DOOM Archaeology: The First 25 WADs

[Never_Again]

 

1994-03-07  ORIGWAD      Jeff Bird                       manually created with a hex-editor
1994-03-11  CROSS          Alistair Brown                manually created with a hex-editor
1994-03-22  DIAMONDx    Michael Kelsey¹             two nearly identical WADs
1994-03-23  E2M1ED        Ed Boling²
1994-03-24  DYLAN1*      Dylan Cuthbert³             BSP distributor
1994-03-26  DMMKS*       ?                                 actual date uncertain⁴
                  LITHE2M1     Chris Hopkins            
                  STONES        Michael Kelsey           
1994-03-27  E1M7BCE*    Brendy Ebel                   final version on /idgames: E2M2BCE
                  JEG_ExL1     Jeremy Last                   two WADs
                  TNCROSS*    Valis (Tom Neff⁵)            final version on /idgames: TNCROSS2
1994-03-28  23CASTLE     Aaron Auseth             

                  STEPSx         Geoff Allan                    two nearly identical WADs, final version on /idgames: DEWADZ1

1994-03-29  DEATH          Terry Evans⁶                  37665 bytes, DM-only
                  DEATH         Jason Whittington⁷          39775 bytes
                  DEATH*⁸      Bret Larwick⁹                  53 KB, DM-only
                  MINE1          Geoff Allan              
1994-03-30  HOCKBETA*  Seth Cohn                      final version on /idgames: HOCKEY10
1994-03-31  EHD1x          Ed Jankovsky                  three WADs

 

Notes

* - not on /idgames

1 - corroborated in "E-mail address needed" post on a.g.d

2 - name sourced via email address match from the Credits section of README.1ST of the DEU 5.21 archive

3 - email address sourced from the TXT file for the updated version, DYLAN2;

     matched in the "BSP v1.0 (100% correct node builder)" post on a.g.d

4 - several CD-ROM compilations have DMMKS with a June 1994 time stamp. Two factors favor the March date:

     a) IWAD tag - some early editors (e.g. DEU 5.0 and DoomEd 2.42a) created this instead of the PWAD tag

     b) barebones design similar to ORIGWAD

5 - it's a puzzle that the author of MAVERICK, PUEBLO and the WIF spec (the grandfather of UDMF) should have released his

     first few WADs under an alias; his authorship appears to have been common knowledge at the time (source)
6 - sources:

     a) "Original deathmatch level!" post on a.g.d

     b) "DEATH.ZIP Worth It" thread, ibid

7 - corroborated in "NEW DOOM LEVEL!!" post, ibid

8 - the original appears to have been lost; a D2 conversion is included in Maximum DOOM as DEATH.WAD under \MAXIMUM\WADS\DOOM2.

     Referenced with the brief description "2 rings" in the "*** 116 Deathmatch DOOM WADs ranked! ***" post on a.g.d.

9 - authorship confirmed in "Creating a new mission" post on a.g.d.

    

Only WADs containing original, new-from-scratch levels are included. Time stamp accuracy is +/- 1 day due to time zone considerations.

March 31 1994 was chosen as the arbitrary cut-off date as the following month the number of new WADs increased drastically, following

the release of DEU 5.0, the first level editor with a working nodebuilder. Collapsing each WAD series (e.g. DIAMOND1 + DIAMOND2) into a

single entry gives a total of 19 entries.

 

While much effort has been put into making this list as accurate and comprehensive as possible it must be conceded that such lists are

not likely to ever be 100% accurate and complete, because most of the primary sources - BBSes, the archives of AOL, CompuServe,

Fidonet etc. - have been lost for more than a decade. Usenet posts, too, have been decimated by the transfer of the archive from

DejaNews to Google 20 years ago, and the latter's subsequent policy of honoring post removal requests (e.g. try searching for posts by

the author of the "Official" DOOM FAQ).

 

Still, additions and corrections are welcome, as long as they are accompanied with reasonable sources/references.

 

edit 2023-09-25:

- corrected date for STEPSx - thanks to deathz0r and thestarrover

- replaced obsolete link to DMMKS

- Dylan C.'s relation to BSP clarified (nobody spotted that for three years? ;)

Edited September 26, 2023 by Never_Again : see edit note in txt

[P41R47]

Always wondered why the Serenity serie (Serenity, Eternity, Infinity, in reverse order episode-wise) its not deemed as the first megawad ever made.

Yes separate releases, but it is the first full set of maps made by a team for Doom.

[Never_Again]

The first megawad ever made is most likely WADPAK1, a compilation by Gary Karnik. The original version was released on May 6th or 7th; the WAD on /idgames is an updated version from August.

 

The first megawad that is not a compilation was probably Enjay's NJDOOM1 (Nov 27). Note that the E2 part of it (NJ_SOH) was released no later than July 1994. The original version of SERENITY (Sep 16 1994) predates NJDOOM1; however, the last installment in the series - INFINITY - took until May 1995 to complete. By then OBTIC and BF_THUD! (both Jan 1995) were out.

Edited May 21, 2020 by Never_Again : added a link

[Mangcubus]

I bet none of these people expected these to be sought-after historical pieces one day.

[Mystic 256]

Over the past 25+ years we have gone from 25 wads to probably millions by this point

[P41R47]

13 hours ago, Never_Again said:

The first megawad ever made is most likely WADPAK1, a compilation by Gary Karnik. The original version was released on May 6th or 7th; the WAD on /idgames is an updated version from August.

 

The first megawad that is not a compilation was probably Enjay's NJDOOM1 (Nov 27). Note that the E2 part of it (NJ_SOH) was released no later than July 1994. The original version of SERENITY (Sep 16 1994) predates NJDOOM1; however, the last installment in the series - INFINITY - took until May 1995 to complete. By then OBTIC and BF_THUD! (both Jan 1995) were out.

Oh, holy s...

I know NJDoom, i got NJDoom, i love NJDoom, and i constantly forget about it.
Thanks anyway for answering, also, i didn't know about the wadpak1, so i gonna give it a try. 

[Never_Again]

I updated the first post. After a year and a half most of the blanks have been filled:

- DIAMONDx -- and not STONES, as previously thought -- turned out to be Michael Kelsey's first release

- the authors of DYLAN1 and of the lost DEATH WAD have been identified

- two of the DEATH WADs are now on /idgames

 

Thus the only remaining blanks are the author of DMMKS and the third DEATH WAD itself. So far all searches for it proved fruitless.

Presumably, a bit-identical copy could be obtained by changing the map entry of the WAD from the Maximum Doom collection to E1M1 but I'd like to find the original.

[Dusty_Rhodes]

Really cool project. I'll have to download these as a little preservation.

[Gibbon]

Definitely going to get these.

[Doomlover77]

I’ve got most of the wads on that list above on CDs. 
there’s a level released on 30/3/94, unknown author, screenshot below. 
 

there’s also wads released in January which are:-

Dmgrav, 14/1/94 by Unknown 

Hevnhell, 17/1/94 by Kenneth S. Forte

Logo, 18/1/94 by Kenneth S. forte. 
Melange, 20/1/94 by Kenneth S. Forte. 
Dprison, 21/1/94 by Justin Powell 

Fertile, 25/1/94 by Kenneth S. forte. 

Dspiral, 26/1/94 by Kenneth s. Forte. 

One level released in February is Pillars, 18/2/94 by David Allen. 
 

other levels for Doom released in March:-

Letter, by DirkyPunglePink, 1/3/94. 
Epi1m2, Mark Fanslau, 8/3/94

Swell, unknown, 22/3/94

Maniac, Jon Boulet, 27/3/94. 
Djg21-1a, unknown, 28/3/94. 
D, unknown, 29/3/94. 

Edited November 17, 2021 by Doomlover77 : Extra information for wad archaeology

[Never_Again]

3 hours ago, Doomlover77 said:

there’s a level released on 30/3/94, unknown author, screenshot below.

 

This is Terry Evans' DEATH.WAD from my list.

 

3 hours ago, Doomlover77 said:

there’s also wads released in January which are:-

Dmgrav, 14/1/94 by Unknown 

Hevnhell, 17/1/94 by Kenneth S. Forte

Logo, 18/1/94 by Kenneth S. forte. 
Melange, 20/1/94 by Kenneth S. Forte. 
Dprison, 21/1/94 by Justin Powell 

Fertile, 25/1/94 by Kenneth S. forte. 

Dspiral, 26/1/94 by Kenneth s. Forte. 

One level released in February is Pillars, 18/2/94 by David Allen.

 

All of these dates are wrong. Most of them are the result of the author's system crash resetting the BIOS clock. I have a dozen+ WADs dated Dec 30 1899, and a bunch more from the 1980s. Other reasons may include buggy transfer/archival software, user error and possibly pranks.

 

3 hours ago, Doomlover77 said:

other levels for Doom released in March:-

Letter, by DirkyPunglePink, 1/3/94. 
Epi1m2, Mark Fanslau, 8/3/94

 

I don't have these two. What are your source(s) for them? I expect EPI1M2 at least to be a modified id level.

 

The rest:

SWELL - CROSS, modified by Dave Nixon; included with DoomEd v2.42a release (1994-03-22)

MANIAC - modified E1M1, "author" is Jean-François Brissette, according to the TXT file

DJG21-1A - heavily modified E1M9

D - a bent-out-of-shape E2M9

 

The list in this thread is the result of years of research - reading hundreds of Usenet posts and TXT files, cross-referencing WADs' binary contents, examining them with various utils including hex editors and last, but not least, actually playing (!) them. So I am afraid that contributions in form of data dumps that can be produced in five minutes are not likely to be useful.

 

This is not meant to dampen your enthusiasm for DOOM archaeology - far from it. I appreciate anyone showing interest in this arcane field and have been following with fascination the WAD compilations thread, to which I should contribute some additions and corrections of my own soon. I just want to emphasize that anyone who wishes to contribute to the list in this thread should be prepared to do a lot more work than just doing a search on his files and checking the dates.

 

The dates cannot always be trusted. There are three major milestones in the history of DOOM map editors development that one should keep in mind re: the dates:

• 1994-02-19 - DoomEd 2.20. The first editor to allow modification of the geometry of stock id levels by manipulating VERTEXes. Any WADs dated earlier than this will necessarily be stock maps with the only changes being different THINGS, textures, light levels, triggers etc.
• 1994-03-23 - DEU 5 beta 4. The first editor to allow building levels from scratch. Anything older (excluding misdated files) is either modified stock maps or WADs built entirely by hand with a hex editor.
• 1994-03-30 - DEU 5.0 public release. The floodgates are opened.

 

So just by having a look through PILLARS' TXT file one can see that it could not have been released before March 31:

Build Time              : 12+ hours
Editor(s) used          : DEU 5.0 (Best so far.)

Same goes for the earlier WADs you listed, e.g. MELANGE.TXT:

 

Build Time              : About 1 day, much of it devoted to textures
Editor(s) used          : DEU 5.0 and BSP 1.0

 

Note that BSP 1.0 was released the day after DEU 5.0.

 

 

The one truly interesting entry in your list is DMGRAV. Three CDROMs in my collection - Deathmatch 7000 and the two Doom Magazines - list it as dated Jan 14. This is nearly two months before ORIGWAD and CROSS were created. The barebone design - a single sector shaped like a fish - and the SEGS/NODES counts may lead one to speculate that this, too, was done with a hex editor. Unlike ORIGWAD's readme, the only TXT file for DMGRAV I've been able to find (given below in its entirety) makes no mention of its origins:
 

This DOOM external .WAD file allows you to float above a mountain
range.
No demons to kill, because the sector is not really closed. Walk
around. Explore!
Blow up the trashcans if you want to! Happy DOOMing.

So this could be a fourth made-by-hand level in existence but the question of its true date remains open. The TXT above is dated 1994-11-23 on the 4-ever-Doomed CDROM and the WAD itself a day before that. The Collection of Doom Utils, Doom Accessories and Doom Fever CDROMs give 1994-06-06 for the WAD, and DDN CD Occurrence 1 lists 1994-10-20. Of all these I find the January date the least plausible, not just out of the general considerations outlined earlier but also because all three CDROMs show evidence of the compilers' carelessness: lots of TXT files missing and, in case of DM7000, a lot of corrupt files.

 

BTW, it would be nice to compile a comprehensive list of all known WADs, including id level modifications, created before DOOM2 release, but that would be beyond the scope of this project.

 

Edited November 17, 2021 by Never_Again : formatting

[4shockblast]

3 hours ago, Doomlover77 said:

there’s also wads released in January which are:-

Dmgrav, 14/1/94 by Unknown 

Hevnhell, 17/1/94 by Kenneth S. Forte

Logo, 18/1/94 by Kenneth S. forte. 
Melange, 20/1/94 by Kenneth S. Forte. 
Dprison, 21/1/94 by Justin Powell 

Fertile, 25/1/94 by Kenneth S. forte. 

Dspiral, 26/1/94 by Kenneth s. Forte. 

One level released in February is Pillars, 18/2/94 by David Allen. 
 

other levels for Doom released in March:-

Letter, by DirkyPunglePink, 1/3/94. 
Epi1m2, Mark Fanslau, 8/3/94

Swell, unknown, 22/3/94

Maniac, Jon Boulet, 27/3/94. 
Djg21-1a, unknown, 28/3/94. 
D, unknown, 29/3/94. 

Just wanted to chime in that these wads almost certainly do not predate origwad. I didn't investigate all of them, but for example, the first Kenneth Forte map on idgames (dspiral) specifies in the txt it was made in DEU 5.0, which wasn't released until March of 1994. Generally, dates in zips are more or less trustworthy but should always be taken with a grain of salt, as the user's computer clock may have been set incorrectly on creation. As such, any wads that supposedly predate origwad or are around this time should always be double-checked against information in the txt, shovelware CDs, Usenet, wherever possible to ensure they actually could have the date indicated by the zip timestamp.

 

Edit: got sniped by Never_Again :p

[Doomlover77]

Interesting read @Never_Again
To answer your question, Ep1mi2.wad is a from scratch doom level taken from the 4_Ever Doomed CD. Download link here :- 

 

https://archive.org/download/cdrom-4everdoomed/4-everdoomedcypresssoftware1994.iso/ARCHIVE%2FLEVS%2FD1%2FWADS08%2FEP1MI2.EXE

The letter.wad is from D!Zone 3, the link is for the wad archive. 
 

https://www.wad-archive.com/wad/4f289761e2c71101bb646405e5e0a70f7b879b30/download/letter.wad

 

Hope this helps. @Doomlover77

Edited November 17, 2021 by Doomlover77 : Extra information for wad archaeology project.

[Never_Again]

23 minutes ago, Doomlover77 said:

Ep1mi2.wad is a from scratch doom level taken from the 4_Ever Doomed CD

 

Thank you for the pointer. I got the WAD and the ISO; the reason it was not turning up in my searches is that it comes in a self-extracting exec.

Its TXT file states

Editor(s) used          : Deu 5.2

so it could not have been made before 1994-05-20.

 

26 minutes ago, Doomlover77 said:

letter.wad is from D!Zone 3

 

Got it. The TXT file doesn't specify the version of DEU used; however the TXT uses WAD Authoring Template v1.4, first included with DEU 5.2, so once again not earlier than May 20 -- unless the author was a beta tester for DEU and released this anonymously, which is not very likely, in which case the date can be pushed back as far as May 6.

[xdude_gamer]

Dang if there's January 1994 WADs out there imagine if there are just Dec. 1993 builds lying around!

[Never_Again]

Not in January, let alone December, but in February there was this DOOM "Extra Hard" ... errm ... thing.

Which reminds me of a few more ppl who might find this thread of interest: @Maes, @GreyGhost and @funduke.

[Doomlover77]

I don’t mind doing a list of ID modified level

wad files ! It would take me a couple of days. 

[SiFi270]

This seems like a good place to ask about the maps recommended in this Twitter thread. I've always felt so tantalized whenever I read it. If one of the experts here could just list the file names, I'm confident I'd be able to find them myself.

[Doomlover77]

@SiFi270I know two of the levels on the twitter thread link above. One is Fcb2.wad which is a E2m1 modification. It also appears under the names E2m1.wad and Doome2.wad. 
 

https://www.wad-archive.com/wad/d66899b3b4692303f5dc98310c93e463b4568e61/download/DOOME2.WAD
 

 

the other one is e2l2_gg1.wad by Greg Grimsby which is a E1m2 modification, shown below 

 

https://www.wad-archive.com/wad/d63d3ff305a7672106c35f0a0877b7a5574fd216/download/e2l2_gg1.wad
 

[Maximum Matt]

Don't even get me started on modified IWAD maps.

[Doomlover77]

Let me just say that a lot of the modified ID wads are absolutely awful, especially the Doominator levels and the M1-M9 wads. The M1-9 wads were Full of barrels !

 

[Chipper35]

Well......'good' or 'bad'.....this is an important part of gaming history.

[Maximum Matt]

13 hours ago, Doomlover77 said:

Let me just say that a lot of the modified ID wads are absolutely awful, especially the Doominator levels and the M1-M9 wads. The M1-9 wads were Full of barrels !

 

Yep, those ones were awful.  

I have to say, though, MIC.wad gets the crown for the most badly mangled version of E1M1: 

[Doomlover77]

I agree @Maximum MattWhat a mess !

[thestarrover]

On 5/21/2020 at 2:50 AM, Never_Again said:

DEATH*⁸       Bret Larwick⁹                 53 KB, DM-only

 

On 5/21/2020 at 2:50 AM, Never_Again said:

the original appears to have been lost; a D2 conversion is included in Maximum DOOM as DEATH.WAD under \MAXIMUM\WADS\DOOM2.

I don't know but this information might be helpful for you.

 

According to this SITE, a death.wad classified as a deathmach is listed in the November 1994 issue of PC Power CD.
 

Text quoted directly from the site:

"DEATH.WAD DM level, looks pretty bad, not fun, 1 room! "

 

No wad timestamp available

 

Unfortunately I don't have the cd and it doesn't seem to be available on archive.org.

 

Cheers!

[Doomlover77]

@thestarroverThe death.wad you mentioned above is for Doom2 from 15-Feb-1995. It’s not a conversion of a Doom wad as shown below @Doomlover77  
 

[thestarrover]

I know. The death.wad available in Maximum Doom is a conversion for doom 2. Maybe the death.wad available in the Pc Power Cd (November 1994) is the original doom 1 version with timestamp 1994-03-29

[Doomlover77]

I’ve just done a check on death.wad 
You are correct on that one @thestarrover. Any other wads I can help with?

I’m happy to report that the Dmgrav date I have is definitely 6/6/94. 

Edited November 24, 2021 by Doomlover77 : Extra information for Dmgrav.wad

[Never_Again]

@thestarrover: going by the description, that is Terry Evans' WAD. For some reason it gained wide distribution, unlike the other two DEATH WADs. Thank you for the link, that site is an entertaining read, kind of like a terse version of Maximum Matt's saga. BARREL2 "impossible", HH-21 and HH-22 "didn't work", FOREST13 "hard" ... yes, it's a doozie.

 

On 11/23/2021 at 5:25 PM, Doomlover77 said:

@thestarroverThe death.wad you mentioned above is for Doom2 from 15-Feb-1995

 

On 11/23/2021 at 10:44 AM, thestarrover said:

a death.wad classified as a deathmach is listed in the November 1994 issue of PC Power CD.

 

[thestarrover]

These wads appear to have been released by the end of March 1994:

 

E1L1.WAD 03/19/1994 by Eric Stenborg

E1L1.TXT 03/19/1994

E1L1.ZIP on the The Arcade Room BBS File Archive (archive.org) or HERE (cd.textfiles.com)

 

MRE1M1.WAD (modified E1M1) 03/27/1994

MRE1M4.WAD (modified E1M4) 03/28/1994

No text file included. Unknown author

Levels included in MRE1WADS.ZIP (03/28/1994)

Download: The 640 Meg Shareware Studio Vol 5 (1994) or Cream of The crop 3 1994  or Retroarchive

 

Is it possible that these release dates are right?

 

Edited September 17, 2023 by thestarrover