Origwad
From DoomWiki.org
| Origwad | |
|---|---|
 The opening screen
| |
| Author | Jeffrey Bird |
| Port | Vanilla Doom |
| IWAD | Doom |
| Year | 1994 |
| Link | Doomworld/idgames |
Origwad is a very early user-created Doom level, designed by Jeffrey Bird of the James Cook University in North Queensland. It does not have an official name and is stored with the filename ORIGWAD.PWD. The level is notable for being perhaps the very first user-created map. A release announcement was posted to alt.games.doom on March 9, 1994 [1]; the time stamp and the readme file both indicate March 7.
In his readme, Jeffrey Bird stated that:
"This is an experimental PWAD file for use with DOOM. It is rather simple since I cannot generate the nodes structure for anything much more complex than this. This level has been generated entirely by hand. No editors were used to produce it."[2]
Contents
Walkthrough[edit]
The level is E1M1, with no support for difficulty levels. It consists of two rooms joined by a door. The first room contains a shotgun and a shotgun guy. The second room contains three imps, two barons of Hell, and the exit switch. There are no power-ups or ammo caches. This makes achieving 100% kills problematic, as the second baron requires several dozen punches to kill, even if the player uses their ammo wisely and forces infighting amongst the monsters.
Secrets[edit]
There are no secrets in this map.
Areas / screenshots[edit]
Bloody carnage, with the exit switch beyond
Speedrunning[edit]
As this level does not contain official secrets, the NM 100S category is redundant.
Current records[edit]
The records for the map at the Doom Speed Demo Archive are:
| Run | Time | Player | Date | File | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UV speed | 0:02.09 | Aleksey Kamenev (4shockblast) | 2020-02-16 | origp209.zip | Cross-listed from Pacifist |
| NM speed | 0:02.34 | Aleksey Kamenev (4shockblast) | 2013-02-09 | orign234.zip | |
| UV max | 0:45.23 | DreamTimes | 2023-03-15 | origm045.zip | |
| UV -fast | 0:45.71 | Aleksey Kamenev (4shockblast) | 2019-07-05 | origf045.zip | |
| UV -respawn | 0:19.80 | Billa | 2022-07-05 | origr019.zip | |
| UV Tyson | 2:27.43 | Bdubzzz | 2022-07-19 | origt227.zip | |
| UV pacifist | 0:02.09 | Aleksey Kamenev (4shockblast) | 2020-02-16 | origp209.zip | |
| NoMo | 0:01.97 | Aleksey Kamenev (4shockblast) | 2022-07-04 | origo197.zip | |
| Stroller | 0:03.49 | Decay | 2022-07-05 | origm1str349.zip |
The data was last verified in its entirety on March 17, 2023.
Miscellaneous demos[edit]
| Run | Time | Player | Date | File | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UV pacifist UV built | 0:01.83 | alps | 2020-11-29 | origxpr183.zip | 0:01 is achieved with monsters through the use of wallrunning along two imps. |
| NoMo UV built | 0:01.89 | alps | 2020-11-29 | origxo189.zip |
The data was last verified in its entirety on January 31, 2022.
Deathmatch[edit]
This map cannot be played in multiplayer mode, as it contains no co-op or deathmatch start points.
Statistics[edit]
Map data[edit]
| Things | 8 |
| Vertices | 14* |
| Linedefs | 16 |
| Sidedefs | 8 |
| Sectors | 3 |
Things[edit]
This level contains the following numbers of things per skill level:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Technical information[edit]
ORIGWAD.PWD must be renamed to ORIGWAD.WAD, or else some ports will not be able to play it at all.
The sidedefs in this level are packed, which for a level of any typical size would presuppose a full-featured editor.
Inspiration and development[edit]
Origwad was followed four days later by CROSS.WAD, which was also produced by hand, by Alistair Brown at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom. Although there had been level editing utilities before March 1994, they were incapable of creating new maps entirely from scratch. The first editor able to do so was DEU 5.0, which was released at the end of March 1994, several weeks after Origwad.[3] With the release of this utility a torrent of user-generated levels followed.
Jeffrey Bird released no further Doom levels. As of January 2006, he still worked at James Cook University, as the CSO System and Directory Administrator, and used the same email address included in Origwad's readme file.[4] Thus he was able, in 2009, to license Origwad for use in a community megawad of retooled 1994 levels. [5]
Trivia[edit]
Origwad is widely accepted as the first PWAD created from scratch, but a few observers have called attention to incomplete "paper trails" from this era of the internet [2][6] and the problem of corrupted time stamps on very old WADs [7], leaving room for speculation that some other map might have been first.
External links[edit]
- Origwad at Doomworld/idgames (note the parameter id=11)
- Origwad demos at the Doom Speed Demo Archive
References[edit]
- ↑ "First *TOTALLY* original PWAD on wuarchive", thread at alt.games.doom
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Origwad at Doomworld/idgames, where it is file id=11
- ↑ "Doom Editing History" at Johnromero.com (archived)
- ↑ Personal correspondence; he responded in Doomworld's reviews section for the level a few comments later
- ↑ 1994 tune-up challenge
- ↑ The first PWADs
- ↑ First PWAD ever?
