working on this, and I'm very grateful for everyone's support.

I may resume work on this or another project in the future. We'll see....

WiiDoom 0.4.1 is released

I fixed the bug that caused the shareware wad to crash in 0.4, so I'm releasing a version that includes only this fix. The homebrew browser can't put out the newest WiiDoom unless the shareware wad (which is packaged with it) works, so this was a high priority for me. Teknecal just confirmed that it's working, so he's putting it out in the next day or so.

Most people won't need to download this new update, unless they wan't to increase the download count via HBB have the latest version. :)

Does anyone play with the shareware wad?

Just wondering if anyone is currently playing 0.4 with the shareware wad file. I've gotten a report of a crash dump when loading it up.

WiiDoom 0.4 is now compatible with HBC

Thanks to everyone who responded to my request for testers. We've verified that this new package works great with the Homebrew Channel, so I've updated the zip file and put it out on the Google Code site (it's still 0.4, since only the packaging changed). Thanks to everyone giving me such detailed info on the issue, I got it fixed much faster than I thought I would.

Go download and enjoy!!!

Still need a tester

If anyone can test this out on the HBC, please email me directly (lnuxguy@gmail.com) so I can send you the new zip file.

Vin is my hero today

Vin tested out a fix for the HBC bug, and found that it works if you copy the prboom folder to the apps\WiiDoom folder. I'm pretty sure all you need are prboom\images and prboom\fonts in that apps\WiiDoom folder, but I'm verifying with vin. For more details, please check out the comments thread of "WiiDoom 0.4 HBC bug". Vin, you're the man, thanks so much!

I'll be posting a new zip file as soon as I can finalize the fix.