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Frost67

Where is doom.exe? [how to watch demos]

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Hello folks.

I've been sitting here for a little while trying to work out how to watch doom speed demo's in (.lmp) format (mostly from the doom-wiki website). ive tried to watch them through ZDoom but i get something saying it would go out of sync badly.

I've dome some searching and what seems to be the best way to watch them is to run doom.exe and use the command line parameter to make it load the demo file..

I understand how to do the command line thing from my research (also i can record demos and watch them in ZDoom myself) but what i'm confused at is what the location of doom.exe doom2.exe etc are so i can watch these amazing speed demos i have downloaded??

I bought the Doom collectors edition from GAME quite a while back because i had lost by old floppy disks, but i cant find any of the .exe files on the CD anywhere, it seems they have abandoned the .exe files for a front end called doom95 for windows. This is all well and good, but it appears i need the doom.exe or doom2.exe files to be able to view the demo files.

Could anyone please give me a hand locating these files if they are needed. Or if they are not needed and i'm doing something a bit silly could you point it out! :)

Thanks a lot for your time!

Looking forward to a reply!

Frosty

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It's odd but the supposedly collector's edition, doesn't include the original exes (what a collectible value!), instead they bring you the shitty DOOM95.exe wich is quite similar to the vanilla exes, except it has some annoyances, and major limitations, yet it runs in windows xp. For some reason they didn't included Master Levels (an oficial add-on for DOOM 2).
I think the original exes can be downloaded for free, but I'm not 100% sure, neither if the modified doom2.exe used for Final DOOM is allowed too.

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Vegeta said:

It's odd but the supposedly Collector's Edition, doesn't include the original exes (what a collectible value!), instead they bring you the shitty DOOM95.exe wich is quite similar to the vanilla exes


Exactly lol!

I run doom95 once or twice, but i didnt like it so i got ZDoom, that seems to work OK.

You say the .exe files are legal to download? where would i go to get these, any ideas? :)

thanks a lot!

Frosty

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Why not try prboom/glboom. It lets you choose compatibility levels so you can play even very old demos. If the demo goes out of sync, read its text file and see what version .exe it was recorded in and add the corresponding -complevel parameter.

Just drop the demo on the .exe to play it. Or you can make a batch file if watching Pwad demos. Simply edit the batch for a new Pwad and demo.

http://prboom.sourceforge.net/index.html

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Catoptromancy said:

Why not try prboom/glboom. It lets you choose compatibility levels so you can play even very old demos. If the demo goes out of sync, read its text file and see what version .exe it was recorded in and add the corresponding -complevel parameter.

Just drop the demo on the .exe to play it. Or you can make a batch file if watching Pwad demos. Simply edit the batch for a new Pwad and demo.

http://prboom.sourceforge.net/index.html


Ok thanks a lot, ill try this now!

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You haven't stated what OS you're using, because unless you have a system with DOS or Windows 9x/ME, Doom and Doom2 won't work very well; the way they access sound is problematic in OSs that don't support DOS directly, causing system lag (DOS emulation apps can help but even then its usually not worth it compared to using a Windows port). If you get the DOS shareware release of DOOM you can see what I'm talking about.

The truth is that except for the first person weapon sprite resizings (that they probably altered to fit the Windows resolutions), Doom95 works pretty much like Doom. But its not optimal for Windows XP because the mouse uses a VXD file for mouse support, which isn't supported past Windows 9x. Trashing it without trashing the DOS engines as well is kind of bullshit, unless you hate Microsoft (not that it's really hard to find reasons to do so) or something.

Doom95 will play just about any demo from The Ultimate DOOM (because it functions like the DOS engine distributed with the retail release of DOOM), but will fail to properly play some DOOM II or Final DOOM demos because of some slight differences in the DOS engines of the games.

You can use PrBoom to watch standard demos (like the ones from COMPET-N) on a modern OS, as it's been developed to be compatible with all three (slight) variants of the DOS engine.

Catoptromancy said:
It lets you choose compatibility levels so you can play even very old demos.

It automatically finds the version, so it's unnecessary to specify the compatibility (unless you're recording).

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Unless you found a boxed copy of doom2 before it was packaged with Doom95(i don't know about ultimate doom), you were supposed to get doom.exe back then by downloading or picking up a shareware floppy, and registering to get the full game. Once you have the shareware, copy your registered doom (doom.wad) from your collector's edition to play doom.exe. Like myk said, make sure your computer plays DOS or DOSBox properly.

myk said:
But its not optimal for Windows XP because the mouse uses a VXD file for mouse support, which isn't supported past Windows 9x.

Do you know what mouse setup Hexen95 has that Doom95 doesn't, because H95 works in XP.

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Playing demos through Doom95 is quite user friendly; it's all I ever use it for. Double-click the Doom95.exe, and in the menu, select the 'Advanced' options. Choose the 'Demo' tab, check the 'Play Demo' box, and whatever .lmp files are in your directory(?) can be accessed. I'd say there aren't any syncing problems about 95% of the time, since I've only had that happen once out of the few dozen demos I've been through.

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Coopersville said:

Doom95 ... I'd say there aren't any syncing problems about 95% of the time, since I've only had that happen once out of the few dozen demos I've been through.

Doom95 has excellent demo compatibility with Ultimate Doom's Doom.exe, but poor compatibility with Doom2.exe. A lot of Doom2.exe demos will desync if you try to play them with Doom95, and so will a fair proportion of Final Doom demos. The specific differences that lead to desyncs are different lost soul behaviour (in Doom2.exe) and a teleport bug in Final Doom.

If pushed to give a percentage for the number of Doom2.exe demos that desync with Doom95 I'd guess at 30%, though it will be higher for longer demos and lower for shorter ones.

OK, I've just tested 32 compet-n Maxes, one on each map of Doom2.wad: 11 desyncs. So my guesstimate may have been a bit conservative.

To watch vanilla demos reliably, use the original DOS exes themselves, Prboom(-plus), Eternity or Chocolate-Doom. BTW, I've recently tested all the Compet-n pwad and Final Doom demos with prboom-plus: just 1 desync out of about 3500 demos (plus 6 where you need to add in a special command-line parameter to get them to play back). The current test version has a new feature for the auto-loading of wads according to the file-name, which makes things even easier (the current default patterns suffice for many compet-n demos).

myk describes how to get hold of the DOS exes here. Though if your only interest in them is for watching demos, there are simpler solutions.

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Grazza said:

I've recently tested all the Compet-n pwad and Final Doom demos with prboom-plus: just 1 desync out of about 3500 demos

Okay I have to know. How exactly did you go about doing this? Do you have some kind of automated checking process, and if so how does it work?

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Start demo playing. Immediately press <End> to go directly to the next stats screen (without rendering frames in between). If the stats screen comes up, the demo almost certainly didn't desync*. Then press <End> again to exit the program immediately (as it tries to advance to the next stats screen, and doesn't find one).

That way it is possible to test several hundred demos an hour. (It's not exactly thrilling entertainment of course.)

Final Doom is a bit messier, as there are two "flavours" to be considered (iwad or pwad). In this case I tested them playing back as iwad, and any that desynched I copied to a separate location and tested as pwad. For Evilution there is a further bifurcation: with map31 patch and without.

----
* I say "almost" because occasionally a demo desyncs near the end and in a way that doesn't stop the player exiting, possibly with a missed kill, or a little slower. And then it is conceivable to get a horrible bug where demos exit prematurely. To make sure that hasn't happened, you'd need to wait until the stats are fully displayed.

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Eternity can also play back about 99% of v1.9 demos. Demos from versions earlier than that aren't really supported, though (they are very rare, at any rate).

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Grazza said:
I've recently tested all the Compet-n pwad and Final Doom demos with prboom-plus: just 1 desync out of about 3500 demos (plus 6 where you need to add in a special command-line parameter to get them to play back).

Out of curiosity: which demos were those?

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Kristian Ronge said:

Out of curiosity: which demos were those?

They were known issues, which made it kind of reassuring.

The desync: m203-433.zip. Andrey had already noticed this one.

Requiring special command-line parameter: these are some of the demos on av15 that feature a spechits overflow that make playback OS-dependent in Doom2.exe. They are: av15-317.lmp, av15-612.lmp, av15-623.lmp, av15-638.lmp, av15-715.lmp and af151000.lmp.
"-spechit 2230937832" works in all cases.

Sorry, I had forgotten before, but there was another one of those that wasn't previously known: mm05r554.lmp. The same parameter does the trick here too. So make that "7 that require a special command-line parameter".

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Grazza said:

Start demo playing. Immediately press <<b></b>End> to go directly to the next stats screen (without rendering frames in between). If the stats screen comes up, the demo almost certainly didn't desync*. Then press <<b></b>End> again to exit the program immediately (as it tries to advance to the next stats screen, and doesn't find one).

That way it is possible to test several hundred demos an hour. (It's not exactly thrilling entertainment of course.)


WHOLLY F-ing HEY-Zeus! are you insane?!

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Actually I felt this was a very efficient and productive use of my time. Compared with the hours I spent knocking a second off my kp13 time, it certainly was. :p

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DeumReaper said:
Do you know what mouse setup Hexen95 has that Doom95 doesn't, because H95 works in XP.

It doesn't seem to use VXDs, just DLLs.

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