Whatever happened to dwango9.wad

[Shockwav3]

w00t, first post in 13 years (and I still have that amazing custom title)!

inspired by doomkid's great This 20-Year-Old Doom Mystery STILL Isn't Solved.. video I remembered that Dwango9 supposedly was lost in time or as falconer from rarefiles (a former Dwango moderator) put it NO SUCH WAD EVER EXISTED.

 

Yet with some effort powered by google I managed to stumble upon this: Zipped archive of ALL the wads played on the HOUSTON DWANGO service in 94'.

It contains a file called "DWANGO!.WAD" which seems to be a compilation mostly made up of Map01 modifications, where I found this. The font for the "DWANGO" lettering seems to be the same used for the DWANGOX logo, albeit scaled slightly different.

The same map is also used as the first map in BLUDBATH.WAD (another interesting, yet probably unconnected file is D10BETA.WAD which seems to be an early version of DWANGOX.WAD, as most maps from the final version are present, as well as the one used for the title screen). BLUDBATH.WAD seems to have been released some time in 1996 as it borrows sound effects from Quake.

 

Sadly all those files come without .txts so this lone screenshot/lump is the only legit trace (til now) indicating that there may have been a DWANGO9 at some point - even if it was renamed before release.
Considering DWANGO/BBSes were decentralized services I'm still up for the theory that some temporal confusion might have lead to DWANGO9 being renamed to X or 10. The fact that DWANGO never was part of the internet of course makes it kinda hard to hope that some kind of archive can be found on the internet, but maybe someone else still has their files from back in the day which might shed some light?

 

EDIT: About the dwango1.exe in that archive, I'm already in the process of cracking it - the bruteforce program for "norton secret stuff" takes up to 3 days tho, why I'm only at 30% right now - not that I expect anything interesting other than a dupe of dwango1.wad to come out of it.

EDIT2: I'm aware of this "fake dwango9.wad" supposedly made some time in 2018 by the same author who made dwango13.wad

Edited September 27, 2020 by Shockwav3

[AinuTheTaken]

Research! For science!

[Doomkid]

Just replying because this is awesome news. I never expected to see proof of the “real” Dwango9 ever existing, and yet here we are. The fake Dwango9 I’m 99% sure was made by Da_Maniac in 2004 or so, and I recall Dwango13 being the Russian compilation.

 

EDIT for posterity: The Dwango9 mystery was solved, in the end. Read this linked post, and the followup post from Voyager7! - https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/2405498

[Chip]

Dwang, that's an awesome find! I hope to hear more about this in the future! maybe a whole new Dwango. If anything does come out of this, Doomkid could recreate his video. That was a good video, by the way.

[RonLivingston]

I don't know what happened to that, But Dwango 5 is my favorite deathmatch set in the series itself. I even remember that doom 3 mod where it uses some of Dwangos maps for its own deathmatch episode compatible with Skulltag Zandronum only, I forgot about the dwango 5 map01 soundtrack is what i've been listening too the most

Edited September 28, 2020 by RonLivingston

[Shockwav3]

Some dwango9-unrelated progress regarding above archive.

 

Dwango1.exe has been cracked and indeed just contained an encrypted copy of dwango1.wad. File contents are 100% identical. On a positive note, the file date was successfully restored. Dwango1.wad is dated 14th of February 1995 6:35PM

 

Digging through my backups I found this a maphack of D5M1 used by members of clan ABC (Anti BFG Clan) on zdaemon back in 2003/2004 before it had integrity checks, basically acting like a wallhack. While it supposedly was suspected for a while, I managed to talk Eligio into sharing the file with me on Doom Connector. Wad integrity checking got added to zdaemon shortly after making that info public.

Edited September 28, 2020 by Shockwav3

[Kool Belzero]

I just realized that I've never played a dwango wad, I'm not sure how to feel about that.

[garbaged]

Some random stuff:

 

http://fuz.fi/doom2/irc/8-97-week1.txt contains a user who talks about not being able to find dwango9 in the ftp servers.  (Ctr-F dwango to find it). 

 

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Talk:DWANGO talks about dwango9 as if its legit.

 

https://www.wad-archive.com/wad/The-Best-of-DWANGO-Dwango50-wad & http://iddqd.ru/doom/levels/dwangopack_alpha.txt directly refer to its existence.  (could be referring the the apparently-fake one of the same name)

 

 

 

 

[Doomkid]

Hmm, I’d be keen to see the evidence that Dwango13.wad was made in the 90’s. There’s loads of posts from all years suggesting the numbered series ends at 12, and although not at my computer I seem to recall it using some resource from after 2000, but maybe I’m thinking of the Sonic Midi used in the fake Dwango9.

 

Regarding the Dwango50 text document, I typed that and stupidly mislabeled Dwango10 as Dwango9. Total flub on my part and just adding to the confusion (facepalm)

[garbaged]

4 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Regarding the Dwango50 text document, I typed that and stupidly mislabeled Dwango10 as Dwango9. Total flub on my part and just adding to the confusion (facepalm)

Ah, I see.  Fair enough!  It happens. 

[DNSKILL5]

On 9/27/2020 at 9:04 AM, Shockwav3 said:

Sadly all those files come without .txts

And this is why everyone should ALWAYS include a txt file with their WAD. It makes a difference! 
 

Oh and great find! 

[Doomkid]

I apologize for the bump, no extra info on Dwango9... But Dwango13 was absolutely not compiled in the 90's. Dunno how I've missed it before, but it has a Greenwar.wad map inside, dating it at 2002 at the absolute earliest, though going by my gut feeling, it was probably made even quite a while after that - there's just some strong evidence in the maps that they're "recreating that 90's feeling" without actually being from the 90's, if you catch my drift. I can't find any evidence of it's existence whatsoever prior to 2010. Just wanted to throw this here as clarification for the 4 people who care!

Edited November 15, 2020 by Doomkid

[Maximum Matt]

On 10/5/2020 at 12:05 AM, Kool Belzero said:

I just realized that I've never played a dwango wad, I'm not sure how to feel about that.

Well get on out there and Dwang it up, son

[Doomkid]

Just bumping this because I decided to make a video about this lost Dwango.. I hope someone has some info and can shed a bit of light on the mystery!

 

 

[Gez]

I believe they jumped from DWANGO 8.1 directly to DWANGO 10 so as to avoid confusion between a DWANGO 9 and the older DWANGO 95 and DWANGO 98.

 

(Insert DWANGO VISTA joke here.)

[Alter]

4 minutes ago, Gez said:

I believe they jumped from DWANGO 8.1 directly to DWANGO 10 so as to avoid confusion between a DWANGO 9 and the older DWANGO 95 and DWANGO 98.

 

(Insert DWANGO VISTA joke here.)

We need DWANGO Service packs for DWANGO Vista!

[tuturbo1991]

Inspired by @Doomkid's idea in timestamp 3:08 of his video, I started working on a automated process to search for the dwango9 image in a WAD. As a Python programmer, I began my process by looking for a library to help me dump LUMP info more easily and I found Omgifol, originaly created by Fredrik Johansson and now maintened by Devin Acker (GitHub repo). First, I stored the data from the WOLF6 LUMP of the DWANGO!.WAD as our flag to be found. Right now the rest of the algorithm is explained as follows:

 

1. open a WAD
2. loop through the possible groups of LUMPs in which the flag could be found (patches, flats, graphics, data)
3. for each LUMP, compare its raw data with our flag's raw data
4. if it matches, save in a text file the information where it was found to future inspection (WAD filename, LUMP group and LUMP name)
5. repeat until the end of the WAD

 

Now it’s just a matter of running the script in batch for a large group of archived WADs and wait for something to come out. I've already started working on a different approach using computer vision to search for similar images so we don't rely on exact comparisons of raw LUMP data. You can found the source code in this repository.

Edited January 9, 2021 by tuturbo1991
minor spelling

[hrr1000]

Hi guys. I have watched @Doomkid 's video and i've been trying to hunt down something.

 

I've been searching for websites/message boards messages regarding dwango9.

 

I have found some threads in russian by digging trough google groups that seem to mention the wad

 

1) https://groups.google.com/g/relcom.games/c/M1h3WZ2PMWE/m/n6DrSuWyzg0J

 

2)https://groups.google.com/g/fido7.ru.game.doom/c/mwOjujVQXjU/m/OoNgXmYzsTQJ

 

I can't really use this tool much but maybe you can gather something from it :)

 

EDIT:

Search query https://groups.google.com/search/conversations?q=DWANGO9

Edited January 9, 2021 by hrr1000
The search query that i've used

[Doomkid]

Thank you for the responses, glad to see some interest in this!

 

4 hours ago, tuturbo1991 said:

Inspired by @Doomkid's idea in timestamp 3:08 of his video, I started working on a automated process to search for the dwango9 image in a WAD. As a Python programmer, I began my process by looking for a library to help me dump LUMP info more easily and I found Omgifol, originaly created by Fredrik Johansson and now maintened by Devin Acker (GitHub repo). First, I stored the data from the WOLF6 LUMP of the DWANGO!.WAD as our flag to be found. Right now the rest of the algorithm is explained as follows:

 

1. open a WAD
2. loop through the possible groups of LUMPs in which the flag could be found (patches, flats, graphics, data)
3. for each LUMP, compare its raw data with our flag's raw data
4. if it matches, save in a text file the information where it was found to future inspection (WAD filename, LUMP group and LUMP name)
5. repeat until the end of the WAD

 

Now it’s just a matter of running the script in batch for a large group of archived WADs and wait for something to come out. I've already started working on a different approach using computer vision to search for similar images so we don't rely on exact comparisons of raw LUMP data. You can found the source code in this repository.

This is brilliant. In another thread, smeghammer mentions using HTTrack to spider the entire sites featuring huge wad collections (Wad-Archive and TSPG) though this method would download all non-wad elements of the sites as well, though those elements could be cleared away after the fact leaving only wads, zips and pk3s. There’s a chance @mifu or @WadArchive could offer us a more direct way to download the entirety of the wads/pk3s on their sites, but I still definitely figured it was worth mentioning here (more details in this thread: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/119071-downloading-mirrors-of-idgames-tspg-and-wad-archive/)

 

Edited January 9, 2021 by Doomkid

[hrr1000]

16 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Thank you for the responses, glad to see some interest in this!

 

This is brilliant. In another thread, smeghammer mentions using HTTrack to spider the entire sites featuring huge wad collections (Wad-Archive and TSPG) though this method would download all non-wad elements of the sites as well, though those elements could be cleared away after the fact leaving only wads, zips and pk3s. There’s a chance @mifu or @WadArchive could offer us a more direct way to download the entirety of the wads/pk3s on their sites, but I still definitely figured it was worth mentioning here (more details in this thread: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/119071-downloading-mirrors-of-idgames-tspg-and-wad-archive/)

 

wadarchive has an api https://www.wad-archive.com/api/ with wadseeker. that combined with a scraper should do the job right?

Edited January 9, 2021 by hrr1000

[Doomkid]

Thank you for pointing that out! That should do it.

[WadArchive]

@Doomkid No need to download the entire archive if you want to find WADs with specific lump in it. I have stored and calculated all the lump names, sizes and hashes (md5, sha1 and sha256) stored in a database for all WADs (well like 95% of them, some just are missing or are corrupt). If you have the lump in question available (or the hash of it) I can do a query for you

[hrr1000]

14 minutes ago, WadArchive said:

@Doomkid No need to download the entire archive if you want to find WADs with specific lump in it. I have stored and calculated all the lump names, sizes and hashes (md5, sha1 and sha256) stored in a database for all WADs (well like 95% of them, some just are missing or are corrupt). If you have the lump in question available (or the hash of it) I can do a query for you

I don't know how to load the lump but i've calculated the hashes (maybe i am wrong but i have used the commands shasum and md5sum)

The hashes are from the file WOLF6.lmp uploaded on the internet archive from HDRambo (the wad is DWANGO!.WAD)(https://archive.org/details/BLUDBATH).

 

 

md5sum WOLF6.lmp  
422d7b544f19bc525f1ec25405cd6031  WOLF6.lmp

 

shasum WOLF6.lmp     
2976bb1c4ad3a449c95cee2e7a8ce8a3c4bc3e67  WOLF6.lmp
 

(recalculate them if you want to be sure)

Edited January 9, 2021 by hrr1000
WOLF6.wad -> WOLF6.lmp

[WadArchive]

Only one WAD has that lump https://www.wad-archive.com/wad/e0e70e3efac7745c7bb904aa18b27a6f 

[Doomkid]

Damn, what a shame - thanks very much for checking though, I really appreciate that. Looks like our only hope might be someone who has it stored on an obscure site that isn't trawled by Wad-Archive, or maybe someone has it stored locally on some old computer that may or may not ever be accessed again (like a more obscure version of how the 0.3 Alpha of Doom existed the whole time, but wasn't found til 2015). Or, it could really be the case that not a single copy remains and it's gone for good. Just for historical reasons, I hope that's not the case, but it may well be.

[hrr1000]

Just now, Doomkid said:

Damn, what a shame - thanks very much for checking though, I really appreciate that. Looks like our only hope might be someone who has it stored on an obscure site that isn't trawled by Wad-Archive, or maybe someone has it stored locally on some old computer that may or may not ever be accessed again (like a more obscure version of how the 0.3 Alpha of Doom existed the whole time, but wasn't found til 2015). Or, it could really be the case that not a single copy remains and it's gone for good. Just for historical reasons, I hope that's not the case, but it may well be.

Could HDRambo know something about it? either who made the DWANGO! file or anything of that sort? could it be just something that a local in Austin did share on their bbs(like they had their own dwango kind of like there are a billion of de_dust3 made by people that didn't share them)?

 

 

 

[Doomkid]

Asking HDRambo about it might be helpful, maybe he'll know the story here or at the very least be able to get in contact with other old Dwango alums who might remember. I know YT isn't the best means of contact, but I did leave him a comment on his channel, but I don't think he ever replied.

[hrr1000]

8 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Asking HDRambo about it might be helpful, maybe he'll know the story here or at the very least be able to get in contact with other old Dwango alums who might remember. I know YT isn't the best means of contact, but I did leave him a comment on his channel, but I don't think he ever replied.

 

there is a steam community that has some people from DWANGO (including HDRambo) (maybe it can help) https://steamcommunity.com/groups/DWANGO

[Doomkid]

Hey peoples, just wanted to give a quick update on this - HDRambo kindly searched and uploaded every last wad he had from the Dwango era but sadly Dwango9 was not a part of it - the closest he found were the same two wads we know about, DWANGO!.WAD and BLUDBATH.WAD.

 

DWANGO!.WAD map01 not only has a Dwango9 logo, but also says "Tourney.wad compiled by Rockett". I wonder if Rockett is around and can maybe remember back 25 years to what the exact details are?

 

If not, my current theory is starting to look more and more like like Shockwav3's:

Quote

Considering DWANGO/BBSes were decentralized services I'm still up for the theory that some temporal confusion might have lead to DWANGO9 being renamed to X or 10.

I think there is a good chance Dwango9 was renamed at some point to (ironically) avoid possible confusion or conflict with other Dwango compilations. I don't think it was renamed to dwangoX or dwango10 however, as they both seem to be their own independent wads - rather I think that BLUDBATH.WAD was possibly, once upon a time, known as DWANGO9.WAD. It not only has the Map01 from DWANGO!.WAD which featured the Dwango9 logo, but it also has the exact same font on the intermission screen. Furthermore, the various Dwango logos found throughout BLUDBATH are oddly "blank" compared to others, and almost look like they were hastily edited to remove the references to Dwango9, again to avoid confusion.

 

There's no solid proof one way or the other - but this is my current working theory. HDRambo has helped in this search as much as he can by giving us access to all of these old wads, so the only hope of finally putting a pin in this seems to be getting in touch Rockett or another Dwango alum known to be associated with that crew.

 

LATER EDIT: BLUDBATH is it's own thing and just happens to share some maps with the lost Dwango9 (sigh!)

Edited April 12, 2021 by Doomkid

[hrr1000]

7 hours ago, Doomkid said:

BLUDBATH.WAD

 

I don't think it's BLUDBATH by Doominator since the readme file points at the wad being created in 1994 https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/deathmatch/a-c/bludba