Trouble using certain WADs with Doom

I've downloaded some home-made WAD's for Doom, and I'm trying to play them on Doom 95. Sometimes this works perfectly, but most of the time e1m1 loads instead of the WAD. For example, I've downloaded the first WADs on the "100 Best WADs of All Time" list on this site. Galaxia works perfectly, but when I try to load Crossing Acheron, UAC DEAD, or Serenity, I get nothing but e1m1. Doom II WADs have always loaded properly (so far), the problem is only with Doom I WADs.

Is there some way to fix Doom 95 so that all WADs will work? Could I download a source port and play these WADs on that? For that matter, how do I use source ports? I downloaded Chocolate Doom, and double clicking on it didn't do anything useful. I know I sound dumb, but I'm new to this.

Thanks, any help is very much appreciated.

The usual installation procedure for a source port is:

a) download zip file of source port
b) unzip in it's own directory
c) place a copy of Doom.wad and/or Doom2.wad in the same directory as the source port (These type of wads are called IWADS)
d) double click sourceport to run it.


If you're after a GUI front-end similar to doom95 then I humbly recommend my very own ESL program (link is in my signature below) since most source ports don't include one.

Your problems for loading some maps might be because those maps are made for Doom 2 instead of Doom 1, so you would need to specify what IWAD you are going to use in each case: with both doom95 and ESL you have this option.

Hope this helps...

First off read the textfile that comes with the wad you download to determine what map it replaces. Second, get a decent port. PRBoom (Google it) is an excellent port for the classic Doom feel, supports all Boom/Doom maps, and has plenty of help documentation so you know how to use it. If you are looking for something a bit more advanced, check out either jDoom or ZDoom, depending on what you want in a port. If its graphics you're looking for, go with jDoom. If its editing features/wads that have them, go with ZDoom. Neither come with really excellent documentation and as such take a little bit to figure out.

Thanks for the advice, everybody. It turns out that some of these WADs replace levels other than e1m1 (for all the sense that makes) and I now know how to use source ports better than I did before. Hopefully this knowledge will get me through the Dooming in my immediate future.

They replace levels other than E1M1 so as to not be playable using shareware Doom.

Bloodshedder said:

They replace levels other than E1M1 so as to not be playable using shareware Doom.

I think the more dominant reason is so the map plays a different music track.