Doom WAD: Encyclopedia II - Doom WAD - History

Doom WAD - History

Doom WAD - 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, 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 separate from the game engine, in "WAD files". 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; 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.

Doom WAD - Utilities and WADs appearing

Immediately after the initial shareware release of Doom, on December 10, 1993, enthusiasts began working on tools to modify the game. On January 26, 1994, the first version of the Doom Editing Utility, a program created by Doom fans which made it possible to create entire new levels, was uploaded to the Internet, and many other editing programs followed. (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.)

Soon, countless hobbyists were building custom WADs and sharing them over AOL and CompuServe forums, and other Internet-based channels. Many of the WADs were in the style of the stock 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 the Aliens TC (see below in the conversions section), based on the movie Aliens.

Even those WADs which transformed the game by replacing graphics and sounds were somewhat limited; much of the game's behaviour, including the timing and power of weapons and enemies, was hard-coded in the Doom executable file and impossible to alter from WADs. One program called DeHackEd addressed this fact by letting users modify parameters inside the Doom executable itself.

Doom WAD - 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 (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, such CD compilations could be sold as long as the price only covered distribution costs.

id Software was at the time working on their next game Quake, using new technology, but started side projects picking up some of the most talented WAD makers from the community to create official expansions and 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 sets created by TeamTNT, was released as an official id Software product.

Additionally, a handful of 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.

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

• Tim Willits, who contributed two Master levels, later became the lead designer at id Software
• Dario Casali, author of a quarter of Final Doom, was hired by Valve Software to work on Half-Life
• Sverre Kvernmo, designer of five Master levels and member of TeamTNT, was hired by Ion Storm for Daikatana
• Iikka Keränen, author of several Doom WADs and later Quake mods, was hired by Ion Storm to create levels for Anachronox and Daikatana, and by Looking Glass Studios to create levels for Thief 2. Keränen was later hired by Valve Software
• John Anderson [2] (level designer), also known as "Dr Sleep", author of five Master levels and E4M7 of Ultimate Doom, later worked on Blood, Unreal and Daikatana

Doom WAD - The source port era

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

In late 1997, id Software released the source code to the Doom engine (initially under a restrictive license; it was however released again under the terms of the GNU GPL). 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 2004, several source ports are still actively developed, and Doom retains a following of people who still create WADs.

Versions and ports of Doom

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki