Essential Tools and Resources



Of course, to be able to construct new maps it is essential that one owns the IWAD for the game.


The Tools

If the objective is to only create new maps, then just a map editor program will do the trick.

Good map editors are

Ultimate Doom Builder
development by ZZYZX
an iteration of GZDoom Builder Bugfix
status: current
github

GZDoom Builder-Bugfix
development by ZZYZX
an iteration of GZDoom Builder
status: development has stopped
github

GZDoom Builder
development by MaxED
an iteration of Doombuilder2
status: development has stopped
github

Doombuilder2
development by Codeimp
a rewrite of his Doombuilder1
status: development has stopped

Doom Builder X

 development by anotak
an improved iteration of Doombuilder2
status: current
github

Slade3
development by sirjuddington
status: current
github

Deepsea
development by randomlag
but no UDMF support
full version is not freeware
status: development has stopped


However, if one wants to be more ambituous and change some resources or create new resources, then the editors below will import/export lumps.

Good lump editors are

Slade3

Deepsea

XWE

current

Slade3 is the preferred
lump editor 		development has stopped

Deepsea is good, but cannot edit
pwads for the UDMF format 		development has stopped

XWE is not recommended


Editor to change the behaviour of the executable DOOM.EXE.

Exl's WhackEd4


New Resources

resources linked to on the ZDoom Forum

A host of new monsters, special effects and textures can be downloaded from Realm667

Another good site for textures is Afterglow

Excellent textures can be found on David Gurrea's site

Here is a collection of photographic textures

A collection of Skyboxes

 Kothic Skies
lvlworld skies

Good programs to create and manipulate new textures

Gimp is freeware.
it may take a while to effectively learn its interface.

Paint.net is freeware

Paint Shop Pro is not freeware.
However, every so often Corel decides to put it on a special sale for around $50.00

Good programs to view textures

XnView is freeware.
It is used for viewing and/or manipulating images, not to create them.

Irfanview is freeware.
It is used for viewing and/or manipulating images, not to create them.

Good program to work with models

Blender
MISFIT³
NOESIS

Good programs to create sounds and music

Audacity
audio software for multi-track recording and editing.

Sekaiju
OpenMIDIProject.


More resources

WIKIs

The definitive information, other than the source code, is available in several WIKIs, for original DOOM, ZDOOM based ports and for Slade3.

Forums

There are many forums. Thanks to modern search engines, these forums are not difficult to find. The most active ones being the ZDoom Forum and the Doomworld Forum.

Video tutorials

Many videos are available on Youtube, just enter a DOOM related term in the Youtube Search line. Good video tutorials are those from AlysiumX and from Chubzdoomer.


Kappes Buur