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1994-09-16
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==============================================================================
WadSFX v0.95 DOOM Sound Effects Editor Rob McCafferty 09/16/94
==============================================================================
WHAT IT IS
----------
WadSFX is a digital sound effects utility for DOOM. It allows you to create
a .WAD file from other sound WAD's and from .VOC files. Sounds can be played
from within the editor if you have a Sound Blaster compatible card. The
sounds will be used by DOOM if you do this: "DOOM -file mysounds.wad".
You can use these files along with other WAD's (new levels, etc.) at the same
time. THIS PROGRAM DOES NOT MODIFY DOOM.WAD OR ANY OTHER DOOM FILES. It
creates new .WAD files.
This program will not work for the PC speaker sounds. Sorry, but I don't know
anything about the PC speaker sound format. If you're playing DOOM thru a PC
speaker, you're definately missing out! The digital sounds rule!
This will also not work with Shareware versions of DOOM. It would be easy
for me to add support for it, but id Software requested that we don't make
things that work with the Shareware version. Besides, DOOM rules! Isn't
it about time you registered?
THIS HERE FILE
--------------
The program is FAIRLY self-explanitory. If you'd rather fumble through it
instead of reading this file, please at least read from the "SOME NOTES"
section on. I suggest you at least scan thru it though, cause there are a
few things that probably need explained. You should also read the UPDATE
file, which includes a list of known bugs.
THE SCREEN
-----------
The top line of the screen is the status line. This is where all messages
and user input go.
The listbox is the large box on the left of the screen. This shows the
resource name, description and source for each of the 61 sound effects. The
resource name isn't important, it's just the internal name DOOM assigned to
the sound. It's really only useful to people who write DOOM utilities :>
The 'Source' shows what file is supplying the sound. It's initially just a
row of dashes, meaning that DOOM is supplying all of the sounds. These sounds
will of course not be written out to a .WAD file. When you load a .WAD or
.VOC file, the name of the file containing the sound shows up here.
To the right of the listbox is the menu. Just press the letter for the
command you want.
THE KEYS
--------
The UP & DOWN cursor keys, HOME and END scroll you through the sound list.
ESC exits the program. When an error message appears in the status line,
press any key to clear it and return to the program. When you're prompted
for a filename or other text entry, ESC will abort the operation. You can
also press any key while a sound is playing to stop it.
THE COMMANDS
------------
L: Load WAD - Prompts you for a filename of a .WAD file, and loads it. If you
don't give an extension, .WAD is assumed. All of the soundcard sounds will be
loaded from the WAD. All other data will be ignored. The Source field on
the screen will be updated for each of the sounds loaded. Any sounds not
replaced by the loaded WAD will remain as they were. You can open up to 16
WAD's at once. At this time, ALL sounds replaced by the WAD will be loaded.
There's no way to just pick certain ones. If you need to do this, load the
WAD and extract .VOC files for the sounds you want, then start over and load
the VOC's back in. Note that it IS possible to load DOOM.WAD this way, but
there's no reason to do so. If you do, all DOOM sounds will be written out
to the .WAD file if you save it (all 623k of them!). BTW, loaded WAD's WILL
NOT be modified in any way (unless you accidently overwrite them).
S: Save WAD - Prompts for a filename for the new WAD, and saves the current
sounds to it. Sounds you haven't replaced (Source field is ------) will not
be written. DOOM will still supply it's default sounds for them. If you
don't give an extension, .WAD will be appended. I think the name MUST end in
.WAD for DOOM to load it though. If the file already exists, it will be
overwritten. DO NOT attempt to write to a file that is loaded or the program
will crash.
R: Read VOC - Prompts for a filename of a .VOC file, and loads it into the
current slot. If you don't enter an extension, .VOC is appended. The .VOC
file should be an 8-bit mono sample, sampled at 11025 HZ (DOOM will play it
back at 11025 no matter what rate you actually sampled it at). As far as I
know, there's no limit on the size of the sample (I've used some over 100k)
or the total size of the .WAD file (I've used some over 1 Meg). Note that
DOOM truncates certain sounds to a few seconds at playback, while it plays
others over 10 seconds long!
W: Write VOC - Prompts for a filename for a new .VOC file and writes the
current sound out to it. The current sound can be supplied by DOOM, or by
a .WAD file. This will NOT work if the current sound is supplied by a .VOC
file, because it would write out the same exact file as you loaded (the DOS
COPY command is probably better for this!). If the file exists, it will be
overwritten.
K: Kill - Deletes the current sound, and resets the Source back to '------'.
If there's nothing loaded in the current slot, nothing happens.
A: Kill All - Deletes ALL loaded sounds. If none are loaded, nothing happens.
You are prompted for confirmation first (press Y or N).
P: Play - Plays the current sound. This works on ALL sounds. If you haven't
loaded anything in the current slot, the default DOOM sound is played. This
only plays sounds smaller than 64k. Keep in mind that neither DOOM nor any of
the other commands have this limitation, so you can create WAD's with sounds
over 64k, you just can't play them from within the editor. The only reason
for this limitation is that I don't know how! If anyone has code to play a
sound > 64k thru a Sound Blaster, feel free to send it to me! Note that the
sounds aren't truncated to 64k, they're taken MOD 65536. This means that if
your sound is 65540 bytes long, you'll hear 4 bytes worth (about .00036
seconds)! BTW, 64k comes out to about 6 seconds.
SOME NOTES
----------
When sounds are 'loaded' from a WAD, they're not actually loaded. Information
about them is loaded so they can be found quickly, but the actual data stays
on disk. You will notice a slight delay when playing a sound from the editor
if the sound is big. This is the data being temporarily read into memory so
it can be played. Future versions may use EMS or XMS or something.
When .VOC's are loaded, the raw data is read into a temporary file called
"WSTEMP.$$$". If you ever see this file, you can delete it. You probably
won't though, cause the program deletes it when you exit.
YOU MUST HAVE THE 'BLASTER' VARIABLE SET TO USE THE PLAY COMMAND. Actually,
you must have it set to run the program or it will crash during
initialization. 'nuff said.
Oh, something else important. If you don't run this from your DOOM directory,
set DOS variable "DOOMPATH" to the correct directory. This is so sounds from
DOOM.WAD can be read in and played.
YOUR OWN RISK
-------------
This is a BETA version. It could quite possibly have bugs. Even if it was
the final release, it could still quite possibly have bugs. All I can tell
you is that is hasn't trashed my disk yet or anything.
REGISTRATION
------------
If you use this program, registration is $49.95. JUST KIDDING. IT'S FREE!
If you like it, please write and tell me so. You can also do this, of course,
if you think it sucks. Sorry, but I don't have an Internet address yet. I
do, however, have a mailbox.
Send comments, suggestions, bug reports, etc. to:
Rob McCafferty
242 W. Sanner St.
Somerset, PA 15501
If you make anything cool with this, please feel free to send it, or let me
know where I can download it from!
Enjoy!