[Hexen] what do dmod.exe and hexmod.exe do?

[ixfd64]

I recently picked up an interest in 3D shooters again, and I managed to pull some of my old games from my really old Windows 95 laptop.

While organizing my .wad files, I noticed that my Hexen directory has two files that I don't recognize: dmod.exe and hexmod.exe.

Running dmod.exe gives the message:

Protected Mode: 0
Unable to read parameter file

Running hexmod.exe gives the message:

Unable to read hexen parameter file

I'm pretty sure they're from one of the add-ons I've downloaded, but I don't remember what they do. Thanks!

[Gez]

They're part of the game's standard installation.

I, too, have no idea what they do. I tried to give them some files as parameters, but it yielded no difference in result.

Oddly, the message strings they display (about being unable to read parameter files) are not present in the .exe themselves -- unless they are somehow encrypted or compressed. But why would they be?

There is also no explanation in the manual IIRC and the readme.txt was overwritten by DOSBox's because the guy who packaged it for Steam didn't care.

[RTC_Marine]

I own a copy of towers of darkness and these files exist on the cd too.

The readme.txt is the same as readme.doc (just with formatting etc) and has no information on it either.

After loading a hexmod into a hex(badum tsh) editor, I noticed that it had some strings towards the bottom of the file: "UART" and "16550". So maybe they are for modem setup in dos?

[GreyGhost]

Gez said:

unless they are somehow encrypted or compressed. But why would they be?

Looks like they are compressed, probably to save space on a set of install floppies but a bit pointless on a CD. I'm leaning towards RTC_Marine's theory that they're modem utilities.

[fraggle]

I think they're something to do with DWANGO.

[printz]

Maybe the masters of hacking from Doomworld can disassemble them?

[Randy87]

I tinker a little with disassembling. Send em' over.

[Enjay]

Compressed EXEs were not unusual back then. (To save space on floppies (as has been stated). Was Hexen available on floppies?)

My initial thought was that they are modem utilities as well. Perhaps the parameters for a game connection could be stored in a config file of some sort and running one of these EXEs would read from the file and pass the parameters from the config file to the modem.

[GreyGhost]

Enjay said:

Was Hexen available on floppies?

It was - 7 disks. Fraggle's correct, I did a quick install of my version 1 floppies and found them in D202.EXE, the DWANGO install file.

[printz]

Enjay said:

Compressed EXEs were not unusual back then. (To save space on floppies (as has been stated). Was Hexen available on floppies?)

Compressed EXEs still exist. Eternity is an example. SVN builds from drdteam aren't compressed, but Quasar's official releases are.

[Quasar]

DWANGO man, DWANGO!

Actually the common term for a compressed executable is "packed." It is mainly done to save space, yes. Smaller downloads, etc.

It does NOT make a program faster, in fact it will take slightly longer to startup as the stub loader must execute, unpack the real program in memory, and then execute it.

I use upx with -9 compression, personally.