If you could add one thing to Vanilla Doom

[kristus]

Maes said:

I do. Before v1.9 you had to modify the IWAD, and the tool to do it was DEUSF. Its name was DEUSF, and DEUSF was the name under which it was known.

That's what I thought. And that's nonsense.
(I bet this is where someone like Fraggle or Quasar comes along and tells me I am wrong, but since I used DEUSF appended PWADS with Doom 2 v1.666 for a long time in the old days I kinda doubt it.)

[Maes]

Let's do some reverse thinking then: if that was not the case (explicitly: you didn't need to modify/merge stuff with your IWAD) then why all pre-v1.9 mods did it? And even had installers to do so automatically and back your IWADs too?

OTOH, I'd concede you the benefit of the doubt by trying WPDOOM with an old version of Doom (v1.1) and seeing what happens. WPDOOM (white power Doom) contains all sprites from Doom in its single-piece PWAD and even the oddball unused Ultimate Doom ones so it should be a good proof of concept. Stay tuned...


Edit: well damn, Doom v1.1 did play WPDOOM with no problems...which raises the question: WHY THE FUCK to merge/modify the IWAD? Why did -at least certain- mods do it, since "including all sprites" worked in v1.1 already?

@Kristus: I dunno man...this is confusing. Either Grazza and I got it totally wrong, or there was actually never any major change in v1.9, despite what was claimed.

Edit 2: The "official" Doom FAQ v6.666 says the following for v1.4:

Bug fixes since v1.4:

- SERSETUP has been rewritten-- AGAIN!
- Help screen now mentions F11:Gamma Correction.
[b] - Sprite graphics can now be used in PWADs./[b]

But I just tried with v1.1 and it worked fine...at least with a "sprite complete". I'll try to see what happens if I remove one sprite...
I guess we need to see a list of version changes and see where that "support for sprites in PWADs" thing creeped in as a novelty, because it surely ain't.

[Never_Again]

[Maes]

Never_Again said:

Do you mean OTTAWAU.WAD? It's a mess indeed. The install requires v1.9 registered, won't work with Ultimate DOOM. I wonder if I should upload to the archives an updated version that does.

Yup, that was the one.

Regarding my WPDOOM experiment...deleting a monster rotation sprite made the PWAD unusable upon loading. Deleting one of the "imp"'s fireballs made the game crash when an imp flung the first fireball.

In any case, when the sprites are complete, the PWAD works. Again I wonder: how could be merging with the IWAD and not from preferable? And why was it so prevalent?

OTOH, PLASCACO.WAD didn't work with Doom v1.1, as in, at all. No invisible sprites, no errors, no weird effects. Well duh.

[Never_Again]

[myk]

Add-on hacking was done independently of id Software, unofficially, so during certain periods many people didn't yet know all the details of how WADs worked, so they just modified stuff the way they could.

Never_Again said:
I wonder if I should upload to the archives an updated version that does.

Nah, according the the text file: Authors may NOT use this level as a base to build additional levels. It might be worthwhile to note on the database comments for the WAD how to get a copy of DOOM v1.9 from The Ultimate DOOM using a downgrade patch followed by the corresponding official upgrade patch.

[Maes]

Never_Again said:

Hard drive space was the limiting factor. Merging into IWAD uses only as much space as the replacements take up. Merging into PWAD duplicates all the IWAD sprite/flat resources. A 4MB file was considered huge in '94.

Too bad that very few mods came with installers that selectively preserved the altered resources somewhere, in order to restore them with minimal disk cost. Most mods just backed up the whole IWAD, or asked the user to do so himself and so even that -minimal, in most cases- disk space advantage was lost. A purely lose-lose situation, that still went on for years.

[kristus]

One program in particular only worked with modifying the IWAD. DMGRAPH it was called IIRC. It was commonly used for early graphic mods.

[Gez]

myk said:

Nah, according the the text file: Authors may NOT use this level as a base to build additional levels.

I don't think "make an updated version that's just the same except for the install procedure" and "make a different mod with new additional levels" are the same thing, really.

[The Green Herring]

Another sprite-replacing program in those days was DM Add Something v1.1, programmed by Bernd Kreimeier. This came to mind because one particular WAD that used it, Escape from 22ventry, is totally unplayable as intended in modern source ports (other than PrBoom+ 2.5.0.4 and newer) without editing the sprite WAD to remove all the null lumps used for the sprites that weren't replaced.

[myk]

Gez said:
I don't think "make an updated version that's just the same except for the install procedure" and "make a different mod with new additional levels" are the same thing, really.

They aren't the same but you need to go ask the author for permission in either case because he isn't telling you you can modify his add-on. He didn't say "but you may modify this in order to port it to other versions or systems."

For all we know, it's tied to v1.9 and has to be used with that.

[Gez]

The Green Herring said:

Another sprite-replacing program in those days was DM Add Something v1.1, programmed by Bernd Kreimeier. This came to mind because one particular WAD that used it, Escape from 22ventry, is totally unplayable as intended in modern source ports (other than PrBoom+ 2.5.0.4 and newer) without editing the sprite WAD to remove all the null lumps used for the sprites that weren't replaced.

Works right out of the box in ZDoom too. In fact, you can just open the zip directly with ZDoom and it works. The null sprites are ignored, the replacement ones are used.

myk said:

They aren't the same but you need to go ask the author for permission in either case because he isn't telling you you can modify his add-on. He didn't say "but you may modify this in order to port it to other versions or systems."

For all we know, it's tied to v1.9 and has to be used with that.

Can't say this logic seems reasonable in any way, shape, or form. Once you go through the installation process, you can play it with any port you want. And if the mod is unmodified, it's the same thing. No different from, say, turning its archive into a self-extractable archive and reuploading it.

[Graf Zahl]

Gez said:

Can't say this logic seems reasonable in any way, shape, or form.

I'd have to agree - but this community seems to have come to the conclusion that 'may not modify' includes the actual distribution, no matter how screwed up it is. Unfortunately there's tons of badly packaged old WADs out there that are in desperate need of a distribution cleanup (Strain comes to mind) but due to this particular clause it won't happen.

[Super Jamie]

I agree with Graf. I actually think the fact that /idgames has a maintainer and a system in place for updating existing files is encouragement for this to happen.

Of course, someone could just ask Ty...

[The Green Herring]

Gez said:

Works right out of the box in ZDoom too. In fact, you can just open the zip directly with ZDoom and it works. The null sprites are ignored, the replacement ones are used.

Not in the current non-beta and non-SVN versions of ZDoom and GZDoom (2.3.1 and 1.2.1, respectively,) which is why I didn't mention them.

Anyway, to finally properly respond to the topic... keeping in mind the capabilities of 1993/1994-era computers, there are many things that I could do, to the point where it's hard to just pick one. For comparatively lofty things, adding proper support for sprites in PWADs would indeed have made things a whole lot less complicated and silly. Also, although raising the limits to Doom+ levels would probably have resulted in less scrupulous designers taxing people's computers to oblivion (again, this is 1993/1994 we're talking about) with a zillion monsters/linedefs/visplanes/etc., shutting down the game for having more than 30 moving platforms at the same time, for example, seems entirely arbitrary.

When it comes to much smaller and less ambitious things, though, being able to activate special linedefs through other special linedefs would have eliminated the need for workarounds like Boom's PassThru flag, and prevented headaches caused by future source port programmers fixing the bug, resulting in levels supposedly created for the original engine, but unfinishable in that engine because the designers only used those source ports for playtesting. Along the same lines, adding "no tags required" versions of certain door linedefs (fast-opening keycard doors and gunfire doors come to mind) would have 1) prevented similar headaches, and 2) eliminated the need to put in new tags for each such door that you include, even when the linedefs you have to tag are on the door itself. Last, but not least, adding proper collision detection -- which is to say, the ability to go over or under solid things -- would have not only have averted similar headaches, but eliminated the frustration that results when you're trying to jump from higher ground or run under cacodemons, only to have your efforts thwarted by an invisible forcefield. It sounds lofty, but considering that Heretic did it about a year later while being based on Doom v1.2, there's really no excuse for this. ;)

Like I said, it's hard for me to just pick one, but there you go.

[Never_Again]

[Reisal]

Super shotgun in Doom1.

[myk]

The Green Herring said:
It sounds lofty, but considering that Heretic did it about a year later while being based on Doom v1.2, there's really no excuse for this. ;)

I'm glad DOOM isn't like Heretic in that sense because monsters in Heretic tend to get stuck onto each other because of it. That's a glitch that took Randy Heit a few years to fix, in the v2 releases, assuming there are no Z-clipping glitches anymore.

Gez said:
Once you go through the installation process, you can play it with any port you want. And if the mod is unmodified, it's the same thing.

To go through the installation, you need DOOM v1.9. It's required to use the add-on. The add-on being distributed isn't really the post-installation result, it's what's being distributed. The installed result has less to do with copyrights, because it's for personal use, unless one were to try to distribute it, of course.

No different from, say, turning its archive into a self-extractable archive and reuploading it.

That is different because both the ZIP and the EXE are simply holding the distribution files, while the diff and all the other junk are the distributed files.

Graf Zahl said:
I'd have to agree - but this community seems to have come to the conclusion that 'may not modify' includes the actual distribution, no matter how screwed up it is.

It's not your work. You can play other things, or find a workaround if you think the installation sucks. In this case, the alternative is to install DOOM v1.9. Otherwise, at least try contacting the author. He might happily authorize such a change or provide it himself unless he has some reason to keep his add-on in that condition. If the author were found and agreed, he could even replace the file with a more universal one, instead of throwing some slight mod of it into the archive.

Ensuring that the distribution package is not tampered with is the way to make sure an add-on is not altered in any perhaps unforeseen or unexpected way. It is the ultimate way of not messing with other people's work. In this case, the add-on is changed by modifying the distribution package. It becomes compatible with The Ultimate DOOM as well as the latest version of DOOM. Was this intentional? Probably not, but who knows, maybe the author learned about The Ultimate DOOM, thought it was blasphemy and felt his add-on shouldn't be updated to it. That would be his call, given in its current form it effectively requires a specific version of the game. It also makes the add-on be distributed in way not directly authorized by the author, regardless of whether his chosen method makes sense to most people.

Super Jamie said:
I actually think the fact that /idgames has a maintainer and a system in place for updating existing files is encouragement for this to happen.

How so? You need permission to modify other people's work.

Never_Again said:
The original release stays as is, the update is a separate entity, so this argument doesn't apply here.

Nope, the "new release" is a modification of the original. The "you may not modify" is not just "you may not replace." Modification of copyrighted stuff refers to a type of copying, where changes are made as well. What you're implying would instead be something like "you may make modifications of this add-on but this copy of the add-on must remain on the archive." That's common practice with any modifiable add-on on idgames, anyway. Next time you deride what I say and accuse me of "quasi-legal talk," make sure your alternative on the matter isn't outright incorrect.

You also need to understand that copyright permissions need to be made explicit. Normally DOOM add-on text files use a binary way to say whether the add-on may be modified or not (you MAY/you may NOT.) You may do what it says you can do, but if it says yes or no to this or that, it's also saying no to anything else not addressed. If it says "you may not use this to build additional levels" it doesn't mean you may otherwise modify it, as long as that doesn't imply making levels, because it never said you could modify it, in the first place.

The add-on is already usable as it is, by anyone. As far as I'm concerned, anyone should have both DOOM and The Ultimate DOOM on their computers, especially if they want to play add-ons like this one. Note also that Ty discourages versions, slight variations and variants of the same level sets because if not the archive gets filled with copies of stuff it already has. What you have in mind more or less fits in that category. It's already on the archive. You want to upload it again just so it's easier to install.

[GreyGhost]

Csonicgo said:

I remember a pac-man mod I downloaded but instead of pac-man I got a shitload of folders with PCX graphics and a batch file with DeuSF or whatever. I still have no idea how to run that shit.

If you mean Pacman Doom - here's the same mod in a PWAD I found on a shovelware CD.

[Graf Zahl]

myk said:

It's not your work. You can play other things, or find a workaround if you think the installation sucks. In this case, the alternative is to install DOOM v1.9. Otherwise, at least try contacting the author. He might happily authorize such a change or provide it himself unless he has some reason to keep his add-on in that condition. If the author were found and agreed, he could even replace the file with a more universal one, instead of throwing some slight mod of it into the archive.

Sorry, but that's just plain idiotic. You should know yourself that most of the creators of these WADs are no longer reachable. Don't think I've tried with a few.

It's not altering the work we are talking here. It's about taking out ancient and obsolete DOS installation utilities that are more an obstacle than a help to play these mods.

You can be damn sure that many people even fail at a simple installation batch as used by Strain.

How about a shitty multi-part distribution as Cleimos 2? That thing comes split in two with some even more shitty batches to install the whole thing. I wonder how many people have not played this because they couldn't get it to run.

I know for people like you and me it's not a problem because we know how to use this old stuff. But what about others? On Windows these batches can at least be started. But on Linux? Or Macs? People have to jump through hoops to get these mods to work. And why? Just because people like you are making policy in deciding that fixing a broken distribution is against the makers' wishes.

[myk]

Graf Zahl said:
You should know yourself that most of the creators of these WADs are no longer reachable.

It's their work and if they said "you may not modify this," it still stands, regardless of technological changes and needs. Sometimes they can be contacted, though. Recently one guy got in touch with the origwad author to ask for permission for a project, since the text file doesn't give any. That is, he contacted the guy who made the first original WAD, more or less.

If the author can't be reached and his WAD is unmodifiable and released in an awkward way, then the WAD must face relative oblivion. If an author cares, he should give permissions to modify the add-on or keep some long term contact with the community or the Internet. The same thing happens to commercial WADs that are then not properly released once their commercial life-span expires. They become more or less obscure to get. The Wraith and Lost Episodes WADs are an example of this. Compare them to Hacx, that, because of a later public release, made its way to the archive itself.

If a WAD seems unusable and permission can't be obtained to fix it for the public, simply move on and play something else. Release things properly or expect them to be forgotten.

Just because people like you are making policy in deciding that fixing a broken distribution is against the makers' wishes.

We don't know their wishes.

[kristus]

Graf Zahl said:

I know for people like you and me it's not a problem because we know how to use this old stuff. But what about others? On Windows these batches can at least be started. But on Linux? Or Macs? People have to jump through hoops to get these mods to work. And why? Just because people like you are making policy in deciding that fixing a broken distribution is against the makers' wishes.

Doesn't Dosbox work on Mac and Linux?

[Maes]

myk said:

It's not your work. You can play other things, or find a workaround if you think the installation sucks. In this case, the alternative is to install DOOM v1.9. Otherwise, at least try contacting the author. He might happily authorize such a change or provide it himself unless he has some reason to keep his add-on in that condition.

For all we know, the author could not give a shit about Doom anymore or even be long ago dead. Good luck contacting someone based on an email inside a 1996 text file. OK, this might not be the case but you can see my point: it's not always possible to contact the original author.

myk said:

We don't know their wishes.

There might be the occasional oddball that would go into Wesley Willis WarHellRide mode with nasty fortified wine and crack made from washing powder and aspirin upon the slightest perceived "desecration" his work, granted (IMO, that current of thought is the unholy legacy of Doom Rampage, who bitched against legalizing his 'masterpiece' and set a lose-lose precedent for everyone). That's the 1% of cases. But any reasonable individual who has forgot his old mods in a closet would be delighted in the remaining 99% of cases that someone took it to heart to preserve his work (happened to me a lot, and I was always delighted, although not in anything Doom related).

myk said:

The add-on is already usable as it is, by anyone.

No, it's not. Dependence on a particular DOS exe and IWAD combo hardly fits any sane definition of "usable by anyone". OK, by reeeeeealllly stretching it one could claim that e.g. you could run an i386 DOS emulator even on an ATARI ST and extract the resources for your personal use on an Amiga source port, but as I said, that's really stretching it, and we both know none is going to do it, not in the name of "respecting the author wishes" at least.

A second solution would be to release a "feature extractor" utility package that extracts the custom packed resources and hardcoded .exe modification into sane, standard WAD and DEH formats (a sort of "unfuck.exe" if you with), but even that is a lot of work to accomodate the whims of just one WAD.

The obvious solution is in front of us, it's just that someone must grow a pair and do it regardless of any -justified or not- backlash (which IMHO could be summed up as "nobody cares".

myk said:

If the author can't be reached and his WAD is unmodifiable and released in an awkward way, then the WAD must face relative oblivion.

If a WAD seems unusable and permission can't be obtained to fix it for the public, simply move on and play something else. Release things properly or expect them to be forgotten.

This position is so absolute that it's first class material for an ideologic "Holy War". Some people say "don't touch anything" and others say "grow a pair and do it".

Yeah, I know I'm stretching it myself with the ATARI ST and AMIGA examples ("usable by anyone" should include even them without going through hoops....riiight?), but come think of it, it's a no more absolute position than considering broken distros "sacred and untouchable". There's that other option of ad-hoc extractor tools, but they would be like reaching all the way to the fountain of youth but not drinking from its water...


THE PUNCHLINE:

Those little magic words... "author wishes" ... what do they mean in the context of preservation? Maybe everything, maybe nothing. Who'll be the final judge and arbitrer of their meaning? Will that judge concede a preservation clause or not? Yeah, there is an established precedent in the Doom community (or only on DW?) but is it appropriate, or is it just a stagnant situation tied to older unfortunate events?

The magic word here is "preservation" rather than "modifying" or "building upon" one's original work. If the Doom community ethos does not allow for such a thing as of now, then perhaps it's time to grow a pair and bring on some changes. The community as a whole will ultimately benefit from it. A Win-Win situation. A Good Deal. A Good Thing. The Right Thing, call it as you want. Surely beats this "STFU and suck it down" attitude (which as I said, is largely due to a certain unfortunate legacy's precedent).

[andrewj]

myk said:

We don't know their wishes.

They at least wanted their work to be played, otherwise they would not have uploaded it to idgames.

So minimal changes to make a mod accessible to more people, as long as nothing in the mod gets broken, seems very reasonable to me. More than that, the opposite (letting a good mod become useless when someone is willing to fix it) seems perverse.

[Maes]

andrewj said:

Hmmmm, actually the opposite to that (letting a good mod vanish when someone is willing to fix it) seems perverse.

As long as the current DW ethos (I don't know if it actually permeates the whole Doom community) does not allow for a preservation clause, distinct from modifying or building upon, it will always be a stalemate between "conservatives" who advocate not fixing anything, and "progressives" who advocate re-releasing standards-compliant versions of unusual mods.

This is really a turning point, which IMHO should have been addressed in the community long ago, rather than having these holy wars now in 2009 (heh almost 2010). Myk is right in saying that the original author should not have made a broken release to begin with. He's also right that he said he does not wish derivative works... but what about repackaging his work in a format more people can enjoy? Seeing how he didn't explicitly forbid this...someone needs to grow a pair, be bold, do it and let the burden of judgement fall on our posters. ;-)

We really need to forget Rampage Doom's precedent to move on though. Broken mod, broken implementation, broken author. It's sad that he's used as the golden rule for such matters.

[myk]

andrewj said:
They at least wanted their work to be played, otherwise they would not have uploaded it to idgames.

And it can be played. It's just that the installation is more problematic or obscure than others due to the non-permissive author's fault.

So minimal changes to make a mod accessible to more people, as long as nothing in the mod gets broken, seems very reasonable to me. More than that, the opposite (letting a good mod become useless when someone is willing to fix it) seems perverse.

It's the reason free or more free software exists. You let people modify it so it can live on in time, among other things. It's not perverse because these people chose not to let other people modify their stuff. Someone may be willing to fix it, but they weren't given the green light to do it. We can't assume for what reason they chose to do that. If we do, our assumptions just suit what we want to believe.

[Maes]

myk said:

It's not perverse because these people chose to not let other people modify their stuff.

So there's absolutely no difference between preserving and modifying from your POV? (well I know the answer already, but I ask rhetorically).

[myk]

They're more or less the opposite. You modify an add-on to make it work on a different environment (various WADs, hopefully where permission was given, have been edited in this sense) while to preserve it you create environments where that unmodified WAD works (DOSBox, allowing a DOS install on any system, is a good example.)

[Maes]

So in other words, you only allow for external means of preservations (which as you know well, are not always possible) instead of compiling internal resources into a standards compliant format (again, even that is not always possible). Sometimes however one of the two is more practical than the other.

Of course, there's a lot of division on where preservation should be headed to. I'm all for the most practical, end-all, be-all of solutions -> making a damn WAD and DEH out of it, while you're trying to reach a compromise between preservation and an arbitrary ethos (you don't actually know if the author didn't want it preserved in this way, you're just arbitrarily extending his non-modification wish in that direction).

Perversely, his choice of releasing it in a fucked up nonstandard format well into 1996 may actually be a sign of his trying to make it "tamper proof", so you may actually have a point.

Another question: if the author DID allow for resource reuse but left it in that same fucked up format anyway, would merely re-releasing it in a standards-compliant way be OK, without any further modifications and without his explicit consent (only implicit consent by crediting) ?

[Phil1984]

Maybe I'm missing the point here, but there are many many wads out there on the /idgames that use resources from iwads other than the one that is required to run the game (i.e. hexen, heretic, final doom etc etc), yet no-one cares despite the obvious copy-write infringement. I therefore, do not see why it is such a big deal to repackage wads from the past that one would otherwise have to jump through hoops to play.