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aldiboronti

Were Doom cheats known about from the get-go?

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When the first shareware episode of Doom was released to the internet were cheats made available with it, in a textfile or something? Or did the first players need to hack the game to learn them? Or did Id Games make them available a little later?

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aldiboronti said:

When the first shareware episode of Doom was released to the internet were cheats made available with it, in a textfile or something?

No, but they were very quickly found.

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How? Did they ask Id, or did they reverse engineer Doom.exe like there was no tomorrow?

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So there's probably still cheats to be found that id didn't mention. :O

EDIT: JK you guys!

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Krispy said:

So there's probably still cheats to be found that id didn't mention. :O


If there were some unknown/hidden cheats, they already would've been discovered years ago by people examining the source code.

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Krispy said:

So there's probably still cheats to be found that id didn't mention. :O


Feel free to dig:

// Massive bunches of cheat shit
//  to keep it from being easy to figure them out.
// Yeah, right...
unsigned char	cheat_mus_seq[] =
{
    0xb2, 0x26, 0xb6, 0xae, 0xea, 1, 0, 0, 0xff
};

unsigned char	cheat_choppers_seq[] =
{
    0xb2, 0x26, 0xe2, 0x32, 0xf6, 0x2a, 0x2a, 0xa6, 0x6a, 0xea, 0xff // id...
};

unsigned char	cheat_god_seq[] =
{
    0xb2, 0x26, 0x26, 0xaa, 0x26, 0xff  // iddqd
};

unsigned char	cheat_ammo_seq[] =
{
    0xb2, 0x26, 0xf2, 0x66, 0xa2, 0xff	// idkfa
};

unsigned char	cheat_ammonokey_seq[] =
{
    0xb2, 0x26, 0x66, 0xa2, 0xff	// idfa
};


// Smashing Pumpkins Into Samml Piles Of Putried Debris. 
unsigned char	cheat_noclip_seq[] =
{
    0xb2, 0x26, 0xea, 0x2a, 0xb2,	// idspispopd
    0xea, 0x2a, 0xf6, 0x2a, 0x26, 0xff
};

//
unsigned char	cheat_commercial_noclip_seq[] =
{
    0xb2, 0x26, 0xe2, 0x36, 0xb2, 0x2a, 0xff	// idclip
}; 



unsigned char	cheat_powerup_seq[7][10] =
{
    { 0xb2, 0x26, 0x62, 0xa6, 0x32, 0xf6, 0x36, 0x26, 0x6e, 0xff }, 	// beholdv
    { 0xb2, 0x26, 0x62, 0xa6, 0x32, 0xf6, 0x36, 0x26, 0xea, 0xff }, 	// beholds
    { 0xb2, 0x26, 0x62, 0xa6, 0x32, 0xf6, 0x36, 0x26, 0xb2, 0xff }, 	// beholdi
    { 0xb2, 0x26, 0x62, 0xa6, 0x32, 0xf6, 0x36, 0x26, 0x6a, 0xff }, 	// beholdr
    { 0xb2, 0x26, 0x62, 0xa6, 0x32, 0xf6, 0x36, 0x26, 0xa2, 0xff }, 	// beholda
    { 0xb2, 0x26, 0x62, 0xa6, 0x32, 0xf6, 0x36, 0x26, 0x36, 0xff }, 	// beholdl
    { 0xb2, 0x26, 0x62, 0xa6, 0x32, 0xf6, 0x36, 0x26, 0xff }		// behold
};


unsigned char	cheat_clev_seq[] =
{
    0xb2, 0x26,  0xe2, 0x36, 0xa6, 0x6e, 1, 0, 0, 0xff	// idclev
};


// my position cheat
unsigned char	cheat_mypos_seq[] =
{
    0xb2, 0x26, 0xb6, 0xba, 0x2a, 0xf6, 0xea, 0xff	// idmypos
}; 


// Now what?
cheatseq_t	cheat_mus = { cheat_mus_seq, 0 };
cheatseq_t	cheat_god = { cheat_god_seq, 0 };
cheatseq_t	cheat_ammo = { cheat_ammo_seq, 0 };
cheatseq_t	cheat_ammonokey = { cheat_ammonokey_seq, 0 };
cheatseq_t	cheat_noclip = { cheat_noclip_seq, 0 };
cheatseq_t	cheat_commercial_noclip = { cheat_commercial_noclip_seq, 0 };

cheatseq_t	cheat_powerup[7] =
{
    { cheat_powerup_seq[0], 0 },
    { cheat_powerup_seq[1], 0 },
    { cheat_powerup_seq[2], 0 },
    { cheat_powerup_seq[3], 0 },
    { cheat_powerup_seq[4], 0 },
    { cheat_powerup_seq[5], 0 },
    { cheat_powerup_seq[6], 0 }
};

cheatseq_t	cheat_choppers = { cheat_choppers_seq, 0 };
cheatseq_t	cheat_clev = { cheat_clev_seq, 0 };
cheatseq_t	cheat_mypos = { cheat_mypos_seq, 0 };
By the way, I love how Dave Taylor managed to typo "Small" into "Samml".

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TimeOfDeath said:

Wasn't there a phone number you could call for tips?


Getting 'iddqd' from Shawn Green himself may have been pretty cool.

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_bruce_ said:

Getting 'iddqd' from Shawn Green himself may have been pretty cool.

Were you getting answers from Id themselves, or from hired help desk technicians?

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From: ddt@daisy.cc.utexas.edu (David Taylor)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: idNews: release 1.1
Date: 15 Dec 1993 19:34:57 -0600
Organization: id Software

Will be releasing the new version (actually, we're calling it 1.1 now
because the original uploads were called DOOM1_0) this evening. We are
going to use the 1.95 4GWPRO dos extender for the new version and
patch, but if you have difficulty with it, we will provide other
executables that you can try with the 1.8 DOS4GW extender and 1.94
4GWPRO extender.

Yes, we think this business with flakey extender versions is a pain,
too. The price we pay for wanting to make this game on a platform
with a market. PC's. DOS. Sigh.

Can't believe y'all found the cheat codes so fast. I sorta munged 'em
up, too! Sheesh. By the way, I think y'all missed a cheat code.
"iddt" in the automap. Try it a couple of times. A short background
thing: "dqd" stands for Delta-Q-Delta, an informal fraternity that two
other hackers and I made up. The requirements were getting a "Q" in
your class (stands for "Quit"- like failing but it doesn't go on your
GPA. we impressed our friends with programming feats but weren't
exactly scholastic role models- so far only one of us has graduated
:). The "spispopd" is complements of the Usenet. See Seth Cohn's
post. "Choppers" is a State Programming Contest game that a friend of
mine named Guy Maor helped write (-GM). He's a little defensive of it
'cause it wasn't *quite* finished on the release day. Was a cool
two-player Rescue Raiders rip-off. He was drunk and talk'd me one
night, and I thought I'd put it in. I believe that you'll get a
chainsaw from it and be invulnerable (just checked the code- yeah,
should make you invulnerable but i never tested it).

Please don't bang too hard on the ftp sites tonight. We caused a lot
of ftp sites to crash on the release day. Thanks..

=-ddt->


http://rome.ro/lee_killough/history/cheat.shtml

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The first time I played DOOM, it was the spring of 1994 I think, and the person that introduced me to the game knew the cheats already.

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Hehe, I like how Taylor actually signed his post with =-ddt-> . Nice little reference, there. ;)

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Yeah, and Jim Flynn or Lee Killough had the nerve to impose Jim Flynn's initials over it in Boom.

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Ahh I still remember being about 6 playing through 'Entryway' and my Uncle randomly leaning over and typing letters on the keyboard. A few seconds later I had tonnes of firepower and couldn't die!

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printz said:

Were you getting answers from Id themselves, or from hired help desk technicians?


I said 'may have been' - no idea, never called them because in these days calling in to the US from Austria would have been monetary overkill.
I guess Shawn hasn't been on board back in 93 so folks like Donna, Hall or Romero may have taken calls themselves...

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I can't say exactly when but I knew the cheats pretty quickly. I'm pretty sure I knew them even before my registered version arrived in the post because I have a vague feeling that I was suitably impressed that IDKFA gave me full game weapons in KDitD, having been used to the cheat, up to that point, obviously only giving me the weapons in the SW wad.

Where did I get the cheats from? I can't say for certain but back then it would have been either from a magazine (perhaps even the magazine that had the SW disks on the cover - meaning that I would have had the cheats from the outset) or a BBS.

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Most of DOOM cheat codes were published by Elias Papavassilopoulos five days after DOOMsday:

                                    
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Path: gmd.de!xlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!pavo.csi.cam.ac.uk!ep104
From: ep104@cus.cam.ac.uk  (Elias 'CaveMan' Papavassilopoulos)
Subject: DOOM cheat codes
Message-ID: <1993Dec15.160051.28055@infodev.cam.ac.uk>
Keywords: DOOM, DOOM, DOOM, DOOM, DOOM, CHEAT
Sender: news@infodev.cam.ac.uk (USENET news)
Nntp-Posting-Host: bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk
Organization: U of Cambridge, England
References: <2em47a$q0g@daisy.cc.utexas.edu>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1993 16:00:51 GMT
Lines: 27



  Ok people, these are the original DOOM cheat codes (like the Wolfenstein
debug keys). I didn't get round to looking for them until I had finished all
levels in Ultimate Violence mode and found all secrets.

-------- SPOILER ALERT ------- SPOILER ALERT --------- SPOILER ALERT --------



You just have to type the following magic words while playing:

iddqd			Degreelessness mode (God mode)
idkfa			Very Happy Ammo. (full ammo + 200% armour, no backpack)
idspispopd		No clipping (SPISPOPD?)
idbehold		followed by S, V, I, R, A, L for various things (menu)
idclev			followed by episode number and level number: warp
idmypos			prints your co-ordinates in hex
idchoppers		prints 'Doesn't suck - GM' (What ??????????)

Enjoy,

Elias.
ep104@cus.cam.ac.uk .

PS.  DOOM RULEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To the half a dozen of you who this name rings a bell to: yes, this is the same guy who was one of the authors of The Unholy Trinity, released the following summer.

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Heh, so a Greek expat student found the codes? I can see the "Greeks always try and find ways to cheat" ravings coming :-p

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Certainly not the first, unless there was a leak he never told anybody about.

But reverse-engineering of the compiled code is possible.

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No idea what his actual .exe hacking knowledge was, but from experience, if he knew he was looking for a bunch of hardcoded data/strings that might the very least have given him a lead in the right direction, even though the strings were encrypted. He'd then need a debugger to realize that some form of decryption takes place at each keystroke, but once the function that did that was discovered, it would be just a matter of time.

Or maybe they could be gathered by some tips/hints in the alphas/beta exes....

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