Name:   PRISON.WAD
Desc:   Sort of a prison complex for Doom. Works only with registered version.
Author: Tim Currie
Date:   7/30/94

Synopsis:
   This was my first serious attempt at building a level for Doom. 
It was constructed using DooomEd - The Real Thing, and later munged and 
hacked with DoomEd by Renegade Graphics, DoomCad, DMapEdit, and DEU. It was, 
incidentally, written to run with the shareware version of Doom, becuase
I hadn't goten my registered copy when I started working on it. It is a 
pretty lame level in comparison to the ones in the registered game, but 
then, I hadn't seen those when I designed it, so I don't feel too bad.
It's kind of fun just to charge around and kill things, and there's plenty of 
ammo, and all of the weapons are in there somewhere. The invulnerability 
sphere in the nukeage pit is for one reason only: to survive the secret 
room behind the exit while playing in Ultra-Violence mode.
   
   If you're planning to build some doom levels of your own and don't 
know which editor to use, read on and I'll give you an objective glimpse 
at each of the ones I used. Otherwise, skip the rest of this and load it up!

   DoomEd - the Real Thing is a cool editor. It works well, and is very
Windowsy, if you know what I mean. The interface works well, and it compiles
useable maps. It would do better to be able to edit a group of objects 
collectively, but I guess that will come in the next rev (it's actually in 
this one, but it doesn't seem to work). Don't delete sectors or lines. This
will render your map useless and the only way to fix it is with DEU! 
  
   DoomEd by Renegade Graphcs is nice, albeit flaky. If all the awesome 
features it boasts actualy worked it would be stupendous. What does work
seems to work well, but it crashed several times in a row, so I stopped 
using it.

   DoomCad dosn't seem to do anything, really. It actually seems to be an
application prototype with no actual code attached to it. ;-) Just kidding. 
I was really peeved, however that the bitmap fiddler, whatever the bloody 
hell a bitmap fiddler is, didn't seem to work at all. That, coupled with the
fact that it is by far the slooooooooooowest of the editors I tested, put
me off of it. I tried earnestly to get it to merge some sectors and make a
door (knowing by this time all of the intracacies involed in doing this),
but alas, it was all for naught. Aside from not making a door, it seemed
to mangle other parts of the map, putting in spurious Hall-Of-Mirrors and
wall texture bleeding in unrelated parts of my map.

   DMapEdit is too cool to be real. It does everything for you, and shows 
it to you in 256 glorious living colors, asks politely for your artistic 
critique, and promplty crashes. Repeatedly. No matter what you do. Ick. |8=(
With some work, this could be the best editor going. 

   DEU is dense, non-intuitve, keystroke driven, terse, and generally
unfriendly. It does, however, work. It never crashes; It allows you to edit
any feature of a map; allows multiple selection of objects of any type;
has superb error checking; allows deletion of objects, even whole sectors;
and it produces functioning WADs quickly with no strange visual effects.
It is, without a doubt, my favorite. I can't stand the interface of DEU, 
but it does work, which is more than the rest can claim. There is one caveat,
(that's latin for buyer, so I don't understand what it has to do with this)
however: every time you move something on the map, it accesses the disk. I
was annoyed by this at first because when you drag something, every time it 
gets drawn in the next location on the grid, the program accesses the disk 
then it redraws the entire screen. I have a 486DX 66 w/8mb ram, and 530K 
free base memory, so I am at a loss as to why it's accessing the disk. Who 
cares. Set up a RAMDrive of 1024k in exTENDed memory, copy DEU there and 
run it. Don't worry. You dont need to have your precious new WAD file on 
the ramdrive, flinching every time the lights seem to dim. It dosn't need 
the WAD file there, just itself. Go figure. 

   Anyway, hope you have fun with my map. It took a while to make, so
I hope you like it. While I'm not happy with it, I can't stand looking at 
it any longer so it's as done as it's going to get. It served it's purpose:
getting me familiar with creating Doom maps. I highly reccomend this hobby
to anyone who is interested. Use DEU (read the manual!!!) and stick with
it. Read the confirmation warnings carefully. Some of them are worded a 
little Germanically (Verb tense in the wrong place, makes you think the 
opposite of what they're relly asking).

If you like it and want to know if I've made anything else cool since I 
wrote this, send me a picture of yourself and/or your computer ;-) and I'll 
return the favor by sending you a 3-1/2 disk with as many levels as I've 
created or can fit on it. This is not payment! I can't legally ask for 
anything in exchange for levels that run with id's game. It's just a 
favor.:-)
-tim

p.s. version numbers and dates:

Editor:                         Rev:    Date:           File
====================================================================
DoomEd - the Real Thing         2.60b4  6/29/94         DE_260B4.ZIP
Renegade Graphics Doom Editor   1.1C    6/29/94         RGDE11CS.ZIP
DoomCad                         4.3     6/29/94         DMCAD43.ZIP
DMapEdit                        3.0     6/28/94         DMAPED30.ZIP
DEU                             5.21    6/29/94         DEU521.ZIP

me:
Tim Currie
4 Chapel St. #4
Newmarket, NH 03857
USA
