Doom WAD format is default format of package files for the video game Doom or its sequel Doom II, that are containing sprites, levels, and game data. WAD stands for Where's All the Data?.[1] 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 shooters. Thousands of WADs have been created for Doom, ranging from single custom levels to full original games; most of these can be downloaded for free 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 (internal WADs) and PWADs (patch WADs). IWADs contain the data necessary to load the game, while PWADs contain additional data, such as new character sprites, as necessary for custom levels.
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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 any modification to the engine itself. 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.
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, Brendon Wyber released on the Internet the first public domain version of the Doom Editing Utility (DEU), a program created by Doom fans which made it possible to create entirely new levels. DEU continued development until May 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 the DEU program. 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.[2] (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 D. Carmack later said the following about a Star Wars-themed modification:
I still remember the first time I saw the original Star Wars DOOM mod. Seeing how someone had put the death star into our game felt so amazingly cool. I was so proud of what had been made possible, and I was completely sure that making games that could serve as a canvas for other people to work on was a valid direction.
Another particularly notable early modification is the Aliens TC (see below in the conversions section), based on the movie Aliens.
Even though WADs transformed the game by replacing graphics and sounds, they were somewhat limited; much of the game's behavior, 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.
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, an id Software member claimed to have taken some measures against distributors of CD-ROM compilations of WADs,[4] some WAD sets and shovelware bundles were nonetheless obtainable for a price at certain outlets.
The id Software team 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:
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 General Public License). 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 2009, several source ports are still actively developed, and Doom retains a following of people who still create WADs.
The most common kind of WAD consists of a single level, usually retaining 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 some 8-10 levels, and sometimes in the form of a megawad, which replaces all or most levels in the game (36 in Doom, 32 in Doom II).
Megawads often represent the work of several people over several months and in some cases years.
A WAD that gives the game a general 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 his Aliens TC, or Aliens Total Conversion.[6] 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.
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.
The Aliens TC was noted for its suspenseful atmosphere. The first level is devoid of enemies, a surprising feature considering the fast-paced action of Doom. Later on, however, the players faces the aliens and even gets to use the powerloader from Aliens as a weapon. Fisher had gotten the idea to create the Aliens TC within his first five minutes of playing Doom in late December 1993, noting a similarity in atmosphere of Doom and the movie. Incidentally, it has later become known that id Software originally planned to base Doom on an Aliens license, but abandoned the idea in the early stages of development.
Many level editors are available for Doom. The original Doom Editing Utility has been ported to a number of operating systems, but lost significance over time; however, many of today's editors still have their roots in DEU and its editing paradigm, including DETH, DeePsea, Linux Doom Editor, and Yadex. Other level editors include WadAuthor and the relatively young Doom Builder (initially released in summer 2003), which, among other things, features a 3D editing mode.
A number of other, specialized editors also were created over time to modify graphics and sound lumps, most notably SLumpEd, Wintex, XWE, and SLADE. Things, such as monsters and items, and weapon behavior can also be modified to some degree using the executable patching utility DeHackEd. Additionally, designers can code their own custon weapon or monster items using a script called DECORATE, which is based on C++
The utility Slige can be used to automatically generate random maps. Slige has a cumbersome approach when creating levels and therefore a newer tool called Oblige has been created. This tool is entirely coded in Lua.
In Quake the WAD files were replaced with PAK files. WAD files still remain in Quake files, but their use is limited to textures. WAD2 and WAD3 use slightly larger directory structure, so they're incompatible with Doom.
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