Known lost WADs of our history?

Thought it was worth mentioning since I think no one has yet. @Bob Evans came out of the blue almost a decade ago to release his lost Odessa series of maps to /idgames, and there in his thread he also mentioned having a CD-ROM with the entire WAD archive of the long-extinct CompuServe forums. He seemed eager to help with preserving the contents of the CD, but seems like due to both internet and personal reasons, he never got to do it. Hist last post was in 2014, and his last connection in 2015. Does anyone know if something happened to Bob, or is the CD lost for other reasons?

Anyway, thought I mention it since this is probably a golden grail for old school WADs, including content from a variety of top mappers from the 90s era that have never been released. It's been years since the last update so I thought going back to it, even if just to remind people of the existence of the CD, would be worth posting about.

The PWADS of The1337DoomCokie which were never released and the only evidence we have is four videos showcasing them.

The Shores Of Zdoom.

The Crawl series of WADs made by Reilsss, one of the earliest contributors to the earlier versions of Aeons of Death, sometime in the late 2000s developed for the jDoom/jHexen/jHeretic-era of The Doomsday Engine, which consists of four chapters. These were:

CRAWL Chapter I: The Heretic PC for jHeretic

CRAWL Chapter II: The Hexen PC for jHexen

CRAWL Chapter III: The Doomed PC for jDoom (Ultimate Doom)

CRAWL Chapter IV: Forever PC for jDoom (Doom II)

Reilsss also made a port of one of the map packs of Laz Rojas' Wolfendoom series to the jDoom era of The Doomsday Engine as well.

There is a documentation for each of these here, and there were download links in the past, but now all of them are dead. And as of now, no screenshot of either the CRAWL series known to exist.

I have all of them:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/bf2jy1kou1o8n5u/reilssslair.zip/file

Hi fellas, i repeat a request from the last year: in this post @Grazza tells he does have a Beta version of KS2 , please man, can you share it with us? Thank you

This WAD called Joe by YouTube user Gigabowser666. Only videos exist of this mapset exist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeGvwVu42oc

https://youtu.be/qr-BLmEYRMo?si=CGFALRguCR9g1wrv

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gRQzCCC5v0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLusCBOpQ_c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvLxXGhhNj8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnnB4SLkIEY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnZLJPIX8sk

17 minutes ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

This WAD called Joe by YouTube user Gigabowser666. Only videos exist of this mapset exist.

Were you able to find a video of level 7? I checked, and couldn't find one.

30 minutes ago, Arrowhead said:

Were you able to find a video of level 7? I checked, and couldn't find one.

Nope, no video for Level 7 exists. :( 

PODEN - A deathmatch map made by YouTuber daiphobos in 2006.

Sadly the link to download the map is dead as Rapidshare went defunct years later.

FSD Doom (Yes that's the name of the WAD) - a ZDoom WAD being made by YouTuber fabio914, which was abandoned for reasons that can't be deciphered.

14 hours ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

FSD Doom (Yes that's the name of the WAD) - a ZDoom WAD being made by YouTuber fabio914, which was abandoned for reasons that can't be deciphered.

 

HD 4K 1080P

On 3/25/2022 at 10:06 AM, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Doom X: a planned MegaWAD designed for ZDoom (and later GZDoom) that started off under the title The Last Marine. It would've been 32-levels long and added in new monsters and later in development new weapons. The YouTube channel and ModDB page is still available, but the official website has never been updated since 2016, and appears to be partially offline and/or inaccessible, with the only way to access it being the Wayback Machine. I guess the author lost interest in making the mod or didn't want to extend the time or resources to transfer code over to ZScript.

 

As far as we know, only a couple of assets would be released separately in one form or another. For example, the Flesh Wizard and Loper (the latter being based on an enemy from Return to Castle Wolfenstein) were uploaded to Realm667's beastiary repository, while others would be released elsewhere. As another example, the Angel of Death enemy appeared in ZDCP2, the Succubus and Trite enemies were made available on the ModDB page, and the infamous Gangsta Grosse was made available for years complete with a test map, but that's really more of a proof of concept of a boss fight for the latter enemy than anything else.

 

It's a real shame that Doom X never materialized beyond a few concept videos and screenshots, but it really would've been over the top and very fun.

There's a ZDoom forums post from bowserknight with a file supposedly having both the Angel of Death and Death Dealers, which replace Barons of Hell and Hell Knights respectively. I say "supposedly" because I don't have doom as of now and have no way of knowing. I'm currently a forum lurker :'-)

[WIP]Colourful Hell 1.00 - Page 35 - ZDoom                        (Look for this and it's basically there yeah)

There's a lost wad named death666.wad, which was made somewhere in 1994, presumably by id Software themselves. This wad is notable for containing content so shocking that anyone who played it died in unimaginable ways. Because of this, it was banned on all sites, and became lost to time. Rumor has it that John Carmack still keeps a copy of it though...

19 minutes ago, Li'l devil said:

There's a lost wad named death666.wad, which was made somewhere in 1994, presumably by id Software themselves. This wad is notable for containing content so shocking that anyone who played it died in unimaginable ways. Because of this, it was banned on all sites, and became lost to time. Rumor has it that John Carmack still keeps a copy of it though...

least schizophrenic doom player 

HeXetic: Rise of D'Sparil - a Heretic and Hexen crossover mod being developed between 2009 to 2010 which was meant to combine the arsenal and beastiary from both Heretic and Hexen.

As far as we are aware only a handful of videos were released during development.

There also used to be screenshots available on the ZDoom forums but unfortunately, due to the fact that ImageShack hosted those screenshots, none of them load anymore their links are broken.

It's a shame that this project was never completed, as the idea of a Heretic and Hexen crossover mod sounds cool, if executed properly.

This map for Risen3D that was being worked on by Sitters sometime in the 2000s which was probably either never released or never finished.

Wow, you remember Rison 3D. Both it and jDoom feel into complete obscurity somehow.

The beta build of the PS1 versions Doom and Final Doom that were sent out to most of the gaming press before the release of either version.

These builds included content not seen in the final release of the game and appears to not have been properly archived by any preview team from the gaming magazine of the day. All we have of any of the cut content of PS1 Doom and Final Doom are screenshots.

On 11/24/2023 at 7:54 AM, Wadmodder Shalton said:

This map for Risen3D that was being worked on by Sitters sometime in the 2000s which was probably either never released or never finished.

It's here.

Now, about Sitters, there's a bunch of maps (The Aztec, Rocket Base, Welcome to Hell) which are no longer available online because they were not updated to the latest R3D - however, I happen to have them, in a bit of an unsorted folder. I never bothered to upload it because I just don't know what the best venue to do so is, but if anyone is interested I can upload the stuff.

Doomed Again was a highly ambitious remake of Doom for the sourceport EDGE, using janky 3D models and promising a boatload of new features. The website was last updated in December 2009. Footage still exists of this mod.

And its website can be found on the Wayback Machine:https://web.archive.org/web/20201016225401/https://sites.google.com/site/doomedagain/da_home

In a similar vein, Doom: The Resurrection was a so-called "extension of the Doom universe" using the Doomsday engine. The only remnant of this mod is its ModDB page, showcasing a bunch of weapon models:https://www.moddb.com/mods/doom-the-resurrection

That Doom: The Ressurection mod for Doomsday Engine looks too "Lawnmower Man" quality of 3D models.

I think one of the greatest tragedies occurred right here on Doomworld; Ninja Doom vanished without a trace. Despite being hosted by this very website, there were no files recovered from 3DDownloads, no one seems to have any development builds, and no screenshots remain from years of development.

There is also a 'lost wad' which was destroyed intentionally. My hosted site mentions a map I made in high-school... of that very same building. The map was completed in 1998, when I was a junior, however the Columbine shooting occurred the following year. I scrubbed the file from the internet (which was possible back then) and it will never be seen again.

2 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

I think one of the greatest tragedies occurred right here on Doomworld; Ninja Doom vanished without a trace. Despite being hosted by this very website, there were no files recovered from 3DDownloads, no one seems to have any development builds, and no screenshots remain from years of development.

A few screenshots appear to have survived:

https://web.archive.org/web/19981202074932/http://www.doomworld.com:80/ninja/screenshots.htm

Here's some more screenshots and info:

https://web.archive.org/web/20011125154030/http://www.otherside.com/kuno/doom2/

The link to ninja.wad was here, but archive.org didn't save it :(

On 3/26/2022 at 7:27 AM, Gez said:

If we're drifting into "projects that were announced and then disappeared", there are a few noteworthy ones.

 

Hi-Tech Hell 2 was supposed to be the sequel of a more ambitious project that would be released later. Don't ask me how that works.

                          hth2 is a sequel for an (yet) unreleased
                          ZDoom wad. Featuring a storyline, dummy 
                          actors, intro/conversations you can skip, 
                          the very different kind of teleports you've 
                          ever seen before... and more.

Anyway, Hi-Tech Hell 1 never happened.

 

Hellstorm: Dark Ascension was one of these very ambitious partial conversions from the late nineties. The Doom source code was opened, and so it was possible to make mods that included a new executable with more stuff in it! More monsters, more weapons, more effects... Of all such projects, only Caverns of Darkness saw the light of day. What happened instead was a decoupling of engines and mod projects, with some engines (ZDoom, EDGE, Legacy, etc.) moving ahead with more and more editing features and mod projects getting built around an existing port. That was a much more future-proof solution, so it's for the best. Anyway, if I bring up Hellstorm, it's because of its historical importance: just go take a look at its bestiary. Notice anything familiar? Yes, this was the debut of Amuscaria's spriting career. Those sprite edits ended up getting included in the Demon Eclipse resource files, even if left unused (a secret Hellstorm-themed level was planned as an Easter egg); and from there they'd find their way to other ZDoom projects. Some of them, like the nightmare and archon even got fancy redesigns at some point.

 

Speaking of abandoned, ambitious projects with their own custom engine, there's another one that has historical relevance: that's right, the Eternity TC! While the TC project eventually died, the custom engine soldiered on, eventually shedding off all the custom Eternity TC content that had been added to focus on being a general-purpose Doom source port instead.

 

I'm going to pretend Mordeth's daughter is named Meredith.

Now that I think of it, I think of it some assets from hellstorm and demon eclipse have made their way to other mods like Dusted's Pandemonia, complex Doom, Aeons of death, to name but a few 

A few WADs that are mentioned in a list regarding the DoomMapsSE folder from the 2015 asset release which might be related to the Master Levels.

willits.wad (probably an early version of Attack?)
willits2.wad (probably an early version of Canyon?)
jsf02ai!.wad
jsf03x.wad
jsf05k.wad

vortex.wad

virgil.old (earlier version of Virgil's Lead)
virgil03.wad (perhaps a slightly later prerelease version of Virgil's Lead?)

chiron-5.wad (either the unreleased standalone Chiron WAD or an early version of Ultimate Doom's E4M7?)
deadlock.wad (earlier version of a WAD from 1997, found in the 2023 DOS/Mac Doom source code leak)

None of these maps were included in the 2015 asset release by John Romero, probably due to fear of pressure by Zenimax.

On 11/23/2022 at 2:36 PM, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Nick Baker's Doom Beastiary, an old website made by @NiGHTMARE for custom monster designs which predates Realm667's repository by a few years. As far as I know, many of these custom monsters never got made beyond a single image.

 

Categories included:

 

Marines

Caco Creatures

Cyber Creatures

Imps

Demons

Hell Nobles

Misc. Undead

Zombies

Silly Stuff

 

Hopefully one with actual experience with sprite development can recreate these old custom monster designs that were never used in any PWADs that I know of.

 

Oh and also, try getting all the files downloadable from The Epidermis Emporium and upload them on Internet Archive in case that website closes down (which has never been updated since October 2004), like what @northivanastan did with B.P.R.D's PWADs that never made it to the idgames Archive.

Some of these have been used in other maps. And these are just the ones I recognize.

The Arachnophyte is a boss in Town Infection.

The Bazooka Guy appears in several WADs including ZPack.

The Blood Demon appears in Skulltag and other countless WADs, but it has evolved over time.

The Dark Imp appears in Skulltag and other countless WADs.

The Fire Imp appears as the Red Level Imp in Colorful Hell.

The Stone Imp appears in Knee Deep in ZDoom.