Final Doom-Plus?

Context, I guess

Recently I've been on a quest to create the optimal DOS Doom experience for each installment of the id tech 1 trilogy. So far, I've gotten Doom 1 and 2 fully set up with dehacked, Doom1/2-plus for bypassing savegame limits for certain WADs, and also SIGIL.EXE, a special fork of Doom-plus design for John Romero's fifth episode. Recently, I figured out dehacked for Final Doom (apparently the id Anthology version of the executable doesn't play nice with dehacked, so I had to borrow the executable from the Steam version), and I've successfully been able to load up WADs like Plutonia 2 and Plutonia Revisited with their respective dehacked patches.

The issue

I started Plutonia 2 yesterday and reached the third level, which causes a savegame overflow in the vanilla executable upon saving. Today I did some research, finding this DoomWiki article about Doom-plus and noticed that speedrunner Archy had at one point made a "Final Doom-plus (aka fdoomp.exe)" fork of it. Further research has yielded no discovery of the executable, only another Doomworld post asking the same thing. But what most interested me was @Redneckerz's reply to the question, stating, "As far as i could trace back, Archy's Final Doom Plus was never released." 

That being said, does anyone know where one could perhaps contact Archy? Perhaps he has a copy of his fabled Final Doom-plus executable sitting on a harddrive somewhere that we could maybe get published or maybe even get our hands on the source code and make a more polished/complete version of this illusive executable.

9 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

Context, I guess

Recently I've been on a quest to create the optimal DOS Doom experience for each installment of the id tech 1 trilogy. So far, I've gotten Doom 1 and 2 fully set up with dehacked, Doom1/2-plus for bypassing savegame limits for certain WADs, and also SIGIL.EXE, a special fork of Doom-plus design for John Romero's fifth episode. Recently, I figured out dehacked for Final Doom (apparently the id Anthology version of the executable doesn't play nice with dehacked, so I had to borrow the executable from the Steam version), and I've successfully been able to load up WADs like Plutonia 2 and Plutonia Revisited with their respective dehacked patches.

Dont forget about Doom32. Which is basically Doom-Plus with some additional removed limits that are very useful for larger levels.

Xttl's Ultimate Doom Hack attempts to be the ultimate all-in-one vanilla hack, but its not finished yet. So until then, i consider Doom32 as the exe hack for vanilla.

9 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

 

The issue

I started Plutonia 2 yesterday and reached the third level, which causes a savegame overflow in the vanilla executable upon saving. Today I did some research, finding this DoomWiki article about Doom-plus and noticed that speedrunner Archy had at one point made a "Final Doom-plus (aka fdoomp.exe)" fork of it. Further research has yielded no discovery of the executable, only another Doomworld post asking the same thing. But what most interested me was @Redneckerz's reply to the question, stating, "As far as i could trace back, Archy's Final Doom Plus was never released." 

As the write of the above article, let me add some additional detail:

One user, @Randy87 quite possibly has the greatest historic Doom archive i have ever come across* and who has been extraordinarily helpful in retrieving some otherwise impossible to find hacks and things. Not even he has Archy's build. Hence ''As far as i could trace back''.

Sadly this Final Doom-plus seems lost to the ages until further notice. It shares a similar fate with some rather obscure source modifications that otherwise had some significant features that are interesting to check out.

* On top of that Randy has also posted some rather amazing savegame hacks so if there is one user who deserves cred, its Randy. And hopefully he does not mind me making this kind of grand compliment. :)

9 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

That being said, does anyone know where one could perhaps contact Archy? Perhaps he has a copy of his fabled Final Doom-plus executable sitting on a harddrive somewhere that we could maybe get published or maybe even get our hands on the source code and make a more polished/complete version of this illusive executable.

I believe Archy is either banned or inactive on DW, hence why i never bothered to ask.

16 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

Dont forget about Doom32. Which is basically Doom-Plus with some additional removed limits that are very useful for larger levels.

Xttl's Ultimate Doom Hack attempts to be the ultimate all-in-one vanilla hack, but its not finished yet. So until then, i consider Doom32 as the exe hack for vanilla.

As the write of the above article, let me add some additional detail:

One user, @Randy87 quite possibly has the greatest historic Doom archive i have ever come across* and who has been extraordinarily helpful in retrieving some otherwise impossible to find hacks and things. Not even he has Archy's build. Hence ''As far as i could trace back''.

Sadly this Final Doom-plus seems lost to the ages until further notice. It shares a similar fate with some rather obscure source modifications that otherwise had some significant features that are interesting to check out.

* On top of that Randy has also posted some rather amazing savegame hacks so if there is one user who deserves cred, its Randy. And hopefully he does not mind me making this kind of grand compliment. :)

I believe Archy is either banned or inactive on DW, hence why i never bothered to ask.

Wow, thanks for the information dude. Lots of great info here. I think what most fascinates me is this archive that Randy has, is this publicly available via a link or is this a private collection of his? Also I think Doom32 is only compatible with 1 and 2 (also loading it with Ultimate Doom doesn't show Thy Flesh Consumed in the episode select for whatever reason, so maybe just 2 then).

8 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

Wow, thanks for the information dude. Lots of great info here. I think what most fascinates me is this archive that Randy has, is this publicly available via a link or is this a private collection of his?

Its his private collection. I have a text file listing of it. Its pretty something massive, Randy has it all backed up but ill leave it in the middle for how long (as i don't know) :P

8 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

Also I think Doom32 is only compatible with 1 and 2 (also loading it with Ultimate Doom doesn't show Thy Flesh Consumed in the episode select for whatever reason, so maybe just 2 then).

Ah yes that's right. Its purely Doom 1/2, but since it was from Xttl, perhaps its based off the Anthology version? Most of his hacks use that as a base (Like Nr4tl.exe) because of a few things:

• Its the latest official Doom engine build iD put out
• Its one of the most stable builds, fixing several bugs in the process

The only thing is that the Anthology executable is quite a rarity, so for it to be the basis of most of his hacks is especially useful since you essentially get the latest iD engine build. By comparison, Entryway's Doom-Plus hacks aren't based off the Anthology version AFAIK.

The UDoomHack i linked uses the Anthology version as a base aswell. So perhaps you can test out the R2 release linked and see how that performs?

17 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

Its his private collection. I have a text file listing of it. Its pretty something massive, Randy has it all backed up but ill leave it in the middle for how long (as i don't know) :P

Ah yes that's right. Its purely Doom 1/2, but since it was from Xttl, perhaps its based off the Anthology version? Most of his hacks use that as a base (Like Nr4tl.exe) because of a few things:

• Its the latest official Doom engine build iD put out
• Its one of the most stable builds, fixing several bugs in the process

The only thing is that the Anthology executable is quite a rarity, so for it to be the basis of most of his hacks is especially useful since you essentially get the latest iD engine build. By comparison, Entryway's Doom-Plus hacks aren't based off the Anthology version AFAIK.

The UDoomHack i linked uses the Anthology version as a base aswell. So perhaps you can test out the R2 release linked and see how that performs?

I just gave it a try. Works fine with standard Plutonia and TNT, HOWEVER, it also inherits the same problems that the standard id Anthology doom2.exe seems to suffer from, that being that player controls don't work when used as a base for dehacked, which could be an issue in terms of its versatility. Should I let him know about this?

28 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

I just gave it a try. Works fine with standard Plutonia and TNT, HOWEVER, it also inherits the same problems that the standard id Anthology doom2.exe seems to suffer from, that being that player controls don't work when used as a base for dehacked, which could be an issue in terms of its versatility. Should I let him know about this?

Yeah, post it in the exe hacking thread, might always be useful!

But as a base for Dehacked? What do you mean?

1 minute ago, Redneckerz said:

Yeah, post it in the exe hacking thread, might always be useful!

But as a base for Dehacked? What do you mean?

I mean, using udoom.exe as the reference executable in dehacked to generate a doomhack.exe creates the same problems as the id anthology doom2.exe.

Really interesting finding the one you made about the Id Anthologies version, OpenRift.
Cool job!
 

Just did some testing myself to confirm and yeah, any DEH patches applied to Id Anthology versions of the EXE seem to just result in corruption.

Tree designed DeHackEd to work with the vanilla version of Final Doom from 1996 rather than the fixed version from (I dunno, 2000 or something?) so it makes sense that an altered version of the EXE results in corruption as soon as the player attempts to move - The same thing happens when you try to use DeHackEd on old/outdated versions of the Doom1 EXE, I'm guessing for the same reason, slight internal adjustments and rearrangements mean that DeHackEd is inserting the "new code" from DEH files in the wrong place for this version of the EXE.

On 12/5/2018 at 7:56 AM, Empyre said:

Before ports that could load deh files, Dehacked worked by editing the exe file. It used offsets into the code to know where to edit things, so you had to have the exact version of the code that dehacked expected, or the offsets would be pointing to the wrong places. The executables for shareware Doom, registered Doom, Ultimate Doom, and Doom 2 would be different enough to make it not work if you have the wrong one selected, even if they all had the same version number.

Looks like the same applies to the patched/fixed version of the Final Doom EXEs!

EDIT: FWIW, I just use DoomP for playing Ultimate Doom mods in DOSBox, Doom32 is even better of course, but I have yet to run into something for Vanilla/Limit Removing Ultimate Doom that won't run in DoomP.

I'd also definitely recommend using xttl's awesome NRFTL.EXE in case your want to play Nerve.wad in DOS. I played through Nerve using his expanded EXE and it just felt so right. Here's an archive with all of the most up-to-date vanilla EXEs, including expanded versions, that I'm aware of (xttl's cool stuff, Doom32, JadingTsunami's ultra-easy DehPick/DehMake and FastDoom, plus some other useful vanilla utils)

If xttl gets that "One EXE to rule them all that works for Doom/UltDoom/Doom2/Final Doom with all the bugfixes and has DeHackEd support" that would be so awesome. Seems like a giant feat to try and get just one EXE to know what to do depending on what iwad it detects, since there seem to be some tiny-but-important revisions between the 1.9 D2/UD/Final EXEs, and those differences muck around with DEH support and such.

37 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Just did some testing myself to confirm and yeah, any DEH patches applied to Id Anthology versions of the EXE seem to just result in corruption.

 

Tree designed DeHackEd to work with the vanilla version of Final Doom from 1996 rather than the fixed version from (I dunno, 2000 or something?) so it makes sense that an altered version of the EXE results in corruption as soon as the player attempts to move - The same thing happens when you try to use DeHackEd on old/outdated versions of the Doom1 EXE, I'm guessing for the same reason, slight internal adjustments and rearrangements mean that DeHackEd is inserting the "new code" from DEH files in the wrong place for this version of the EXE.

 

Looks like the same applies to the patched/fixed version of the Final Doom EXEs!

 

EDIT: FWIW, I just use DoomP for playing Ultimate Doom mods in DOSBox, Doom32 is even better of course, but I have yet to run into something for Vanilla/Limit Removing Ultimate Doom that won't run in DoomP.

  

I'd also definitely recommend using xttl's awesome NRFTL.EXE in case your want to play Nerve.wad in DOS. I played through Nerve using his expanded EXE and it just felt so right. Here's an archive with all of the most up-to-date vanilla EXEs, including expanded versions, that I'm aware of (xttl's cool stuff, Doom32, JadingTsunami's ultra-easy DehPick/DehMake and FastDoom, plus some other useful vanilla utils)

  

If xttl gets that "One EXE to rule them all that works for Doom/UltDoom/Doom2/Final Doom with all the bugfixes and has DeHackEd support" that would be so awesome. Seems like a giant feat to try and get just one EXE to know what to do depending on what iwad it detects, since there seem to be some tiny-but-important revisions between the 1.9 D2/UD/Final EXEs, and those differences muck around with DEH support and such.

Great stuff as always. I didn't even know there was a special NRFTL executable, that's pretty awesome.

I'm very glad to see that interest in Doom, in particular Doom for DOS, is still alive and well. I'm very much out of the loop so I may not be of much help, but I do have a file called FDOOMP.EXE on my hard drive. I'm currently in contact with axdoomer about giving it to him. Aside from my contact with axdoomer, is there a location you would like me to upload this file to?

P.S.: I'm quite surprised I managed to come up with a "fork" that no one has managed to reproduce :). I had practically no programming skills at the time so I must have found a step-by-step guide somewhere.

17 minutes ago, Archy said:

I'm very glad to see that interest in Doom, in particular Doom for DOS, is still alive and well. I'm very much out of the loop so I may not be of much help, but I do have a file called FDOOMP.EXE on my hard drive. I'm currently in contact with axdoomer about giving it to him. Aside from my contact with axdoomer, is there a location you would like me to upload this file to?

 

P.S.: I'm quite surprised I managed to come up with a "fork" that no one has managed to reproduce :). I had practically no programming skills at the time so I must have found a step-by-step guide somewhere.

Hi there Archy! I wrote the little reference to your file on the DoomWiki page which has spurred some users to make threads related to it. I originally was convinced you weren't be able to be approached anymore, hence i postponed any further investigations.

Tagging @PhoxFyre007 and @OpenRift as they are interested in this aswell. And perhaps @kgsws and @xttl too.

Really great to see your name come up here.

I can host your file permanently if you so wish, if you want me to PM you about more details, please let me know. Ill be happy to write up some details about your work.

What's crazy is I don't even remembering making or obtaining this file, let alone talking about it here. I'm also surprised I was even able to make the file. I'll PM you shortly.

I'm glad we have the file now. It could have easily been lost forever. 

The file was originally posted in this thread: 

Doomworld doesn't delete uploaded files automatically, so I assume it's safe if I upload it here: 

FDOOMP.zip

Redneckerz in a pm wrote:

Quote

Can you tell me a bit more about fdoomp? What was the drive to do it? What does it feature?

I don't remember much about why I made it. I do remember wondering and being annoyed that there was a doomp and a doom2p but no fdoomp. This post seems to reveal the tool I used to make it (in other words, it seems myk actually made it), but the link is now dead.

5 hours ago, Archy said:

I'm very glad to see that interest in Doom, in particular Doom for DOS, is still alive and well. I'm very much out of the loop so I may not be of much help, but I do have a file called FDOOMP.EXE on my hard drive. I'm currently in contact with axdoomer about giving it to him. Aside from my contact with axdoomer, is there a location you would like me to upload this file to?

 

P.S.: I'm quite surprised I managed to come up with a "fork" that no one has managed to reproduce :). I had practically no programming skills at the time so I must have found a step-by-step guide somewhere.

Funny I was just talking to @axdoomer about adding Final Doom support for his patcher on Github lol. Something to note though, FDOOMP.EXE doesn't seem to load Plutonia.wad or TNT.wad at all for whatever reason. Instead, it will load Ultimate Doom's WAD. Is there a certain way that I'm supposed to get this working? Many thanks for the file btw.

It seems from this post fdoomp was based off of modifying doomp to behave like Final Doom instead of directly modifying Final Doom's executable. Today I ran Plutonia/TNT with fdoomp.exe by having doom2.wad in same directory as fdoomp.exe (and NOT having doom.wad in that directory) and then using the "-file plutonia.wad"/"-file tnt.wad" command line arguments.

Edit: I believe the purpose of fdoomp was to have a -complevel 4 version of doomp/doom2p for demo recording purposes, but it was not meant to behave like Final Doom outside of that scope, so loading plutonia.wad/tnt.wad as an iwad was not a concern.

13 minutes ago, Archy said:

It seems from this post fdoomp was based off of modifying doomp to behave like Final Doom instead of directly modifying Final Doom's executable. Today I ran Plutonia/TNT with fdoomp.exe by having doom2.wad in same directory as fdoomp.exe (and NOT having doom.wad in that directory) and then using the "-file plutonia.wad"/"-file tnt.wad" command line arguments.

Interesting.... Well, perhaps if someone does use this as a base for a further revision, they could probably change the target IWAD, then make a dehacked patch that restores all the Plutonia-related text (map names, intermissions, etc.). Though that does make me wonder if there'd be character limit issues that come with that...

Or just rewrite all of Final Doom's details manually, I guess.

9 hours ago, Archy said:

Redneckerz in a pm wrote:

I don't remember much about why I made it. I do remember wondering and being annoyed that there was a doomp and a doom2p but no fdoomp. This post seems to reveal the tool I used to make it (in other words, it seems myk actually made it), but the link is now dead.

I have that cracker executable and all the .crk files ever made for it. Axdoomer's Doom Patcher made use of these aswell i believe (And he has all of them too). I could always put a zip together with all these files. .crk files is what Entryway used to raise his limits.

Some other details i know of FDoomP:

• Based on Doom-plus 1.92.2,  (Linkingf to your own post, haha) which in turn is based on Doom2-plus 1.92.6 (Yes, Doom2-plus actually existed earlier than Doom-plus) meaning it has the full range of raised limits that are in DoomP/Doom2P (Actually, Doom2-plus's raised limits formed the basis for all the other Entryway Plus executable hacks.) Here is a post where you announced it.
• Doom-plus 1.92.2 has a teleporter bug that FDoomP inherits.

Unrelated but interesting, a Dehacked patch existed by Entryway that reveals VPO limits through a clever usage of the pistol.

6 hours ago, Archy said:

It seems from this post fdoomp was based off of modifying doomp to behave like Final Doom instead of directly modifying Final Doom's executable. Today I ran Plutonia/TNT with fdoomp.exe by having doom2.wad in same directory as fdoomp.exe (and NOT having doom.wad in that directory) and then using the "-file plutonia.wad"/"-file tnt.wad" command line arguments.

 

Edit: I believe the purpose of fdoomp was to have a -complevel 4 version of doomp/doom2p for demo recording purposes, but it was not meant to behave like Final Doom outside of that scope, so loading plutonia.wad/tnt.wad as an iwad was not a concern.

This might be crucial. If it behaves like Final Doom but its not the Final Doom executable, there might be differences. Considering its based off Doom-Plus, a geniune FDoomP would have to be based from the Final Doom executable.

Xttl's exe hacks use the far less common Id Anthology version of Final Doom's engine because it fixes the Teleporter bug in TNT and it being the latest official engine build iD put out, also one of the most stable versions out there. FDoomP is not based on this, but on the regular DoomP version. Hence why i say the above is crucial to distinguish the hacks apart.