ulsimpdm.wad

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• http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?file=themes/simpsons/ulsimpdm.zip

***************************** presenting... ***********************************
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
          the ULTIMATE SIMPSONS-DooM2: Hell in Springfield!!!
_______________________________________________________________________________

---------------------------------- NOTICE -------------------------------------

     This wad takes advantage of special features only found in the ZDoom
source port. ZDoom is available for download at http://zdoom.notgod.com. The
wad is fully compatible with other versions of Doom, including the original
Id doom2.exe. I am unsure about Mac Doom compatibility. The ZDoom features used
keep the characters from saying each others lines. In other word for best
game play results use ZDoom. Make sure you have doom2.wad in the same folder
as the simpdoom.wad and zdoom.exe.

------------------------------- INSTALLATION ----------------------------------

     Ideally you will want to download ZDoom to play this wad, but if you are
using the old doom2.exe from Id you will want to run the install.bat file. It
will make the wad playable by adding all the Doom2 graphics to it. 

To run Ultimate Simpsons Doom type one of the following:
zdoom -file simpdoom.wad
doom2 -file simpdoom.wad

     For portfolio evaluation purposes, I have included several save-game files
of locations that highlight the modifications made to the sprites and textures.
You may want to turn on god-mode before proceeding in order to get a good look
at the bosses. 

---------------------------------- WHY? ---------------------------------------

     After playing this wad, I would imagine you'd be asking yourself one ques-
tion... "Why?" Why the hell did I spend 2 weeks creating this elaborate modifi-
cation of DooM2? Well, as a professional, award-winning commercial animator at
a small but reputable studio in Dallas, I found myself with a lot of free time 
on my hands during a slow project season with very few clients. I was poking 
around AOL for some game demos I could download when I found the original SIMP-
SONS DooM patch created by "Spooky" Steve Blauwkamp and "Decapitated" Chuck
Fuoco. The .wav files they chose for the sounds were hilarious, except they ran
so long that they'd all run together during game play, making them difficult
to listen to. The artwork on the sprites was very creative, although somewhat
primitive-looking with a limited number of animated frames per character. It
was still pretty fun, but being such a discernable animator, I felt compelled
to improve it for my own satisfaction. Besides, I did have a LOT of free time, 
as I said. 

     So, if the old DooM2 has become tiresome and dull, these wads will add a 
whole new look to those drab textures. The original design is almost unrecog-
nizable in some places! Now if I can just figure out the level editor...

-------------------------------- WHAT'S NEW? ----------------------------------

     Every sprite (except the player) was completely reanimated, including a lot 
of the still-object sprites. They have the same number of frames as the original
DooM2, each with it's own original death sequence which I think you'll find
amusing. Heh heh heh... 
                          
                                * the cast * 
   
You: Homer 
Player: no modifications
Zombieman: Moe the bartender
Shotgun guy: Police Chief Wiggum
Heavy weapon dude: Grampa Abraham Simpson
Imp: Ned Flanders 
Demon: Barney (the drunk guy)
Lost soul: Krusty the Clown flying head
Pain Elemental: TV showing the Krusty the Clown Show, with Itchy & Scratchy
Cacodemon: the guy in the Bee-suit on the Spanish television channel
Hell Knight: Apu, the Quickie-Mart manager
Baron of Hell: Sideshow Bob
Arachnotron: Maggie Simpson
Revenant: Bart Simpson
Mancubus: Willie the Scotsman-groundskeeper at Springfield Elementary
Arch-Vile: Marge Simpson
Spider Mastermind: Cyber-Smithers Tank (Wayland Smithers, Mr. Burns' flunky)
CyberDemon: Robo-Burns Mecha-Suit (Montgomery Burns, Homer's boss)
the Secret Level Nazi-guy: Evil Homer-bot

     A lot of the patches and flats have been modified with wacky patterns and
colorful psychadelic sequences, as well as some entirely original Simpson art
here and there. Although it's somewhat cartoony-looking, I managed to keep the
gore motif. Oh, and I got a little lazy after a couple of weeks of alterations,
so I threw in a couple of "cheesecake" pics of hot babes on the walls (and one 
object-sprite). Nothing notty, just a couple of shots of Christina Applegate, 
the YUMMIEST woman on TV and film in my opinion, and one other woman who I 
can't identify but she's striking an interesting pose (the sprite is hard to
find in the DooM2 levels, but it's all over the master levels).
 I should warn you that some of the patterns were duplicated over certain types 
of walls, so those hidden doors may be harder to find! 

     The essential graphics have been altered including the backgrounds between
levels and the roll-call at the end of the game, plus a WICKED title screen!!!
The status bar is different, complete with lil' Homer heads in the center box. 
I was afraid to mess with the text. I tried it with the original DooM once, and 
it messed everything up. 

        Most of the sounds were extracted from the original SimpsonsDooM patch,
with the length edited for better game play. The original had such perfectly
chosen sound bytes from the show, that I didn't dare modify them, even though
one of them doesn't fit the character it's assigned to. More on that later.

     I managed to swap out most of the music files with some amusing midi files
I got off AOL. Naturally, I HAD to get the Simpson's theme song in there!
     
---------------------------------- HOW? ---------------------------------------

    I think the reason this took the better part of a month, is that I have 
absolutely NO programming skills, and had a difficult time getting Wintex to 
work for me. I finally realized that as I kept adding sprites to my main wad 
for testing, I was building up the wadinfo file with each batch of changes. 
After a while, the program simply crashed every time I tried to do anything
with an error message I didn't understand. Once I figured this out, it went
pretty smoothly, but each new test wad took about an hour to build (it took
2 hours to create the final versions!). 
    All the files were extracted with Wintex 3.0. All the sprites were 
imported into Autodesk Animator Pro (the best damn 2-D animation software
in existence!), then split up into individual flics of each character, and 
faded out to use as a trace reference for the sprites' moves. Then came the 
tricky part. I had to convert the new frames to .bmp files that would replace 
the DooM files. I couldn't figure out how to batch-save them over the DooM
art, since the frames aren't sequentially numbered, so I had to save them 
ONE... BY... ONE. Almost 1000 images. Just when I thought that would be the 
worst part, I found that the wad-building process had thrown all the char-
acter's positions all out of whack, so they bounced all over the screen when
played. I couldn't find a way to batch it in Wintex, so using Wintex 4.0, I
had to re-align each individual frame. It wasn't as tedious as the saving 
process, but it was still a pain towards the end, when I had replaced all
the art.
    The patches, flats and graphics were considerably easier. I just painted
over the original files in Fractal Painter. 
    The Cyber-Smithers and Homer-Bot were built using 3-D Studio. It started 
off as just an experimental thing, but the Smithers came out so nice that I 
kept it. The Homer isn't as cool, but that sprite doesn't appear in the game
much anyway. 

--------------------------------- ANY BUGS? -----------------------------------

     I haven't found any problems with the final yet, other than the asthetic
discrepancies in the wall images not always blending together properly, and the
one mismatched voice. When Marge/ArchVile is walking around, a wav file of Mayor
Quimby is assigned to her. It was just so funny, I had to stick it in the game 
somewhere! By the way, I changed that demon's "flame attack" to something a bit
different. I just hated the way the fire-effect completely abscured your vision.
     Also, the Homer head in the status bar doesn't always properly match the
amount of damage he's taken. I might've fixed it before I upload this, though.
     The only other problem is the actual SIZE of the sprites. I drew them a bit
larger than the originals so that the detail and facial expressions were clearly
visible. This causes the player's perspective to appear slightly shorter, as if
Homer had shrunk in the wash! It's a minor annoyance, but this also causes the 
Robo-Burns' missles to shoot out of his groin, rather than his chest. Oops! Well,
 I guess it's funnier that way. 

------------------------------ DOMO ARIGATO... --------------------------------        
     Many thanks to ID software, of course. Maybe I can get a graphic production
job using this as part of my portfolio? We shall see...
     Thanks to GT Interactive for the Maximum Doom CD (which has a newer version
of the original Simpsons DooM on it). I wish I had discovered this patch file
before the CD was produced. 
     Thankyou, Matt Groening and FOX Television (and Klasky Csupo Studios), for 
creating the most hilarious (and longest running) animated series ever! I hope
and pray that it will continue for another decade, if not longer. 
     Unfortunately, I didn't think to document the credits for the midi files I 
downloaded, but I should at least acknowledge the songs used:
      
     The Simpsons theme, The theme from The Munsters, "Miserlou" (from Pulp
Fiction), The theme from "StarBlazers" (Space Cruiser Yamato), the Hogan's 
Heroes theme song, the Pink Panther theme, the theme from Chef!, the Urusei
Yatsura (Lum) theme, "Linus" from the Peanuts TV episodes, the theme from 
I Dream of Jeannie, the Dating Game theme, and the theme from Monty Python's 
Flying Circus are all copyrighted and owned by their respective companies and
creators. There. 

     Lastly, but certainly not leastly, thanks to Steve Blauwkamp and Chuck 
Fuoco for the original Simpsons DooM, and for giving me something to do while
in between projects.

------------------------------ WALTER SAYS... ---------------------------------

                                                                 (03/09/2002)

     Hi, I'm Walter Stabosz. I'm gonna tell a little story about this wad.
I helped Myk make this wad distributable. What's that mean? Well a long time 
ago (1998) when Myk wanted to upload his wad to the cdrom.com archive they 
rejected it because it contained images and sounds that were copyrighted by 
Id Software. So for years this awesome wad went unplayed by the majority of the 
Doom loving population. I was one of the lucky few who had downloaded a copy of 
this wad when it was still up on a website Myk had made. I would have never 
heard about this wad if I hadn't emailed Myk in 1998 about a Southpark wad he
was working on.

     A couple of years when by and a couple of hard drives got erased, and
when I wanted to play this wad again I could not find it! I couldn't even find
Myk's email address. After a few weeks of searching, with the help of  I found 
an old newsgroup post he had done.

http://groups.google.com/
groups?selm=19980313073401.CAA11240%40ladder01.news.aol.com&output=gplain

Once again I contacted Myk and told him I wanted the wad and furthermore wanted
to make it distributable. He promptly mailed me a zip disk and I got to work.
It actually only took me a few hours to remove the copyrighted Id material. 
However since I had this wad in my hands I thought, why not improve it. I
checked around and found that with the sndinfo.lmp file in ZDoom, I could fix
the annoying monsters saying each others lines bug. 

The rest of the time spend on the wad I was searching the Internet for Simpsons
sound clips. It is hard to find good quality sound clips! Eventually I recorded
some sounds from The Simpsons Wrestling game for Playstation and The Simpsons
Road Rage for PS2. I also added another song, Inagodadavida by Iron Butterfly.
The zip file also includes test.wad which is just a map with all the monster
in individual rooms. I used it for wad testing purposes.

Finally it is done. Enjoy.

If you want, you can reach me at [email protected]

------------------------------------- MORE? -----------------------------------

     Who knows? First I intend to send this to ID with my resume and portfolio
before I do anything else, but I have been considering creating other patch-wads
based on various cartoon shows. I may do a Looney-DooM with all the classic 
Warner Brothers charcters. I would rather do one based on my favorite WB show, 
"Steven Spoelberg presents: FREAKAZOID!", but there are hardly any good wav
files available on-line, and I don't have the resources to record my own just
yet. If you have any comments or suggestions, my e-mail address is:
                                
   [email protected]

Thanks for reading all this, and ENJOY!!!