Boom2Zoom 2024.6.29

Converts media from a WAD file to modern formats.

Boom2Zoom

A CLI tool that extracts assets from a Doom WAD to a directory in ZDoom archive format.

This project was originally started to convert dump Doom texture packs. It is written in Python and uses omgifol to load data from WADs.

Features

• Textures and flats are exported to PNGs under the textures and flats folders respectively.
• Stock textures are filtered out by content using a set of known texture digests (more on this below).
• ANIMATED and SWITCHES are converted into ANIMDEFS syntax.
  • Definitions from various Doom-engine games are omitted.
  • Animations are fully defined with PIC, but you can opt out and use RANGE instead.

Installation

Windows ♿

A binary is available under releases. Download and make sure it's in your PATH. This is the quickest and simplest way to use Boom2Zoom on Windows.

Pipx

You can use Boom2Zoom via pipx.

pipx install boom2zoom

Of course, you can also install it directly with pip if you know what you are doing. Just be careful.

Quick-start

Let's first test that B2Z is installed correctly:

boom2zoom --help

At a minimum, you need to provide a wad and the directory to dump its assets into.

boom2zoom OTEX_1.1.wad otex

Textures need patches to be exported and B2Z will warn if there are patches missing.

As you may have put together, we use --base to specify additional sources of patches:

boom2zoom jimmytex.wad jimmytex --base doom2.wad

Texture Filtering

Note: When talking about textures, we are strictly speaking about wall textures.

Boom2Zoom only checks textures for infringement, not flats! If there are stock flats in the WAD, they will be exported.

Details

A WAD with custom textures usually contains redefinitions of stock ones. You probably do not want these, and they are copyright infringing. To help you not break the law, Boom2Zoom spots stock textures and won't emit them. It spots them by seeing if the digest of the texture is the same as a stock one. This digest comes from hashing the raw pixel values of the texture.

B2Z knows the texture digests of the main Doom games, Freedoom, Heretic, Chex 3, and Hexen.