A good old pile of Doom related questions

[Devalaous]

I have a couple of things I'd like to ask, some of which are more for the more specialised forums, but the mix of them makes me think it should be here. Move it elsewhere if im totally wrong though :p

First question:

A long time ago I found this at a local trade centre, along with a Final Doom disk (My first owned PC copy that was, sad that I sold it back after buying Collectors Edition), but ive never really done much with it, mainly because even on the win95 computer I had then, the archaic interface on the back was terrible and I didn't know shit about Doom files, I didn't even know source ports existed.

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o181/Ekerezan/Doom/IMG_0318.jpg

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o181/Ekerezan/Doom/IMG_0320.jpg

Anyone know of this thing and if there's anything good on it? I'm assuming its piles and piles of 1994 levels, but you never know, and I'm too busy with other things to sift through them all

Second question:
I've been building a collection of all the Doom engine games + commercial wads, with Perdition's Gate and Hell To Pay, there's piles and piles of odd files. Is the PG-RAW.wad and HTP-RAW.wad all I need to play them properly on something like GZDoom etc? They seem to work fine that way, but theres all this other stuff, so just in case..

Third question:
In ZDoom/GZDoom, how on earth do you get things to auto-load? I'd like to have the brightmaps/lights and perkristian(?)'s smooth weapons as long as my custom blood file (Blue caco blood, green baron/knight blood, no lost soul blood, black specter blood) to all autoload instead of finding them in the files every time, but I cant figure out how. Every path ive written fails, so thre must be some special way to do it.

Fourth and final question:
GZDoom every so often hassles me about OpenGL or something not being the right version, despite the fact if I keep running it, it'll give up and load perfectly fine, with OpenGL working perfectly fine. Any idea whats going on here?

(Edited to move focus from the big images to my other questions)

[Maes]

Ragnor said:

I'm assuming its piles and piles of 1994 levels, but you never know, and I'm too busy with other things to sift through them all

And you're probably spot-on. Well, you can just browse the directories normally (without using the shitty interface, I never cared for those in either Doom or shareware CD-ROMs back in the day) and find out for yourself.

You may find a thing or two that are not in the current idgames due to legality concerns (that "Doom 1 to Doom 2 conversion" mentioned on the cover is already one of those, although I recall that being a Doom 2 to Doom 1 compatibility addon, rather than the reverse), but otherwise it's just a tripe doom shovelware CD. Not that they weren't fun back in the day when there was no Internet.

[ArchitectofHell]

Fun little piece of memorabilia, but yeah---probably full of pretty bad maps. :P

[Maes]

Well, see for yourself :-p

http://cd.textfiles.com/doom2mania/

However the directory organization is terrible, even for Doom shovelware standards.

[DeathevokatioN]

I just played 2diefor or something, and it was a fun little ugly map with a very interesting non linear layout. A bit short though. :(

[Varis Alpha]

Oh! That reminds me, I got this one for Christmas (apologies for the crap quality, only camera he have is this stupid webcam):





I assume this is just one of those shovelware CD's that was avaible back in the day, because it says it contains things like sound replacements from Monty Python and Aliens, graphics replacements like Pacman and Barney, save game editors, map editors, extra levels, stuff like that. But what I don't understand is there being "secret levels" on the disc, and that it's apparently a shareware version they're selling (it says "one of the best shareware games you can get from Apogee"). I mean, if they was selling the shareware version, why did they have map editors and such?

[Gez]

The "no PWAD with shareware IWAD" block may not have been there since the beginning.

Further, don't forget how shareware worked -- you had an order form (in a file called ORDER.FRM) telling you how to phone Apogee to get the full game. Getting the shareware version was the gateway to getting the full version, since Doom wasn't sold retail.

Finally, it wouldn't have made sense not to put the shareware on the CD. I mean, look at /idgames. It holds the shareware versions, too.

[Maes]

Were there any editors that actually worked with the shareware version back then?

Maybe some tools that worked on specialized lumps e.g. sound or flats may have worked on the shareware IWAD as well -or any WAD for that matter-, but I recall e.g. that DEU would refuse to work.

However, DoomBuilder doesn't refuse to work with the shareware IWAD, but the PWADs produced in that way may not be fully compatible with the registered version ;-)

In any case, the Doom shareware was on EVERY shareware and shovelware CD of that era, so how could it be missing from a Doom collection? The editors and WADs were there for registered and commercial users, anyway.

I now remembered that questionable "Doom 1 to Doom 2" converter that floated around, essentially a texture + flats pack that added some missing textures from Doom 1 to Doom 2 and allowed you to play Doom 1 WADs in Doom 2 (although with some misalignments, and you had to rename the map lumps yourself). It was tied to specific Doom 1 and Doom 2 versions anyway, so e.g. it wouldn't work with Ultimate Doom PWADs using E4 graphics and SKY_4 replacements.

[Bucket]

That reminds me of something I've never really looked into: did anyone make PWADS that are compatible with the shareware version? I remember not being able to buy retail for about six months, and being ticked that I couldn't play any levels.

[Devalaous]

I remember playing some cool house level back in the day from the disc, and was blown away by the "level of detail"

Oh those were the days...

Anyway, question 1 answered, could I get some input on the others? :D

[Maes]

Bucket said:

That reminds me of something I've never really looked into: did anyone make PWADS that are compatible with the shareware version? I remember not being able to buy retail for about six months, and being ticked that I couldn't play any levels.

I once did try to see to what extent playing levels with the shareware PWAD was viable: I took a modern source port (I recall prboom and even prboom+ don't forbid using PWADs with the shareware version) and tried to load a few shovelware levels, in particular E1M1 ripoffs and the such.

The result? Out of maybe 20 levels I tried, only one was kinda playable, and it soon crashed on an unknown sprite. Not an exhaustive search by any means, but I think I got the big picture so I called it quits.

With Doombuilder, which also accepts the shareware IWAD, it was possible to create additional levels that would load in prboom+, however they looked fucked up when loaded with the registered IWAD (same effect under DB).

So yeah, it might be possible to do, but it would be pretty restricted: no E2 and E3 textures, no lost souls, no cacos, no cyber, no spider mastermind, no PL and BFG (and not even berserk packs, unless you cheated) and a very limited selection of decoration. All you could do would be E1 recreations.

[Du Mhan Yhu]

Ok back in like 2004, I bought ultimate doom trilogy. I dont have it anymore... But ive asked around and nobody seems to know what im talking about. My copy had Ultimate doom, it had all doom and doom 2 monsters in ultimate doom... to be clear My doom 1 had all monsters from Doom 2. Has nobody seen this before?

[Xaser]

PSX Doom?

[Du Mhan Yhu]

no it was on pc. it came with the doom 95 launcher.

[Du Mhan Yhu]

The only reason im asking is im trying to find that .wad again. Pay for of course, but nobody seems to know what im talking about.

Like i could play e1m1 and there would be chaingunners and hellknights. In the secret to the left of the poison near the end there was a pain elemental.

[Never_Again]

Ragnor said:

Second question:
I've been building a collection of all the Doom engine games + commercial wads, with Perdition's Gate and Hell To Pay, there's piles and piles of odd files. Is the PG-RAW.wad and HTP-RAW.wad all I need to play them properly on something like GZDoom etc?

Yes, these files contain all the new resources and should work with any port that can handle incomplete sprites/flats sets properly.

[Porsche Monty]

Maes said:

Were there any editors that actually worked with the shareware version back then?

While obviously not an editor in the strict sense of the word, someone released a patch for tweaking the gamma levels before the feature was officially introduced and it worked fine with Doom Shareware.

[GreyGhost]

skaman86 said:

Ok back in like 2004, I bought ultimate doom trilogy. I dont have it anymore... But ive asked around and nobody seems to know what im talking about. My copy had Ultimate doom, it had all doom and doom 2 monsters in ultimate doom... to be clear My doom 1 had all monsters from Doom 2. Has nobody seen this before?

Sounds like a hack. I've encountered one for the Doom 1.6 Beta which makes use of the Doom 2 monster behaviour code but restricts the mapper to re-named Doom sprites. If yours had the Doom 2 sprites it's more likely an unofficial conversion - like DOOM142.WAD (which is on the Master Levels CD) with Doom 2 monsters added or substituted.

[glenzinho]

Maes said:
Were there any editors that actually worked with the shareware version back then?

Geoff Allan's DoomEd (v1.23 or something like that) let you make custom PWADs if you renamed the DOOM1.WAD file to DOOM.WAD. I created my first half a dozen levels or so with that program before I had DOOM II & Ultimate Doom.

Early versions of Waded let you manipulate textures, things, move vertices, heights etc on shareware...