1993 Mystery WAD?

I have something to share with you guys that I think is kind of cool. I got this file back in 2008 from a site that is apparently gone now (or I can't remember the name correctly, but I'm pretty sure the site was called captaindoom.org)

If I remember what the site said correctly, supposedly this is a level designed by Sandy Peterson that was never finished (It doesn't seem to be playable either). I think I have reason to believe this could possibly be legit, because the last modified date on the file is 1993.



The name of this file is lookjohn. Perhaps this was supposed to address John Romero or John Carmack? I don't really want to be the detective here, so perhaps you guys could tell me what you think...

http://www.mediafire.com/?yiprap1wpjwynfg

Interesting. (The map is E3M5 btw to save people a few seconds)

It's super unfinished I believe. I can't get out of the starting room and the rest of the map is pretty much untextured and has no things in it. It features a handful of apparent unfinished areas. It's hard to pick out anything interesting or useful about it given how super unfinished it is but the release date is pretty remarkable. Nice find.

Interesting.

I took a look at it, and although it doesn't seem to resemble any map from Doom or Doom II, it does have that particular style. You very well could have stumbled across an unfinished Id map.

Very Cool if it is real, but, it is not hard to change your system date and save a just started map with that date. :(

Agreed, faking something like that is too easy. I'd like to know more about the website it was found on.

Marnetmar said:

captaindoom.org

The domain name's available if anyone wants it. Haven't found anything remotely like it so far in the lists of current/former Doom sites that I've checked.

GreyGhost said:

Agreed, faking something like that is too easy. I'd like to know more about the website it was found on.

The domain name's available if anyone wants it. Haven't found anything remotely like it so far in the lists of current/former Doom sites that I've checked.

Well from what I remember, I came upon the site on accident. It was also terribly made and looked something like this site: http://www.fixedearth.com/

Chances are it was some unofficial site some young kid made. I'm starting to doubt the legitimacy of this WAD now...

If you dismiss it outright, you risk throwing away a piece of Doom history. Also think about where the wad may have been found. If it's some geocities shit thrown up by some newbie, the chances of them actually modifying the wad as a joke don't look too favorable. But then you have to consider the circumstances around how they found the wad. The internet sometimes can be like that telephone game, where you start off with one story, and eventually you end up with a completely different story. So even if no harm was intended, it could have been misinterpreted somewhere along the distribution route that Sandy make the wad, when in fact there's something else to it.

Unfinished Sandy Petersen maps are like fragments of the True Cross, most turn out to be fakes but it's cool when you stumble across the real thing. One way to find out would to ask the man himself.

its funny cause most people around here think sandy peterson is a shit level designer.

Sandy Peterson had a bit of an odd style, but his maps actually weren't bad.

its funny cause most people around here think sandy petersen is spelled "sandy peterson"


Actually, I have nothing against the guy's style. They're a bit less aesthetically pleasing, but they're still fun.

Xaser said:

sandy petersen

I learned something new today.

Foofoo said:

its funny cause most people around here think sandy peterson is a shit level designer.

yup

@GreyGhost:
Where can i find a collection of unfinished Petersen maps?

Lorenzo said:

@GreyGhost:
Where can i find a collection of unfinished Petersen maps?

Doom II's IWAD

I lol'd

Mr. Freeze said:

Doom II's IWAD

Ooh, mild scalding.

It possibly may have been a map that Id dropped from production or a map made by some guy who wanted to play a practical joke who knows? Like GreyGhost said the only way to find out is to ask the man himself.

It's a pretty obvious fake.

- Id used text source files for their maps. There is no reason for them to compile a map which obviously wouldn't do anything in vanilla Doom, so why would they bother doing this? Not even the unfinished maps in the alphas are that pointless.

- It was not build with idbsp, the only nodebuilder back then. Easy to verify: Just take idbsp and rebuild it, and you'll get a significantly different file.

- The map has properties which are not possible with idbsp: There are quite some neighboring sectors with identical properties. The only way to make them individual sectors with idbsp is to change at least one attribute. Id itself used to put dummy tags if needed. See the stair builders in original Doom maps for the most common example.

Well, scouring USENET turns up nothing but some posts in 1993 saying that Petersen and John Romero were the sole level designers near the end. I know that doesn't help much, but it's something. Maybe this is something Sandy sent to Romero one day.

EDIT: Upon looking up some of my findings for alpha-era maps, This has some qualities of alpha *and* post-release maps. For starters, the map is mostly orthogonal walls that are confined (mostly) to a grid. In fact, most all lines in the map are built in conformance to a grid.

However, this map is missing a bounding box. The bounding box was used in the old versions of id's map editor, most likely an engine limitation or to keep map designs in a "believeable" dimension of a building, preferably ones on the intermission screen. This seems to be free-flowing for the most part. However, since most of id's maps seemed to have started near a far corner or near the edge of a map, this kind of gives me an idea of what part of the map this fragment would have been: the lower right side.

The main issue I have with this is: This feels more like a Tom Hall map fragment than anything else! Tom liked low ceilings (some ceilings in the alpha were so low, the doomguy in the final release couldn't walk through them), conforming to the grid, and many orthogonal/diagonal lines. So if this is official, I wouldn't say it's entirely Petersen's. if anything, it might be a retextured fragment o f an unfinished Tom Hall level.

Or it could be fake. Who knows!

LogicDeLuxe said:

It's a pretty obvious fake.

- Id used text source files for their maps. There is no reason for them to compile a map which obviously wouldn't do anything in vanilla Doom, so why would they bother doing this? Not even the unfinished maps in the alphas are that pointless.

- It was not build with idbsp, the only nodebuilder back then. Easy to verify: Just take idbsp and rebuild it, and you'll get a significantly different file.

- The map has properties which are not possible with idbsp: There are quite some neighboring sectors with identical properties. The only way to make them individual sectors with idbsp is to change at least one attribute. Id itself used to put dummy tags if needed. See the stair builders in original Doom maps for the most common example.

Well, I guess the case is closed then.

can you reupload this into a zip file to keep the file attributes? That seems to be removed from my copy.

Csonicgo said:

can you reupload this into a zip file to keep the file attributes? That seems to be removed from my copy.

What do you mean by file attributes?

When I downloaded it from the hosting site, the dates were all reset to the exact time I downloaded the file. if you put it in a container like a zip file or something, the original file date information will be there. This leads me to believe this was once in a zip file itself...

Csonicgo said:

When I downloaded it from the hosting site, the dates were all reset to the exact time I downloaded the file. if you put it in a container like a zip file or something, the original file date information will be there. This leads me to believe this was once in a zip file itself...

Ah, I understand now.

http://www.mediafire.com/?zcowgjx9wb36sm7

Holy crap, 7-Zip flipped out when it tried to load that. The RAR file(ugh) says that the file was last messed with this monday, however it SCREAMED about a date error. I assume that's when you copied it over to something to upload it this week? Either way, whatever you did, the original modification date is gone or corrupt. So I'll have to take your word for it.

Edit: by date error, I mean it literally had no date set at all. weird. I hope you have the original still with the original modified date.

Csonicgo said:

Holy crap, 7-Zip flipped out when it tried to load that. The RAR file(ugh) says that the file was last messed with this monday, however it SCREAMED about a date error. I assume that's when you copied it over to something to upload it this week? Either way, whatever you did, the original modification date is gone or corrupt. So I'll have to take your word for it.

Edit: by date error, I mean it literally had no date set at all. weird. I hope you have the original still with the original modified date.

Well, that was the original. Too bad the WAD is fake however.

You know it COULD be someone trying to fix the wad to make it playable in vanilla but the original is long gone. Or, if it's fake, whoever did it knows how to channel Tom Hall/Sandy Petersen through a map editor. :)

While unlikely, I suppose those are possibilities. Well, maybe we could try finishing the map just for fun. I think I might try to.

I wholeheartedly conclude this was never a Sandy Petersen level.

Nice try attempting to fake the date stamp, Marnetmar, but no cigar!