Doom Wads with DOS launchers

[Redneckerz]

1 minute ago, Murdoch said:

 

Not most cases. All cases. In the case of shareware, it's the same executable so the distinction is irrelevant. Plus id's license terms forbid modding the shareware version.

Hmm, so aside scenario 3, everything is illegal.

 

That means Doom 4 Vanilla MS-DOS has a problem, because it specifically mentions using a dehacked merge executable and has a Doom2bak.exe aswell.

 

Useless trivia: Strain's original installer would allow you to build a replacement exe called Strnhack.exe. This was basically a renamed Doomhack.exe. You could specifiy what name the custom exe had to have instead of the default Doomhack.exe.

[Murdoch]

In theory it is illegal yes. In practice, the consequences are going to be nil. They theoretically could be sued but what is Bethesda going to do? Spend thousands suing them and get 50 bucks, a half eaten pizza and a few empty cans of energy drink in settlement? They would be more likely to get in trouble distributing an IWAD with a significant portion of original game assets intact.

[VGA]

57 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

I actually was thinking about one other possible variable @VGA please chip on this!

• So supplying a Doomhack.exe with your patch combined is in most cases illegal to distribute (See this prior post) But what if you use the Doom2 shareware executable? Would using that .exe as a base for a Dehacked custom EXE (as Doomhack) be legal?

Obviously it would be a moronic thing for any author to just ship the modified exe and no DEH patch, especially in today's place where people just load up a patch in a source port. But still.

Both of these are illegal, you cannot distribute the full version executable of Doom 2 (modified OR unmodified)

 

You also cannot *modify* the shareware executable and distribute it. (I suppose Dehacked does not even accept the shareware executable by the way.)

 

There are many questionable releases in the Doom community, PM me if you are interested in a mind-blowing example :D

Edited February 29, 2020 by VGA

[Redneckerz]

1 hour ago, VGA said:

Both of these are illegal, you cannot distribute the full version executable of Doom 2 (modified OR unmodified)

 

You also cannot *modify* the shareware executable and distribute it. (I suppose Dehacked does not even accept the shareware executable by the way.)

 

There are many questionable releases in the Doom community, PM me if you are interested in a mind-blowing example :D

Thanks for this. :)

[Doomkid]

Forgive me if it's answered in the thread, but I couldn't find any citation for the claim that the EXEs are illegal to distribute, regardless of whether or not they're modified? I'm not really doubting the claim, it just seems strange given that the EXE is little more than compiled source code - a source code that's been freely available since 1997. Is it because of DMX?

 

I just want some clarification on this because there are multiple websites and repositories that are distributing all the Doom EXEs under the impression that it is legal to do so, as I would've assumed as well. https://github.com/Doom-Utils/iwad-patches (check vanilla-engine, it has every known version of the DOS EXEs). There is also Doom/Doom2Plus: https://sourceforge.net/projects/prboom-plus/files/doom2-plus/1.92.6/ which also just seems to be modified EXEs, in this case with all the limits raised.

 

If this is a problem I want the people hosting these to know about it so they don't face any trouble, unlikely as it may be. If it isn't a problem, I can't help but wonder why anyone got in trouble for distributing the modified EXEs from any point after 1997? It's not like a modified Doom EXE is going to do you any good for piracy anyway - even if you got your hands on an iwad from one place and modded Doom EXE from somewhere else, it isn't going to work right because it's going to be looking for the content in the pwad that it was modified to match up with.

 

I'm just seeking come clarification on this, I find it interesting and want to know for sure what the deal is.

[Murdoch]

8 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I'm just seeking come clarification on this

 

It is more assumed than explicitly stated. Piracy is, after all, naughty. Even distributing part of copyrighted software is still piracy. id may not have cared back in the day (the readme doesn't mention any restrictions) but Bethesda potentially would if they found out though as I said earlier, more likely to care about data than the code since the source has already been released.

[Redneckerz]

8 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Forgive me if it's answered in the thread, but I couldn't find any citation for the claim that the EXEs are illegal to distribute, regardless of whether or not they're modified? I'm not really doubting the claim, it just seems strange given that the EXE is little more than compiled source code - a source code that's been freely available since 1997. Is it because of DMX?

 

I just want some clarification on this because there are multiple websites and repositories that are distributing all the Doom EXEs under the impression that it is legal to do so, as I would've assumed as well. https://github.com/Doom-Utils/iwad-patches (check vanilla-engine, it has every known version of the DOS EXEs). There is also Doom/Doom2Plus: https://sourceforge.net/projects/prboom-plus/files/doom2-plus/1.92.6/ which also just seems to be modified EXEs, in this case with all the limits raised.

 

If this is a problem I want the people hosting these to know about it so they don't face any trouble, unlikely as it may be. If it isn't a problem, I can't help but wonder why anyone got in trouble for distributing the modified EXEs from any point after 1997? It's not like a modified Doom EXE is going to do you any good for piracy anyway - even if you got your hands on an iwad from one place and modded Doom EXE from somewhere else, it isn't going to work right because it's going to be looking for the content in the pwad that it was modified to match up with.

 

I'm just seeking come clarification on this, I find it interesting and want to know for sure what the deal is.

Regarding the Plus hacks: They raise the vanilla limits and are hex-edited. Doomhack works within the vanilla limits and are generated by Dehacked.

 

It could be fun to see how Dehacked would work within a Doom Plus executable and taking advantage of the raised limits - A Dehacked-plus/Doomhack-Plus, really. But given the abundance of source ports these days that simply support loading of patches or merging with a command line parameter, the practical use of such would be limited.

 

Great question by the way!

7 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

 

It is more assumed than explicitly stated. Piracy is, after all, naughty. Even distributing part of copyrighted software is still piracy. id may not have cared back in the day (the readme doesn't mention any restrictions) but Bethesda potentially would if they found out though as I said earlier, more likely to care about data than the code since the source has already been released.

The crossover discussion i put in the D4V is thus an interesting one from the angles that are presented.

 

It isn't likely that anyone gets flagged for this. But it is true that the practice isn't legal, hence why most WADS that have .deh patches leave it up to the user to create a merged executable, using the users own Doom2.exe. As i read it, the way D4V supplies the exe is one of convenience and practical use.

 

It is indeed more assumed than stated - But one should be better safe than sorry. If legal matters would actually play a part, such things would not work to your advantage. The if part is ofcourse highly hypothetical as neither id Soft nor Bethesda have (yet) gone after anyone doing this, mind you.

[Doomkid]

1 hour ago, Murdoch said:

It is more assumed than explicitly stated. Piracy is, after all, naughty.

Well that's pretty much the crux of it - does distributing an EXE that is essentially just a compiled version of freely available code really count as piracy? I'd say it doesn't, especially since an EXE and pwad are totally useless to you if you don't already have the iwad.

 

[..] more likely to care about data than the code since the source has already been released.

I agree. I see little difference between distributing a modified Doom EXE and a source port. Functionally, it is the same thing - a program that can run Doom, but only if an iwad is already supplied. The only thing that puts it up in the air AFAIK is DMX which of course isn't in the available source.

 

1 hour ago, Redneckerz said:

It could be fun to see how Dehacked would work within a Doom Plus executable and taking advantage of the raised limits - A Dehacked-plus/Doomhack-Plus, really.

The Doom plus variants have full support for DeHackEd. I've used them loads of times! Only useful to the fringe who play around with DOSbox, but still cool for sure.

 

Anyway, I'd just be stunned if anyone could be bothered to care about distributing doomhack.exe files generated by DeHackEd, since there are a million and one programs out there that will run Doom so long as an iwad is present, and this is no different. I also agree that it's probably better to be safe than sorry, though.

[Redneckerz]

4 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Well that's pretty much the crux of it - does distributing an EXE that is essentially just a compiled version of freely available code really count as piracy? I'd say it doesn't, especially since an EXE and pwad are totally useless to you if you don't already have the iwad.

Well the DOS executables are copyrighted afaik.

 

Even so this page may be interesting.

 

In practice its a fringe subject. Some replaced the exe with just a deh to be better safe than sorry, others did not. There is only a risk with scenario 2 if id Soft or Bethsoft would take action against this.

 

4 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

 

I agree. I see little difference between distributing a modified Doom EXE and a source port.

Unless one targets plain DOS - a source port with just the deh patch is by far the preferred solution.

 

4 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

The Doom plus variants have full support for DeHackEd. I've used them loads of times! Only useful to the fringe who play around with DOSbox, but still cool for sure.

Interesting :) Can Dehacked make use of the plus improvements? I am not too sure of this since dehacked only modifies things within vanilla limits.

 

4 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Anyway, I'd just be stunned if anyone could be bothered to care about distributing doomhack.exe files generated by DeHackEd, since there are a million and one programs out there that will run Doom so long as an iwad is present, and this is no different. I also agree that it's probably better to be safe than sorry, though.

Exactly. But as you can tell, difference of opinion exists for ease of use - at the cost of introducing a small but unnecessary risk.

[Redneckerz]

@Doomkid Perhaps a little superfluous but i have been scouring off the /idgames to find big projects that did something more with the Doomhack stuff. So far i have found several megawads that came with their own custom installers, which allowed them to generate a custom exe containing Doom2 and the appropiate .deh. As you can change the default name of the replacement exe in Dehacked's .ini, i assume those installers relied on it aswell.

 

So far i have:

• Hacx (Custom exe is called DHACX)
• Strain (Comes as strain.exe, but the custom Doomhack is called STRNHACK)
• Scientist 2 (Custom exe is called SCI2)

 

Dimensions of Time also has something similar in its instruction (called DOT.exe) but it isn't stated absolutely.

 

EDIT: I stated prior that Cyberdreams didn't had such an option and the site suggested to use Cyber, but testing reveals that Cyberdreams does produced a Dehacked Doomhack exe, called CYDREAMS.exe.

 

Mostly useless info, but it does show that certain projects did something (slightly) more with Doomhack then telling the user to make a custom.exe or (less common) supplying a Doomhack.exe by default. There are threads on DW that detail how these were used to record demo's (Using the exe made by the installer). Obviously this stuff is only ever relevant in a DOS environment, but it might be useful for anyone that wants to toy around in DOS with these WADS and do not know of this option that these installers provide.

 

Tangibly related, I also found Entryway's Master, an Doom2 exe hack similar to Doom Plus but done years prior, used for deathmatch purposes. It has internal bots and additional screen information.

Edited March 11, 2020 by Redneckerz
Clarification.

[Diabolución]

On 3/1/2020 at 3:05 AM, Doomkid said:

I couldn't find any citation for the claim that the EXEs are illegal to distribute

 

https://doomwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AVersions_of_Doom_and_Doom_II&type=revision&diff=97773&oldid=97731

 

Linguiça said:

Well technically the Doom EXEs are under a EULA that prevents any redistribution. You could say "yeah well the source is GPL now" but license changes are not retroactive to already-distributed versions. Plus, the GPL says you would need to distribute all source code with the EXE. This presents a problem since 1) we don't actually *have* the source code used to make the DOS binaries, and 2) they contain code for the DMX sound library, which is very much not free.