Looking for some help with Doomsday and making Doom(I/II)/Heretic/Hexen levels

[Paratech]

I've had Doom 1/2, Heretic, and Hexen for some time and have recently became interested in making levels for them. I haven't made any FPS Mods and this will be my first attempt at doing so.

I have legal copies of Doom (Doom win95 and Doom 2 win95) and Heretic and Hexen and I was wondering what the best free level editor was, that would run in Windows XP.

I was also curious why the Doomsday engine wouldn't load the games for me, but the Doomsday kickstart would. What is the Doomsday engine for if not to start the games?

Thank you.

[jonc2006]

the kickstart is the frontend or "launcher" for it, thats the way the games are supposed to load. however the latest version of doomsday doesnt use kickstart, it uses a new one that is more user-friendly called snowberry. i suggest you download the latest beta. at the moment i believe it is beta 5. as for level making, google doombuilder. its a complicated question to answer as there is a lot you will need to learn. it wont be learned overnight either.

[Paratech]

Thanks I downloaded the program and will experiment with it.
BTW, I wasn't naive enough to think I'd be writing kick butt wads in a week, but I want to get my feet wet...

I love construction programs, and want to make levels for FPS games I like...

Thank you.

[jonc2006]

Originally Posted by Paratech

Thanks I downloaded the program and will experiment with it.
BTW, I wasn't naive enough to think I'd be writing kick butt wads in a week, but I want to get my feet wet...

I love construction programs, and want to make levels for FPS games I like...

Thank you.

well the only reason i said its going to take a while is mainly because there is almost too much information out there. some is useful, some isnt. so it takes time to sift through everything thats out there and actually find something that makes sense. there are also many other map editors out there that just doom builder, doom builder just happens to be my preferance but it doesnt mean its better than others. the reason i like doom builder is because it has a 3d view mode so you can actually walk around in your map as it is still under construction. this is very handy as you can easily spot and correct things like misalined textures which is probably the most common mistake that is made in map making. i suggest using as many editior programs out there and then see which ones you like best.

in addition to learning map making you will probably want to learn basic scripting as you can then add in some neat effects and soforth.and one last thing that you should take note of, certain source ports are capable of doing more that others, what i mean by that is that some ports like zdoom, have support for slopes, underwater effects,room over room designs,etc, doomsday doesnt on the otherhand. now to someone who isnt using the ports for editing, these features dont really mean much, but for a mapper, it allows many more modern effects and design techniques that can really make a map stand out against the crowd. zdoom imo is far superior to doomsday in terms of what it can handle and do with editing. so you need to take into consideration that the source port you use can dictate or limit the things you can do with editing.