Doom WAD

Doom WAD is the default format of package files for the video game Doom and its sequel Doom II: Hell on Earth, that contain sprites, levels, and game data. WAD stands for Where's All the Data?.[1] Immediately after its release in 1993, Doom attracted a sizeable following of players who created their own mods for WAD files—packages containing levels, graphics, and other game data—and played a vital part in spawning the mod-making culture which is now commonplace for first-person shooters. Thousands of WADs have been created for Doom, ranging from single custom levels to full original games; most of these can be freely downloaded over the Internet. Several WADs have also been released commercially, and for some people the WAD-making hobby became a gateway to a professional career as a level designer.

There are two types of WADs: IWADs (internal WADs) and PWADs (patch WADs). IWADs contain the data necessary to load the game, while PWADs contain additional data, such as new character sprites, as necessary for custom levels.

History

Extensibility in Doom

When developing Doom, id Software was aware that many players had tried to create custom levels and other modifications for their previous game, Wolfenstein 3D. However, the procedures involved in creating and loading modifications for that game were cumbersome.

John Carmack, lead programmer at id Software, designed the Doom internals from the ground up to allow players to extend the game. For that reason, game data such as levels, graphics, sound effects, and music are stored separately from the game engine, in "WAD files". This allowed players to make their own data without making any modifications to the engine. According to Doom's initial design document, WAD stands for "Where's All the Data?".

The idea of making Doom easily modifiable was primarily backed by Carmack, a well-known supporter of copyleft and the hacker ideal of people sharing and building upon each other's work, and by John Romero, who had hacked games in his youth and wanted to allow other gamers to do the same. Not everybody in the id Software crew was happy with this development, however; some, including Jay Wilbur and Kevin Cloud, objected due to legal concerns and in the belief that it would not be of any benefit to the company's business.

Utilities and WADs appearing

Immediately after the initial shareware release of Doom on December 10, 1993, enthusiasts began working on various tools to modify the game. On January 26, 1994, Brendon Wyber released the first public domain version of the Doom Editing Utility (DEU) program on the Internet, a program created by Doom fans which made it possible to create entirely new levels. DEU continued development until May 21 of the same year. It was made possible by Matt Fell's release of the Unofficial Doom specifications. Shortly thereafter, Doom enthusiasts became involved with further enhancing DEU. Raphaël Quinet spearheaded the program development efforts and overall project release, while Steve Bareman lead the documentation effort and creation of the DEU Tutorial. More than 30 other people also helped with the effort and their names appear in the README.1ST file included with the program distribution. Yadex, a fork of DEU 5.21 for Unix systems running X, was later released under the GNU/GPL license.[2] (Carmack additionally released the source code for the utilities used to create the game, but these were programmed in Objective-C, for NeXT workstations, and were therefore not directly usable for most people, who were PC users.)

Jeffrey Bird is credited with creating the first custom WAD for Doom, released under the title Origwad, on March 7, 1994. Soon, countless hobbyists were creating custom WADs and sharing them over AOL and CompuServe forums, and other Internet-based channels. Many of the WADs were made in the style of the base game, others were based on TV series, movies, or original themes. Some of the id Software staff have revealed that they were impressed by some of the WADs; John Carmack later said the following about a Star Wars-themed modification:

I still remember the first time I saw the original Star Wars DOOM mod. Seeing how someone had put the death star into our game felt so amazingly cool. I was so proud of what had been made possible, and I was completely sure that making games that could serve as a canvas for other people to work on was a valid direction.

— John D. Carmack[3]

Another particularly notable early modification is Aliens TC (see below in the conversions section), based on the movie Aliens.

Even though WADs modified Doom by replacing graphics and audio, the amount of customization was somewhat limited; much of the game's behavior, including the timing and strength of weapons and enemies, was hard-coded in the Doom executable file and impossible to alter in WADs. DeHackEd, a Doom editing program created by Greg Lewis, addressed this by letting users modify parameters inside of the Doom executable itself, allowing for a greater degree of customization.

Commercial WADs

Around 1994 and 1995, WADs were distributed primarily through BBSs and via CD collections found in computer shops or bundled together with instruction guides for level creation, while in later years Internet FTP servers became the primary method for obtaining these works. Although the Doom software license required that no profit be made from custom WADs, an id Software member claimed to have taken some measures against distributors of CD-ROM compilations of WADs,[4] some WAD sets and shovelware bundles were nonetheless obtainable for a price at certain outlets.

At the time, id Software working on their next game, Quake, using new technology, but started projects picking up the most talented WAD makers from the Doom community to create official expansions and to compete with the unauthorized collection CDs. The team produced the 21 Master Levels, which, on December 26, 1995, were released on a CD along with Maximum Doom, a collection of 1,830 WADs that had been downloaded arbitrarily from the Internet. In 1996, Final Doom, a package of two 32-level megawads created by TeamTNT, was released as an official id Software product.

Additionally, various first-person shooter games released at the time used the Doom engine under a commercial license from id Software, as such essentially being custom WADs packaged with the Doom engine. An example is the 1997 release, Hacx: Twitch 'n Kill.

In addition to the many people who contributed to commercially released WADs, various authors became involved with the development of other games:

Source port era

Main article: Doom source ports

Around 1997, interest in Doom WADs began to decline, as attention was drawn to newer games with more advanced technology and more customizable design, including id Software's own Quake.

On December 23, 1997, id Software released the source code to the Doom engine (initially under a restrictive license; it was released again in 1999 under the terms of the GNU General Public License). With the source code available, it became possible for programmers to modify any aspect of the game, remove technical limitations and bugs, and add entirely new features.

These engine modifications, or Doom source ports, have since become the target for much of the WAD editing activity (although some purists prefer the original, unmodified engine). As of 2016, several source ports are still actively being developed, and Doom retains a strong following of people who still create WADs.

Types of WADs

Levels and level packs

The most common kind of WAD consists of a single level, usually retaining the theme of the original game, but possibly including new music and some modified graphics to define a more distinctive setting or mood. Both single-player and deathmatch multiplayer levels are common.

Also common are WADs which contain several levels, sometimes in the form of an episode, replacing nine levels, and sometimes in the form of a megawad, which replaces 15 or more levels in the game (27 in Doom, 32 in Doom II, 36 in The Ultimate Doom).

Megawads often represent the work of several people over several months or years.

Total conversions

A WAD that gives the game an overhaul to incorporate an entirely different game setting, character set, and story, instead of simply providing new levels or graphic changes, is called a total conversion. The phrase was coined by Justin Fisher, as part of the title of Aliens TC, or Aliens Total Conversion.[6] Add-ons that provide extensive changes to a similar degree but retain distinctive parts or characteristics of the original games, such as characters or weapons, are often by extension called partial conversions.

Notable WADs

The following is a non-inclusive listing of highly popular, unique or historically significant WADs that may be considered uncontroversial in its selection. See the external links section below for alternative lists and review sites.

Megawads

Total conversions

Miscellaneous

Screenshot from Freedoom

Editing

Many level editors are available for Doom. The original Doom Editing Utility (DEU) was ported to a number of operating systems, but lost significance over time; many modern Doom editors still have their roots in DEU and its editing paradigm, including DETH, DeePsea, Linux Doom Editor, and Yadex. Other level editors include WadAuthor, Doom Builder (released in January 2003), and Doom Builder 2 (released in May 2009 as the successor to Doom Builder). Some Doom level editors, such as Doom Builder and Doom Builder 2, feature a 3D editing mode.

A number of other, specialized Doom editors were created over time to modify graphics and audio lumps, most notably XWE, SLADE, Wintex, and SLumpEd. Things, such as monsters and items, and weapon behavior can also be modified to some degree using the executable patching utility DeHackEd. In ZDoom, users can create new monsters, weapons, and items through a scripting language called DECORATE, made to address many of the shortcomings of DeHackEd, such as not being able to add new objects, and not being able to deviate far from the behavior of the original weapons and monsters.

The utility Slige could be used to automatically generate random levels. Slige had a cumbersome approach when creating maps, however, and a newer tool called Oblige has since been created. This tool is entirely coded in Lua.

WAD2 and WAD3

In Quake, WAD files were replaced with PAK files. WAD files still remain in Quake files, though their use is limited to textures. Since WAD2 and WAD3 use a slightly larger directory structure, they are incompatible with Doom.

Notes

References

  1. ↑ "5 Years of Doom". Doomworld.
  2. ↑ Yadex's Homepage
  3. ↑ "John Carmack Answers". Slashdot. Retrieved 2007-04-13.
  4. ↑ Green, Shawn & McGee, American (1994). "Doom Conference". Planet Rome.ro. Retrieved May 7, 2008.
  5. ↑ John "Dr. Sleep" Anderson article at the Doom Wiki 05-07-08
  6. ↑ Fisher, Justin (1998). "5 Years of Doom interview at Doomworld". Doomworld.com. Retrieved May 7, 2008.
  7. ↑ http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?file=levels/doom2/megawads/d2twid.zip
  8. ↑ Aliens TC article at the Doom Wiki
  9. 1 2 Doomworld - The Top 100 WADs Of All Time: 1994
  10. 1 2 Jay & Dee (May 1995). "Eye of the Monitor". Dragon (217): 65–74.
  11. ↑ "Freedoom :: Download". Freedoom project website. Retrieved 2008-10-29.
  12. ↑ Blasphemer homepage
  13. ↑ Pinchbeck, Dan (2013). Doom: Scarydarkfast. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. p. 126. ISBN 978-0-472-07191-3. Retrieved December 19, 2013.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, January 01, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.