wadtools

Tiny tools for creating and unpacking DOOM/Heretic/Hexen/etc. WAD files under Linux

Build

Building

gcc wadbuild.c  -o wadbuild
gcc wadxtract.c -o wadxtract
gcc wadpack.c -o wadpack
gcc wadfindthing.c -o wadfindthing

Of course, you may build any tool you need instead of all.

Installing

Set $PREFIX to, for example, /usr or /usr/local, or somewhat else.

sudo cp wadbuild wadxtract wadpack wadfindthing $PREFIX/bin

Invocation

Create WAD file from separate lumps:

wadbuild <wadfile> <filename> <lumpname> [<filename> <lumpname>...]

• wadfile is filename of newly created wadfile (will be overwritten if exist);

• filename is filename of lump to add (specify '-' if you want a zero-sized marker);

• lumpname is name of lump as which this file would reside in WAD.

Example:

wadbuild mywad.wad \
         decorate1.txt DECORATE \
         decorate2.txt DECORATE \
         - A_START \
         acslib_compiled.o ACSLIB \
         - A_END \
         acslib.acs ACSLIB

This creates mywad.wad with the following entries:

• DECORATE - with decorate1.txt contents;

• DECORATE - with decorate2.txt contents;

• A_START - empty marker;

• ACSLIB - compiled ACS script from file acslib_compiled.o;

• A_END - empty marker;

• ACSLIB - ACS script source from file acslib.acs.

Extract WAD file:

wadxtract <wadfile> <directory>

• wadfile - filename of wadfile to extract data from;

• directory - path where to place resulting lumps (created if necessary; specify . to extract into current directory).

Each file name is prepended by number which indicates its position in WAD file directory, and .lmp extension is added.

Special characters unsafe for various file systems ([, ], \ are replaced by _).

Example:

wadxtract mywad.wad ./output

Extracts mywad.wad to ./output directory.

Say, we have a file we created before, it will be decompressed to following files:

• 0001_DECORATE.lmp - what has been known as decorate1.txt file;

• 0002_DECORATE.lmp - what has been known as decorate2.txt file;

• 0003_A_START.lmp - empty file;

• 0004_ACSLIB.lmp - what has been known as acslib_compiled.o file;

• 0005_A_END.lmp - empty file;

• 0006_ACSLIB.lmp - what has been known as acslib.acs file.

Pack WAD file back:

wadpack <wadfile> <directory>

• wadfile - filename of newly created wadfile (will be overwritten if exist);

• directory - path from where to read extracted lumps (specify . to read from the current directory).

The only files to be packed are those whose names start with four digits followed by underscore. Lump name will inherit file name part starting with 6th character. Any part after . character is ignored, as well as any characters that could make lump name longer than 8 bytes.

Note: Special characters ([, ], \) are not restored! These lumps will have _ in their name inside the WAD file.

Example:

wadpack mywad.wad ./output

Builds mywad.wad from ./output directory that was created by wadxtract call.

Find a THING inside some map of WAD file:

wadfindthing <wadfile> <version> <thing type>

• wadfile - filename of wadfile to look for things in;

• version - expected version of THINGS lump: d for DOOM, h for Hexen;

• thing type - decimal number of thing type.

Example:

wadfindthing mywad.wad h 9058

This looks for thing with type 9058 inside every map of mywad.wad which contains maps in Hexen format.