Caverns of Darkness

Caverns of Darkness
Author	The Chaos Crew
Port	Eternity Engine
IWAD	Doom II
Year	2002
Link	Doomworld/idgames
	This mod was one of the ten 2002 mods to feature in the Top 100 WADs of All Time on Doomworld!

Top 100 WADs of All Time
2002 Alien Vendetta 2002 A Doom Odyssey Caverns of Darkness Dark 7 and Mission Pack Nimrod CH Retro Episode Ruma 007: Licence to Spell DooM Rip It, Tear It, Smash It Congestion Control
1994 - 1995 - 1996 - 1997 - 1998 1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 Cacowards

Caverns of Darkness is a 12-level partial conversion for Doom II created by the Chaos Crew and released on April 24, 2002. It is packaged with a required custom source port executable for MS-DOS, a fork of the Eternity Engine dubbed "EE 3.29 dev beta 5 joel-2". The levels are well-known for their use of voodoo doll conveyor belt scripting, ambient sounds, and fake 3D (through middle textures) to create more realistic subterranean environments. Caverns of Darkness was named one of 2002 entries in the Top 100 WADs of All Time.

Authors

Levels for the WAD were made by:

• Christopher Lutz
• Pedro Francisco Puicón (NokturnuS)
• Emil Brundage (NaturalTvventy)

Programming for the engine was done by:

• Joel Murdoch

Music for the WAD was written by:

• Justus Johnson

Content

Custom content

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Levels

All levels by Christopher Lutz unless noted otherwise.

• MAP01: Surface
• MAP02: Six Feet Under (exit to MAP11)
• MAP03: Hell & High Water
• MAP04: Hydrosfear by NokturnuS
• MAP05: Command Control by Emil Brundage (exit to MAP12)
• MAP06: Periditions Abyss
• MAP07: Lava Processing
• MAP08: The Pit
• MAP09: Hellmine by NokturnuS
• MAP10: Caverns of Darkness
• MAP11: Symbol of Grace (secret map)
• MAP12: The Stand (secret map)

Soundtrack

Aside from one custom track, all levels use Doom and Doom II songs by Robert Prince.

• MAP01: ? by Justus Johnson
• MAP02: "Running From Evil" (from MAP01: Entryway)
• MAP03: "The Demons from Adrian's Pen" (from E2M2: Containment Area)
• MAP04: "The Demon's Dead" (from MAP10: Refueling Base)
• MAP05: "Donna to the Rescue" (from E3M2: Slough of Despair)
• MAP06: "Waiting for Romero to Play" (from MAP18: The Courtyard)
• MAP07: "Waltz of the Demons" (from E2M7: Spawning Vats)
• MAP08: "Into Sandy's City" (from MAP09: The Pit)
• MAP09: "Shawn's got the Shotgun" (from MAP07: Dead Simple)
• MAP10: "Getting too Tense" (from MAP28: The Spirit World)
• MAP11: "They're Going to Get You" (from E2M4: Deimos Lab)
• MAP12: "They're Going to Get You" (from E2M4: Deimos Lab)
• Title: ?

Caverns of Darkness Engine

Caverns of Darkness Engine (or CoD Engine) is a source modification created by Joel Murdoch and based on Eternity Engine v3.29. The COD.EXE file included in the PWAD's archive is a source modification compiled for DOS. To play Caverns of Darkness in Windows operating systems, a DOS emulator such as DOSBox must be used. The binary adds more level editing features including:

• a new instant-death sector type for players falling into a black void
• a healing sector type that gives players health
• two new lighting effects to adjust sector brightness by 15
• looping ambient sounds
• additional attacks for the arch-vile and cyberdemon

On May 4, 2002, The Chaos Crew member Christopher Lutz published Joel's source code to the team's web site. However with the file stored on Joel's personal hosting, the link eventually went dead and the source became unavailable for more than a decade. On May 26, 2019 Joel Murdoch re-uploaded the source and posted a new download link to the Doomworld forums. It was made available on the idgames archive on January 31, 2020.

A new source port, Tartar, was released in December 2021 based on the CoD Engine source code and integrating various other improvements.

ZDoom version

On January 23, 2005, Christoph Oelckers (Graf Zahl) supplied a source modification called ZDOOM-COD.EXE, derived from ZDoom 2.0.96 that made the necessary additions to play Caverns of Darkness. It reports in-game as ZDoom 2.0.96c (COD custom). On November 15, 2008, he released a CoD PWAD patch to instead allow the levels to be played using the regular ZDoom build. It substitutes DECORATE actors in place of the original hard-coded custom thing types and weapons, as well as using MAPINFO to apply map translators that replace the CoD engine's new sector and linedef types.

Trivia

• Chris Hansen included this WAD in his 2002 list of "Great Doom Releases".

External links

• Caverns of Darkness at Doomworld/idgames
• Caverns of Darkness Engine source code at Doomworld/idgames
• Caverns of Darkness at Doomworld/idgames (ZDoom patch WAD from 2008)
• ZDoom custom build forum thread from 2005
• Caverns of Darkness at the Doom Speed Demo Archive
• Original COD Engine source code release entry (May 4th, 2002), hosted by Doomworld
• Top 100 WADS of All Time: 2002, Doomworld
• Review at ONEMANDOOM: WAD Reviews