Reload hack

The reload hack is an undocumented feature of vanilla Doom that allows rapid turnaround for level authors to test their changes without needing to completely restart the game.

Historical context
Doom's levels were developed on using the DoomEd editor, while the game itself ran under  on PCs. On early '90s hardware, starting up the game on a 486 class machine could take a long time (up to 30 seconds or more if using a 33 MHz processor); extensive pre-processing is performed on startup to prepare texture data for use in the renderer.

This makes the development cycle (Make change; rebuild WAD; restart game) quite expensive in terms of time. The reload hack was therefore implemented to reduce the time required to test out a level change.

Usage
The well-known command line parameter can be used to load a PWAD file for play, typically containing a third-party level. Adding a tilde (~) before the filename signifies that the reload hack should be applied to that file. For example:

doom2.exe -file ~reload.wad

will load, but the WAD file will be reloaded each time the level is restarted. So if is changed using an external editing tool, the changes can be immediately seen by using the IDCLEV level warp cheat code, or by restarting the level through dying or any other normal means.

Because of the nature of the hack, not all changes to the WAD file will have an effect. For example, texture changes will have no effect as they are precomputed on startup. A comment in the WAD code (w_wad.c) where the reload hack is implemented refers to it as "a fragile hack".

It is likely that id Software's developers used the hack with a NeXTStep workstation and PC in concert, with the PC loading PWADs stored on a network drive accessed in parallel by a NeXT workstation. This is evidenced by the parameter that loads maps from the directory  and automatically prepends the tilde to enable the reload hack - drive E: may have been a network mount present on the Doom development machines.

History
In April 1994, Dave Taylor posted a company status update to Doom newsgroups that mentioned that the upcoming version 1.3 would include "a new map reload feature for the map editor types out there so that you can test a level immediately after developing it without restarting." Unfortunately, either they forgot to properly document this new feature, or else knowledge of it was lost, as it was only rediscovered following the Doom source release in 1997. This is unfortunate because the hack would have been useful on the hardware of the time, and usable with a multitasking OS capable of running Doom (such as or ).

On modern hardware, CPUs are fast enough that the startup pre-processing time is negligible, negating most of the benefit of the hack.