Experimenting: Shadow + Rise of the Wool-Ball in DOSBox

[ACMDogfight1997]

I know this is a stupid and pointless favor, but I'm doing this just for experimental purposes or for shits n' giggles depending on how you call this idea. A few weeks ago, I discovered Shadow of the Wool-Ball and Rise of the Wool-Ball, two .wads that I found very interesting due to the cartoon-ish theme involving two anthropomorphic Hedgehogs fighting an evil alien feline empire that has taken over the protagonist's planet and cause nothing but bad things to it. I fondly grew up with cartoons as a kid and have to thank the creator, MSPaintRocks (alt. name WatchDaToast), for creating such interesting .wads. I never played any Doom/Doom II .wad before and these two .wads got me to play such for the first time. Anyway, I played these two .wads on GZDoom (and played them with the Doom.wad and not the Doom2.wad as it was suppose to run with) and finished them all while I was sick with a loss of appetite.

After finishing these .wads, I had an interesting idea. What if I could run these .wads under the MS-DOS emulator DOSBox? Now I know that's a silly question because GZDoom was made to run .wads under the Doom engine easier. But just, again, for experimental purposes or for shits n' giggles depending on what you want to call it, I think it's interesting to find out if these .wads can be run under DOSBox. I've used DOSBox for about three years just to run certain MS-DOS flight sims and some other games but I've never ran a special Doom .wad on it before. Thankfully, there was this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5sFlbCmkFM) that I watched to explain what I needed to do to run a special Doom .wad and I tried that out.

So far, my results is that I hear the default Doom II opening track play with nothing but a black screen. Clicking or pressing any key will bring me back to the DOS interface with "Bad V-DrawPatchDirect" displayed at the top. I have no idea what that means and I have no clue on what else to do.

Now I said before, I'm just trying this out just, once again, for experimental purposes or for shits n' giggles depending on what you would call it. This is not important to me so don't waste too much of your time helping me to make this idea work. I put this thread in the "Off-Topic" sub-forum because it said that it's for anything that's "not ZDoom" and this is about running a special .wad on DOSBox.

[Nash]

The mod contains data that the original MS DOS executables just cannot handle. That's like... trying to take Strife or Hexen's .wad and get them to run with doom2.exe. Same engine, sure, but completely different data inside the WADs. What you are trying to do is impossible.

[Rachael]

You would need a DOS-compiled version of GZDoom to run them and those simply do not exist yet. Source ports have had a focus of moving *away* from DOS, not to it.

You could probably stick some backend code from DOSDoom or something into the GZDoom folder, and after a few tweaks and changes compile it with DJGPP, but honestly, don't expect it to run well except on a native DOS machine.

[ACMDogfight1997]

Ah, not possible eh? Well I guess that's my answer. Thanks for the replies.

[Gez]

Total conversions like the Wool Ball games rely on ZDoom's advanced custom content definition features allowing to easily create new monsters, pickups, weapons, and player characters. I believe the maps are also scripted. Running that inside DOSBox means you'd either have to graft ZDoom's virtual machines (one for custom actors, one for map scripts) into a working DOS port, along with all the associated support code; or you'd need to port ZDoom itself to DOS. I'm honestly not sure which is less work. A minimum-effort attempt at making a DOS-version of modern ZDoom would require ditching any of the DirectX code (there's some DirectInput stuff, and also some DirectDraw and Direct3D stuff) and the entire sound code, then see if you can get something to compile and run.

[wolfmanfp]

ZDoom 1.22 actually had a DOS version. I don't know if SOTWB runs on it, however.

[wildweasel]

ZDoom 1.22 actually had a DOS version. I don't know if SOTWB runs on it, however.

If it uses Decorate at all, then no. Though more likely it'll choke on the graphics lumps (1.22 predates PNG support, to my recollection) or the ACS (as the ACS VM has had tons of new functions added to it in the days since then) before it even gets to the game itself.

[Graf Zahl]

1.22 predates DECORATE, it predates slopes, it predates PNG and it also predates most other things that are considered core features of ZDoom. All it really had was Hexen map format, ACS (far more limited than today indeed) and MAPINFO. In short: There's absolutely zero chance to run any ZDoom map made in the last 15 years on it.

[ACMDogfight1997]

Something that came to mind that I want to share.

So running such .wads would be impossible to run on MS-DOS (or at least an MS-DOS emulator) unless maybe with some extensive modifications that's probably to much to work with. I understand. So let's change the question.

What's the earliest version of Windows that the earliest version of ZDoom that can run SOTWB and ROTWB can run on? (Kind of a badly worded question, I know)

I just have an interest in making something modified from a retro PC game to run on a retro operating system just for fun. You might consider it ironic for me to pursue something like this considering the number on my username is my birth year. Admittedly, I do believe I have a higher respect in retro software and hardware than just at least some of my peers.

[Gez]

I believe Windows XP is the supported minimum requirement currently, though it might still be possible to run on Windows 98 with the KernelEx patch.

As for minimal version of ZDoom required to run Rise of the Wool Ball (most recent of the two games, so normally the one with the highest requirements), I don't know. Try ZDoom 2.8.1 for a start.

[Graf Zahl]

Although 2.8.1 worked on Windows 9x, it was never actually stress tested on these platforms. Your best bet may be ZDoom LE. But keep in mind that modern mods have far higher system requirements than what was common on these ancient platforms.

For example, my last DOS system came with 16 MB of RAM, you'd have a hard time getting ZDoom to run on that at all, because it doesn't have any dynamic lump caching mechanism that throws stuff out when memory is exhausted. In short: The entire engine is geared towards far more powerfui systems

[ibm5155]

no way you can run this game since in vanilla you cannot be on top of other objects so those balloons would not work...
The best you could try is to port the mod to be vanilla compatible or maybe for vanilla strife/hexen

[Gez]

You cannot make these mods vanilla compatible. Period. Not for vanilla Doom, not for vanilla Hexen, not for vanilla Strife, not for vanilla anything. The games are entirely built around ZDoom features. If you take them out, you remove 99% of the mod content. It'd be like claiming this is Dark Forces for vanilla Doom.