WadC

WadC, short for Wad Compiler, is a programming language and designed for constructing Doom levels. Originally written by Wouter "Aardappel" van Oortmerssen, it is now maintained by Jon Dowland.

Compared to a traditional level editor, WadC may seem very awkward to use. WadC's strength is with structures that can be : a function can be written to create a pillar, for example, and then invoked any number of times to create many pillars.

Version 3.1 will feature built-in support for vanilla conveyors, allowing level designers to easily add in pseudo-scripted sequences in Vanilla Doom.

History

 * Version 1.0 was released in October 2000
 * Version 1.1 was released in July 2001 - The last version by Aardappel
 * Version 1.2 was released in December 2011
 * Version 2.0 was released on 22 September 2015
 * Version 2.1 was released on 22 September 2016
 * Version 2.2 was released on 13 November 2017
 * Version 3.0 was released on 20 February 2019
 * Version 3.1 was released on 27 June 2022

Interface
The IDE takes the form of a two pane window. In the left pane, WadC code can be written. A preview of the resulting level is displayed in the right pane. Messages and errors encountered when processing the WadC code are displayed in the right-hand side, below the map preview.

Recent releases of WadC included a command-line interface as an alternative to the IDE.

Language
The WadC language is a, normal-order evaluated functional language with a strong resemblance to a.

Example script


The following script generates a corridor of steps that descend under water.

/* * water.wl - a demonstration of the Boom water routines */ main { waterinit_fwater(-16) movestep(0,64) -- out of the way of control sectors pushpop(movestep(32,32) thing) -- a ramp of rooms, descending in floor and ceiling height fori(0, 7,        set("floorheight", sub(0, mul(i,24)))         set("ceilheight",  add(128, get("floorheight")))         water( box(get("floorheight"), get("ceilheight"), 200, 256, 256), get("floorheight"), get("ceilheight"), )        movestep(-256,0)     ) }
 * 1) "standard.h"
 * 2) "water.h"

Notable levels
Perhaps the best known WadC maps were created by Aardappel himself, including his submission to Doomworld's 10 Sectors competition, and Crucified Dreams MAP12. The source code files for both maps are included in the WadC zip file as and  respectively.


 * Jon Dowland's BRutal EXtinction International Tournament was the first PWAD released using the vanilla conveyor trick. The source code is found in the  lump as  which can be used to build vanilla conveyors for other PWADs.
 * Cybermind's The Last Sanctuary utilizes WadC to simulate (compute) a day and night cycle system utilizing dozens of linedefs and sidedefs.