.wad

WAD is the file extension for Half-Life 1 texture packages. An acronym for Where's All the Data?, WAD files first originated in ID Software's Doom as a general purpose file archive to help facilitate game MODs. A format of the same name was later used in ID Software's Quake engine as a texture package, then consequentially adapted by Half-Life 1's GoldSrc engine. GoldSrc specifically uses version 3 of the format, sometimes referred to as WAD3. WAD files typically contain standard texture sets, custom texture sets for individual levels, sprays, HUD elements and fonts.

WAD3 can store 3 types of data (however, WAD format itself allows up 256 types, but GoldSrc uses only 3):

miptex

Power-of-16-sized world textures with 4 mipmaps.

qpic

Simple image with any size. Format:

int width;
int height;</code
char[height][width] *data; //Image is stored as 8-bit numbers of colors in palette
short colors_used; //Number of colors in palette (can't be more than 256)
char[numcolors][3] *lbmpalette; //8-bit RGB palette data

font

Fixed-height font. Contains an image and font data (row, X offset and width of a character).

All numbers in WAD files are unsigned and little-endian.

Links

CStrike Planet

A collection of official and custom Counter-Strike WAD files.

The Wadfather

A large collection of WAD files.

Utilities

GCFScape

Views and extracts WAD files as BMP files.

Xwad

Source SDK tool for converting WAD files to Source materials.

VTFEdit

3rd party tool for converting WAD files to Source materials.

Qlumpy

Half-Life SDK tool for compiling WAD files.

Wally

The de facto WAD editing suite (supports only miptex).