Doom Wads with DOS launchers

Anyone who has downloaded Alien Vendetta has realized that there is an .exe file for it.

I am not fully sure, but I think this is from DeHackEd programs for old dos?

What other wads have done this?

8 hours ago, ZeMystic said:

Anyone who has downloaded Alien Vendetta has realized that there is an .exe file for it.

I am not fully sure, but I think this is from DeHackEd programs for old dos?

 

What other wads have done this?

I love how this topic spurred up as i was researching this.

Id love to be corrected on this but lets go.

• Older WADS, before source ports came to be, relied on Dehacked to make changes to the Doom 2 exe. The legal way of doing this is by supplying a .deh file which contains the patch. Nowadays most source ports support loading of these patches together with the unmodified .EXE. But prior to this, it was often advised to modify your original Doom2 executable with the DEH patch.
• In order to do this, Dehacked could generate an exact copy of the Doom2 executable, called DOOMHACK.EXE by default. This Doomhack would be a combination of your Doom2 executable with the DEH patch - thus creating a hacked.EXE. You could then either rename Doomhack or leave it as is. Your Doom2.exe would be unaffected, afterall, Doomhack is a copy of your Doom2 executable with the DEH patch combined.

This, in hindsight, made Doomhack a predecessor to any source port - given it operated before the source code was released.

Cyberdreams is one WAD that shipped with a DEH patch and provided the user instructions how to make a custom EXE out of it.

Downsizes were that such custom exes were created with older versions of Dehacked that dont run on newer systems. Or that they patched an older Doom2 executable. Such provides a challenge to run on todays systems. Mar that with a custom installer (and sometimes an additional license forbidding modification or distribution was added aswell) and you got a recipe for disaster.

It also didnt help that some authors simply shipped their modified .EXEs with their WAD, which is illegal since its a modified Doom2 executable. So idgames uploads usually have them converted back to a .DEH patch.

The only thing i yet do not know is the difference between a binary Dehacked patch (Used in older Dehacked versions) and a (renamed) DOOMHACK.EXE. Is this one and the same thing?

Thus afaik, AV.exe is a compiled Doom2 exe with the patch and thus illegal. But id love to be corrected on all of this!

From the documentation:

Quote

 

[1.7 Av.exe/deh]

The included exe file alters automap names, ingame storylines and partimes.
The partimes represent the fastest maxkill times aviable at the time of
release, rounded of. Maxkill = 100% secrets and kills on ultraviolence,
starting the maps from scratch.

Note that av.deh does not include the par times.

 

I checked and the bytesize is the same as version 1.9 of doom2.exe, it is a hacked version of it.

Other old releases of mods can have custom launchers, or executables that patch your IWAD! :D

31 minutes ago, VGA said:

From the documentation:

 

 

I checked and the bytesize is the same as version 1.9 of doom2.exe, it is a hacked version of it.

 

Other old releases of mods can have custom launchers, or executables that patch your IWAD! :D

So that confirms that its a renamed Doomhack.exe - itself a copy of Doom2 with AV's deh patch applied.

I reckon back then this practice was more sensible as it provided the end user with a ready-to-go exe so that they didn't had to go through the hassle of applying the patch themselves - But the resultant hacked.EXE is still illegal, obviously.

Thanks for checking this out VGA and confirming.

Do you also know if there is a difference between a binary Dehacked patch and Doomhack.exe? As far as i understand it:

• Dehacked up to 2.3 provides a binary patch, aka the old way of patching. It is thus required to patch the vanilla exe before one could use it (Hence why Doomhack.exe was relevant)
• Dehacked 2.3+ provides text based patches. These can be loaded alongside a source port, so no specific need for hacking the vanilla exe. However, it can still be done, even with a text based DEH patch.

Ill just summon @Enjay for this (Enjay, i did read your extensive tutorial and several posts do this, i just need some more clarity haha)

http://www.aspectsweb.co.uk/dehacked/deh03.html

Quote

Earlier versions saved its patches in some sort of binary format. The later ones are simple text files and can easily be edited with notepad or similar to add BEX information. It is the later text format that source ports support. If you have any old format patches, you can load them into dehacked 3.1 and resave them to upgrade to the new format.

It's easy to convert binary to text Dehacked. (Alien Vendetta uses text Deh.)

2 hours ago, VGA said:

http://www.aspectsweb.co.uk/dehacked/deh03.html

 

 

It's easy to convert binary to text Dehacked. (Alien Vendetta uses text Deh.)

Yeah, this is Enjay's page. Unfortunately it does not answer the questions i have laid out. Perhaps i need to formulate them better?

I understand that what i am looking for is nothing more but a nuance that seems oblivious to anyone that has used Dehacked, but i have specific reasons to go on this route. :)

I am not sure what you're asking. I think initially the Dehacked program saved the hack-modification data in a binary format because it was easier for the developer. Later on, the developer put some extra effort to now save them to a readable and editable text format. At that point source ports did not exist so you still had to patch the DOS exe, regardless.

Av.exe isn't quite just a renamed doomhack.exe. Par times can't be edited in dehacked, this is the reason why the .exe is included and not (just) the .deh.

Oh! Funny I should run into this thread as I've been racking my brain over another wad... Eternal Doom. Been meaning to try that one but when I downloaded it I found it had exe's and bat's in addition to wad's and a slew of other stuff. I've been wondering how to run this on a modern system. Add to the mix that I'm on a linux box :o

If it's a DOS launcher I suppose I could run it through dosbox, but I'd rather play this natively in gzdoom if that's at all possible.

Could I just use the command line to load all the wad's? But I wonder if it won't need all the other stuff... How about turning it into a pk3? Would that work?

Any other solutions?

1 hour ago, VGA said:

I am not sure what you're asking. I think initially the Dehacked program saved the hack-modification data in a binary format because it was easier for the developer. Later on, the developer put some extra effort to now save them to a readable and editable text format. At that point source ports did not exist so you still had to patch the DOS exe, regardless.

Correct.

23 minutes ago, Andreas said:

Oh! Funny I should run into this thread as I've been racking my brain over another wad... Eternal Doom. Been meaning to try that one but when I downloaded it I found it had exe's and bat's in addition to wad's and a slew of other stuff. I've been wondering how to run this on a modern system. Add to the mix that I'm on a linux box :o

I am 99% sure that if indeed Eternal Doom had an EXE it would be a launcher. If it is a hacked EXE, it would only be modified level names and intermission texts. I have no memory of anything more dramatic than that - no modified weapons or enemies. So the wads should work fine, you will just miss the modified map names on the automap and the intermission texts.

EDIT: Stand partially corrected. The original Eternal Doom III release. Eternal Doom IV, however, does have some changes but it is a ZDoom release with no exe. I thought I played it but obviously did not.

2 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

I am 99% sure that if indeed Eternal Doom had an EXE it would be a launcher. If it is a hacked EXE, it would only be modified level names and intermission texts. I have no memory of anything more dramatic than that - no modified weapons or enemies. So the wads should work fine, you will just miss the modified map names on the automap and the intermission texts.

There are 29 files in ED's zip though... look at the screenshot below.

You'll note that there's a STARS.BMP and UDSKY.BMP that seem to be skies, so there's that at least. And all the other stuff makes me think that there's probably more going on there than just a launcher?

Yeah I just downloaded the original release. Waaay more complicated than I remember. I think I may have created my own version of the WAD with the patches in. I believe the core WAD Eternall.wad will still work fine on it's own though you may get some oddities like the sky being wrong. Let me read a little more. Trip down memory lane heh.

OK so I think the rest of the guff is just to patch the earlier releases if I am interpreting the text file correct. This was released in 1997 afterall, many computers had a premium on hard disk space then. This would gel with my memory of the main WAD being fine on it's own.

So just go at it. Load the WAD with your port of choice, it should be fine. It's not like your computer will explode if it is not right.

1 hour ago, VGA said:

I am not sure what you're asking.

Essentially a variant of the same question:

• The only thing i yet do not know is the difference between a binary Dehacked patch (Used in older Dehacked versions) and a (renamed) DOOMHACK.EXE. Is this one and the same thing?

Or, very similar:

• Do you also know if there is a difference between a binary Dehacked patch and Doomhack.exe?

And ill add another:

• Can a Doomhack.exe both be made from a binary .DEH patch and a text. DEH patch?

1 hour ago, Uncle 80 said:

Av.exe isn't quite just a renamed doomhack.exe. Par times can't be edited in dehacked, this is the reason why the .exe is included and not (just) the .deh.

What is Av.exe made then? As i understand, Doomhack.exe is a vanilla Doom2 exe with the DEH patch of choice applied - This is how Cyberdreams does it, and it suggests you should rename it to Cyber.exe according to the website.

In general, sometimes these custom things also came with their own custom launchers - that only work in DOS. @Maes did quite some repackaging work on notorious WADS, almost 5 years ago. See this post.

Great to see @Murdoch in here - Did some Boom source mods for the WolfenDoom series if i remember correctly :)

7 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

The only thing i yet do not know is the difference between a binary Dehacked patch (Used in older Dehacked versions) and a (renamed) DOOMHACK.EXE. Is this one and the same thing?

Different thing. The binary patches were quite tiny, smaller than the exe and smaller than the same patch rendered in the later text form. You still needed to apply it to an EXE or use a prehacked EXE to get the desired result.

Quote

Great to see @Murdoch in here - Did some Boom source mods for the WolfenDoom series if i remember correctly :)

Yes, glorified hacks that they were. Like Caverns of Darkness.

3 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

 

Different thing. The binary patches were quite tiny, smaller than the exe and smaller than the same patch rendered in the later text form. You still needed to apply it to an EXE or use a prehacked EXE to get the desired result.

Thank you. I have literally went to every possible sensible place to find this difference and its not described like this.

Two more and i am out ;)

• So, what is a prehacked exe? (Doomhack again?)
• A bit superfluous but still: Can a Doomhack.exe both be made from a binary .DEH patch and a text. DEH patch?

The reason why i am so inane on Doomhack is because i am trying to define it historically.

Yes, Dehacked 3.1 can read older and newer format patch data and patch the exe. If someone distributes the actual exe with the wad, I guess you can call it prehacked :D

Like Murdoch said, PAR times cannot be edited with Dehacked so they hex-edited them manually on doomhack.exe for Alien Vendetta. And distributed that ... prehacked exe.

The older binary format doesn't contain any executable core or any magic, just saved patch data that you load with Dehacked.

Well in this case, the prehacked exe will be AV.EXE ie: it's a Doom exe they have supplied, prehacked, ready to go. Like when I am lazy and don't want to cook dinner, go and get a precooked chicken from the supermarket. They applied the DEH and then they must have used a HEX editor to alter the par times which DeHacked could not do.

And yes you could make a doomhack.exe with either patch type. The name of resulting exe is really irrelevant. Whether you apply the patch to your main Doom EXE or DeHacked or some other process gives you a hacked EXE with a different name, the end result is the same from a practical perspective.

I just downloaded the original Dehacked Zip (or at least the final release) to refresh my memory. You could control it with command line parameters so you could make batch files to run WADs that needed patches. Run Dehacked, apply the patch, run Doom with the WAD, then run Dehacked to undo the changes. Maybe earlier versions were less confident of undoing the changes, hence Doomhack.exe? I don't recall. I did not heavily get into Doom modding till I got on the Internet which was - I think - late 1996. I did dabble with the binary version but mostly knew the text version.  I do remember latest versions always undid the changes quite nicely.

On 2/28/2020 at 9:06 AM, ZeMystic said:

Anyone who has downloaded Alien Vendetta has realized that there is an .exe file for it.

I am not fully sure, but I think this is from DeHackEd programs for old dos?

 

What other wads have done this?

I suppose we should answer the original post lol. So summarising what was discussed above, the av.exe was a Doom EXE that had the deh file applied, with manual hacks to alter the par times. Running the WAD with the DEH file in a modern source port will get the desired result just not the par times which are hardly important. I do not recall any other mods from the time period supplying prehacked EXE files as it was actually illegal as Redneckerz said. Any supplied EXE files were likely to be custom launchers.

5 minutes ago, VGA said:

Yes, Dehacked 3.1 can read older and newer format patch data and patch the exe. If someone distributes the actual exe with the wad, I guess you can call it prehacked :D

Consider yourself redeemed VGA :) Thank you. This clears things up and i now understand the little nuances more that came with this.

As i recall, Doomhack could also patch against a Doom2 version, leading to extra troubles if the generated Doomhack was made by an older Dehacked.

5 minutes ago, VGA said:

Like Murdoch said, PAR times cannot be edited with Dehacked so they hex-edited them manually on doomhack.exe for Alien Vendetta. And distributed that ... prehacked exe.

 

The older binary format doesn't contain any executable core or any magic, just saved patch data that you load with Dehacked.

....That's quite messed up. :/ Because that would still mean an illegal Doom2 exe was distributed back in the day (If i am getting what you are saying)

4 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

Well in this case, the prehacked exe will be AV.EXE ie: it's a Doom exe they have supplied, prehacked, ready to go. Like when I am lazy and don't want to cook dinner, go and get a precooked chicken from the supermarket. They applied the DEH and then they must have used a HEX editor to alter the par times which DeHacked could not do.

 

And yes you could make a doomhack.exe with either patch type. The name of resulting exe is really irrelevant. Whether you apply the patch to your main Doom EXE or DeHacked or some other process gives you a hacked EXE with a different name, the end result is the same from a practical perspective.

Understood. As Doomhack was the default name given by Dehacked, this is why i keep referring to it as such. Some would rename the thing for clarity.

Interestingly enough, i came across this Tumblr entry by someone who messed around with Doomhack for his own personal use - Given Dehacked had the option to keep your modifications in-exe aswell. It is an interesting read.

4 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

I just downloaded the original Dehacked Zip (or at least the final release) to refresh my memory. You could control it with command line parameters so you could make batch files to run WADs that needed patches. Run Dehacked, apply the patch, run Doom with the WAD, then run Dehacked to undo the changes.

That's how i understood it. Sometimes, DEUSF was also needed to merge graphics in prior to making Doomhack.

Whenever an old DEH patch had to be modernized and it was only available in a hacked.exe, you indeed would use Dehacked to seperate the two again.

7 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

 

I suppose we should answer the original post lol. So summarising what was discussed above, the av.exe was a Doom EXE that had the deh file applied, with manual hacks to alter the par times. Running the WAD with the DEH file in a modern source port will get the desired result just not the par times which are hardly important. I do not recall any other mods from the time period supplying prehacked EXE files as it was actually illegal as Redneckerz said. Any supplied EXE files were likely to be custom launchers.

I believe it was a combination of multiple things:

• Prehacked exe (I assume with this you mean a Doomhack.exe with hex edited stuff like AV)
• Prehacked exe + custom launcher
• Standard exe but custom launcher
• Or a renamed Doomhack.exe with the patch incorporated (Or just left with the default name)

From what i could tell though the old archives, Option 1 was not common, Option 2 neither but is a nightmare to get working on modern systems (hence repackaging efforts exists), Option 3 did exist aswell, but it was only the launcher being an issue - the WAD itself/EXE could run just fine and Option 4 would be illegal, because its just the Doom2 DOS executable.

Every single one of these besides option 3 would be illegal to distribute anyway. Many readmes simply instruct the user to make a Doomhack.exe using the supplied DEH file, sometimes including Dehacked.exe along with it, instead of supplying one.

Basically yeah.

I had forgotten about DeuSF. Been a long time since I heard that name. I remembered DeuTex but not that. It is entirely possible that to this day, somewhere in the dark recesses of /idgames there is a mod that used that to patch in graphics changes via a batch file.

Of course that exe in the Alien Vendetta zip is illegal to distribute. It isn't 100% piracy because you need the IWAD, too :D

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/DeuTex

About DeuSF, it was a small utility by the devs of DeuTex to merge resources into an IWAD because of limitations in the wad loading mechanism. I think Chocolate Doom replicates that limitation but also has a -merge commandline option to overcome it. Anyway,  if you go to idgames and search the "whole textfile" for "deusf", you will find some old projects requiring it, one of the most prominent is Aliens TC.

EDIT: This is why you need this cmdline:

https://www.chocolate-doom.org/wiki/index.php/Aliens_TC

In vanilla you needed to modify your iwad.

20 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

Basically yeah.

 

I had forgotten about DeuSF. Been a long time since I heard that name. I remembered DeuTex but not that. It is entirely possible that to this day, somewhere in the dark recesses of /idgames there is a mod that used that to patch in graphics changes via a batch file.

10 minutes ago, VGA said:

Of course that exe in the Alien Vendetta zip is illegal to distribute. It isn't 100% piracy because you need the IWAD, too :D

 

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/DeuTex

Thanks, both of you. I think i have enough now to define Doomhack in a historical perspective.

4 hours ago, Andreas said:

Oh! Funny I should run into this thread as I've been racking my brain over another wad... Eternal Doom. Been meaning to try that one but when I downloaded it I found it had exe's and bat's in addition to wad's and a slew of other stuff. I've been wondering how to run this on a modern system. Add to the mix that I'm on a linux box :o

 

If it's a DOS launcher I suppose I could run it through dosbox, but I'd rather play this natively in gzdoom if that's at all possible.

 

Could I just use the command line to load all the wad's? But I wonder if it won't need all the other stuff... How about turning it into a pk3? Would that work?

 

Any other solutions?

To run Eternal Doom in GZDoom, simply drag and drop ETERNALL.WAD into the GZDoom executable. If you want to play the two bonus levels, you need to drag and drop either CSWEEPER.WAD or CREDITS.WAD along with ETERNALL.WAD into the GZDoom executable. 

4 hours ago, Murdoch said:

OK so I think the rest of the guff is just to patch the earlier releases if I am interpreting the text file correct. This was released in 1997 afterall, many computers had a premium on hard disk space then. This would gel with my memory of the main WAD being fine on it's own.

 

So just go at it. Load the WAD with your port of choice, it should be fine. It's not like your computer will explode if it is not right.

Oh I'd already tried that and it does load. It just looked a bit off to me so I wasn't sure if it was because of missing textures or if it was just the way it was supposed to look LOL. I guess it must be the latter, then.

16 minutes ago, Andromeda said:

To run Eternal Doom in GZDoom, simply drag and drop ETERNALL.WAD into the GZDoom executable. If you want to play the two bonus levels, you need to drag and drop either CSWEEPER.WAD or CREDITS.WAD along with ETERNALL.WAD into the GZDoom executable. 

Ah! Alright, good to know what those other two wad's are. Been wondering about that. Thank you ;)

You should install SLADE so you can double click wads and see what you're loading. Also, it's easy to get rid of annoying music, sprite or sound replacements by deleting them.

4 hours ago, Andromeda said:

If you want to play the two bonus levels, you need to drag and drop either CSWEEPER.WAD or CREDITS.WAD along with ETERNALL.WAD into the GZDoom executable. 

That you may, but then the Cyber Sweeper map will not be "randomized", i.e. the cybers will appear at the same spots every time. One of the EXEs in the eternal zip is used by the Eshell frontend to produce a different setup on csweeper.wad when run from within the shell program.

As for the DeHackEd topic, I would like to add that dehacked.exe can recreate the original patch in text format if you only have the prehacked exe.

I actually was thinking about one other possible variable @VGA please chip on this!

• So supplying a Doomhack.exe with your patch combined is in most cases illegal to distribute (See this prior post) But what if you use the Doom2 shareware executable? Would using that .exe as a base for a Dehacked custom EXE (as Doomhack) be legal?

Obviously it would be a moronic thing for any author to just ship the modified exe and no DEH patch, especially in today's place where people just load up a patch in a source port. But still.

12 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

I actually was thinking about one other possible variable @VGA please chip on this!

• So supplying a Doomhack.exe with your patch combined is in most cases illegal to distribute (See this prior post) But what if you use the Doom2 shareware executable? Would using that .exe as a base for a Dehacked custom EXE (as Doomhack) be legal?

Obviously it would be a moronic thing for any author to just ship the modified exe and no DEH patch, especially in today's place where people just load up a patch in a source port. But still.

Not most cases. All cases. In the case of shareware, it's the same executable so the distinction is irrelevant. Plus id's license terms forbid modding the shareware version.