THE SKY MAY BE is broken in ALL Sourceports.

As the title says. The WAD seems to be corrupt somehow, because the only way to play it with all the sprites and textures is to use an arcane DOS setup and extract an IWAD-riddled mess. I will be contacting Doug The Eagle about this mess very soon, but as of today, THE SKY MAY BE is only playable 100% in DOS Doom. Not even Chocolate-doom can play it properly.

Whatever shall we do

http://doomedsda.us/wad1137.html

just read creaphis' instructions in the attached text files, use the correct wad and stop spreading panic.

The OP was probably useless.

While I've been unable to play THE SKY MAY BE correctly(and never bothered in the first place) its possible to load BLESSED.DEH as a wad via Skulltag(and other installed source ports). Playing the "blessed engine" alone without the main maps themselves is quite amusing.

dew said:

http://doomedsda.us/wad1137.html

just read creaphis' instructions in the attached text files, use the correct wad and stop spreading panic.

I had no idea that resource existed. neither did the person that told me to start this thread.

But that isn't the case. The problem is: the source port should be able to detect those graphics, when it's not. the game is "playable", but still broken without that "fix".

I wasn't trying to spread "panic" at all, jeez :(

Maes said:

The OP was probably useless.

Actually it was useful to one person on #chocolate-doom, but I still think the WAD warrants a re-release with fixed markers. :)

There's a lot of badly packaged WADs that desperately need a re-release but it won't be done due to the rigid interpretation of the 'may not modify' clause in them.

Who cares that most of these will eventually become space hogs nobody can use in a few years once 64 bit systems become the norm...?

Graf Zahl said:

There's a lot of badly packaged WADs that desperately need a re-release but it won't be done due to the rigid interpretation of the 'may not modify' clause in them.

I think there was only one such mod (OTTAWAU) which was both broken in a way that made it unusable even with legitimate UDOOM copies, and which was the object of contention with such "purists" (well, at least here on DW there was exactly ONE person defending its "chastity"). And AFAIK an un-fucked release found its way to the archive anyway. So there.

There's a lot of stuff that will quickly become unusable to the average Joe because it requires old DOS tools, even when used with source ports

Let's face it: Most of these won't even be able to start a batch file that'd do most of the work! How are they supposed to handle more complex stuff on a system where these tools can't even run without outside help (namely Dosbox?)

Well, considering that Sky May Be has a few effects that ONLY work in vanilla Doom.exe (like the switch that's labeled "Do Not Press"), I can only imagine how broken it gets with some of Doom's glitches fixed and repaired.

This is the only instance I can think of in which fixing bugs makes a level more broken.

I suppose we can imagine these wads have a life time before they expire, same as us.

The problem seems to be that the wad does not have any markers for where the sprite lumps begin and end. At least Chocolate Doom's -merge option seems to require them (and so did all the common DOS tools everyone usually used for this task, DeuSF and NWT, but this wad seems to come with a custom installer exe which probably does not need them).

If you want to play it in Chocolate with the new sprites, just add a "SS_START" lump before MISGA0 (lump #162 in _SMB417.WAD, or #161 if you count from 0) and a "SS_END" lump after SPOSU0 (lump #230 or #229) and use -merge as usual. The flats are already delimited with F_START and F_END it seems.

That will probably also fix the problem with other engines, but I only tested PrBoom+ in addition to Chocolate Doom.

You could argue that releasing materials onto the archive gives the archive owners the right to take actions that maintain those files. If this is the case, Ty could always commission some intrepid editors to do this archive maintenance work under the umbrella of officialness. IMHO.

We have had this argument before.

Ty himself posted and said the uploads on the archives remain how they are.

The end.

Which means people on ST and other ports get pissed and make illegal, unofficial (yet fixed) versions of those wads. Strain is one of them. This can only get worse...

Lol yeah I remember that argument well...perversely, the only person advocating no changes/adaptations whatsoever, did so based on one possible interpretation of "defending the author's non-modification wishes", and also advocated enforcing it even at the cost of condemning the mod into oblivion, which IMHO is just perverse/fatalistic. By that same logic, had the author chosen to write "you MAY modify it" instead, there would be no ground for debate, and the mod could be unconditionally saved/converted. Even more perverse.

As for the OP, isn't it a bit ironic complaining about the most deliberately broken Doom mod ever being...well...broken? ;-)

Quasar said:

You could argue that releasing materials onto the archive gives the archive owners the right to take actions that maintain those files. If this is the case, Ty could always commission some intrepid editors to do this archive maintenance work under the umbrella of officialness. IMHO.

Fully agreed. The thing is that absolutely nobody wants to alter these mods in any way, just to make sure they continue to work as the makers expected.

Super Jamie said:

We have had this argument before.

Ty himself posted and said the uploads on the archives remain how they are.

The end.

Not The End!
I don't like this kind of attitude. Yes, Ty has spoken and I think he's wrong. In my opinion the archive needs an active maintainer, not just somebody who dumps stuff into it without ever checking its usability. So the discussion will inevitably continue.

It's easy to be dismissive if you happen to have the knowledge - and more importantly the technical means - to un-messify these WADs for yourself. But we are rapidly approaching a point in time where it will no longer be possible to run the ancient programs needed to install them without tools that go over the average user's head. DosBox is great but it's sure not something a computer newbie will even remotely understand how to use, not to mention that before using it you'd first have to know that it exists!

And then it's 'Goodbye Strain, Cleimos 2, Obituary, etc...' I don't want that to happen. These are great mods that deserve a wider audience than they currently get. I wonder how many users out there downloaded these packages, got confused and never got to experience what's in them.

Graf Zahl said:

Who cares that most of these will eventually become space hogs nobody can use in a few years once 64 bit systems become the norm...?

Fortunately, we have DOSBox, and several companies are using it for re-releases of old software already.
Besides that, any successful CPU is downward compatible. It's just Windows which ditched 16 bit support, thus doesn't support any software written for MS-DOS anymore.
I don't see MS-DOS dying anytime soon. Well, it requires an experienced or willing to learn user, which might be a turn off for many indeed.

LogicDeLuxe said:

Fortunately, we have DOSBox, and several companies are using it for re-releases of old software already.

Read my post why DosBox is not a solution but a crutch at best.

Besides that, any successful CPU is downward compatible. It's just Windows which ditched 16 bit support, thus doesn't support any software written for MS-DOS anymore.

Not correct. x64 architecture can not operate in a mode that allows to run 64 bit and 16 bit real mode/virtual 8086 mode code at the same time. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64 )
They might have been able to implement 16-bit Windows support but that system is even more dead than DOS so it would have been a waste of time.

I don't see MS-DOS dying anytime soon. Well, it requires an experienced or willing to learn user, which might be a turn off for many indeed.

For all intents and purposes DOS is dead and has been dead for several years. You have to admit yourself that it requires an experienced user to use and understand it.

And that's the whole point: All these 'broken' mods can easily be made unbroken by an experienced user. But that begs the question whether that is a desirable outcome. For the general public that happens to be interested in Doom - and that's apparently more people than some here might want to admit - these mods are dead meat, for all intents and purposes.

LogicDeLuxe said:

Besides that, any successful CPU is downward compatible. It's just Windows which ditched 16 bit support, thus doesn't support any software written for MS-DOS anymore.

Actually, x86 in real/16-bit mode (Virtual 8086 mode) is a wholly different beast than the native 32-bit mode that came with 386 and afterwards (protected mode) and is used by Doom and late DOS-era games. A DOS emulator must however emulate both, not just one, and even protected mode DOS games need a mix of both to start.

You can't run such applications natively on a modern CPU without switching modes between real/protected all the time, which is what Windows 3.x/9x/Me did (not the best thing for stability), and 64-bit CPUs even lack that ability when in 64-bit Long Mode (they must switch to legacy mode hard reset to be able to run 32-bit protected mode stuff, and from there access 16-bit real mode). So yeah, there is downward compatibility but it's more and more convoluted to achieve.

Windows NT actually have a virtual DOS machine (NTVDM) which did this switching task, but as you said it's actually entirely omitted in pure 64-bit versions of the OS.

Even if users are smart enough to run DosBox and other tools, it still doesn't mean they're going to be bothered to take the time. I've skipped WADs because they required too much work.

Super Jamie said:

We have had this argument before.

Ty himself posted and said the uploads on the archives remain how they are.

The end.

Right.

Let's take a look at STRAIN.
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=8467
Let's download it: content of strain10.zip:

strain.001
strain.002
strain.003
strain.004
strain.txt
unpack.bat

This is the full content of the archive. Six (6) files.

Let's read the readme:

================================================================
Copyright / Permissions
================================================================

Authors should write us (ada@iname.com) to inquire into the use
of these levels.

You MAY distribute this WAD, provided you include this file and
the entire STRAIN package, with no modifications.

You may distribute STRAIN in any electronic
format (BBS, Diskette, CD, etc) but no money may be collected
for this add-on without writing us for permission. Not even
if the money is just to 'recover the cost of the medium.' This
obviously includes software compilations. Just write us
already. Also, you must keep the STRAIN package intact,
including this file.

Other than that, enjoy and please spread STRAIN as far and wide
as possible! And please write us to let us know what you think
or to at least let us know how far it spread!

Oh yeah, for the crazies out there who are always after an
unearned buck: STRAIN and its installer are provided as is and
come with no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied.
In no event will the copyright holders be liable for any damages
resulting from the use of this software.

Solution: create a new strain10.zip that will contain the following:

strain.wad
strain.txt
originalpackage/strain10.zip

Problem solved! You complied with the letter of the readme and the rules of the land and everything is fine and dandy. It is a distribution of the wad (yes, the wad itself) which includes the "this file" (which is the readme) and the entire STRAIN package with no modification. Exactly what they wanted.

Lol! So much for excessively anal language. One word wasn't correctly chosen and the whole thing falls apart... :D

Strain is not a very good example, if you want to point the problems of certain distributions. What you actually need is simple file chaining, which should be available as a base utility in every self-respecting OS, and an unzip utility.

It would be possible to perform the same operation under DOS, CP/M, UNIX, Linux, AmigaDOS, even MacOS X with built-in tools.

OTTAWAU on the other hand is a much more fucked up example:

• Relies on a precise version of the game (PLAIN Doom v1.9), which locks out even legitimate Ultimate Doom owners.
  
• Relies on custom DOS patching tools to patch the .exe and IWAD.
  
• Even if the assumption of using DOS (and to a lesser degree, non-Ultimate Doom v1.9) were OK for its time of release, its method of patching was nonstandard even for the time. Uses no DEH, no DEUSF, and assumes entirely nonpatched .EXEs and .WADs.
  

...such a clusterfuck sure can be packaged better. What makes it even more of a WTF is that the author was already an experienced WAD author by the time he made it, and had already released WADs with patched graphics and sprites. Since for his own sanity/ease of development he sure must have used DEUSF and DEHACKED like everyone else, I wonder what ultimately led him to this fucked up choice of format. Unless he was SOOOOOO 1337 that he hard-coded the changes in HEX in his own DOOM.EXE and DOOM.WAD!!!

There are other "delights" such as stuff that comes with a gazillion .PCX files that then you must run through several utilities and fuck your IWAD... no thanks. Keep the original for "purists" and make a sane single-file PWAD for oh...pretty much anyone not constrained to use a DOS-only box with vanilla, or even for vanilla users that want to keep their sanity.

What's really stopping someone from creating fixed versions of these mods and hosting them outside of idgames, like with Aliens TC?

david_a said:

What's really stopping someone from creating fixed versions of these mods and hosting them outside of idgames, like with Aliens TC?

Probably the fact that some guys with way too much time on their hands will bitch and moan about it/its moral implications/its roles in the 2012 Apocalypse on a certain Doom forum? :-p

The more I think about it the less problems I see with it. If the original author isn't around to repackage it:

A) He probably doesn't have any interest in Doom anymore and doesn't care at all
B) It might even be flattering that people think highly enough of his work that they expend the effort of fixing it so new people can enjoy it

david_a said:

The more I think about it the less problems I see with it. If the original author isn't around to repackage it:

A) He probably doesn't have any interest in Doom anymore and doesn't care at all
B) It might even be flattering that people think highly enough of his work that they expend the effort of fixing it so new people can enjoy it

I'm definitely with you and Graf on this. It's not like you are replacing the original wad's place with the modernized version. Keep the original, but create a modernized version as well. If someone is anal enough to get OJ's lawyer involved, then rescind, but it isn't likely. I mean FFS, if it went to court (probably over some wad 99.9999% of population earth doesnt play), you have the mandate of heaven.

Graf Zahl said:

And then it's 'Goodbye Strain, Cleimos 2, Obituary, etc...' I don't want that to happen. These are great mods that deserve a wider audience than they currently get. I wonder how many users out there downloaded these packages, got confused and never got to experience what's in them.

Well, if they view this thread, they'll be able to find usable versions at the DSDA. Thanks for bringing this up. I've been meaning to do this for awhile. :-)

CLEIM20:
http://doomedsda.us/lmps/323/cleim20.zip

OBTIC11:
http://doomedsda.us/lmps/708/obtic11.zip

STRAIN10:
http://doomedsda.us/lmps/830/strain10.zip