Doom "Extra Hard": THE first addon?

[Maes]

After a lot of speculation, I managed to find a download link for the elusive "Doom Extra-Hard" by Group TUC (The Underworld Corporation), one of the rarest and less spoken-about addons.
I won't share the link though, for reasons that will become clearer later on).

For a lot of time, there was some speculation about what it was: some said that it was an obscure commercial addon, a level set made by a specially talented 4yo girl or even a single highly innovative level etc.

Well, the truth is now revealed but it's less glamorous than what make-believe had cracked it up to be: it's just a modified commercial v1.0 DOOM.WAD with a datestamp of 12/2/1994 and relased on 15/2/1994 according to the .nfo files that come with it.

It came in an 8-floppy installer configuration which just creates a new DOOM.WAD, and it just consists of unaltered Doom levels with hacked up monsters and things. Understandable, since there were no level editors at the time save for early DEU with no BSP building, so this doesn't predate DEU's demo levels, but it does predate ORIGWAD and all other "commercial" addons. No idea if they did that with DEU or just hex editing though.

However the whole thing doesn't seem legitimate or officially licensed by ID....was it supposed to be? Does anyone else have more info on that?

TL;DR version: The infamous Doom Extra Hard is actually just a modified DOOM.WAD full of stuck Cyberdemons, and it smells fishy at best.

Edit: here's what to expect

[General Rainbow Bacon]

Wow! I watched the first 15 seconds and already had enough. That looks terrible! Dammit, now I feel the need to do "Doom: Second Run" as well. As soon as my "doom 2: second run" is finished I will come up with something to trump that abomination.

Edit: Unfortunately, I do have to give credit for it being the first wad, kinda. But it's still really bad.

[Philnemba]

LOL did they really expect anybody to get pass the spidermastermind in E2M1 due to its size? Still its an old piece of doom history even if its garbage.

[Never_Again]

[printz]

Probably someone had just programmed a random thing generator like Jumble and used it to alter Doom.wad, then he warezed it. Same trick as uploading SLIGE wads.

[Gez]

Should have been called Doom Extra Glitchy, what with all the stuck monsters. E2M1's spider deserves special mention. "To win the level, you must place yourself there and wait until the imp kill the spiderdemon with their tiny fireballs. You can't really try to help them to speed it up, because you'll need your pistol ammo for the imps anyway and well, you can't use your fists against the spider."

Given that there are apparently BFGs and invulspheres everywhere, it doesn't even seem really that hard.

[Maes]

Never_Again said:

The reliability of the file date stamps is moot. I got 19 WADs off various CD-ROMs dated from 1980-02-02 to 1993-10-16. Anyway, this does appear to be the first megawad. =)

There are also some warez-style .NFOs that state the release date as 1994/2/15, just three days after the WAD's file stamp. The same filestamp appears in other files in the full distro package such readme's, FILE_ID.DIZs, .NFOs etc. (uses a floppy unsplitter utility to join several DOOM.WA1, DOOM.WA2 ... DOOM.WA8 files into DOOM.WAD so the very least there is some consistency. A full listing of what the distro package contains (sorry, dirty Pinko Europe DD/MM/YYYY filestamps due to system settings ;-) :

12/02/1994  10:31 ££         1.441.792 DOOM.WA1
12/02/1994  10:31 ££         1.441.792 DOOM.WA2
12/02/1994  10:32 ££         1.441.792 DOOM.WA3
12/02/1994  10:33 ££         1.441.792 DOOM.WA4
12/02/1994  10:33 ££         1.441.792 DOOM.WA5
12/02/1994  10:34 ££         1.441.792 DOOM.WA6
12/02/1994  10:34 ££         1.441.792 DOOM.WA7
12/02/1994  10:34 ££           303.710 DOOM.WA8
13/02/1994  01:10 §£               549 FILE_ID.DIZ
13/02/1994  01:27 §£             5.770 INSTALL.EXE
12/02/1994  10:11 ££               210 README.1ST
13/02/1994  12:48 §£                85 README.DSK
13/10/2002  06:58 §£               530 tsc.nfo
13/02/1994  12:39 §£             7.220 TUC.NFO
13/02/1994  12:38 §£            11.100 TUC_REL.EXE

Never_Again said:

Definitely not legitimate.

Yup, and nothing "commercial" about it other than they calling it "Commercial Doom Extra Hard V1.0E". Otherwise yeah, it's actually the full v1.1 IWAD, though badly slaughtered.

As for the glitchiness...I doubt they use DEU on this one. They just replaced existing items with others via hex editing after figuring out some of the ednums at random and having only enough grasp of the IWAD to locate the THINGS structure...and then did so blindly with some sort of search and replace. If you try REALLY hard you may be able to find a pattern in what replaces what.

If they used an early version of DEU, the very least they'd have produced something like DMINATOR.WAD, which is modified ID levels made much harder but with sane monster placement and even some extra areas).

printz said:

Probably someone had just programmed a random thing generator like Jumble and used it to alter Doom.wad, then he warezed it. Same trick as uploading SLIGE wads.

If they did so in early 1994 with minimal grasp of the DOOM specs, then they'd deserve some respect. This seems like a crude manual hackjob. If any doubts about its being genuine (not legitimate) can be dismissed, then it truly has a special place in Doom history as the very first addon besides DEU demo maps, and deserves a WIKI article. The only way to make sure is for someone who warezed it back in the day to confirm that it existed.

[SaladBadger]

thread title said:

THE first addon?

It also appears to be the first bad 1994 wad. I wonder if this thing was actually properly tested, given the glitches.

They may have tested it by seeing how much they died, actually. And seeing how long it took them to beat anything.

[Never_Again]

[Maes]

Yup, the same date is also present in the "TUC_REL.EXE" file which is a BBS-style cracktro. IMHO the thing is genuine, as it's too elaborate a hoax to put together. I can provide a link to the .txt and .exe files if there's enough interest (not the WAD or the WAx files though).

[General Rainbow Bacon]

DMINATOR.wad sounds interesting. Anyone got a link for that since I want to do something similar?

[Maes]

DoomHero85 said:

DMINATOR.wad sounds interesting. Anyone got a link for that since I want to do something similar?

To post such a link would constitute warez, since it's based on original ID levels. However it can still be found on many older shovelware WAD compilations...if you know where to find them. I recall it brought my 486 DX/40 to a crawl, and even had some nice touches (e.g. E1M2's outdoors became an enclosed area swarmed with pinkies, and the light level dropped to 0 as soon as you stepped in it).

[Mattfrie1]

Wow, that's just awful, E2M1 especially. Did anyone take the time to test it before releasing it?

[General Rainbow Bacon]

I found it at the dsda along with dminator2.wad. I also found a video of someone playing the first level in it :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE7DuXJlQoU

Anyway, I read that warez was putting up unmodified id maps. Since this seems to be heavily modified, I don't think it would be considered warez. Also, my own "doom 2: second run" would be warez under that logic, and nobody has said anything to me about it. Dunno if you mean making a iwad out of something like that is warez.

[Gez]

DoomHero85 said:

Anyway, I read that warez was putting up unmodified id maps. Since this seems to be heavily modified, I don't think it would be considered warez.

Modified or not, it's still a full IWAD that allows to play mods. The sprites and sounds and music tracks have not been modified. That's one strike against it.

Distributing modified resources (including maps) from a game is generally tolerated by game publishers, as long as it requires the original game. This, simply put, does not. Make no mistake, modified or not, it's still copyright infringement in the strictest sense. It's just that you are more or less given an informal license to distribute such modifications as long as it requires the full game to be used.

DoomHero85 said:

Also, my own "doom 2: second run" would be warez under that logic

If the point is to make an IWAD that does not require doom2.wad and that is created from Doom II maps rather than recreated from scratch, then yes it is warez.

[General Rainbow Bacon]

My wad is not an iwad. But neither is dminator.wad I just played some of it and the one on dsda isn't a full iwad anymore if it ever was. The guy who made it fixed it i guess. You can check for yourself. Anyway, thank you for clearing up the misunderstanding of what "warez" really is for me.

[LogicDeLuxe]

Maes said:

I can provide a link to the .txt and .exe files if there's enough interest (not the WAD or the WAx files though).

It shouldn't be too hard to turn this into a proper patch. I wouldn't say that it's worth the effort, though.

[myk]

The pro of turning it into a PWAD would be to give people a legit way to get it, making the illegal way unnecessary and thus less popular.

[Never_Again]

[Andy Olivera]

Well, this sucks in any number of ways, but if you'd like to see it, anyway, here's a PWAD version.

[printz]

If you use RanDoom on a non-Ultimate Doom.WAD, you'll get the same thing, sans the stuck monster problem (Ultimate Doom will make RanDoom crash, so break it into two PWADs: episodes 1-3 and episode 4. Then ranDoomizing them will work).

EDIT
@Maes: Well, in Doom 3's case, there exist maps made as early as August 2004, game's release date. I know Doom 3 came shipped already with an editor, but still I wouldn't be surprised if game-hacking enthusiasts playing Doom 1 have looked early for a method to change the game, and probably indeed program a scrambler to make the job easier. Some people are just extremely fast working; they finish the game within a couple of weeks, and immediately proceed to modding it / mastering gameplay.

[Deeforce]

This wad is waaaayyyyy better and it is called "HARDFUCK"!!!1111

[Maes]

myk said:

The pro of turning it into a PWAD would be to give people a legit way to get it, making the illegal way unnecessary and thus less popular.

Well, that can certainly be done: I can strip the IWAD of all resources except the THINGS monster placements, although I'm not sure if that would work on vanilla or it needs ALL map data. Isn't that illegal, since it would be distributing original ID levels? THe only 100% legal way would be to distribute a patching program that targets only the THINGS lumps in the IWAD or using a source port that can handle mixed data structure loading as e.g. for sprites.

And to clarify all those who wonder about the "warez" status of stuff like DMINATOR.WAD which isn't an IWAD: it's because it's based on modified ID levels. This was barely tolerated by the Doom community in 1994, and later explicitly condemned by ID itself, so there. Such maps AFAIK are immediately deleted from idgames as soon are they're reported,

[xttl]

That will not work in original Doom and doesn't work in PrBoom(+) either. Dunno about ZDoom.

The map is loaded by looking up which lump number (in the combined lump directory of all WADs you loaded the engine keeps internally) is the ExMy or MAPxx marker and then the map resources are loaded by just blindly adding offsets to that index.

Like this:

   // lumpname is MAPxx or ExMy at this point

   lumpnum = W_GetNumForName (lumpname);

   P_LoadBlockMap (lumpnum+ML_BLOCKMAP);
   P_LoadVertexes (lumpnum+ML_VERTEXES);
   P_LoadSectors (lumpnum+ML_SECTORS);
   P_LoadSideDefs (lumpnum+ML_SIDEDEFS);

   P_LoadLineDefs (lumpnum+ML_LINEDEFS);
   P_LoadSubsectors (lumpnum+ML_SSECTORS);
   P_LoadNodes (lumpnum+ML_NODES);
   P_LoadSegs (lumpnum+ML_SEGS);

[Maes]

Yeah, ZDoom doesn't load them either. So the only way to legally release this is to make a diff-like patcher for targetted at a specific IWAD version (and then again, I'm sure there will be arguing whether even just the THINGS lumps are to be considered original ID material on par with the whole maps).

[printz]

Or just release with THINGS only, and instruct the user to copy all other data from his copy of Doom into the PWAD.

[Andy Olivera]

Well, if it would be more palatable to everyone, I could use bsdiff to make a patch for the Ultimate DooM IWAD. This was my initial solution, but I figured people might just want to be able to unzip and play it, instead, given how awful it is.

Which would be preferred?

[printz]

Wasn't the diff method the one which crippled wads like Ottawau?

[RestlessRodent]

For every thing in a map that isn't a player start or teleport destination, replace it with a random monster, item, powerup, or other thing. Repeat until all objects are changed. Play level.

[Maes]

GhostlyDeath said:

For every thing in a map that isn't a player start or teleport destination, replace it with a random monster, item, powerup, or other thing. Repeat until all objects are changed. Play level.

There seems to be some pattern or at least a half-assed thought process of what to replace (and probably they didn't mind one or two stuck cyberdemons in E1M1 or the few other levels they bothered playtesting. After all, the levels really became "extra hard". Still, it's impressive considering that there WEREN'T ANY FUCKING TOOLS OR EVEN UNOFFICIAL DOOM SPECS back then.

A side effect of replacing inert items with monsters without rebuilding the REJECT map, is that many of the replaced monsters completely ignore the player unless attacked. And I'm not 100% sure that they respected teleport destinations...

Alas, only "Group TUC" knows the truth :-p

And at least I would stop having any doubts about the timestamps genuineness: they're all over the files, they're INSIDE the files as well, hell, even inside a compiled .EXE BBS cracktro. The IWAD used as a base and distribution method also fit the era. Again, if we had some "old fart's" confirmation, that would be super.

printz said:

Wasn't the diff method the one which crippled wads like Ottawau?

Alas, yes. That being said, a "partial MAPxy and ExMy updater" tool can be made: read a WAD, detect MAPxy and ExMy lumps, and update only the subfields of specific ones according to some config file or PWAD, since there's an implicit hierarchy. Release tool and source code so that DOS, Windoze, Lunix and MacOS lusers are happy. Problem solved.