Doom - Fixed

For a very, very long time I have wanted there to be a release of Ultimate Doom with all of the known issues fixed (stuck monsters, missing textures creating HOM effect, misaligned textures, things with no difficulty flags set, broken secrets, etc.).  Why Ultimate Doom?  Ultimate Doom will forever be my favorite, and I felt like it deserved some polish, so I decided to polish the maps myself.  I should mention that I am extremely new to map editing along with the legalities of it, so I sure hope I am doing this right.  I created a pwad that has all of the Ultimate Doom maps with the aforementioned issues fixed--this wad does not contain any of the doom assets; it only contains the maps with the known issues listed in the Doom wiki fixed.  All mapping credit goes to id software (John Romero, Sandy Petersen, Tim Willits, Shawn Green, John Anderson, American McGee, Tom Hall, possibly more that I am forgetting).  All I did was polish the maps by fixing stuck monsters, realigning textures, setting difficulty flags for things that had none set, applying textures for walls/linedefs that had none applied, and fixing broken secrets.  To further elaborate on this:

-Fixed stuck spectres and pinkies in E1M6, stuck pinkies and Baron of Hell in E2M6, stuck spectre in e3m6, stuck imp in E4M3, stuck cacodemons and pinkies/spectres in E4M4, possibly more that I maybe failing to remember right now.

-Fixed broken secrets in E4M3 and E4M7.

-Fixed goofy switch in E4M7 that raises the exit switch.  This strange switch had a ridge and would not light up / toggle when pressed.  I made it look and function like a normal switch.

-Fixed all instance of missing textures mentioned in the Doom wiki across all maps.  These missing texture created a HOM effect of varying degrees, but not anymore!

-Realigned countless textures across many maps, most notably any textures involving bricks and tiles (E2M4 and E3M7 especially).  I am sure I missed some, but I will gradually find the rest and hopefully release updates.

-Adjusted ceiling height in E3M6 so that the tops of certain structures don't disappear in the low ceiling/sky from certain views.

-set difficulty flags for many decorations across many maps that didn't have any set, causing them to not appear (now they appear).  Exceptions were a few in E3M1 and E3M9 because they hung from the empty sky at face level in the starting room.

-set difficulty flags for a few small ammo pickups across many maps that did not have difficulty flags set, causing them to not appear (now they appear).  Literally all of these were small pickups and were only a few here and there.

-One additional change I did out of personal preference is I changed the music track in E2M3 from the intermission track to "The Demons From Adrian's Pen" (same as E2M2).  I did this because I grew up playing the SNES version of Doom, and E2M3 played "The Demons From Adrian's Pen" on this version.  Plus I don't feel the intermission track sounds right in any map.  I feel it belongs on the intermission screen!  If you don't like this change, feel free to remove this from the wad, I will not be offended.

That is all I can think of for now.  To play simply load the wad file alongside your doom iwad.  Thanks for reading...I hope you enjoy!

[link removed: do not distribute modified id software levels - Mordeth]

Do no distribute modified iwad levels here. I've had to remove your link for this.

could this be distributed as something like a bps patch? would that still be off limits?

2 hours ago, Mordeth said:

Do no distribute modified iwad levels here. I've had to remove your link for this.

Hmmm I thought it was okay to distribute maps, just not assets.  So there is no legal way to share maps from the iwad that have the mistakes fixed?

I think gzdoom lets you patch levels on the fly, but i'm pretty sure the built in level fixer already fixes these problems

2 hours ago, jgs1989 said:

Hmmm I thought it was okay to distribute maps, just not assets.  So there is no legal way to share maps from the iwad that have the mistakes fixed?

Maps are assets. Distributing VCDIFF files (which are basically diffs for binary files), like what this repo does, is probably fine since they just encode the difference between files and are unusable without the original file. And as Obsidian Plague said, GZDoom has a system that can patch levels at runtime using ZScript, which it does for some things like untagging unobtainable secrets and fixing missing textures, though not everything that you mentioned.

Why was this removed? It was distributed as a PWAD, right? Then it's no different than shipping a wad that contains modified IWAD textures.

If the reasoning is the /idgames rule, that was enacted to prevent flooding the archive with low-effort "I opened E1M1 and added 1,000 cyberdemons" type of things. It seems fair to enforce a similar policy here for the same reasons, but presuming the OP is accurate (I can't exactly check the wad :P ), that's clearly not the case here.

8 minutes ago, Xaser said:

Why was this removed? It was distributed as a PWAD, right? Then it's no different than shipping a wad that contains modified IWAD textures.

 

If the reasoning is the /idgames rule, that was enacted to prevent flooding the archive with low-effort "I opened E1M1 and added 1,000 cyberdemons" type of things. It seems fair to enforce a similar policy here for the same reasons, but presuming the OP is accurate (I can't exactly check the wad :P ), that's clearly not the case here.

Thanks Xaser, I feel honored to have you of all people sticking up for me...I am a big fan of your work (No End in Sight is my favorite wad of all time).  Anywho, I am pretty sure what I made is a pwad, it is a wad that contains nothing but the original ultimate doom maps polished, and one track.  (I made the e2m2 song also play in e2m3).  It contains no assets whatsoever.  I am pretty new to all of this, but I did make sure that my wad contains nothing more than what I mentioned.  The wad requires the doom iwad (doom.wad) to run anyway, so I think that further proves it is a pwad.

dang it I was hoping to try out fixed maps

The only other project I found doesn't fix the other issues mentioned here

Hrmmm, nobody in the past has given me flak for my Maps of Chaos edits, which all three versions (normal, hard and hardest) do have significant architecture edits (and additions) to a good number of maps on both Doom and Doom 2, that and fixing up existing errors in the IWAD maps.

Oh ok wait doesn't that also violate the rules

I think it's a gray area? Also it's on ModDB and not /idgames/.

K

1 hour ago, Reisal said:

I think it's a gray area? Also it's on ModDB and not /idgames/.

ModDB is a wild west of modding where people get away with publishing other people's mods with not much in the way of support from the sites administration unless you have weight to throw around. As such it's a community blind spot and not a good demonstration of how things operate around here.

Outside of extreme cases, people more often then not treat it like the plague.

If there was a patch made for them, wouldn't it be possible to have them as a PWAD that is made when the IWAD in question is present instead of patching the IWAD in case of issues and whatnot?

11 hours ago, Reisal said:

I think it's a gray area? Also it's on ModDB and not /idgames/.

I'm guessing that's the reason why Maps of Chaos hasn't got any backlash (Unlike MoC TERROR EDITION). That and that the maps are different enough from the originals.

I guess the reason this mod got removed immediately is that the fixes don't warrant enough justification to not call this "warez" under a legal point of view, even if you still need the original IWAD to play it properly.

Maybe jgs can upload them on ModDB as well and just show some screenies here without posting a link. I doubt that would get you in trouble maybe.

On 7/8/2024 at 12:11 PM, RevanTCO said:

MoC TERROR EDITION

So he took my modifications, added even more architecture and turned them into Sunder-like difficulty levels by the looks while inspecting the maps with UDB..Bleh. Arch-viles, Arachnotrons and Cyberdemons on MAP01? Come on..Not even I am that mean when I was editing the "Overkill" versions of the maps..

Way too many custom textures and takes away from the original aesthetic and theme the IWAD maps have..

@jgs1989 The only other way to published edited/fixed IWAD maps is the Internet Archive as that's the only path of least resistance, but even that is considered frowned upon to this forum, as links to edited/fixed IWADs are prohibited and get removed by moderators including @Mordeth, so you'll have to search for them manually.

On 7/6/2024 at 6:10 PM, Obsidian Plague said:

I think gzdoom lets you patch levels on the fly, but i'm pretty sure the built in level fixer already fixes these problems

GZDoom has a "built-in level fixer"?

22 minutes ago, OliveTree said:

GZDoom has a "built-in level fixer"?

Kind of.

It has a list of maps, identified by their hash sum, that are known to have bugs or to require special compatibility options. These maps can get some post-processing done to fix them. It's usually for things that cause visual glitches or hinder gameplay.

21 minutes ago, Gez said:

Kind of.

 

It has a list of maps, identified by their hash sum, that are known to have bugs or to require special compatibility options. These maps can get some post-processing done to fix them. It's usually for things that cause visual glitches or hinder gameplay.

Interesting. Is a list of all of these fixes located somewhere?

26 minutes ago, OliveTree said:

Interesting. Is a list of all of these fixes located somewhere?

https://github.com/ZDoom/gzdoom/blob/master/wadsrc/static/zscript/level_compatibility.zs

There's also this list of maps for which compatibility flags are automatically applied: https://github.com/ZDoom/gzdoom/blob/master/wadsrc/static/compatibility.txt

On 7/7/2024 at 10:46 AM, Xaser said:

Why was this removed? It was distributed as a PWAD, right? Then it's no different than shipping a wad that contains modified IWAD textures.

 

If the reasoning is the /idgames rule, that was enacted to prevent flooding the archive with low-effort "I opened E1M1 and added 1,000 cyberdemons" type of things. It seems fair to enforce a similar policy here for the same reasons, but presuming the OP is accurate (I can't exactly check the wad :P ), that's clearly not the case here.

In my humble opinion, I think the problem here is not the package format used to compile the assets (PWAD in this case) but the assets inside the container. What the author did is basically copying various copyrighted assets, made tiny modifications, and pack them back as a PWAD. From my point of view, it is the same as grabbing original STARTAN textures, changing a few pixels (still look basically the same) and compile them in a PWAD. If this reasoning doesn't make sense, then I would be able to distribute a PWAD with sprites so slightly colour rebalanced as to they still look the same to the naked eye but if you check in photoshop, yes they are modified.
 

Also, as for the "modified IWAD textures", that could be also problematic if idSoftware doesn't give permission to use their assets as a base for our own. I have no idea about this very specific point though.

And with that being said, what @jgs1989can do instead is to use a programmatic way to change the maps during run-time, such as using ACS to realign textures, or also "kill" all the monsters and then re-summon them in the correct spots and fixed attributes, and the like. I am not familiar with ACS, so not sure if all that can be done but probably yes.
 

1 hour ago, Scyon said:

In my humble opinion, I think the problem here is not the package format used to compile the assets (PWAD in this case) but the assets inside the container. What the author did is basically copying various copyrighted assets, made tiny modifications, and pack them back as a PWAD. From my point of view, it is the same as grabbing original STARTAN textures, changing a few pixels (still look basically the same) and compile them in a PWAD. If this reasoning doesn't make sense, then I would be able to distribute a PWAD with sprites so slightly colour rebalanced as to they still look the same to the naked eye but if you check in photoshop, yes they are modified.

Well, the sprite fix WAD is mostly just IWAD sprites with a couple pixels changed or offsets shifted, and that's been allowed to exist, though I think only because there isn't a better way to do it.

I suggested doing a binary patch, like how people share romhacks, both here and in the other thread OP created for this topic, and shared some resources on how to do so. No word since then though.

it would be interesting if ultimate doom builder and sourceports could save and load a kind of diff data maybe in some other format than a wad file ... then those fixes could be saved in such a format in udb and then loaded up in gzdoom or other sourceports... distributing IWAD maps or modified IWAD maps straight up is not a good idea though as others already mentioned

A vcdiff or bps patch might be a better idea, I think?

Or better yet why not upload any fixed IWAD maps to Internet Archive, while trying to not post a link to said unofficial patched maps to the Doomworld forums?

11 minutes ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Or better yet why not upload any fixed IWAD maps to Internet Archive, while trying to not post a link to said unofficial patched maps to the Doomworld forums?

so the IA will get a neat DMCA , already they've having problems with book publishers.

Without thinking IA is not for such things, as you should already know.

bruh.

14 minutes ago, LuciferSam86 said:

so the IA will get a neat DMCA , already they've having problems with book publishers.

Without thinking IA is not for such things, as you should already know.

bruh.

I'm pretty sure all Doom IWADs are already available on Internet Archive.