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Nes

DOOM Historic

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In a random act of boredom, I've decided to download all the DOOM shareware versions and run the maps through a hex comparison tool. I found some interesting changes and documented them on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=2C05FCD2000FBE3D

This is every change in the maps themselves of all the DOOM shareware versions. (v1.8 and v1.9 had NO difference) I've been thinking of doing DOOM 2 now that I found my old copy of v1.666. (8/29/94 version, though I wonder if the different dates really have a difference in the IWAD)

Enjoy.

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Those were some fine and interesting videos. Seeing the E1M3 pit rocket off into the sky was funny, as was seeing it turn into a mile-deep, inescapable pit of doom (no pun intended.) Also, I didn't know the E1M4 swastika originally faced a different direction.

Thank you for the videos, Nes!

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The Doom wiki needs more info on version differences, so this should be useful.

There are downgrade patches to DOOM v1.1 (from The Ultimate DOOM) and to DOOM II v1.666 (and then of course various upgrade patches in the idstuff and historic directories), so it should be possible to do this sort of thing for various registered and commercial releases.

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Really interesting. You should get randomly bored more often.

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I remember some of these: the variations on the swastika in E1M4, the modified pit in E1M3 (but not the save/load effects), the door in E1M8, and the additional bits in E1M1. Although I know at the time I thought to myself "why didn't I notice this before", not realizing it was due to a recent update...

E1M1 in Ultimate Doom has 666 sidedefs... does anyone know whether this was intentional or just an evil coincidence?

And speaking of studying changes between Doom versions while bored, I noticed (by comparing the MUS files) that the music changed a bit between different versions (oops, my notes don't say which, other than 1.2 and 1.9 are different). I haven't listened too carefully to the differences, but it sounds as if the polyphony was changed to avoid notes being dropped on less capable soundcards.

The GENMIDI lump also changed between Doom and Doom 2. This has the side effect that the music from Doom levels used in Plutonia (which uses Doom 2's GENMIDI) will sound different (on an OPL2 or OPL3) than it does in the original game. (I wouldn't have noticed this when I first got Final Doom, I had a wavetable card back then.)

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I hate that secret switch in E1M1. It's so useless, you dont even get a secret bonus for using it.

I have no problem with the DM addition of that shotgun and berserk pack though. That room was pretty empty.

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JohnnyRancid said:

I hate that secret switch in E1M1. It's so useless, you dont even get a secret bonus for using it.

I have no problem with the DM addition of that shotgun and berserk pack though. That room was pretty empty.

I think the secret switch was probably added with the intent of opening up the layout some more for DM.

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esselfortium said:

I think the secret switch was probably added with the intent of opening up the layout some more for DM.


Indeed it was. And it worked too

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I will admit that the added switch does definitely improve deathmatching on E1M1, but in single player it feels completely unnecessary.

As with most everyone else, I found the videos for E1M3 to be the most fascinating. I've never played the old version so I didn't know about all that, and I don't think I would ever have been able to find all those bugs anyway.

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StupidBunny said:
I will admit that the added switch does definitely improve deathmatching on E1M1, but in single player it feels completely unnecessary.

It makes "Nightmare!" more straightforward if you plan on using the megaarmor, which is convenient (especially for when you get to E1M3) unless you're pretty good already at NM play.

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Those videos were fun to watch and there were lots of things/changes I didn't know about. The way the swastika room kept changing (3 or 4 times?) was humorous.

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Damn... I actually remember most of those changes.

Not all, but most.

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The MAP29 part certainly cracked me up. Nice job, Romero!

Some of the things changed seem to have resulted from Doom II's more rushed production in comparison to the original...

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I miss Doom 2 1.666. That was only Doom I had for the longest time, and I spent countless hours playing coop with my brother.

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I didn't upgrade from 1.666 until I got the Internet (in 1996 or 1997), so I played for years with that version... until just now I didn't realize the bars in MAP02 had been removed. (I just assumed that someone inside was opening them before I got there. Everytime, apparently.)

I remember the see-through wall in MAP18, which I occasionally used to hide from my opponents during deathmatch games. And those missing deathmatch starts in MAP28 caused some consternation -- I never played much co-op back then so I don't think I ever noticed the missing starts in MAP29, though.

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I only played two player coop, so that explains why I never knew about the missing starts in map29. For the same reason, I also never knew you could chat to a specific player by using the key corresponding to the first letter of his or her color until it was mentioned in #chocolate-doom several months ago.

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You made some good finds. I never thought these wads could go through so many little changes between versions.

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Why were maps 01 and 02 shifted in the first place? Did it fix something or was it just obsessing over the positioning being "neat"? It sounds like it just made more problems than it fixed.

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Because so many things seem to have shifted by the same amount at the same time, I suspect it was accidental. I'm not sure of the specifics of their editor but maybe they accidentally had a load of things selected at one time when they only meant to move one but ended up shifting a load of them and then didn't test properly afterwards.

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I don't think I ever knew about that secret in MAP03. Shows how much I play plain Doom 2 these days...

Is there a comparison of the E2 and E3 levels in Doom? Or were the changes there not that interesting?

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CODOR said:
Is there a comparison of the E2 and E3 levels in Doom? Or were the changes there not that interesting?

He worked from the shareware versions. It's possible to do those using the patch I linked to above, though.

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