Andrew T.

There isn't much, but I found this post from 2015 which explains most of the differences: I'm not sure whether modifying the 0.3 WAD or modifying Yadex itself would be more difficult.

I've managed to get the Yadex Doom editor running in Cygwin on Windows. It may be old, and it may be for Unix...but as far as I know, it's the only editor capable of opening Doom alpha 0.4 and 0.5 maps. Development of Yadex petered out years before the 0.3 alpha surfaced, though...and since the 0.3 WAD format differs slightly from that of later alphas, Yadex can't open it by default. Is there a workaround for this?

I just tested this out on Doom 95 and Crispy Doom: Stand on the column, face the north edge, and press the spacebar. Lo and behold, it worked...every time! Thank you: You've solved an 28-year-old mystery!! I can't help but wonder whether American McGee intended for this teleport to be non-obvious and difficult to get to, or if he simply used the wrong "action" by mistake. It'd be far from the only map error in Episode 4.

In all my years of playing Doom, there isn't a single hidden area I haven't explored...with one exception. Is it possible to get to this teleport in E4M4 in normal gameplay? Near as I can tell, it's covered by a door that's supposed to be triggered by a linedef in one of the columns south of it. But I can't get the column to do anything.

I had a protracted introduction to Doom. In the 1990s I discovered a number of shareware games, including Wolfenstein 3D and the Apogee library. I was 11 or 12 at the time...and on my first play-through, Wolfenstein frightened me to the core! Yet, the one game I *didn't* have was Doom. I was aware it existed...it was such a cultural juggernaut that it was hard not to...but at the time, I was satisfied with platform scrollers and orthogonal walls. Around 2000 I discovered the Toastytech Doom website , which had a detailed write-up about the game's development and pre-release versions. I was so captivated that I immediately downloaded the 0.5 alpha, put it on a floppy disk, and loaded it on the 486 machine I had recently inherited as a hand-me-down...and discovered it wasn't quite playable all the way through, LOL. I repeated the experience with the "actual" released shareware a few days later. The feeling I had from my first play-through of Doom was one of all-around satisfaction. It was an immersive game. Each level felt carefully crafted, with just the right balance of threats, puzzles, and length to keep me engaged and encouraged to drive on. The game was filled with elements that stimulated curiosity, and encouraged exploring: "What does that blue sphere in E1M3 do, and how do I get to it?" Episode 1 was less frightening than Wolfenstein (being older helped), but it still inspired psychological horror: There were dark corridors, flickering lights, and a prevailing sense that you NEVER knew what enemy was going to suddenly lurch out around the bend. And the ending was one of the most unexpected moments I had experienced in any game.