CapnClever

The "IWAD tag [file] not present" error indicates that the given IWAD failed the check that determines the file to be an IWAD. The first four bytes of the file should read, in ASCII, "IWAD", and for whatever reason that is not the case. (You can check yourself using this online hex editor.) I can think of three reasons for this: Your "doom2.wad" is a mistakenly-renamed PWAD Your "doom2.wad" is corrupt Your "doom2.wad" isn't a WAD file at all First thing you'll want to do is check that your doom2.wad is what it's supposed to be. Go to this DoomWiki page and confirm that the filesize you have matches one of those listed (probably 1.9 or BFG Edition, though I suppose it's possible you have an older version so check all of them if the first two don't match). If you find a matching filesize, use this online MD5/SHA-1 hash generator to confirm those values for the file as well. If you don't find a match, then you've got a problem and probably will want to retrieve whatever is necessary (Steam purchase, CD-ROM, etc) to gain an accurate copy of doom2.wad. If the problem is #1, you should be able to open it up in something like SLADE or Doom Builder and check what's actually there: it's possible some overwriting happened accidentally. Otherwise, you can safely discard that doom2.wad once you've retrieved the true copy. If you do find a match and it's still not loading, then you'll have to wait for a response for one of the devs, because I wouldn't know how to proceed from there. As for why it would be working in prboom-plus and GZDoom, I have no idea on that either: we can explore the problem further after you've verified the file.

My guess is that your IWAD file is located in your GZDoom directory and that PrBoom-plus isn't just going to find it there, though it's hard to without context. Here are some potential solutions. Just throw a copy of your Doom2 IWAD into prboom-plus. It's a bit wasteful space-wise but 20MB on drives these days isn't that much. If you're trying to run prboom-plus from the command line: The -iwad parameter has to be specified if an IWAD isn't already in the current directory or prboom-plus's directory (plus some other miscellaneous cases that aren't going into here). "prboom-plus.exe -iwad C:/SomePath/ThatGoes/ToTheIWAD/doom2.wad" would be one such example. If you're trying to run prboom-plus from Doom Builder/GZDoom Builder: Confirm in "Tools > Game Configurations > [config you're using] > Testing" that the example command line (available by checking "Customize parameters") points to a valid IWAD file. If it doesn't, you can hardcode the path yourself or put your IWAD in the place that the example suggests. (I'm not sure what defines the variable %WP, don't see anything for it in other settings, so if it's not working for you then hardcoding is likely the best option.

A DeHackEd patch is just a file with a ".deh" (or ".bex" for the Boom equivalent) extension. They contain information that wasn't modifiable through only a WAD, and originally were used to literally patch the original game executable (e.g., DOOM2.EXE), though source ports know how to handle them without such drastic measures. As for using it in Doom Touch, I imagine the files are probably selectable like any other WAD/PK3 file. If not, I have no idea how you'd access a command line from an Android.

If you need something like this done in the future, TwistedWave has an online version. I myself recommend grabbing Audacity, the only waveform editor I've ever needed in over 10 years. They didn't just reverse the sound clip, of course: there's some echoing that creates additional noise. It's hard to guess what a deconvolution sounds like until you actually do it.

Everyone's gonna have different control setups. Just look at all these topics about 'em! Trying to find the popular setup is the best bet, if there's even a majority in that regard, and even then you want to make sure certain settings work for everyone in default (video mode, as mentioned). I'm sure there are ways to make 'em better, but I imagine it's awfully low on the priority list for both users and developers. I setup and re-setup configurations all the time, and I've found it's something I simply got used to. Only takes a minute or two, and you'll get at least that much Doom time when you're done. (If I did have something to complain about menu-wise, it'd be the menus themselves, but that's an even hairier mess in terms of who likes what and a sense of what "better" entails.)

idgames ensures through its submission process that a license accompanies every single file. I don't see the same for Realm667, so I would suppose any file downloadable without one can technically be ripped apart and sewn together at your whim. (If nothing else they don't make it easy to find such a license: hopefully someone else knows better.) Every Reallm667 submission has to include attributions, which is kind of like a permissions agreement in that it likely won't be accepted into the Realm667 repository unless the submitter has all these things in order: on the other hand, it doesn't prevent anyone else from using it and not applying the same credit. I suppose the ethical thing-to-do would be to attribute whenever possible: the few sample cases I downloaded from Realm667 included a CREDITS text lump. You'll want to take that big listing of credits you have and either make your own CREDITS lump or simply include it in some textfile to be distributed alongside your mod. Furthermore, as your mod will contain these shared elements, it follows to further allow others the permission to modify and reuse your own work in their own (again, as long as they attribute the original to you and everyone you originally attributed). As for whether or not you require active permission from the authors, I would say the answer is no: the authors knew the consequences when submitting their work to Realm667, and you should feel free to do what you want with it. I could probably go on at length about the connotations of using shared resources and whether or not the modder is appropriately justifying their usage, but that has nothing to do with the OP's intentions. Ultimately, the fact that these resources require *ZDoom in the first place limits the amount of useful feedback you'll find here (where many source ports are used) as opposed to, say, ZDoom forums (where the *ZDoom usage is 100%). You may be better off searching for answers there.

Video's up! Took a bit longer to get online see as how I had significant cuts to make due to technical problems during the original airing. This one's a bit scatter-brained, and I really do want to create a shorter, more focused episode next time. Apologies if it's not quite as enjoyable to follow along as others have been.

That's because there are no differences to compare: complevel has very little to do with the Doom Compatibility submenu. MBF allowed for a number of previously-fixed behaviors to be switched on or off at will, meaning that at cl11 (with a few extra requiring a prboom-plus complevel) the configuration of menu options are directly linked to the gameplay you get. Anything below cl11, however, is effectively ignored, which is why complevels like cl2 (Doom2 1.9) and cl9 (Boom 2.02) are so valued. When you choose a complevel, you're choosing to run the game exactly according to the behaviors of the engine selected. Applying a complevel performs a number of changes outside of that menu which aren't emulated simply by setting menu values on or off. (The exception to this is overflow emulation, though these can provide warnings for those interested in the details.) You can, however, start prboom-plus with a given complevel and then change the behavior after game start from the menu: I suppose that, since opening the menu at a low complevel would break a demo anyway, this wasn't deemed important.

Due to some only-slightly-expected circumstances, Evo will be delayed for some hours. I'll be sure to post a status update ~15 minutes before we get started, so keep an eye out for that. EDIT: Oh, and as usual you can expect the YouTube upload by Monday, June 19.

New episode of Evolution of the WAD at a slightly different time! Head over to https://www.twitch.tv/capnclever today, June 17 starting at 6:00PM EDT (UTC-4). This episode will be Map Openers, looking at the opening shots and scenes on display at the very beginning of a map.

This is the most exact answer I can give you.

There are some people trying to develop formal theories behind game design. The MDA Framework tends to be the most known, and it's an insightful read even if you don't believe it to be useful in a targeted manner. I can only repeat what I said earlier: a preference needs no explanation, a assertion of better/worse does. The hypothetical person saying "Doom is better" without giving an explanation is stating their preference, only in a way that's going to piss people off; and the hypothetical person saying "Doom is my favorite" while attempting to explain is only guessing at rationalizations (or wording their assertion poorly). If we can't agree on that much, there's little reason to continue. If this sounds like stubbornly splitting hairs, well, yeah I am doing that. Yet I'm not going to blindly accept preferences that may not accurately reflect their perspective. Indeed, the very same person could think that some hypothetical game trap is both a thrilling experience and dumb gameplay, perhaps on different playthroughs, or quite possibly at the same time. So how might it be both? That's what I want to understand, and I don't accept that "we're all just different" is the only possibility. I think you're trying too hard to get a quantitative metric out of this, when even the qualitative metrics are fuzzy. I don't have a statistical method to convince you that Gameplay X does something better than Gameplay Y. Yes, ideally we would apply mathematical formalism to get an accepted result, but should we just twiddle our thumbs and ignore everything until one is available? I wouldn't write this stuff if I didn't expect to be challenged on it. Heck, that I don't get challenged on it often tends to be disconcerting because there's no way I have anything remotely close to a useful theory. If you don't think there are answers to be found, so be it, but I'm going to keep toiling away until I find one.

I'll put it this way: to call something preferred (or a favorite) requires no significant justification, whereas to call something better ought to be proven. To speak in terms of most or least favorite, or preferences, or merely likes and dislikes, is to have a positive or negative reaction towards something that is not (or cannot be) explained. My favorite color is red. Why? Because when I look at various colors and I see the one we call red it evokes the greatest positive emotional response. Of course, that explanation is effectively "I like it because my body said so", and does nothing to make anyone else understand or even believe it to be true from my own perspective. If you really like pineapple on pizza, you aren't going to convince someone who doesn't to change their stance. Preference itself exists a priori, beyond that which can be deduced through intelligible meaning. And yet through those innumerable preferences you can start to piece together patterns about how you think. To speak in terms of better and worse conveys a more objective weight, in which one provides comparisons revolved around basic assumptions. "For objects M and N and assumptive qualities A, B, and C; if factors AM, BM, and CM are greater than factors AN, BN, and CN; then we can say that M is better than N." Within this, there's a focus on presenting evidence that exists regardless of the viewer and using it to infer degrees of quality. What's important to realize is that there is no implied "better in all things forever": M is better than N regarding only qualities A, B, and C, and that's only if the reasoning is sound. Often there are no useful comparisons to make! Thus, better and worse are reserved for cases where there is enough similarity to make a case in the first place, and the case itself must be defined to be meaningful. So when I see "favorite" and "better" used interchangeably, it suggests no interest in how others think, only what that surface-level preference is. It suggests that trying to describe my own understanding has no value because the other person is more interested in aligning with like-minded others rather than learning to agree even when we don't think similarly. (The more likely probability, however, is that most people don't give a rat's ass about any of the above and believe the two words to be semantically equivalent, so I tend to go with that.) I say that. And of course, in order to say that I have to pick a means of comparison, of which I choose gameplay because the most fundamental attribute video games have in common is being games. (Of course you can say that the medium of video games is much more than simply a game, but seeing as how interactivity (i.e., the play in gameplay) sets them apart from other media, I think it's an easy basis from which arguments can be derived.) Don't get me wrong, Heretic is still the game that evokes the most positive emotional response to me as opposed to Doom, but I don't let that get in the way of me judging it on concrete terms that I can relate to others. And, if I'm looking to make a better game on such merits, I have a working theory from which I can progress toward that goal. --- Anyway, all that aside, I suppose Doom2 wins my preference, though it's not by a mile or anything. Even if Doom1 has less to offer, it's also a smaller game, and I think it uses the space it has just fine.

It comes up a lot more often than you'd think. Also, your poll is asking for "favorite" while your post suggests "better", even though these carry different meanings. For example, Heretic is my favorite game on the Doom engine, even though I acknowledge that Doom and Strife and Hexen are better games. This is to say that Heretic aligns with my own aesthetic interests in a way that naturally pulls me toward its qualities while overlooking its flaws; but if someone were to ask me for a recommendation on a game to play from the idtech1 engine, it would be likely the last thing I'd suggest. As far as Doom1 and Doom2 are concerned: I think Doom1 holds up better as a first-time experience but grows weaker with replays, whereas Doom2 lacks a strong first impression but gets better over time. Probably because the maps are bigger in Doom2? There's more to potentially miss in a playthrough of the latter, whereas the most you'll be finding in Doom1 on a second pass are the more well-hidden secrets. It also helps that there's a higher skill cap in Doom2, especially with the new enemies that make you think a lot more about how to handle them. Doom1 has superior cohesion and pacing, however, and that makes it more of a full experience when you're immersing yourself into it. (That's just a surface-level read, though, as I haven't spent much time considering it.)

Good question! I haven't seen that problem before. You can cause it to auto-progress by holding a key down (mouse counts) before the text screen appears, but it doesn't actually buffer new inputs. If you're running the game on an old compatibility level, you can't press a button to bring the full text into view and have to wait for it to slowly scroll out. It's possible the game thinks you're holding a button for some reason, don't know any more than that. This is one of those relics left in primarily for demo-syncing purposes: the original executable used this time to load the map, but as this is often instantaneous in the present year the time is far shorter; and adding a keypress or artificially padding out the length of the screen would most certainly break demos (though no reason not to allow it for the current version). Anyway, I don't see a way to adjust it in the options: you'll just have to read it after finishing the level.

It's pretty good, if unpolished on the gameplay side. Certainly a monumental amount of effort on the visuals. I left a comment in that thread, seeing as how it wasn't locked. Anyone who enjoys interesting scenery should take the hour needed to check it out.

Pretty cool! It certainly brings out much of the primal moodiness that many have idealized in the series over the years. It gets a bit over-detailed on occasion, but I think it's an excellent aesthetic that lasts for the course of the map. Some thoughts: I don't think the player needs to go through the entirety of E1M8 to grasp the situation of the map proper: everyone's played it, everyone remembers it. Starting the player at the base of the stairs leading to the infamous teleporter is probably more than enough. The first significant view of the hellscape is quite breathtaking: it sets the pacing of the map well. Regarding new enemies: The gargoyle-like enemies are definitely the most interesting here: incredibly evasive but incredibly fragile, and their imp-spam makes them a priority. They're somewhat trivialized by chaingun without autoaim (at least I'm assuming this was meant for freelook, given the vertical nature and sloping of the level) but hey, a unique use for the chaingun against an enemy more worrisome than the average opponent is always refreshing! The lock-on lost souls are also pretty neat, as they better justify their HP value compared to the typical type. I'm surprised you didn't make give them a random chance to pop out of Pain Elementals. The Skelenants are fairly boring, not much more than a bulked-up demon. Their melee attack does "home" in if you try to dance, which is a bit of a change-up, but considering their speed it's hardly an issue to kill them from a distance. Indeed, demons are more interesting because you can make them harmless with the right technique: to remove that is to make the enemy less flexible. I think I only saw one or two chaingunning Mancubi, and that's a good thing: a hitscanning sponge is usually a tedious monster. The Red Baron is amusing, if still basically a Baron: its initial encounter in the tube-hallway is its best usage, as that fight is actually difficult to handle without taking damage. Of course the player could just wait it out, but I like the potential there. Way too much ammo everywhere. I doubt I picked up even half of it on my way through the level. I realize it's a non-linear adventure, but that's all the more reason to pace each encounter with an appropriate amount of ammo as you go, rather than scattering it all over the place. The Cyberdemon and Mastermind encounters aren't much to look at, gameplay-wise: in contrast, their preceding fights are among the challenge highlights of the map. You could probably get rid of them and work on a more polished group of lesser foes to get more out of the areas: this would also better set up the final boss, which would come as that much more of a shocker to veterans expecting something on the hackneyed side. This is probably just me, but the use of PSX/64 sound effects throws me off a lot. Many of the enemies end up sounding the same, which makes it difficult to determine who's still alive and attacking me when not directly in my view. Experiment with a little mix-and-match, see if there's a combination between the two sets that works. Wasn't sure if the map's completely done, so I did cheat my way into what were apparently easter eggs. For anyone who hasn't tried the map yet, I would implore you to search thoroughly for all the secrets before doing so, as they're amusing enough to be worth the effort. I get a sense of a focus on wanting the scare the player with enemies rather than providing them a suitable challenge, which is fine. Most of the time, however, I simply wasn't afraid, and what's left is shooting at things until they die. There are virtually no traps (nothing like a monster closet anyway), making everything incredibly straight-forward and occasionally anti-climactic. I recall a plasma gun sitting in a nice set-pieced room and being ready to run over it and start blasting away, but nothing came: hell, nothing came for the next couple minutes. As this is a game, I would suggest that your artistic direction be put to optimal use in providing an interesting experience rather than a tour (not that there isn't plenty of it already: this is meant only as a vague suggestion on where to look for refinements). If anyone feels like trying it out, don't expect much of a challenge: there might be a couple of hairy moments, but it'd be easy enough to do without saving if you're careful. Quite fun to explore, though!

Does it? Mine are showing up as left-aligned right now. I don't see an alignment setting in the options, though... Eternity Engine can handle mouselook (and turning off the autoaim as well), albeit with Heretic-like limitations on how far you can pan. It's sort of a point in PrBoom+'s favor, but I wouldn't be surprised if EE devs would better accommodate panning limitations. This is The Big One™ as far as die-hard PrBoom+ users are concerned: you can easily set the exact behaviors necessary to replicate a particular emulation with a command-line switch. This could be my own naivety, but it seems like it should be easy enough to add to Eternity Engine (e.g., ZDoom-based "compatibility mode"s), thus providing similar emulation conveniently if not exactly. Demo compatibility itself is another matter, of course, but just throwing a Boom map, designed and playtested in complevel 9, into EE and expecting it to function like that would be an excellent nicety. PrBoom+ is an excellent "legacy port", insomuch that it strives to emulate many different points along the early history of Doom executables and eventual source ports. I'm aware that there exist some extra features that PrBoom+ (or maybe PrBoom) chose to add over the years, which probably make a few WADs here and there specific to the port, though I don't know what they are myself. As for specific advantages... PortMIDI is a nice MIDI driver using the original instrumentation. EE only uses SDL_Mixer, and while it thankfully works okay enough on Windows, I'd consider PortMIDI the superior option. There are a lot more variations to the alternative HUDs in PrBoom+. If you're used to one of them and it isn't in EE, guess you'd be out of luck. The speed-up/speed-down/current map/next level buttons for demo handling (and even non-demo handling) are handy. EE does have both chasecam and freecam for demos (though I just noticed the latter forgets to grab the mouse so that's a bit of a problem). If you're already using PrBoom+ and are considering to switch to EE, there is the ever-present problem of converting mouse sensitivity. I play across like, four or five different sensitivities, so I never feel completely on-kilter, but I'm sure there are people that are very, uh, sensitive about their sensitivity settings. One of the nicest niceties in Eternity Engine, compared to PrBoom+, is support for finite actor height. For as many people that complain about infinite actor height, I imagine most people wanting that-but-also-vanilla would flock to Eternity Engine for that reason alone. I've been using it in situations where a WAD is advanced and supports EE, but I'm considering looking into a compatibility setup to make it palatable toward Boom-centric maps. I don't know much about graphical limitations, and for the most part I can't be bothered to care. If I can visually understand what's going on then it's good enough for me (though it's worth noting I use and have no qualms with Chocolate Doom's graphical quality).

You might just wanna read this. It's the resulting (i.e., stretched) image that displayed in 4:3, whereas square pixels would've produced an 8:5 aspect ratio. Hardware at the time of Doom's inception was ever-changing, even moreso than now. It's natural that id software would work with something most people had access to. Doom also had PC Speaker sounds just to accommodate consumers that lacked a sound card, when no modern game company would bother these days.

YouTube video's up! I did say we'd try to keep a schedule at most once a month, so here's the once-a-month. Should be back to more like 1-2 weeks for at least a few episodes, though.

Bet you thought we forgot but no, Evolution of the WAD's comin' up! Tomorrow even! Join us on Saturday, June 3rd, starting at 9PM EDT (UTC-4) over at https://www.twitch.tv/capnclever for Hexen-style Hubs! We'll be looking at the originals for comparison, and then a number of other WADs (some Hexen, some Doom) that use variable similarities in style.

Well if you want to go by Doom2's intermission text: CONGRAULATIONS, YOU'VE FOUND THE SECRET LEVEL! LOOKS LIKE IT'S BEEN BUILT BY HUMANS, RATHER THAN DEMONS. YOU WONDER WHO THE INMATES OF THIS CORNER OF HELL WILL BE. It's from Doomguy's perspective (albeit having a direct fourth-wall break destroys the narrative as believable) so who knows if it's like, an actual corner of Hell for Nazis or what. If we're to take it even the slightly bit seriously, the fact that the levels exist and look incredibly similar to the layouts in Wolf3D imply a same-universe connection. Of course, then you'd have to explain the hanging EGA Keens... I have this theory that the Wolf3D levels in Doom2 are evidence that, over the last ~300 years, humanity has shrunk to around a third its original size. It also explains why Doomguy is so fast and slippery!

Your individual-level reviews, on average, are more detailed than my own (nevermind the time taken for screenshots) so I wouldn't sell yourself short. In fact, I have no idea if my reviews are particularly useful for the intended audience: namely, people who haven't played the WAD and are deciding whether or not they ought to. It's quite possible that most downloaders would rather skim through a number of pithy and terse recommendations, and when they see a wall of text it's a tl;dr. If you do plan on adding a review for Urania, if nothing else I suggest doing what I did at the bottom and adding a compilation of your posts from here for easy access: with your numerous visual samplings it might help some people decide quicker. The main reason I'm writing up long reviews is because is new format allows for it. Previously, /idgames was extremely limited in its ability to comment on files, so that's what people stuck to writing: very rarely will you see anything on there that deserves a paragraph break. Now, however, we're free to use the same formatting editor that the forum itself provides. I can throw down lists, embedded links, and even the occasional picture to construct a compelling yet fluid review. Not every review is quite this long, but then again not every mapset do I spend time thinking about each individual map so closely. You can scroll down this page to get a better idea of average length. Anyway we'll see where it leads: maybe others will decide to try their hand, maybe not. I hope to keep myself relatively concise as I continue: Urania's review is especially long because I was able to critically examine it moreso than usual.