Having trouble running older WADS

[Jbondboy]

I'm pretty new to the DOOM scene, only having started playing over the past couple of months. DOOM is a great game with lots of replayability that modern games just cant hold up to. Recently I came across doomworld's top ten WADs series where they break best WADs down by year and fell in love with the idea. I want to see just how the community and game itself has evolved over time, and the top tens series is a great way to do that. Recently however I have run into problems trying to run older WADs with newer source port engines. I run GZDoom and have been able to run newer mods and WADs in combination with and seprate from one another, however I am having trouble running older WADs, even by themselves. When trying to run these wads the game starts up at e1m1 with no changes at all despite running the wad. I use the ZDL launcher (cause its awesome :D) and have the IWADS for Ultimate doom and Doom 2. If anyone can help me figure out what's going on id be eternally grateful. 

[Edward850]

Could you specifically point out which WADs? Your problem isn't as obvious without understanding what it is you're trying to load.

[Jbondboy]

The ones im having issues with are the older ones, specifically Acheron, Serenity, and Eternity. Those are only the ones I remember off the top of my head. The only WADs im having problems with are the pretty old ones.

[Jbondboy]

That one was my own stupidity i admit, but others like UAC_DEAD wont run or change anything at all.

Edited February 22, 2018 by Jbondboy : cant figure out how to add a comment lolz

[Linguica]

I just downloaded https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/s-u/serenity and it seems to work fine in GZDoom. As basic as it sounds, make sure you are playing the WAD with Doom 1, not Doom 2, and the new levels are in episode 3.

[xvertigox]

Check the readme and see which map(s) the wad replaces. A lot of the time it'll be something like doom.wad E1M5 etc. You can't assume it's doom2.wad map01 with older (or even newer) maps.

[VGA]

Yes, some older wads replace specific maps because they want a different sky or because there are some hardcoded stuff in them (like having to kill all arachnotrons before something activates) or because of secret exits etc...

 

You can also load any wad with the tool called SLADE, then you can see the contents and which maps is contains. Some older wads have hidden maps that you can't get to normally.

[seed]

I've played a few wads from and around the '90s in GZDoom with no problems.

 

Try simply dropping the wad(s) on GZDoom's executable and choose the right IWAD and it should work afterwards. If they don't, well, either doing something wrong or maybe they're not compatible.