DOSMenu Set-up For Super Upgrade Pack Levels

Andy Nonymous has sent in a zip which contains a DOSMenu configuration for running the Wolf 3D Super Upgrade Pack levels in a more user-friendly format than the Wolfmaster 2.0 menu system.
Directions for setting it up are in the README.TXT file. Even without setting it up, the menu can be run just to check out the contents of the Super Upgrade Pack. Andy tried to get as much up-to-date information into the menu as he could find.
Under DOSMenu, all of the pertinent add-on information is available on the same screen, and the game documentation is a keypress away.
Available at http://www.brlowe.co.uk/Dosmupgd.zip .

Either menuflag.dos is deleted or it's renamed to menuflag.app.

Run wolfm.exe which is in the wolf3dsu.zip file. It should spit out allgames.lhz and a few other files.

stathmk,

I have!

Here's how I would go about doing it:

(setting up the Super Upgrade Pack first)

1. Unpack the WOLF3DSU.ZIP. There will be some setup files with 2 subfolders, CREATOR and MAPEDIT.

2. Place a copy of the registered Wolfenstein into the folder with the WOLF3DSU stuff. Setup will not run without the registered version being there.

3. Run setup from the WOLF3DSU folder. You will see lots of files, the second largest is ALLGAMES.LZH.

(setting up DOSMENU next)

4. Unpack the DOSMUPGD.ZIP. You should get a set of odd files with a subfolder called WOLFREG.

5. Place a copy of the registered version of Wolfenstein in the WOLFREG folder we created in step 4.

6. Use WinRAR (or any suitable unarchiver) to unzip the contents of ALLGAMES.LZH. These are the game maps and readme files.

7. Copy or move these maps and readmes into the WOLFREG folder.

8. Run DOSMUPGD's setup to get things configured (answer Y)

9. Run DOSMENU by clicking the wolf.bat shortcut.

Simple, huh? Less than 10 steps!

Sorry it couldn't be more Windows-friendly. I am not much of a programmer, and the QuickBASIC compiler is from 1989 IIRC. I also did not want to run afoul of 3DRealms, who released the Super Upgrade Pack, by including their files with DOSMENU.

After all this, you can also run the Super Upgrade Pack by clicking on wolfm.bat.
Both of these DOS programs will run best from a full-screen command prompt. If you run them windowed, maximizing the window will make it easier to see what's going on.

One last note: in DOSMENU, Game J, listed as "New11", would probably be more accurately described as "NEW11 (full version)", since New11.zip was the "shareware" version of this game, and the full version is what is included with the Super Upgrade Pack. The makers of this, Ideas From The Deep, were actually a professional software company, led by Lane Roathe (who was involved with the id software people in the very early days), that was offering their full Wolf add-on for $15. The later levels look to be much better than the first several, which IMHO did not help sell their product at all...

Edit: I would try to do all this outside of DOSBox. I'm not sure if DOSMENU will even run in DOSBox, but I know it runs in Windows.

Enjoy!

Andy

stathmk wrote:

Andy wrote:
3. Run setup from the WOLF3DSU folder. You will see lots of files, the second largest is ALLGAMES.LZH.

It had that Carlton Griffin copyright screen with the blue background. It had, "Press any key to continue." I pressed a key and it disappeared. Did I do this right?

After step 9, I get:

Not reading Drive D
Abort? Retry? Fail?

You sound like you're educated in DOS. We haven't had a computer running straight from DOS since 1995.

Yeah, the Super Upgrade setup just unpacks the Super Upgrade package, it doesn't run anything else. If you could find the ALLGAMES.LZH file, it worked.

Make sure you run the setup.exe in the DOSMUPGD folder (step 8.), and answer Y (enter) at the program's prompt. This will tell DOSMENU where all of the files are located. Sounds like it's currently looking a non-existent D: drive right now.

stathmk wrote:Oh, can Mapedit run on the Wolfmaster levels? I want to use Mapedit to find passages to secret levels. Does anybody know where to find the ghost dogs that I've heard look like greyhounds? I've heard that these are in Wolfenstein Super Upgrades.

You can certainly run Mapedit on these levels, but you'll have to copy and rename the files into the MAPEDIT folder. With ChaosEdit, you can easily navigate to the WOLFREG folder and select one of the gamemaps files.

There are no graphics changes in the Super Upgrade package, so you won't find those greyhound ghost dogs.

Andy

if you are using Windows XP, then why aren't you using VDMsound to run the program.

I followed step 1-9 and it runs on Windows Xp. It sounds like there aren't any gamemap files inside the 'WolfReg' folder besides the Wolf3D copy (Step 7).
There aren't any name changes in the episode menu of Wolf3D.

VDMsound? Did I miss something?

if you use windows 2000 and up(excluding vista) vdmsound is a program that lets you run dos games with full sound and with no slowdown like you get in dosbox.

go here to get it:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/

haha, cute.... I know VDMsound. But it isn't an answer on such a problem. Oh and the sound quality is nothing to make a song and dance about. Maybe I should ask my VDMsound copy if it feels hurt now.

stathmk wrote:

Andy wrote:Make sure you run the setup.exe in the DOSMUPGD folder (step 8.), and answer Y (enter) at the program's prompt. This will tell DOSMENU where all of the files are located. Sounds like it's currently looking a non-existent D: drive right now.

This might be what made the difference. Now for some reason it loads up Wolfenstein without the Wolfmaster levels. I didn't try it in DOSBox this time.

I'm running on Windows XP if this makes a difference.

To select the various levels, move the highlight up or down with the arrow keys before entering. The full set of available keystrokes will show if you hit F1 (and F2). Did you put all the Gamemaps and readmes from the LZH file into the WOLFREG folder (steps 6 and 7)? If not, only the registered levels will be available to DOSMENU.

Windows XP should only affect the music and/or sounds (negatively).

Edit: added after I noticed it worked for you (doh!) :

stathmk wrote:I ran the WOLF MS-DOS Batch File instead of Wolf.bat and I was able to start a Wolfmaster game. It now works.

Maybe the wolf.bat doesn't work in Windows XP. I never use WinXP for any DOS games, so I may have missed that, sorry. Anyway, I'm glad it works for you!

Andy

I installed the Super Upgrade pack as per instructions. I am not using the DOSmenu front end. I have learned a few things that might be of help in figuring out what the problem with running WolfM is. First, I downloaded the pdf file of the Super Upgrade ads from 3DR. On the last page in the pdf is installation instructions for the SU pack.

It says that the purchased version included a "new" copy of Wolf3D (full version), and recommended creating a directory for that version and installing SU into that instead of using the installed version you already had.

It also says there is supposed to be a file named W3D-HELP.EXE in the Wolf3D full version. My copy of the full version does not have this file. The menu items for the documentation files don't work. Also, when I select the option to play the game, regardless of whether or not I changed which set of levels to play, when wolf3d is launched, the settings screen shows up, and then DOSbox crashes without error (almost like it was given the exit command).

I am trying to locate the W3D-HELP.EXE file to see how much of the problems are corrected by having it present. Does anyone here have it, or know where to find it? I have posted on 3DR's forum to see if they can/will make that file available.

I downloaded Dosmupgd.zip. I will play around with it as well.

stathmk wrote:Welcome to the forums!
Do you want to make your own levels? The Wolfenstein 3D Dome ( http://www.wolfenstein3d.co.uk/news.htm ) will not post your randomly generated levels made by Wolfenstein Super Upgrades.

I am just wanting to play the levels included in the pack. I'm not ready to tackle creating my own maps yet.

stathmk wrote:I think I have the Apogee version of Wolfenstein 3D version 1.4G and I will will look for it this week. I'll see if they have the file in that version. You might have the Activision, 3D Realms, Steampowered.com, or Gog.com version, but I don't know.

I found a copy of W3DHELP.EXE. (Turns out the - added in the installation instructions is a typo.) It made no difference. It's interesting that I found the file on a site that had each of the files included in the shareware version of Wolf3D v1.4 listed separately. I was able to download just that file. I compared the list with the files in the shareware v1.4 that I have, and the W3DHELP.EXE file is the only one that isn't in that directory. I wonder if I have copies of 1.4 prior to removing the goobers command line option? Like, maybe W3DHELP didn't get included until 1.4g?

stathmk wrote:Check this updated forum: https://wolf3d.darkbb.com/dome-news-f2/upgrade-to-dosmenu-set-up-for-super-upgrade-pack-levels-t1455.htm . I'm the webmaster of Wolfensteingoodies.com and I'm already working on some projects. I already wanted to post the Wolfenstein Super Upgrades help files this month or next on it.
There's an editor for the PC Wolfenstein 3D called ChaosEdit or ChaosEditor. You somehow get to see the level layouts in it.

The files that WolfM looks for are in the ALLGAMES.LHZ archive. I have found that it is the renaming convention in WolfM that is the problem. Apparently DOSbox won't handle wildcards in renaming. The files being extracted to play with are not being renamed to .wl6. They still have the .A, .AA or whatever extension. I think that is why the game crashes.

There is a version of super upgrades that has each mapset stored in its own folder. This would probably be easier to use when there are problems extracting the maps. It has all the mapsets contained in the other version.
http://www.veracottis.co.uk/wm_levels.zip .

Schabbs wrote:There is a version of super upgrades that has each mapset stored in its own folder. This would probably be easier to use when there are problems extracting the maps. It has all the mapsets contained in the other version.
http://www.veracottis.co.uk/wm_levels.zip .

I grabbed it. I was amazed. The download window was open for only a second, but the whole zip file was downloaded. Usually a file over a megabyte takes at least a couple of minutes to download. Thanks.

I did some experimenting last night. I found that if I rename the files extracted to .wl6 the game will play. Sometimes I have to exit DOSbox and restart it before it will work. I think it has something to do with the directory listing in DOSbox not being updated when a filename gets changed in Windows. And I even tried just backing back out of the dir and re-entering the dir (cd .. and cd wolfsu [my wolf super upgrade directory], respectively). Also, when you want to use mapedit, you have to quit DOSbox and restart if before mapedit will find the files, once you've renamed them.

It's sloppy, but it works. Hopefully I can find a way to get around all this soon. I'll post when I know more.

I found a way to fix the game maps loading in another forum. I will quote it here:

You can work around the situation by using the 4DOS command shell, which
has more full-featured versions of DOS commands. Place 4DOS.COM in the
root of your mounted C: drive, and then type "SET COMSPEC=C:\4DOS.COM"
in DOSBox prior to running the addon. You can put the SET command in the
autoexec section of your conf file for convenience.

In my setup, 4dos is installed into a folder named 4DOS in my My Games folder. In the config file for DOSbox, I used the following set command in the autoexec section, just before the mount command for mounting drive C:

SET COMSPEC=C:\4DOS\4DOS.COM

This corrected the problem with the games not being recognized because of the extensions not being renamed. However, it did not fix the issue with the readme files to the different game levels not being read. The "Bad command or file name" error still occurs. I'm looking into that.

Also, 4DOS is now available as freeware. JP Software put it on their ftp site: ftp://ftp.jpsoft.com/

The 4dos folder there contains a file (the installer for 4dos) and a folder. The folder contains all of the 4dos files. The installer can be opened with WinZip. DO NOT run the installer to install 4dos! Select and extract the necessary files from the installer archive. The files listed in the folder on the ftp site are the files needing to be extracted. I extracted them to a folder named 4DOS.