Back when the Doom source was released, one of the odd things tucked away in the source code was the French translations header. A header file contains French translated versions of all the messages that appear in-game during play. Not only that, there are references to "doom2f.wad" and a French language mode within the source code.
I always assumed the French version really existed, but I never found anyone who actually owned the thing, or a copy of DOOM2F.WAD. Searches for it on Google were fruitless, most results being comments from other people who had similarly failed to track it down. Some people even dared to suggest it was a myth and didn't really exist. So, while it's clear that the translation work was clearly done, it seemed ambiguous as to whether it was ever actually properly released. If it did, it would have to be pretty rare.
That changed around a year ago when I read a post on a French Doom forum by someone who seemed to have it!
A while ago someone give me a copy of Doom 2. I'd never try that I had already seen this game in my PC. But then I installed it and had the good surprise to see that it is entirely in French. The menu, the text at the end of episode, the text during the game ... I did some research on the net but nobody talks about this version. Moreover the WAD file is not called DOOM2.wad but DOOM2F.wad.
1: Has anyone else heard of it, otherwise it is a rather rare version?
2: Do there exist versions of Doom 1 and Final Doom in French also?
I contacted the author of the thread, but unfortunately his CD was scratched and he could no longer read its contents. It did occur to me that this could have been a hoax at this stage, but I had no reason to think this was the case. But this did give me hope that it might have actually been published and I might be able to find a copy of it out there somewhere!
Despite the problem reading the CD, the thread was nonetheless useful because it included photos of the CD case. The pictures were on an image hosting site and expired eventually, but I saved copies of them that can be found here.
The reason these were useful is that I realised that (1) it was published by Virgin, (2) the box design (with the Virgin logo on the right and GT interactive logo on the left) is subtly different to other CD versions of the game.
For the next few months, I checked the French eBay on a daily basis, checking for new copies of Doom II put up for sale. I honestly didn't hold out much hope of finding a copy. I sent messages to sellers asking if the version they were selling was the French version, or if the disc contained "DOOM2F.WAD". Those who replied were negative; it seems that even in France, the English copies of Doom II vastly outnumber the French ones.
Finally, back in November, I got a positive reply from one of the sellers I had contacted! It took a couple of months because of the way I had it shipped to me (don't ask), but I now have it!
A Youtube video showing it in action (along with the translated command line tools):
The detail level graphics on the options menu are misaligned (probably because the code doesn't take into account the different width of the text image). Note that the French doom2.exe always shows the same quit message (you can see the code to handle this in the source code).
Vital statistics
DOOM2F.WAD is 14607420 bytes long. Its MD5 checksum is 3cb02349b3df649c86290907eed64e7b, its CRC32 checksum is 27eaae69.
The French version of doom2.exe is 687781 bytes long. Its MD5 checksum is 03edb841bb9ca99bd0fd5e197cf43e71, its CRC32 checksum is 7c6fba71. It is based on Doom II v1.8. As far as I know there is no upgrade patch to v1.9.
What precisely is different about DOOM2F.WAD compared to the normal DOOM2.WAD?
Firstly, the following lumps are different and have been replaced with French-translated versions:
ENDOOM (Text mode exit screen)
HELP (Help screen with key bindings)
DOOM2F.WAD does not contain M_EPI1, M_EPI2, M_EPI3, M_EPISOD, M_RDTHIS, which are Doom 1 graphics that apparently got left in DOOM2.WAD by mistake. It also does not include WIOSTF.
It does contain an extra graphic called WIOBJ, and there's a reference in the source code to handle this. It looks like WIOBJ is used instead of WIOSTI in multiplayer co-op games (presumably the normal WIOSTI is too big for the co-op intermission screen).
Finally
There are a few mysteries still. Why only French and not any other languages? Why the subtle palette distortion in the French graphics? I emailed John Romero to see if he knew anything about the French translation and although his reply didn't answer all my questions it did give some insight into how the translation was done.
Subject: Re: Doom II French Version
Hey Simon,
The text translation was done by Art of Words, they sent me the text,
then I compiled it into the new executable. There was nothing more than
that. It was a really quick turnaround. I set up the project so we could
do foreign versions (I did the same thing with Wolf 3D) pretty easily.
Thanks,
John Romero
So that's DOOM2F.WAD. I'm planning to package up all the modified graphics from the French IWAD into a PWAD that I'll be uploading to the idgames archive along with a dehacked patch, so other people interested in seeing what it's like to play in French can see for themselves.
However I remembered that there was already a patch in the archive translating certain parts of the game in French -no idea where to find it though, or if it was entirely original work or a DOOM2F.WAD derivation.
Oh dear, that's a blast from the past if there's ever been one. They had the English-to-French game translations market cornered at the time. They also worked on Origins titles and I'm pretty sure for Lucas Film Games too. They were always so mediocre at that job...
About the different font graphics, I'd bet that they simply recreated a similar bitmap font instead of getting the original characters from id or recomposing it from the existing graphics.
Well, congratulations on finding what is probably the rarest collector item ever in the Doom fandom! :)
Use3D said: Doom2f is also missing the nazi stuff right?
Didn't appear so, as he warped to the secret levels. The German edition of DOOM II, which is not localized, is only missing the two Wolf3D levels. Trying to IDCLEV or -warp to them causes a W_CacheLumpNum error.
Cool. I've taken years of French but not enough to notice the mistakes. The only foreign copy of Doom I have is Japanese. It's on floppies so I've been unable to load it up because I'm too lazy to find a floppy drive. Since Japanese stuff has English stuff all over it, I was curious to see if the wad was actually modified. The case says "3-D Alien Busters" in big letters on the top. I can't seem to spot an image of it on google. I think there's a picture of it in the id Anthology book.
Use3D said: Doom2f is also missing the nazi stuff right?
Ah, forgot to mention this. No, the Wolfenstein levels are present and exactly the same as in the English version. I warped to both levels in the video to show that this is the case, but forgot to explain why I had done this.
Ah, I thought I had heard doom2f was the 'international' version that was missing the nazi stuff. So the non-nazi doom2.wad was only distributed in Germany under the same name? (doom2.wad)
translating the difficulty settings from french into english (literally) they say:
I do not want to die (I'm too young to die)
Not too hard! (Hey, not too rough)
Make me Bad (Hurt me plenty)
Ultra-Violence (Ultra-Violence)
The nightmare! (Nightmare!)
Gez said:
You're even worse at it than Art of Words. :)
Your back-translation makes about as much sense as translating "do me a favor" into "transform me into a gift".
Or, to make it short: Faites-moi mal -> Hurt me.
Literal translation would give you "make me bad" as faites-moi is make me. Google translate gives me: "Do me wrong"... I think the translation was supposed be "fais-moi mal"?
Use3D said: Ah, I thought I had heard doom2f was the 'international' version that was missing the nazi stuff. So the non-nazi doom2.wad was only distributed in Germany under the same name? (doom2.wad)
hobomaster22 said: Literal translation would give you "make me bad" as faites-moi is make me.
Not "make me", but "do/make to me". And "mal" is not "bad", it'd rather be "pain". :p It's not an adjective, it's a noun in this case. Compare with "faites-moi plaisir". If "faites-moi mal" is "hurt me", "faites-moi plaisir" is "please me".
That's what I meant with my example of "do me a favor" turned into "turn me into a gift"; words have several meanings, standard grammatical constructions differ, so you are likely to run into problems if you just make a word-by-word translation of each term using the first entry that comes up in a bilingual dictionary, you run into nonsense.
Gez said: if you just make a word-by-word translation of each term using the first entry that comes up in a bilingual dictionary, you run into nonsense.
Yeah, and this is a problem that automatic translators still have a lot, and people should only use that crap for jokes.
fraggle said: I'm planning to package up all the modified graphics from the French IWAD into a PWAD that I'll be uploading to the idgames archive along with a dehacked patch, so other people interested in seeing what it's like to play in French can see for themselves.
I just uploaded this to the idgames incoming dir. There's also a copy of it here for the time being.
Hmm. I'm only going with the (apparent) logic here. Isn't what you're uploading IWAD material? Or is the content modified by Art of Words free to distribute?
printz said: Hmm. I'm only going with the (apparent) logic here. Isn't what you're uploading IWAD material? Or is the content modified by Art of Words free to distribute?
It's a patch.
It's no different from the Chex Quest dehacked patch.
printz said: Hmm. I'm only going with the (apparent) logic here. Isn't what you're uploading IWAD material? Or is the content modified by Art of Words free to distribute?
Firstly, the Art of Words thing isn't important - Id simply contracted out the translation work to them, so as far as I'm concerned, Id own the translation. If this wasn't the case, d_french.h wouldn't have been included in the Doom source release.
Secondly, yes, it's technically IWAD material. However, I'm pretty certain that the Doom license permits PWAD files to contain material from the IWAD. If it didn't, a good percentage of all PWADs in the idgames repository would be illegal (eg. KDIZD's sprite replacements, for example).
fraggle said:
Firstly, the Art of Words thing isn't important - Id simply contracted out the translation work to them, so as far as I'm concerned, Id own the translation. If this wasn't the case, d_french.h wouldn't have been included in the Doom source release.
Secondly, yes, it's technically IWAD material. However, I'm pretty certain that the Doom license permits PWAD files to contain material from the IWAD. If it didn't, a good percentage of all PWADs in the idgames repository would be illegal (eg. KDIZD's sprite replacements, for example).
If no IWAD Material was used in a PWAD at all (no matter what lumps were used), the repository would be more compact. Maybe someone can start a legal-idgames repository, then sell CDs of it for $5.
If no IWAD Material was used in a PWAD at all (no matter what lumps were used), the repository would be more compact. Maybe someone can start a legal-idgames repository, then sell CDs of it for $5.
03-17-10 14:04 
