ever wanted to try older IWADS?

i dont know if anyone here has found this before, but i found an EXE that if you give it the ultimate doom IWAD, it will let you play any of the older DOOM games! (inluding 1.1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.666, 1.8 and of course, 1.9). i believe it is called DOOM Patcher.

the historic IWADs will be fully intact, and it creates the IWAD in the EXE's folder. if you want to keep ultiate doom on your skulltag/zdoom/etc IWAD list, you will have to change it's name to 'doomu.wad', and change the created IWAD's name to 'doom.wad'.

this will let you see the monster killing itself bug in 1.1, the swastika in E1M4 in 1.2 and 1.1, and the lack of a nightmare skill in 1.1! (it will show a missing texture square in place of the nightmare name, and if even highlighted will cause modern source ports to crash.)

the same happens if you give it Doom II. it will let you use the older versions!

one other wad you can give it is TNT.wad. it will offer you a fixed IWAD, with the yellow key in singleplayer in MAP31!

the link is here:
http://doomgate.de/files/ladopato/index_en.html

(also, that page contains a link for you to play the pre-release version of doom! (alpha and beta versions) they are DOS exes only though, so may not work under the new windows enviroments.)

sorry if someone has found this before.

I remember this was mentioned somewhere in the past, but yeah, it's not bad to be reminded from time to time. A great way to quickly complete your Doom collection if you own the v1.9 IWAD.

Yes, this is known. It all started with Lee Killough's patch from The Ultimate DOOM to DOOM v1.1. Then other patches appeared (one for DOOM II, at least), and this guy made a mega-patch combining these and, so it seems, adding a few things.

Ultraboy94 said:

(inluding 1.1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.666, 1.8 and of course, 1.9)

What 1.4?

this will let you see the monster killing itself bug in 1.1

I think, you need the EXE of 1.1 (also available on that site) for this, too, don't you? And 1.1 refuse to run under Windows. Had something to do with the old network code, iIrc. An emulator should solve this, though.

LogicDeLuxe said:

What 1.4?

Well, I have 1.45 shareware somewhere....

LogicDeLuxe said:

And 1.1 refuse to run under Windows.

</facepalm>

LogicDeLuxe said:
What 1.4?

I think it's like v1.2 but with the updated executable from the shareware. Unless I'm wrong and a registered IWAD for v1.4, with some fixes, was shipped to some people.

I think, you need the EXE of 1.1 (also available on that site) for this, too, don't you? And 1.1 refuse to run under Windows.

I presume all these downgrades also produce the corresponding executable, as does Killough's patch.

RandyMandy said:
Well, I have 1.45 shareware somewhere....

I don't know about 1.45, but didn't Sybex' "The Official Doom Survivor's Strategies & Secrets" come with 1.25? (I have the book but the back cover has a tear in it where the envelope containing the disks would go and I can't remember whether I was the one who ripped them out or if it came that way.)

I've never heard of version 1.25, nor of 1.45.

Did this v1.25 really have an engine with "DOOM Operating System v1.25" at the top during startup? Do you have any references about it?

Probably he confused/combined 1.25 and 1.4 (which exist) into 1.45 (which doesn't).

I remember having 1.25 (shareware) on a CD somewhere too...dunno about v1.4 though.

Note: why doesn't the wiki mention 1.7 for both Doom.exe and Doom2.exe? :-/

I know there were "v1.3" versions that were bootlegs, but the first official release after v1.2 was v1.4. The v1.25 could be an unofficial hack, if it's really called v1.25 and that's not some pet name people gave one of the intermediate (unauthorized) versions.

Note that that article in the wiki only talks about the executable. The Versions of DOOM and DOOM II also refer to the whole game.

Hmm ... v1.25 seems to be a special case, as I found in this newdoom thread:

http://forums.newdoom.com/archive/index.php/t-21897.html

There's a mention of :

Doom v1.25 Shareware DOOM1.WAD 4225460 4/21/94 CRC:225d7fb1

"Special Sybex version", go figure :-/

I have a recollection (possibly incorrect) of 1.4 being the version that introduced specific support for the SB AWE32 soundcard.

Maes said:
Hmm ... v1.25 seems to be a special case, as I found in this newdoom thread:

http://forums.newdoom.com/archive/index.php/t-21897.html

There's a bit more info here: http://forums.newdoom.com/archive/index.php/t-36006.html

------------------------------------------------------------
SPECIAL VERSION 1.25 FOR SYBEX
------------------------------------------------------------
Unfortunately, this version does not support the GUS sound
card due to time limitations. This version should be more
stable than v1.2.
------------------------------------------------------------

I've found copies I made of the diskettes, but haven't had a chance to see what's different about 1.25 besides what's mentioned in the readme...

This is a patcher about registered wads and does not care about shareware Doom, since you can easily download all those if you really need. And I never heard of a registered Doom between 1.2 and 1.666, except for unofficial patches which he decided not to include.
Btw., is there a reason 1.25 is not included in the doom archive?

The archive has all the releases id put up on the idstuff directory, so I'm guessing that this v1.25 might be a version compiled for Sybex that id didn't think was worth providing by themselves, as they were getting ready for a juicier update. If anyone has a copy of the v1.25 shareware package, it could be uploaded to the /historic idgames directory.

myk said:

If anyone has a copy of the v1.25 shareware package, it could be uploaded to the /historic idgames directory.

I could do that. I will upload the original id installer (using DEICE.EXE) which requires DOS to unpack. Should be no issue since using old IWAD's is not useful to modern ports anyways.

Edit: upload finished.

There's also an unpacked version of 1.25 on DooMGate: http://doomgate.de/files/ladopato/demodl_en.html

myk said:

I know there were "v1.3" versions that were bootlegs

I actually have a copy of the 1.3 bootleg. Just ran across it tonight while checking some zip files on some old floppies. The executable is dated April 8, 1994. Works with the 1.2 iwad just fine!



Edit: I just compared the executable of my 1.3 to the "1.4" bootleg out there and they are the same EXCEPT for the way the version is displayed.
Using VBinDiff to compare the 2 files, this is what I got:

My 1.3: DOOM Operating System v%i.%i
1.4 bootleg: DOOM Operating System v1.4

Edit #2: After doing a google search for the zip file that I have, I found it uploaded here: http://cd.textfiles.com/cream/cream03/games/scumdu13.zip

Thanks for the 1.3 exe info, I got it before from here http://russell.slipgate.org/doom-patches/dm1_3.ZIP
It seems this one is the 2nd level beta of Doom v1.3 and the first one may be lost forever

[Guido-Anchovy] said:
My 1.3: DOOM Operating System v%i.%i
1.4 bootleg: DOOM Operating System v1.4

Does this mean that the v1.4 display is fake? I wonder why anyone would do that. It makes no sense. It only leads to confusion.

According to the date stamps, "v1.4" is 42 seconds older than "v1.3". Maybe they built it twice, because the first time they used the wrong version number in it... then again, the stamps could be from different systems (if one is not faked).

myk said:

Maybe they built it twice, because the first time they used the wrong version number in it

Hardly by accident, though. Checking the older versions reveals that this string was not changed since v1.1 (v0.99 printed a float number), thus I don't believe in a typo or similar mistakes.

Also supporting the fake theory is the fact that %i is used by the printf syntax, ie. it is used to output an integer value. That means, if the file is identical otherwise, there are two integer values passed which resemble the actual version number, but they are discarded since there is no %i there in v1.4, which pretty much lets it look like simply hacked with a hex editor. And since the files are identical otherwise, the internal version is indeed v1.3 (checked with a hex editor).

I can't think of any reason to change that string in such a way. So the question remains. Why was it done?

Ah, I see what you mean now... it's hard-coded instead of depending on the version value. Considering that, I guess a warez dude may have hacked it. Restoring %i.%i with a hex editor indeed unveils the true version number, 1.3.

LogicDeLuxe said:

I can't think of any reason to change that string in such a way. So the question remains. Why was it done?

I asked another friend about this and his theory was maybe whoever changed it did so for "street cred" with some BBS back in the day. i.e. "I RELEASED 1.4! Look at me!"

Curiously, I noticed that v1.25 is newer than v1.3, but still quite similar to it. Both have the low detail sky bug. And v1.25 appears to be the first version which changed "DOOM Operating System" to "DOOM System Startup".

That's really odd! I wonder if maybe 1.3 had a few bugs, so they just modified 1.2 to 1.25 and released it.

[Guido-Anchovy] said:
That's really odd! I wonder if maybe 1.3 had a few bugs, so they just modified 1.2 to 1.25 and released it.

No way. Remember the low detail sky bug? That would be too much of a coincidence to make the exact same blunder twice. Also the command line parameters supporting Doom II development are there, which would make no sense if it were a different branch from 1.2.

Not a proof, but there is already a "doom2.wad" string in 1.25, which likely means that they changed it from "doomr.wad" a few days after the 1.3 build. Remember the old Doom FAQ? They hadn't decided on a name for the successor yet, so they probably renamed the wad file once they did.

LogicDeLuxe said:

Remember the old Doom FAQ? They hadn't decided on a name for the successor yet, so they probably renamed the wad file once they did.

They mustn't have tried too hard now, have they?

You might remember that ID also skipped an official 1.3 of Wolf3D because someone else released an unofficial 1.3.

I've also heard rumours that this unofficial 1.3 of Wolf3D contained pornographic material.

Vermil said:

I've also heard rumours that this unofficial 1.3 of Wolf3D contained pornographic material.

You're playing mind games with us. Dirty games. Aimed at our lower, most basal instincts.