A couple of quick points: I'm using Doomsday Engine version 1.10.4 (frontend version 1.6). I'm using the Master Levels for Doom 2 from Steam.
Naturally, I placed the DOOM2.WAD file within the 'data\jdoom' folder under the Doomsday program folder. I created a subfolder under 'jdoom' called 'master_levels'. You can call this folder anything you want, just place all the Master Levels WAD files within. If you have them all, you'll have 20 WAD files. You may also have the accompanying TXT description files, which you can place in the same folder if you wish.
If you have Doomsday set up with Doom 2 already, it probably looks something like this:
Click the Shared Settings profile at the top of the list on the left, then make sure you are on the Settings tab, looking at My Addon Folders. Click the plus sign button below that:
Browse to your 'master_levels' folder (that's what I called mine, maybe you called yours something else), click to highlight it, and then click the OK button:
You should now see the path listed in the My Addon Folders box:
Go back to your Doom 2 profile, then click the Addons tab, and then click the Refresh button toward the bottom. Now you'll see the levels listed by file name in alphabetical order:
If you want to play a specific level, click the check box on the left side of the level to select it, then click the Play button in the bottom right:
This next part is a little tricky. The Master Levels contain 21 maps (I know there are only 20 WAD files, one of them has two maps in it), but many of them replace the first map in the game. This means you can't have them all loaded at the same time. For instance, if you wanted to play through them all consecutively, you can't just check all the boxes and start the game thinking you'll go from one to the next.
If you already have experience playing Doom with custom WAD files, this will probably make perfect sense to you anyway. What you need at this point is a list of the custom levels and which maps they replace. Well, here you go:
ATTACK.WAD ("Attack")......................1
CANYON.WAD ("Canyon")......................1
CATWALK.WAD ("The Catwalk")................1
COMBINE.WAD ("The Combine")................1
FISTULA.WAD ("The Fistula")................1
GARRISON.WAD ("The Garrison")..............1
MANOR.WAD ("Titan Manor")..................1
PARADOX.WAD ("Paradox")....................1
SUBSPACE.WAD ("Subspace")..................1
SUBTERRA.WAD ("Subterra")..................1
TTRAP.WAD ("Trapped On Titan").............1
VIRGIL.WAD ("Virgil's Lead")...............3
MINOS.WAD ("Minos' Judgement").............5
BLOODSEA.WAD ("Bloodsea Keep").............7
MEPHISTO.WAD ("Mephisto's Maosoleum")......7
NESSUS.WAD ("Nessus")......................7
GERYON.WAD ("Geryon")......................8
VESPERAS.WAD ("Vesperas")..................9
BLACKTWR.WAD ("Black Tower")...............25
TEETH.WAD ("The Express Elevator To Hell").31
TEETH.WAD ("Bad Dream")....................32
Once you know the level you want to play, you have its box checked and you launch the game, you'll need to warp to that level unless it happens to replace map 1. To warp to a level, you need to enter the command "warp #" in the console. For example, if you want to play Geryon, you'll enter "warp 8" in the console.
One problem I was having that I couldn't find any answers on was how to access the in-game console to warp to a specific level. If your desired level replaces the first map, getting there is easy, no warp required. But if you want to play "Black Tower" and don't want to play through the first 24 levels to get there, you need to warp.
Everything I could find said that tilde (~) was the hotkey to open up console, but that just plain didn't work for me. Here's how I did it. Start Doom 2 from Doomsday like you normally would to play. Go to Options, then Control Panel:
Click 'Console' in the left menu, close to the bottom, then to the right you'll see the 'Activation key' setting:
The default is "tilde", but I had to change this because it didn't work. I used the same key (as tilde) which made it say "apostrophe". I couldn't get it back to say tilde to save my life. Try it and you'll see. Anyway, apostrophe is good enough, same key anyway. Finally, click the 'Close Panel (Esc)' button and you're done. You can play and access the console.
In case you're wondering, like I was, where Doomsday stores this data, it's here:
C:\Users\[Your Username]\Documents\Doomsday Frontend\runtime\configs\doom\game.cfg
The above path assumes Windows Vista or higher. Within the GAME.CFG file, the setting looks like this:
# Key to activate the console (DDKEY code; default is tilde, 96).
con-key-activate 39
Mine says "39" because it's already changed to apostrophe. If you want to change it back to tilde for some reason, since you can't do it in-game you can just edit this value (changing it back to 96), save the file then re-launch Doomsday.
I'd love to hear from anybody that finds this helpful. Let me know if I've got anything wrong or if there's a better way.
