Maybe one of the most useful Doom-related software utilities ever made, and one of the most relevant today, Wad Tools 2.0 is a command line tool that lets you literally browse through a WAD file like Doom2.wad, Hexen.wad and user-created PWAD levels.

The Doom shotgun being fired and reloadedWhy is this useful? Because with Wad Tools 2.0, (also called WT2) you can insert, replace or just download any of the character images, sprites, textures and other images in the game. And this is a big boost for fans of the game, developers, and fan site builders like me here.

This gives our Doom Page a big boost because we can show detailed images from the game and pull user-created resources to illustrate what really goes into level design.

It’s a very simple, very small program that performs one basic task — exploring Doom game files.

WT 2.0 was a big accomplishment for the developer, who inserted on-the-fly resource replacement into this version over 1.0.

With this program, you see not only how much work went into Doom and its many user and commercial additions, but also how quite basic it all is. Doom is a series of images, changing and reacting to the environment. You can actually see the shotgun firing, the fist punching, the chemical barrel exploding and all the gory and bloody scenery that went into this gaming franchise.

From the creator:

WAD Tools 2.0 “Documentation”This has been sitting on my hard drive for about 2 months now, and I figured with the recent releases of DOOM II and Heretic, it would be useful once again. WT 2.0 is pretty much like WT 1.0, but with thefollowing additions:

  • Graphics can be exported to BMP (a bug in LBM exporting is also fixed)
  • Resources can be edited in the WAD file. You no longer have to export it, edit it, and then import it back into the WAD file. This would have been pretty useful back when the DOOM formats were being figured out, but oh well…
  • In the editor, Tab switches between hex and ascii view.
  • In the graphic viewer, you can use up arrow and down arrow (or Enter and Backspace) to flip through graphics. It makes it a lot easier to view them, in addition to letting you see the animation sequences.

Program syntax is “WT wadfilename”. The default wadfile is DOOM2.WAD.

Download Wad Tools 2.0 free from Blast Magazine

Doom 2 computer-like wall texture

About The Author

John Guilfoil is the editor-in-chief of Blast: Boston's Online Magazine and the Blast Magazine Network. He can be reached at [email protected]. Tweet @johnguilfoil.

Leave a Reply