[pre-342] WolfenDoom Portal is buggy

[Tormentor667]

I just noticed that WolfenDoom Portal from Laz Rojas isn't working the way it did before (no idea though when it stopped working, it's already been a while).

One problem is that the palms and trees (sticked together out of two objects) don't work anymore as before, the other problem is, that the arch-viles (producing ambient sounds) are visible and don't work as before. I uploaded the wad including the deh patch here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/54624878/portal.zip

*EDIT*
After playingg around with it further more this happens to all of the mods from Laz Rojas using a .DEH patch.

[Enjay]

(no idea though when it stopped working, it's already been a while).

Indeed it has. I tried ZDoom 1.23 and 1.22 and it didn't work in them. I got it to work in PRBoom and WinMBF however, Eternity wouldn't start with the deh file loaded. It reported:

Code: Select all

E_GetThingNumForDEHNum: invalid deh num 0

Although I don't see anything obviously wrong in the DEH patch, loading the file into the original DOS Dehacked program does flag up a number of errors starting with:

[Ed the Bat]

I've never seen any issues (aside from pre-existing ones, such as DeHackEd limitations looking sloppy) in WolfenDOOM. Also, what does "don't work as before" mean?

[Enjay]

In this case, start the map, go through the gate and bear right. You'll see an archvile idling on the ground and all the trees appear to be floating off of the ground. Right behind the player start spot will be a hanging body. In WinMBF, the archvile is invisible and making the sound of crickets, the trees are on the ground and the hanging dead body is invisible and making the sound of a truck idling.

(At least I think the archie makes the cricket sound and the hanging corpse makes the truck sound.)

[Ed the Bat]

Nope, I'm not seeing any such thing, nor have I ever in the past ten years I've played this mod (going back to using Doom Legacy, before I discovered ZDoom).

However, I must disclaim that the version of Portal I have (which I downloaded from Laz Rojas' website) is timestamped 1999, while I see the one Torm has uploaded is from 1997. Could be relevant to the problem...

[Enjay]

That does indeed seem to be relevant. The one from the WolfenDoom site dated 1999 seems to be working correctly.

[Graf Zahl]

The reason this patch doesn't work is that in some places it contains actual zeroes instead of space characters. The parser interprets them as end of file markers. I consider this clearly broken data. After removing these bogus characters the patch works.

If you want to see how this really looks, get a text editor that can display control characters. Notepad++ is my recommendation. You'll immediately see what's wrong here.

[wildweasel]

Bear in mind, too, that the entire Wolfendoom series was made in Classic Mac OS, using a tool called DeMackEd (itself a subset of another Mac program called Doominator, if I recall) that was intended to aid cross-platform compatibility for DEH patches between Mac OS and MS-DOS. It could be that the patches DeMackEd puts out are just ever-so-slightly different enough that ZDoom is choking on them. I recall some related silliness with the /idgames version of Operation Eisenmann, with an Arch-Vile idling on top of a swimming pool and Pain Elementals hanging out near fountains.

[Enjay]

The reason this patch doesn't work is that in some places it contains actual zeroes instead of space characters. The parser interprets them as end of file markers. I consider this clearly broken data. After removing these bogus characters the patch works.

Given the nature of the errors reported by DeHacked, I suspected that might be the case.

[Gez]

Yeah, MacDoom editing was weird. For example, I've noticed some files in the WolfenDoom series were the DMX identifier was 0x0300 instead of 0x03. Looks like it was written in big endian. In that case, the sample rate is also written in big endian; but the number of samples is still in little endian!

[Enjay]

I notice this on the old Doomworld hosted site for WolfenDoom:



That's for the "Second Encounter" but a few of the other mods have similar patches for download. The patch file is gone but my guess is that it contained a fix for the original deh file.

[Havoc]

The patch file is gone but my guess is that it contained a fix for the original deh file.

The patch is still available here: http://www.atomicgamer.com/files/1693/2ndfix-zip

[Enjay]

I think that most, if not all, of the files on Laz's site are the up to date (ready-patched) ones. However, I did notice that Slade still reports some of the sound lumps as being in Mac format.

[Tormentor667]

So if I understood anything correctly, all I need is to update the WolfenDoom files, right? Where can I get the latest versions of any WolfenDoom project available to make sure everything works as intended?

*EDIT*
Different question: How can I remove/replace the NUL with a regular spacer?

[Graf Zahl]

Get Notepad++, which can display them. Unfortunately you have to remove them manually because I haven't found a search&replace tool yet that can do it automatically.