A weird bug in Doom95 i remember from my childhood (Now recreated!)

Is this common knowledge or something obscure?

The year is 1997. Our neighbor has a Windows 95 PC with a demo disc called Games Sampler for Windows 95 and on that disc was DOOM and it forever changes my life. You couldn't get my away from that computer and one day, i was staring in awe at the demo rolling and one of them was E1M7 where the player dies in the elevator room with the upper portion with walls that you can see under.

The demo doesn't end after death however, but rather Doomguy gets back up again even though health is 0 and the mugshot is the dead face. After he got up, you could move around yourself with enemies idling in place. You couldn't open doors since the demo would end if you hit the spacebar and you had no weapon either.

The demo was running through Doom95. Is this a known bug?

There's no known behaviour where this could happen in Doom, Doom95 included. While in a Demo, no player input is ever used (ticcmds are built but ultimately discarded and replaced) and most buttons will just bring up the menu anyway.

Additionally, while what you're describing in the end is a zombie bug, there's no known zombie bug that could occur in E1M7 given the lack of voodoo dolls.

It's not technically impossible for a combination of both factors to occur due to oddly specific memory corruption (though I don't think these two portions of memory are in the same place?), but there's nothing recorded like this happening and no theories on it either. Chances are that you dreamed it or are confusing two unrelated memories?

(I also checked this on period hardware with the shareware version of Doom95 which has an E1M7 which indeed has the player die in this area. It just proceeds to the next loop.)

32 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Chances are that you dreamed it or are confusing two unrelated memories?

This is such a strong memory for me that i'm 100% sure that this actually happened. I specifically remember the exact spot and map even though i haven't seen the demo for more than 20 years.

I'm gonna have to dig up an image of the disc and try to replicate the bug. Again, i'm 100% sure this happened, and i've seen it many, many times as we had the shareware running as background noise while playing with legos and from time to time one of us had to push spacebar to start the demos again because every time E1M7 came up, the same thing happened.

Be aware that a Brain saves Memories in a strange Manor :)

I have Memories of me with ~5 years speaking with People in german and i was 100% sure about that.

After seeing a Video of me in that Situation i was astounished that i was speaking spanish.

My Brain saved the meaning of the Conversation, not the actual Language.

Because i am using german way more frequentlty my brain concluded that it had to be german what i've spoked.

Same could happen with you :)

Your Brain concluding Information to a Memory.
 

So yes, the best Way is trying to recreate that Bug.

Even better if you have the same Image :)

@Edward850 Told ya! Excuse the corrupted palette and video capture with a phone but you can still clearly see what's happening! Didn't have access to physical Windows 95 hardware so Virtualbox was used. Is there a way to run Doom95 on Win10? It starts but complains about not having supported video modes.

VID-20210407-WA0003.zip

33 minutes ago, Muusi said:

@Edward850 Told ya! Excuse the corrupted palette and video capture with a phone but you can still clearly see what's happening! Didn't have access to physical Windows 95 hardware so Virtualbox was used. Is there a way to run Doom95 on Win10? It starts but complains about not having supported video modes.

 

VID-20210407-WA0003.zip

oh my god it looks like clown vomit

why're you able to open doors tho? didn't you say that wasn't possible? 

2 minutes ago, roadworx said:

Why're you able to open doors tho? didn't you say that wasn't possible? 

Yeah that was a part i indeed misremembered. The glitch still happens though :) Wonder if it's the same with all versions of Doom95 or is it this specific version?

Interesting. I've never seen this happen before, glad you still remember it.

44 minutes ago, ☭ Quack ☭ said:

Interesting. I've never seen this happen before, glad you still remember it.

Would be cool to know what exactly makes the player become a zombie. Been wondering for all these years.

2 hours ago, Muusi said:

@Edward850 Told ya! Excuse the corrupted palette and video capture with a phone but you can still clearly see what's happening! Didn't have access to physical Windows 95 hardware so Virtualbox was used. Is there a way to run Doom95 on Win10? It starts but complains about not having supported video modes.

 

VID-20210407-WA0003.zip

what kind of sorcery is this?!?!

resurrection of evil and astral body projection goin on. :s

did that happen with that specific version of the engine you were playin with back in the day or you picked a random one of doom95? there were several builds for that engine although I have no leads to what would make it behave like that.

3 hours ago, Muusi said:

VID-20210407-WA0003.zip

O_O

The only bug I ever recalled from the version of Doom95 I had, was that it would crash for some reason whenever opening the blue doors in map 3 of doom2... Still don't know why it happened, but it always did, without fail. A little windows message would pop up with some error on it, (I don't remember of course, now, its been like 2 decades...) and then it would crash to desktop. I haven't been able to get it to repeat with the versions that are around now.

But yeah, I've never had this weird zombie thing happen - that is, if your memory is 100% correct still, I could be a little bit off with my memory too, lol.

2 hours ago, Muusi said:

Yeah that was a part i indeed misremembered. The glitch still happens though :) Wonder if it's the same with all versions of Doom95 or is it this specific version?

could you maybe link the doom95 files? i'm sure someone here could figure it out

12 minutes ago, OleBumma said:

what kind of sorcery is this?!?!

resurrection of evil and astral body projection goin on. :s

 

did that happen with that specific version of the engine you were playin with back in the day or you picked a random one of doom95? there were several builds for that engine although I have no leads to what would make it behave like that.

This is a version that was included in a demo disc called "Games Sampler for Windows 95".

5 minutes ago, Arrowhead said:

The only bug I ever recalled from the version of Doom95 I had, was that it would crash for some reason whenever opening the blue doors in map 3 of doom2... Still don't know why it happened, but it always did, without fail. A little windows message would pop up with some error on it, (I don't remember of course, now, its been like 2 decades...) and then it would crash to desktop. I haven't been able to get it to repeat with the versions that are around now.

 

But yeah, I've never had this weird zombie thing happen - that is, if your memory is 100% correct still, I could be a little bit off with my memory too, lol.

Check the video.

5 minutes ago, roadworx said:

could you maybe link the doom95 files? i'm sure someone here could figure it out

I'll upload it :)

3 hours ago, Muusi said:

Is there a way to run Doom95 on Win10? It starts but complains about not having supported video modes.

There's a patch for it as found in this thread:

Just now, Muusi said:

Check the video.

Sorry, must have missed it. I stand corrected though, seems as if you did remember this correctly in the end! Very very weird. I have no idea what could possibly be causing that. This has just become a very interesting thread... :)

DOOM95 from Games Sampler disc.zip

Okay Doom community let's get to the bottom of this mystery!

Can someone who manages to run this on a more modern system confirm that the bug still happens? And maybe do a video where the colors are correct and a Model M isn't hammering your ear drums🤣 Or is this something specific with Windows 95🤔

Also check out the menu system that you could use to check out the demos if browsing the disc seemed too boring:

You explore the Manhattan Space Station in 1st person and it even had Doom style secrets hidden behind secret walls etc. Oh man this really is my childhood condenced in one video <3

i'd run it on my old win98 computer if the power supply wasn't busted )`:

2 minutes ago, roadworx said:

i'd run it on my old win98 computer if the power supply wasn't busted )`:

I also was excited to run it on a Pentium MMX system i have stashed in a closet but not one damn VGA cable in the house🙄 Plus my Samsung Sync Master had vertical collapse so i don't have a proper monitor for it either😭

3 hours ago, Muusi said:

This is a version that was included in a demo disc called "Games Sampler for Windows 95".

that's a very early version of the Doom95 engine (dated Nov. '95, probably the earliest I can recall of) that you have there, which was released on one of the authors' personal page, and might still be subject to some rough bugs that went unnoticed.

afterall the "95" wasn't just a reference to Win95 being the system the frontend was aimed to be compatible for, it was also the year the frontend first came out.

if the glitch may only happen with this specific version it would explain why people that generally downloaded the frontend from id software's official sources (game discs, ftp) don't remember about it. maybe they fixed the bug or replaced the demo afterward.

first time discovering it's on a games sampler disc.

A better video.

Doom95 bug.zip

I wonder if the Doom95 executable bundled with that Windows 95 Game Sampler CD you had years ago was different from the one in the idgames archive that came bundled with Shareware DOOM.

Is it the common one used in earlier Windows releases of Doom & the 2001 Collector's Edition compilation, the id Anthology version, or an entirely different version altogether?

On 5/4/2021 at 3:57 AM, Wadmodder Shalton said:

I wonder if the Doom95 executable bundled with that Windows 95 Game Sampler CD you had years ago was different from the one in the idgames archive

I guess this one's older.

Woah, this is an awesome find! I’ve never heard of this 1995 version of Doom95, I was only ever aware of the idgames version and the 2001/Anthology version! Thanks for sharing this history. Based on it being clearly unfinished (not just the zombie demo, but the inexplicable tutti-frutti everywhere) I’m gonna assume this was a very limited release..

54 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Woah, this is an awesome find! I’ve never heard of this 1995 version of Doom95, I was only ever aware of the idgames version and the 2001/Anthology version! Thanks for sharing this history. Based on it being clearly unfinished (not just the zombie demo, but the inexplicable tutti-frutti everywhere) I’m gonna assume this was a very limited release..

Yeah it's very buggy. I'd LOVE to do a full playthrough of Doom on this version just to see what kind of buggy weirdness happens later on as i've ever only experienced the shareware episode using this version and i was very young back then. 

My problem is that i'm running this through a Windows 95 installation inside DOSBox X and i'm not sure if some of those visual bugs happen because of the emulation. I'd either need to get Doom95 running on Windows 10 (it complains about not finding a compatible video mode or something close to that) or setup my Pentium MMX system to run Win9x natively. Sadly my beautiful SyncMaster had a vertical collapse and i have no skills to fix the thing so i don't have any VGA displays for my retro system :(

Since Doom95 runs perfectly on my Win 7 PC, I decided to give this a look. The results were very strange..

Firstly, there was no way to select your wads or change the configuration, it just jumps right into the game. I tried putting Doom2.wad in the folder out of curiosity, and it jumped right into the Doom2 demos. They played fine with no issue, until it crashed looking for DEMO4. The worst issue with this version is that for some reason it doesn't respond to any inputs from me at all. I can't bring up the menu, I can't interact with the game in any way whatsoever. Conversely the other versions of Doom95 work more or less perfectly on this PC.

I also noticed some weird graphic artifacting around Doomguy's face, like it wasn't clearing away the garbage pixels from previous frames of animation. The HUD was still showing after a demo played and it looped to a credit screen or the title screen, which doesn't happen in the more updated versions of Doom95. This isn't surprising considering the date of the EXE, but it doesn't recognize Plutonia or TNT as iwads at all.

I then removed Doom2.wad and it jumped into the shareware. No tutti-frutti walls, just the weird Doomguy face artifacting again, and sure enough when it got to the 4th demo, the player was suddenly zombified. Again, I had no control over the game whatsoever, so I couldn't do much, but it looked like it was ready to hang there forever.

I'd love to learn why it does this. Maybe this version could also be added to the Doom95 page on Doomwiki!

So John was a zombie after all!

Somehow I vaguely remember experiencing this bug too in the 90's :)