Doom modding


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? 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 shooter games. 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 and PWADs. 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 Dooms 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 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.
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:
Another particularly notable early modification is Aliens TC, 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, some WAD sets and shovelware bundles were nonetheless obtainable for a price at certain outlets.
At the time, id Software was 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:

Levels and level packs

The most common type 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.
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. 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

Freedoom is a project aiming to create a free replacement for the set of graphics, music, sound effects, and levels used by Doom. Since the Doom engine is free software, it can be distributed along with the new resources, in effect providing a full game that is free. Freedoom also allows users to play any of the thousands of other WADs that normally require the original game.
The project distributes three IWAD files: the two single-player campaigns named Freedoom: Phase 1 and Freedoom: Phase 2, and FreeDM, which contains a collection of deathmatch levels.
Freedoom does not require any source port to run, and can run on any limit-removing source port of Doom. It can be downloaded from its homepage, https://freedoom.github.io/
A similar project, Blasphemer, aims to create a complete free version of Heretic, but is less fully developed than Freedoom.

Editing

Many level editors are available for Doom. The original Doom Editing Utility 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, and Doom Builder 2. Some Doom level editors, such as Doom Builder and Doom Builder 2, feature a 3D editing mode. As of now those two are discontinued, but a newer fork has been released and is regularly updated, known as GZDoom Builder.
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.