Known lost WADs of our history?

I have not yet been able to find the original version of the ELFSTOMP.WAD by Steve Duff , which appeared on Elf's MacDoom WAD of The Day Page and in the AOL MacDoom Library. Only the enhanced and fixed version is available on idgames (and everywhere else online and on CDS). I'd like to play the original version... and take a look at that secret door removed from the final version. :)

Steve Duff goes by @Steve D on these forums and is active, so maybe you should message him about it.

I recall that somebody was working on a GTA mod for Doom 2.

On 1/22/2024 at 1:29 PM, Firedust said:

Unless it was reworked to be included elsewhere, Xaser's Union Halls for Stomper 'remake'.

It's honestly very weird seeing a WIP map of mine listed in this thread (this is at least twice now) -- this thread is supposed to be for posting things that are lost to time, and I'm very much still an active member of the community. If you're interested in someone's WIP, its better to reach out directly, that way they know someone's looking forward to it.

I do still have this map, there's a fancy mini-project I'm spinning it into, but it's been very low priority lately.

25 minutes ago, Xaser said:

this thread is supposed to be for posting things that are lost to time,

I have also noticed a little overlap with new posters and the kind of WADs they ask or post about, so I'm gonna chime in and remember everyone: This thread is designed as a sort of ''graveyard'' for WADs that we have proof existed at some point in time but are currently lost or unavailable for download.

Before you post anything here, I recommend to first ask in the Official 'Trying to Find a Specific WAD' Thread to see if maybe someone has a version of the WAD you are looking for. There's ton of archivist there that hold on to various zip files across decades so you never know if the WAD you think is lost, maybe is just tucked away waiting in some drive.

If the WAD author you are looking for is still active and reachable in the community, then I'd recommend to contact him/her first to see if maybe they have a working  version of the WAD, and if not, then at least you can gather more info about what happened to it and share it with the rest of us here in the thread.

On 1/27/2024 at 9:25 AM, Marmiteman02 said:

I recall that somebody was working on a GTA mod for Doom 2.

Is it this one by Xegethra?

1 hour ago, Xaser said:

It's honestly very weird seeing a WIP map of mine listed in this thread (this is at least twice now) -- this thread is supposed to be for posting things that are lost to time, and I'm very much still an active member of the community. If you're interested in someone's WIP, its better to reach out directly, that way they know someone's looking forward to it.

To play devil's advocate WIP levels get discarded/lost more often than not with little to no notice. Glad to know it's not the case with your stuff!

I do tend to keep a lot of backups scattered about, 'cause yeah, you never know when that old scrap will prove useful for a future project.

I guess my thoughts are more like: if you're posting about a wad in here, it's probably because you'd be interested in playing it. If the author is still floating about, then letting them know there's still interest in it is the best thing you can do to help it see the light of day.

On 6/6/2022 at 4:50 AM, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Doom 4 The Final Chapter (not to be confused with Doom 2016) - a sequel to the infamous Doom 3 Mr Smiley Head Safari partial conversion teased when you beat episode 3, which was abandoned and never finished.

Quoting myself here, but I wonder if anyone would be able to get in contact with the members of the short-lived Impact Software that made the infamous Doom 3 Mr Smiley Head Safari partial conversion.

These are as follows:

Calvin Wong

Ken Wu

Anthony Ong

Mike Tam

Jonathan Chang

John Wei

Perhaps these individuals would be able to provide details on what this abandoned sequel was going to be about.

Boy there's a lot of lost Doom wads, as lost as the missing spider pit scene in king Kong 

Some lost wads by Tony Soderlund that were on Geocities. The Adventures of Sub and DELCRET.WAD are on idgames thanks to @lupinx-Kassman.

An 8-level wad named "The Gore Levels" that was released around 2007-2008.

AOL Doom

Death Realm by Jason Farnsworth

PSFDoom

Eaket Doom by Luke Reeves

KEYPIT by Ian Wilson

Gothic Park by David J. Reid a.k.a. MoonLust

I've been personally archiving almost every WAD that won a cacoward (excluding JokeWADs, MP-exclusive mods, and Worst WAD winners), and so far the only cacoward-winner that I've found to be lost has been Codename: DEMOLITIONIST, a gameplay WAD winner from 2020 (at the time known as SWWM GZ) whose creator hosted it on a github page that no longer exists.

Thankfully, every other Cacoward winner I've tried to download (which has been everything but the 2021 Cacowards, which I'm in the process of downloading today) has been downloadable even though a lot of them (mostly gameplay mods from the zdoom forums) aren't on the idgames archive, and hopefully they stay available.

1 hour ago, Explorer of Time said:

I've been personally archiving almost every WAD that won a cacoward (excluding JokeWADs, MP-exclusive mods, and Worst WAD winners), and so far the only cacoward-winner that I've found to be lost has been Codename: DEMOLITIONIST, a gameplay WAD winner from 2020 (at the time known as SWWM GZ) whose creator hosted it on a github page that no longer exists.

Only available through author's website now. https://marisakirisa.me/doom/

On 11/27/2023 at 10:43 PM, Wadmodder Shalton said:

The beta build of the PS1 versions Doom and Final Doom that were sent out to most of the gaming press before the release of either version.

 

These builds included content not seen in the final release of the game and appears to not have been properly archived by any preview team from the gaming magazine of the day. All we have of any of the cut content of PS1 Doom and Final Doom are screenshots.

Excuse me if I'm missing something obvious but is there any hint of which maps those is the first and second screenshots could possibly be? While I do recognize the third one as Tom Mustaine's 'Doom2 Map14 Homage', I have no clue which the previous are.

I thought at first the first screenshot was from Sverre Kvernmo's Cabal series, due to the 4-point star ringing in my memory, but that area doesn't exist in any of the 12 maps. And it doesn't appear in Christen Klie's 12 maps either.

No idea about the second one, unfortunately.

1 hour ago, elf-alchemist said:

No idea about the second one, unfortunately.

It's Halls of the Damned.

.

5 hours ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

It's Halls of the Damned.

Thank you

This list of WADs featured on the Espi Award section of the 2014 Cacowards.

It just proves that even modders create feature creep on their own projects, which will never work, always stick to the bare minimum of features that your source port offers. In other words, never copy the feature creep of failed FPS games that took longer to come out like Daikatana or Duke Nukem Forever.

Not all of those are lost (well, you can forget about UAC Ultra 2 but you know) and what's more, many of those are either vanilla compatible or limit removing

Animosity - a proposed free-IWAD project by @Death Egg to build an equivalent to Strife's IWAD, which had very minimal work done before being put on provisional status.

The original versions of Storage Area 32, Gothic Dreams & Silent Steel, which were made by Dark 7 author @Gunrock. They were replaced by remastered versions in recent years, making the originals harder to find. We have Dissolution in both its original and remastered forms available.

41 minutes ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

The original versions of Storage Area 32, Gothic Dreams & Silent Steel, which were made by Dark 7 author @Gunrock. They were replaced by remastered versions in recent years, making the originals harder to find. We have Dissolution in both its original and remastered forms available.

@Grazza shared a collection of old versions of the @Gunrock's maps in this post

Eternal Doom Versions 1 & 2. The earlier versions that were released around late-1995 to early-1996 (maybe even mid-1996) when Team Eternal were in charge before TeamTNT acquired and reworked it. Only the third version of Eternal Doom (known as Eternal Doom III) is widely available, making the first two versions almost difficult if not impossible to find.

Here.

On 3/25/2023 at 8:34 PM, Mad Butcher said:

Blue Oyster Cult level for Doom 2

If you still looking for it, the wad has been found. 
Recently a video was posted on Youtube. The download link is  in the description.

33 minutes ago, thestarrover said:

If you still looking for it, the wad has been found. 
Recently a video was posted on Youtube. The download link is  in the description.

Awesome! Thank you so much for the link!

36 minutes ago, thestarrover said:

If you still looking for it, the wad has been found. 
Recently a video was posted on Youtube. The download link is  in the description.

Always nice to see lost media get (re)discovered! Calling @Endless @Wadmodder Shalton

25 minutes ago, Mad Butcher said:

Awesome! Thank you so much for the link!

You're welcome! :)

On 3/25/2023 at 3:34 PM, Mad Butcher said:

Jwango 15 - Joe Acrylic

As I recall there was a jwango13 as well, once upon a time I had both of them, but never burned them to disc or anything and it's no longer possible to get either from Wayback anymore either.  I still kick myself when I think of them but it was before I really realized the importance of personally archiving anything that might be interesting.

I'm honestly not sure if there was anything unique about them beyond the compilation arrangement, though, I'm pretty sure the custom sprites were just a mashup of selections from other sources and the maps may have likewise been borrowed.

The original 3 episode release of Doom. Every platform that sells Doom nowadays is Ultimate Doom (Or in some cases, just called Doom) that obviously includes TFC. But the base release can only be acquired now through second hand sites like Ebay. 

Not just for Doom, but other similar episode based shooters from the 90's. Heretic/Duke Nukem 3D/etc