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Roofi

Can a wad really be considered as vanilla if it uses a dehacked?

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1 hour ago, Noiser said:

Actually, your answer to me was "No, it's not".


Holy Toledo my man, you have a bad habit of arguing with ghosts. You aren't the OP. The OP asked "is dehacked still vanilla." I answer "yes." Your perspective is getting all twisted up because you're assuming that people are disagreeing with you in totality. But if you think dehacked gets a pass for vanilla mods, then you are in agreement with the rest of us. It seems like you have the right idea intuitively but you're getting messed up on the specifics. I said no when you claimed that vanilla compatible means compatible with doom.exe. Your own D4V is an example of why that's not true - it does modify the exe, but it's still considered vanilla compatible. Just because you created it doesn't mean you couldn't have been mistaken about the nuts and bolts, and that's OK. I'm just trying to break down what seems to be your mistake - the idea that dehacked is somehow supported or compatible with doom.exe. It is not. It forcibly edits the file. Hence the name hack.

 

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13 minutes ago, Quasar said:

When you get down to it, 1997 is the arbitrary cut-off point of development on things that applied to the DOS exe which determines what is or is not accepted as "vanilla" in some cases.

Were people doing anything to the exe post 1997? All I can think of was ACE, and the reason why ACE hasn't been accepted as a modding standard is because no source port supports it/being a security risk to implement (I believe don't quote me on that).  

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1 hour ago, magicsofa said:

Holy Toledo my man, you have a bad habit of arguing with ghosts. You aren't the OP. The OP asked "is dehacked still vanilla." I answer "yes." Your perspective is getting all twisted up because you're assuming that people are disagreeing with you in totality. But if you think dehacked gets a pass for vanilla mods, then you are in agreement with the rest of us. It seems like you have the right idea intuitively but you're getting messed up on the specifics. I said no when you claimed that vanilla compatible means compatible with doom.exe. Your own D4V is an example of why that's not true - it does modify the exe, but it's still considered vanilla compatible. Just because you created it doesn't mean you couldn't have been mistaken about the nuts and bolts, and that's OK. I'm just trying to break down what seems to be your mistake - the idea that dehacked is somehow supported or compatible with doom.exe. It is not. It forcibly edits the file. Hence the name hack.

No, I don't think dehacked "gets a pass". I'm saying that it is compatible. And that's easily verificable: you run the patch and it works with the vanilla exe. My point is easy to understand - but you are not willing to listen or accept that people may have a different perspective from you. Your condescending tone also doesn't help, so I end my case here. 

 

And no, you are not speaking for the community in any capacity.

 

1 hour ago, Gez said:

It's long been accepted by the community that DEHACKED is still vanilla-compatible. But I doubt it'd be accepted that limit-removing, custom DECORATE actors, and use of the Doom-in-Hexen map format would be similarly accepted as being vanilla-compatible, despite these things being literally compatible thanks to ACE.

That's a good point, but maybe ACE comes more into source-port territory. Dehacked play with the code but doesn't add anything in it, so at least there's a difference. I admit that gets into muddy terrain though and I'm not that familar with ACE. Maybe the future will tell more about it, assuming it gets popular at some point.

Edited by Noiser

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5 hours ago, Noiser said:

No, I don't think dehacked "gets a pass". I'm saying that it is compatible. And that's easily verificable: you run the patch and it works with the vanilla exe. My point is easy to understand - but you are not willing to listen or accept that people may have a different perspective from you. Your condescending tone also doesn't help, so I end my case here. 

 

And no, you are not speaking for the community in any capacity.

 

I'm sure I do speak for the community when I say that everyone is getting exhausted by this back and forth. But, since the point of this thread is to discuss what is and is not vanilla compatible, I feel compelled to not just let this go. And yeah, I'm gonna get a little condescending. You said you were "just curious" but you have been rejecting my detailed explanations with flippant remarks like "read my post again" and "it's easy to understand."

The statement "you run the patch and it works with the vanilla exe" shows that it is you who doesn't understand what is going on under the hood. I tried to politely explain that it's OK to lack a deep understanding of this stuff. It's often not necessary even when creating a vanilla mod. Your own mod is a case-in-point. You made an impressive mod, but you are wrong about the way it interacts with the original application. This isn't a matter of perspective. It isn't personal either. I am not attacking you as a person. I am attacking your ideas on a logical basis only. I know that I am a stubborn and aggressive debater - please don't mistake that for ill will toward an opponent. That would be like assuming that if I beat you in a game of chess, that means I hate you. On the other hand, if I beat you and then you throw a temper tantrum and call me names, then it might start to annoy me and for good reason. If you keep insisting that I cheated or something, I'm eventually going to say "look, you don't know what you are talking about. I know the rules of the game, and I beat you fair and square." A little bit condescending perhaps, but after enough tantrums it might be warranted. Whether a game or a logical debate, it is just that. Don't take it personally.

Spoilering the rest cuz it's l o n g:

 

Spoiler

Here's why your statement is not correct. Beginning with the first bit, "run the patch." How do you do that? If I have doom.exe and mymod.deh in a folder, how do I run the patch? The answer is I can't. This is provable first by realizing that there are no console commands or anything else that will cause any modification to the game. You can type -file mymod.deh, -deh mymod.deh, whatever - the patching just won't happen. Furthermore, this can be proven by examining the .deh file itself as well as the doom source code. Look inside the .deh and you will find a list of properties. It will say stuff like "Thing 40, Health 100" or "Frame 163, Duration 0". You won't find any code in this file. It is not a program. It doesn't do anything on its own. So this proves that the patch can't apply itself to the game. Now, take a look at the doom source code. Is there any part of the code that reads these properties from a .deh file? No. The doom source code will read data from a .wad file, but even then, it will ignore anything it doesn't recognize. So if you have a DEHACKED lump in your .wad, doom.exe just ignores it and nothing is modified. In order to refute this, you would have to show me the exact portion of the original source code that accepts modifications to thing properties and state tables from an external file. If you really are curious, you can look for it yourself. But I am telling you right now, it isn't there. The only way to make the patch work is via DEHACKED.exe. Dehacked.exe didn't just create the .deh file - it was also responsible for applying the modifications to the game. The .deh file only existed so that you could save and share your changes. So, in order to make your modifications happen, you had to run dehacked.exe, input your desired changes manually or load them from a .deh file, and then apply them to the game executable. Applying the modifications would either modify doom.exe or create a copy of doom.exe and then modify that.

Knowing all that, it should be clear why the second part of your statement doesn't make sense. After we "run the patch" - meaning we have told dehacked.exe to modify the game according to whatever patch we loaded or whatever values we plunked in the editor - we are left with a modified executable. It doesn't matter if that executable file is called doom.exe, doomhack.exe, or anything else. It is not the same file distributed by iD software. And, it has not been modified through any functionality found within doom.exe. That could only be done with dehacked.exe which literally goes in and changes the data for you. If you knew all the byte addresses you could do it manually with a hex editor. The result is the same - a modified version of the original executable file. So it doesn't make sense to say the patch "works with the vanilla exe" because you aren't running the vanilla exe. You are running a hacked version of it. Now, the code is actually not changed very much: the actual structure or logic of it remains the same. All dehacked did was change some numerical values and strings. But it still changed something and therefore the new .exe file is different from the old one. It is not the original file. No matter how superficial the change, running a modified doom.exe does not count as running the original doom.exe. It's modified.

The reason why these hacks get a pass is because the modifications are all stuff that theoretically could have been in the .wad files instead. How much health an imp has is just a number in a table, and so that information could have been read from the .wad instead of inside the code. But because it wasn't, changing the number means changing the code. You can load custom maps with the original, unmodified doom.exe, and doing so does not change anything about doom.exe. But you can't change the imp's health unless you modify the original source code. So technically you are creating a new application when you apply a dehacked patch. But in practical terms, you aren't making any changes to the program's behavior - just the values being fed to the program. That's why it gets a pass. We all agree that these changes are not really enough to call it a source port or something like that - the same way that new maps and textures are also not changing the fundamental programming, just the data it operates on. It is an exception - we still call this kind of modification "vanilla compatible" because we have collectively decided that the changes you can make with dehacked are superficial, and should not be considered to be a source port or a new engine. We ignore the technicality. It is more practical for us to instead differentiate between changing imp's health, and more serious changes like how the screen is rendered.


 

Edited by magicsofa

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3 hours ago, magicsofa said:

(text)

I'm familiarized with Dehacked and the process to apply the patch. Detailing it too me is not only a waste of time but also feels like you are just trying to insult anyone who may be interested on the debate. Yeah, you have to apply the patch using the software, and it changes the exe. That's completely unrelated to the topic. Unfortunately you still don't gave me any reason to believe that your "rule" isn't totally arbitrary. You are basically saying that applying the exact same patch as an external file is valid because "it is" while changing it on the executable is not because..."it's not" - and then you just proceed on more trivial war on semantics just because I said you can "run the patch", while it's exactly what you do on Dehacked. Great.

The change IS superficial compared to a source-port because it doesn't add anything to the code. That's not a trivial point. And ok, maybe the perception on the community would be a bit different if it was more agressive in this regard (we will never know). However, that's not my point. My point is that Dehacked is compatible with the executable because we can empirically prove that it is. You cannot deny that, as much as you want to move the goal posts to please whatever you think the term means in your head.

Edited by Noiser

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5 hours ago, Astronomical said:

Were people doing anything to the exe post 1997? All I can think of was ACE, and the reason why ACE hasn't been accepted as a modding standard is because no source port supports it/being a security risk to implement (I believe don't quote me on that).  

I know for a fact that entryway (screenname of PrBoom+ dev) made "limit rasied" versions of Doom.exe and Doom2.exe back in 2005-2006, and that those were then later expanded on just within the last few years, and we now have UDOOM32.exe and DOOM32.exe which allow for many more visplanes and drawsegs and stuff. Sadly, the "savegame buffer overflow" was never fixed, or at least hasn't been yet :(

 

In 2016 xttl modified the IPXSETUP.exe to allow for -dup 2 and more -extratics (basically just commands used by DWANGO to make international play quite a lot more responsive). Fraggle also continually dabbles with the DOS EXEs over the years, I know Christmas 2019 he released a pack of DOS EXEs to be used with Doom/by modders.

 

EXE hacking - beyond just applying .deh patches, I mean - is very niche in the post-2000 world, but a few tinkerers here and there keep it alive to a degree. I have a link to all the vanilla/DOS EXEs I'm aware of here: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/117694/

 

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@Noiser @magicsofa Honestly I think you guys are just arguing semantics at this point.  You both know how Dehacked works, you both also agree with the general community terminology.  You're not actually disagreeing with each other.  You're just getting caught up in tiny technicalities in your posts.  E.g.:

 

6 hours ago, Noiser said:

you run the patch and it works with the vanilla exe.

 

Technically the patch works with dehacked.exe, and dehacked.exe works with the vanilla .exe.  That's all magicsofa is trying to say.  But this is a pointless technicality and not worth arguing over.

 

7 hours ago, magicsofa said:

the idea that dehacked is somehow supported or compatible with doom.exe. It is not.

 

Dehacked is "compatible" with Doom.exe in the sense it's designed to specifically work with the vanilla exe.  If I got gzdoom.exe and renamed it to doom.exe, Dehacked wouldn't work with it.  That's all Noiser is trying to say.  Technically you could argue "compatible" isn't quite the right word, but again, this is a pointless technicality and not worth arguing over.

 

Other than that, you guys are 99% barking up the same tree.

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On 12/1/2021 at 5:58 PM, Doomkid said:

This is a perfect analogy, because in all cases, the car has been altered and is no longer in its vanilla state. Changing the upholstery or the engine still means it's no longer the "vanilla" car, as-sold by the manufacturer :)

I feel like throwing a wrench in your gears just for argument's sake... So I'm gonna ask if a "car" (such as classic doom), that had all its diagrams of construction made public (classic doom source code) might have been intended to become subject to modifications by the end-user, to begin with -- therefore rendering discussions wrt altering some or all parts of it in some fashion moot in the first place, because the creation of custom content of any sort can be considered an intrinsic design goal of the product that has been purchased...

 

Also... Let's say you had 2016 Mustang in your garage, now you mess around with it, maybe you alter fuel and air intake by the engine to make it burn fuel more efficiently, maybe you replace the seats, maybe you put in a pretty badass racket so you can blast your brains out while you're in traffic... Are you not driving a 2016 Mustang any longer..? And would anybody who sees you in that car of yours not think you're driving a 2016 Mustang when they see you cruising around.. ? In other words, does "vanilla" necessarily mean "factory tuned"..?

 

(Actually I don't care, I just felt like making kind of a shitpost that sounded semi-intelligent, so that perhaps someone would bite... :P)

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12 minutes ago, Bauul said:

Technically you could argue "compatible" isn't quite the right word,

Compatible.

But hey, whatever. I agree the discussion was pointless at best. We are nerds, that's what we do :-)

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2 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Also... Let's say you had 2016 Mustang in your garage, now you mess around with it, maybe you alter fuel and air intake by the engine to make it burn fuel more efficiently, maybe you replace the seats, maybe you put in a pretty badass racket so you can blast your brains out while you're in traffic... Are you not driving a 2016 Mustang any longer..? And would anybody who sees you in that car of yours not think you're driving a 2016 Mustang when they see you cruising around.. ? In other words, does "vanilla" necessarily mean "factory tuned"..?

 

(Actually I don't care, I just felt like making kind of a shitpost that sounded semi-intelligent, so that perhaps someone would bite... :P)

Of course if you follow that rabbit hole deeply enough you are looking at the Ship of Theseus paradox, which is something philosophers can still hold heated arguments about to this day despite it having been formulated in ancient Greece. Safe to say nobody's settling that debate any time soon. That's why it's better to, as I mentioned before, just accept community terminology with its assigned value than to endlessly lawyer over its details.

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Just now, Quasar said:

Of course if you follow that rabbit hole deeply enough you are looking at the Ship of Theseus paradox, which is something philosophers can still hold heated arguments about to this day despite it having been formulated in ancient Greece.

Shhhhhhhh!!!! Don't give my scheme away like that, man....

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9 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Let's say you had 2016 Mustang in your garage, now you mess around with it, maybe you alter fuel and air intake by the engine to make it burn fuel more efficiently, maybe you replace the seats, maybe you put in a pretty badass racket so you can blast your brains out while you're in traffic... Are you not driving a 2016 Mustang any longer..? And would anybody who sees you in that car of yours not think you're driving a 2016 Mustang when they see you cruising around.. ?

At the end of the day, any flavor of Doom is still Doom in my book! (or I guess in this analogy, a Mustang is a Mustang is a Mustang)

 

6 minutes ago, Noiser said:

But hey, whatever. I agree the discussion was pointless at best. We are nerds, that's what we do :-)

Don't worry. The argument you two were having didn't even touch the hem of the garment of the "Doom doesn't have 3 dimensions" morons

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4 minutes ago, Bauul said:

Dehacked is "compatible" with Doom.exe in the sense it's designed to specifically work with the vanilla exe.  If I got gzdoom.exe and renamed it to doom.exe, Dehacked wouldn't work with it.  That's all Noiser is trying to say.  Technically you could argue "compatible" isn't quite the right word, but again, this is a pointless technicality and not worth arguing over.


A fair point. Still though, if we're gonna talk about the meaning of any word or phrase, we're talking about semantics. The whole point of this is to determine why "vanilla," meaning "unmodified," can include things that are indeed modified. And my answer would be, "because of a technicality."


@Noiser I'm not trying to insult anyone, just getting as detailed as I can to show exactly where I think you were wrong. I absolutely love arguing about semantics and technicalities because I am obsessed with finding the Truth (tm). I have been told many times in my life, "you're just arguing for the sake of arguing." To which I reply, "damn right I am! This is my idea of fun!"

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A good thing about discussions is that I can at least improve my english, even if just a bit.
I still have a long way to go though (I will consider myself good when I stop editing my posts). D8

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You're several times better than most native English speakers, the average American or Aussie typs mor like this 2 lazy 2 really bothr so ya dnt wry bout it dud u r doin btr than most ppl hu only kno 1 langage

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On 12/2/2021 at 11:32 AM, Doomkid said:

Because I love you guys, here's the script I just made for a video I'll be making within the week (if all goes according to plan)..


So it was more like a month than a week.. but I finally did it!

 

 

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Great Video. I agree to everything in it.

On the Topic-
I would say they are not vanilla doom but vanilla-compatible mods/levels

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24 minutes ago, Doomkid said:


So it was more like a month than a week.. but I finally did it!

 

 

The taxonomic structure was very sound, it's a 10.

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6 hours ago, Doomkid said:


So it was more like a month than a week.. but I finally did it!

 

But what about playing Doom through Doom Eternal? :p

I jest. Good stuff as always~

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11 hours ago, Doomkid said:

So it was more like a month than a week.. but I finally did it!

Well, better late than never, huh? ;-)

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In my opinion, no, even if technically so.  People looking for vanilla are looking for a certain type of gameplay experience, not someone's reimagining according to their preferences.

 

8 hours ago, ducon said:

Can a WAD really be considered as vanilla?

 

Assuming you are implying that WADs are akin to alterations to gameplay, if that were the case we'd be talking about OG against everything else, rendering the term 'vanilla' totally irrelevant.

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